Page 34 of Flagrant Foul
He guides me to the couch, remaining standing once I’ve taken a seat. He watches passively as I take a bite of bacon and toast. It’s perfect. Perfectly salty. Perfectly buttery. Exactly what my hangover needs. I take another bite and another one. The entire time I eat, Teddy doesn’t move. His arms are at his sides, hanging loosely. Hands in a neutral, resting position.
I chew and swallow, chew and swallow until my tongue rebels. Until my pharyngeal muscle goes lax and my mouth goes bone dry.
Teddy raises a sympathetic brow, pads to the kitchen, and returns with a glass of water. He hands it to me.
I take it gratefully, and when I’ve downed most of it, I put the glass and plate on the side table next to me. I feel like I should say something, but I don’t know what. Teddy is being super weird. The whole day is being weird.
Something very strange has happened in this apartment, and it’s making Teddy larger than life. He’s all I can see, and he’s somehow managed to fill the entire room with his smell, and despite all the bacon and water I’ve had, there’s a sweet taste in my mouth I can’t shake.
Teddy is still eerily calm, but added to that, a vague reverberation of amusement has engraved a large comma into one of his cheeks. The way he’s looking down at me leaves me one hundred percent certain his amusement comes at my expense.
“Ready?” he asks almost kindly.
My head is a little loose on its hinges and bobs without any active involvement from me. A very, very distant voice murmurs something to me in a soft, breathy whisper. It’s so quiet that I can’t quite make out what it’s saying, though it seems important.
Teddy reaches down and long, graceful fingers curl around the hem of his T-shirt. I’m transfixed. Hyperfocused. The fabric is soft and tightly knit. Luxurious. The stitching of the hem is exactly the same color as his shirt. I’ve never noticed it before, but now that I have, I wonder how hard it is to make that happen. Is it someone’s job to match colors like that? If so, how do you get into that kind of thing? Is there, like, a special qualification or something? I think about asking Teddy these questions, as he seems like the kind of guy who would know, but I’m so absorbed by the movements of his fingers that I can’t remember how my tongue works.
He lifts his hand and his T-shirt comes up with it. He moves slowly. Steadily. Showing more skin in incrementsso gradual that I feel myself aging as it happens. Changing. Mutating.
At first, a hint of his stomach is exposed.
It’s okay,I tell myself.It’s no problem. It’s not a big deal. We’re teammates. We play on the same team. I see him shirtless in the locker room all the time. I grew up with him. We used to go to the public pool in Alabaster all the time. I’ve seen his chest lots of times. It’s fine.
The problem is, this time is nothing like the other times. Teddy’s different this time. His eyes are different. So is his mouth. There’s this inexplicable heat radiating off him. A raw sexuality that’s oozing out of him, spilling onto the floor, and wrapping itself around my legs. His lips are different too. They’re curled at the corners like paper that got too close to a flame.
I feel like I might be a little too close to a flame too.
He looks more than eerily calm now. He looks sure. Of the situation, of me, but more than that, he looks sure of himself.
That scares me.
My hungover heart squeezes hard, winding me and wiping my mind clean.
I’ve never seen Teddy like this. Never. Not at the nightclub in New York. Not in the street outside it. Not even that spring break in Alabaster when he held myhand and tried to kiss me in the backyard. My right hand clenches at the memory, clutching at nothing as though it’s trying to hold on to something intangible.
It was a still night, warm and cloudless, and the moon was full. We were outside. Alone. Nate was out with a girl he’d been chasing for a while. Cindy something, I think. No. Sylvie. Sylvie Jackson. We had plans to meet up, Nate and I, but he sent me a message that morning letting me know he couldn’t make it. I read the message while I was doing something else and forgot all about it.
I forgot that Mr. and Mrs. O’Reilly would be out and that Teddy would be home alone. I forgot that it wasn’t a good idea for me to be anywhere near Teddy without Nate there to act as a buffer. I stood on the porch and rang the bell like I always did. Everything was normal.
He opened the door and nothing was normal again.
He was happy to see me, and he didn’t try to hide it. He was so happy that his hand flew to his chest. His fingers found the chain around his neck and wrapped around it tightly. He held on to it like it was a talisman. He smiled at me the way he used to smile at me when we were kids. Like I was something big. Something that mattered. Someone worthwhile.
The sky was pitch black. A sprinkling of stars danced around the moon, and as we walked down the stairs thatled from the back porch to the lawn, Teddy slid his hand into mine. He did it so casually that it felt natural. Like the most normal thing in the world. Like something we’d done lots of times before.
His hand was warm in mine. So warm. Our fingers fit together perfectly, as though they were made for each other. It felt so right that it took me longer than it should have to pull away.
I told myself it didn’t mean anything. That friends held hands sometimes. That nothing more would happen. That it was just the one time.
I knew I was lying to myself, but I couldn’t make myself let go.
I feel like that now too. I should be closing my eyes now, or blinking at least, but I can’t make myself do either.
His hand is still moving. Still traveling up. His whole belly is exposed now, and I can see him breathing. His ribcage expands as it fills with air. Little dents form above his navel when he expels it. He’s three yards away from me. Close, but not close enough that I could touch him if I reached out. I can feel his breath on me despite that. It lands lightly but hits hard.
Hot.
It hits hard and it’s hot.
