Page 46 of A Flighty Fake Boyfriend
“Exactly like that.” He knee-walked toward me but stopped when he was about a foot away. “Either way, it’s all good.”
I had to clear my throat. “I’m a little tired and a little drunk right now.”
He nodded, though I knew he saw through the lie. “Maybe you’re right. It’d be better if we were both sober.”
“Sleep well, Epic.”
“You too, Ryan.”
I lay awake long after Epic fell asleep, thinking about him.
The thing I regretted most was lost contact. Because even if hooking up was off the table for me just then, I missed the warmth of casual touch. I missed the way his back had pressed to my chest in the lounger and how he’d turned over and tucked his face into my neck. I missed holding him.
I’d gone so long without touch, Epic’s had ruined me in a single night.
He made me want.
He made me relive coffee-flavored kisses and long walks in the sunshine and someone who cared whether my ribs showed or I smoked too much. He made me miss Luis, whose lips I would swear still had a smile he shared only with me.
I relived lost days—lost dreams—with Luis, whom I’d met at an ordinary fundraiser in a posh hotel. I'd walked past him to get a drink in the bar, but I never got there. He'd grabbed my hand and simply never let go. Not until he realized there was nothing to hold on to, anyway, but by then…
By then we’d broken each other’s hearts.
When I finally drifted off, I dreamed of that hotel, and the look Luis gave me in its gilded mirrors, and the clench of his fingers around my wrist as he’d pulled me into the shadows and kissed me without introducing himself first.
I dreamed of his room, and the view, and the way we fed each other breakfast the next morning and how I’d believed I’d never be alone again.
“You feel too deeply,” he told me time and again. “You think too much.”
Whether it was my job—mywindmillsas he called it—or him, he was never comfortable with the way a news story or a casually caustic word from him could blow my world apart.
I didn’t like it either, so I’d retreated inside myself and my work, little by little, until we paid the price.
For some reason, I never dreamed of the bad times.
Instead, my stubborn, idiotic heart held on to the best times, the golden hopeful moments, the sweet smiles, the rain-soaked kisses, the way he woke me in the morning with coffee and pushed inside my body at night.
When I woke beside Epic the following morning, there were tearstains on my cheeks. The persistent ache in my gut I’d been so certain was some kind of ulcer had turned out to be grief. Only grief.
I lay there crying, unable to help myself. Unable to hide my tears. I started to rise from the bed, but Epic reached for me.
“Hey.” He pulled me to him. “Hey. Oh, sweetheart. What’s all this?”
“It’s nothing.” I turned away, half-afraid he was going to try to dry my tears and half-afraid he wasn’t. “Bad dreams.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Please let me go. It’s really nothing.” I tried to pull away, but he cupped my face between his palms. I felt absurd. It was absurd, being handled by a man so young.
“My grandma says as soon as you tell someone about a bad dream, you’ll never have that dream again.” He pressed his cheek to my forehead and kissed my brow. “Tell me, Ryan.”
“It hurts.”
“Mm.” He kissed my temple. My eyes. The tip of my nose. A spot under my ear. “You’ll have to be more specific. What hurts?”
I clenched the T-shirt over my heart. “Here.”
“Oh.” He pulled me to him, and that was worse by far. I’d been trying to arrest the flow of tears, but his kindness just…broke the levee.
