Page 27 of The Plus One
It was the first time he’d been touched like this in… forever. He couldn’t conjure a single memory of someone touching him for such an extended period of time so comfortably. It should have disconcerted him. He’d been deprived of substantial touch for years now; the only contact he made with another was when their body was broken on his table and his hands were the only things that could put it back together again. He’d started avoiding touch as much as possible—like it would singe his skin if he allowed anyone too close. But Indira’s warmth and comfort lulled him to an almost-drugged state of euphoric calmness. And, without thinking, without stopping himself, Jude leaned back.
Then he fell into the deepest sleep of his life.
CHAPTER 11
Jude
“Oh my God, Jude! Howareyou?”
It was about the fifteenth iteration of the same greeting Jude had heard in as many minutes as he hovered on the outskirts of Collin and Jeremy’s latest engagement/pre-wedding party.
His body tensed as he was pulled into another crushing hug by someone he only vaguely recognized from med school.
Collin and Jeremy, damn extroverts that they were, had invited all their friends from medical school to come out to Dusty Luke’s, a dive bar most Callowhill students had drowned their sorrows in at least once or twice. Which basically meant their entire graduating class was packed into the tiny West Philly pub.
And every single one of them seemed dead set on randomly touching Jude and speaking loudly in his face over pumping music and colliding voices.
“You were stationed overseas, right?” Brad, someone Jude distantly remembered from cadaver lab, asked, leaning far too close into Jude’s already invaded personal space. This was the first time he’d been out in a crowd this large since coming home, and he was thoroughly wishing for the lonely safety of his room. He’d thought the Cheesecake Factory had been overwhelming, but this was next level.
“Were you in the military?” Brad’s wife, Marta, asked, also getting close.
“Not exactly,” Jude mumbled, gulping down his water, hoping it would cool the burning feeling in his gut and limbs. Jude had seen the consequences of war, though, the horrific injuries people inflicted upon each other. The reminder of it regularly punched him in the throat.
Brad opened his mouth to ask another question, but a loud tapping on the microphone at the front of the bar commanded everyone’s attention.
Jeremy and Collin stood on the small stage in the corner, cheeks rosy as they smiled at their friends.
“Hello, everyone!” Jeremy said, gripping the mic. “We have a few things we’d like to say. First, thank you all for coming to our little pre-wedding bash.” The pair beamed at the scattered applause. “Everyone says it’s so easy to be caught up in the day that you miss your own wedding, so we decided to celebrate it as many times as possible!”
“And tonight,” Collin said, taking the microphone from Jeremy, “we thought it would be fun to throw back some beers, eat cheesesteaks, and host a little bit of trivia! It’ll be a mix of general knowledge and facts about us as a couple, and the winning team will get a prize.”
“What’s the prize?” a voice near Jude called out. He could recognize that voice anywhere. He scanned the area around him until he saw Indira standing at a nearby high top, elbows propped on the table as she slid her glass between her hands.
Jeremy took the mic again. “Glad you asked! It’s a super-cool, custom-made, limited-edition, extremely fashionable and not at all tacky…” Jeremy and Collin looked at each other with matching grins, then created a mock drum-roll by slapping their thighs. “…Jellinshirt!”
Jeremy grabbed something from the table behind him, then held it up to the crowd with a flourish, a T-shirt unfurling from his grip.
It was… something. That’s for sure.
Large caricatures of Collin and Jeremy hugging each other were airbrushed in the center withJellin(which apparently was their couple name and wedding hashtag) written in large cursive at the top.
“Amazing, right?” Collin said, voice cracking on a chuckle as he looked adoringly at Jeremy. He pulled the mic away from his mouth as another laugh shook him, closing his eyes for a moment to collect himself. “Get ready, because we’ll get started soon.”
The crowd cheered and whooped, but Jude didn’t miss Indira’s rather vocal heckling. She was such a little shit. Jude smiled as he moved closer to her.
Everything about her drew him in, and Jude made a conscious effort to stop his feet from moving.
The past few days had been a rather shocking exercise in restraint. Jude was trying, somewhat desperately in his mind, to sever any growing threads between the two of them since their bizarre couch… cuddle… thing.
He didn’t want Indira seeing him too closely, noticing the damage in him. But living under such tight quarters with her was a surprisingly visceral type of torture—her laugh traveling through the wall they shared as she talked on the phone, the sound of her rough and lovely voice as she sang in the shower, her soft and earthy scent embedding itself into everything Jude owned—all little tugs at a spot below his ribs, tempting him to… to…
To just exist around her.
So, naturally, he’d been trying to avoid her as much as possible.
He stepped back, tucking himself into the corner, hoping to disappear into the bar’s dark and chipped paint while the hum of the space threatened to cut him open. He hated that subtle noise. It set his teeth on edge and made his heart pound against his chest.
He tried to focus on the faces of people—study their features until everything else blurred at the edges—instead of absorbing the overwhelming amount of bodies around him.
