Page 23 of Only When We Fall

Kai

The message sits unsent in my drafts.Hey, tomorrow okay? Just coffee and a chat.

I stare at it for too long, thumb hovering, before I lock my phone and toss it onto my bed.Just coffee!What a joke. Any time I’m within a foot of her; I want to hold her and beg for her forgiveness.

I need a distraction.

Seb must read the tension on my face when I drag myself into the kitchen, because he eyes me over his bowl of cereal like I’m a stray dog that might bite. “You look like shit.”

“Cheers,” I mutter, snatching a drink from the fridge.

He chews slowly. “You know, if parties aren’t hitting the same, there’s this open class thing tonight. My friend Jules is running it.”

I raise a brow. “What kind of class?”

“Live drawing,” he says. “With her art crowd. Chill vibes. Weed, sketchbooks, probably some weird music. Thought you wanted a change.”

I arch a sceptical brow, “You’re inviting me to hang out with artsy stoners?”

He shrugs. “Better than watching you mope and pretend you’re over whatever her name is.”

“Emmie,” I mutter, and he grins.

“I knew it.”

By the time we get there, the sky’s already bruising into twilight and the studio’s pulsing with low music. The room smells like acrylic and incense. People sit cross-legged on scatter cushions,sketchpads resting on their knees. It’s just how I pictured it to be and when I snigger, Seb elbows me in the side, scowling in warning to behave.

My attention is dragged to the two naked women in the center of the room. I blink. “You didn’t mention the nudity part,” I whisper.

Seb grins. “Didn’t want you to bail.”

They’re posing as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, with one lounging on a velvet chair, the other stretched out on a rug like a fucking Renaissance painting. Seb passes me a sketchpad and a charcoal stick. I hesitate; I don’t make a habit of drawing. It’s one of the things my dad hated to see me doing. He said it’d never pay the bills. But I take the offered supplies and drop down beside Seb on a beanbag.

Ten minutes in and I’ve forgotten that the women are even naked. I’m concentrating so hard on drawing their lines and shading in the right spots, that I don’t notice it. Seb glances over my shoulder once and mutters, “Damn, you’ve got a good eye.”

Someone cracks open a bottle and offers it around. It smells of nail polish remover as I take a swig and wince, restraining against the urge to gag.

The girls take a break, and someone changes the soft music to something with a little more bass. A few of the other artists drop their sketch pads, stretching as they follow one another from the room, lighting up joints. The smell of weed wafts back through the room but before we can follow, one of the girls grabs Seb and pulls him into a tango style dance.

I smirk, taking another swig from the bottle as the other girl crawls into my lap, laughing and brushing my hair out of my face like she’s always known me.

“This is fun,” she purrs.

I smile, because I’m supposed to. But it’s not real. Not really. And as I knock back more of the homemade vodka, the roombegins to float away, and I allow my head to fall back. She takes the bottle, drinking a few mouthfuls before giggling. “That’s strong.”

I bring my head back up as she climbs over me. A sheer material is wrapped over her shoulders, but she doesn’t seem to care she’s naked as she leans closer, pressing her mouth to my ear and whispering, “You’re hot.” All I can think about is Emmie’s reaction if she were here. I’d definitely earn an eyeroll. “The second you walked in the room, I imagined this,” she whispers, touching my cheek gently until we’re eye to eye, before sealing her lips over mine. I kiss her back, my hands travelling over her shoulders and up into her hair as I tug her even closer.

I want this.I repeat it over in my head. The vodka’s burning through my veins, and she’s warm and soft and already moaning into my mouth like she can’t get enough of me. She grinds against me, breathy moans slipping from her parted lips as I nip the skin along her collar bone. Her hands grip my belt, and she begins to tug it open. And then it hits me; I don’t want this. Not her. Not someone else that means nothing but a quick, empty fuck. I still her hands and she glances up; her cheeks flushed from excitement. I give my head a slight shake and she frowns. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just need,” I scrape my fingers through my hair. “I need some air.”

She doesn’t argue, instead giving me a crooked smile like she’s seen this before, as if I’m not the first guy to lose his nerve after the third shot of nail-polish vodka. She leans in and presses one last kiss to the corner of my mouth before slipping off me, and vanishing into the haze of incense and strobe lights.

I stumble outside. The air is cool and sharp. I lean against the wall, dragging my hands over my face and for a long moment I stare up at the stars. They don’t look how they used to. Nothing does since Emmie. I groan, pulling out my mobile. I open up thetext from earlier, the one I never sent, and hover my finger over the button.

It’s clear I can’t move forward until I’ve spoken to her, and so I hit send before I can talk myself out of it.

Chapter Eight

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