Page 38 of Meet Me in the Blue

A moan rumbled in my chest, foreign and loud, and with shiny eyes and pink cheeks, Luka broke away, breathless. “What are we doing?”

I held his face between my hands, the rough texture of his dark stubble felt right under my palms. His lips were this pretty shade of strawberry red, slightly swollen and shaped like a heart. I hadn’t noticed that before, the divot above his lip. “I have no idea.”

“You can’t kiss me like that…” His voice was raw, scraped thin and vulnerable. “You can’t kiss me like you mean it if you don’t.”

“I mean it.” I lowered my hands to his hips. I didn’t care about the cars passing by, or the cashier staring at us through the bookshop window. “Luka… look at me.”

He covered my hands with his, pushing them from his hips, and stepped back, the cold air adding more bricks between us. “I don’t want to lose my best friend again.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that,” he said, his hands in fists at his side.

“I guess I don’t.” I thought about my failed attempts at relationships, my hesitation toward sex, the loneliness invading my home every time I walked through the front door. “I don’t know what I’m doing, or if I can even give you what you need, but hell, Luka, I want to try.” I hesitated as he pushed his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Unless you meant it when you said you were over it. Over me.”

“You give me what I need every time I look at you. By simply… existing.” His bleach-blond hair rustled in the breeze, his eyes, weary and soft, blinked back the brimming moisture dampening his lashes. He wasn’t the same boy I’d always known. Time and pain had changed him. But he was mine all the same. He kept his distance and gave me a watery smile. “I don’t know what to do… I’ll never be over you, Rook, and that kiss…” His voice broke, and he shook his head, huffing out a choked laugh. “It was everything I’ve ever fucking wanted, and it scares the hell out of me. I don’t think I could survive it this time… if it didn’t work out.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” He raised a brow. “Does that mean… what? What does that mean?”

“It means whatever you want it to, Luka. I’m here, and if that’s all you need, if that’s enough, it’s enough for me too.”

“It has to be enough.”

Nodding, I breathed through the growing discomfort in my stomach. “Then I can respect that. I shouldn’t have kissed you. I shouldn’t have assumed that’s what you wanted.”

“Rook,” he said my name with so much regret it was hard to look at him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t… you hate that word. Remember?”

“I don’t want things to be weird. I just want my friend, and I feel like I fucked it up again.”

“You didn’t… I promise…” I gave him a smile that wasn’t a total lie. I gave him his friend and reached up to brush a strand of hair from his forehead. “We’re good, I swear. Come on, let’s go take those pictures.”

I started to cross the street, touching my fingers to my lips. The heat of his mouth hadn’t yet faded, and as Luka sidled in next to me, I hid my shaking hands in the pockets of my jacket. It didn’t matter if, for the first time in my life, a kiss actually meant something, that I actually wanted more than anything to kiss him again. This was who we were, and I didn’t want to do anything to lose that. It was enough. It had to be, because more than anything, I didn’t want to be someone he needed to survive.

LUKA

I WAS SUCH Aliar.

I told myself if I stayed busy, I’d forget the way he tasted, like spice and granted wishes. I’d forget how the heat of his lips lingered even three days later. I’d forget how I’d finally gotten everything I’d wanted and promptly pushed it all away. Fucking fear, it ruled me, and I was exhausted trying to fight it all the time. I stared at the screen of my dad’s computer, at Rook’s smiling face frozen in time. I’d taken the shot on Monday at the office. He hadn’t been paying attention, laughing with Charity about something, laughing like he hadn’t uprooted every last one of my lifelines, like he hadn’t kissed me and opened me up and destroyed me all at once. I didn’t know how to move forward. He’d said he wanted to try.

Try.

Try to want me?

Try to love me like I loved him?

Loving Rook was effortless for me. Effortless because I’d always known. It wasn’t a maybe kind of thing, or a let’s try, it was years of hopeful smiles and subtle touches, disseminating each one and wondering if this time… just maybe… It was hours of talking in the dark shade of trees and knowing that this person, this one man, owned all of my secrets. All but one. And it was a million days of wanting to give him that secret, wanting to give him everything.

I wasn’t willing to gamble our friendship, gamble everything on the word try. I touched my fingers to my lips again for the thousandth time since Monday.

“Stop it,” I whispered to myself as I flipped through more of the photos and focused my attention on my project. I had to have all the final edited photos to Mr. Burgess and Zach by tomorrow morning and had zero time to wallow. It didn’t help that I hadn’t seen Rook since Monday, hadn’t had the chance to read him face to face. We’d both been too busy, and with this deadline, I had to decline his invitation to lunch today. I wasn’t avoiding him on purpose. I wasn’t. We texted every night, and I hadn’t detected any regret in the tone of his messages. If anything, it was like the kiss hadn’t happened at all. Our friendship was intact. Another photo of Rook popped onto the screen and my heart sank, overfilling my gut with anxiety. Fuck. I wasn’t very good at this whole self-preservation shit anymore.

I closed the editing program and headed to the kitchen with a plan to eat my feelings. With my mood officially in the toilet, I wouldn’t get much work finished anyway. I had all day and night to get it done and figured making sure I actually ate something today was a good enough reason for a break.

I found my mom hovered over the stove, stirring a pot. The scent of carrots and onions in the air had my stomach cramping with hunger. “Smells good.”

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