Page 41 of Green
I gave him a look.And?
“And I just thought I should come right out and tell you that instead of dancing around the issue.”
“Okay, great. Thanks. For not dancing around the issue.”
He nodded his head once, like that was the end of the conversation, but he didn’t move.
“Anything else?”
He licked his lips, rubbed them together, rolled onto his tip-toes then back to his heels. He looked down at the ground, scratched his chin with his thumb, messed up his hair, cleared his throat. “That’s it. Just had to get it off my chest.”
“So you’ve gotten everything off your chest now?”
“Yup. Feels good. How do you feel?”
“Fantastic. My chest feels amazing.”
After a beat, wherein his eyes flicked down to my chest, he said quickly: “Cool. Good talk. Good night, then.”
I felt the corners of my mouth pull up into a big fake toothy smile. “Good talk. Nighty night.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest again. “Was there something you wanted to say?”
I had so many thoughts swirling around in my brain that I couldn’t pick out one of them and put words to it, so I did the only thing I could do. I picked up my pillow and threw it at him.
He caught the pillow with ease and clung to it. “I shouldn’t have come in here. I guess I’m just nervous about…stuff. But my offer for you to continue on with our current arrangement still stands.”
“And my answer is still no.”
He looked incredulous.
No. He looked sad.
I felt horrible.
“Theo, it’s just that—”
“No, it’s fine. We probably shouldn’t talk anymore tonight. You have to get up early.”
“Yeah.”
“Good night.” He left and shut the door.
That’s just like him. He comes in here and says something totally annoying and I’m still the one left feeling guilty about being an asshole.
Was it wrong of me to want to torture and confuse him, just a little? Did he deserve to be punished for being so gosh darned shirtless eighty percent of the time I saw him? Was it, in fact, a good and sensible idea for me to shower before going to bed so I could get fifteen more minutes of sleep in the morning? And was it possible that I would forget to bring a change of clothes with me to the bathroom, which meant I would have to return to my bedroom wrapped in a towel, even though that had happened exactly zero times before when Theo was home?
Yes.
To all of the above.
A thousand times, it was about fucking time, why the hell not, oh hell yes.
