Page 82 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
Who was I kidding? It made me want him.
Screw it. I couldn’t keep watching. I needed to move. I rolled over, wishing I could fall into some portal that would take me anywhere but here in this moment. It wouldn’t hurt if the portal could also transform me into a guy who’d be turned on by C-girl’s sighing girly sounds instead of my best friend’s caveman ones. My pillow shifted with me as I rolled, and the corner caught the wire from my phone charger. Horror streaked through me as my phone launched off the crates I used as a bedside table. I grabbed for it, the scene morphing into slow motion, but my fingers only grazed the wire. The phone clattered onto the ugly linoleum floor, making a noise that sounded like a bomb going off in the muffled quiet of the room.
I froze, my lips clamped together to keep the string of colorful profanities from escaping. Please God, please God, please. . .
Whispered sounds, then Malcolm’s sleepy, lust-drunk Southern accent drifting over from across the room. “You awake, Bates?”
That’s it, God, I’m going atheist.
I debated whether or not to open my mouth. What the hell was I supposed to say? Yeah, man, just hanging out over here listening to you get it on with your girl of the week. Soldier on. Don’t mind the tented sheets. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Fuck.
“Hmm?” I said, a lame attempt to sound like I was coming out of a deep sleep.
The girl let out a whispered “Ohmigod,” and there was a hurried rustling of sheets or clothes. Her voice was urgent and low but I could hear everything. “Malcolm, where’s my bra? Find it. I don’t want him to see anything.”
Malcolm chuckled at her obvious panic. “Bates, if you’re really awake, close your eyes for a minute. Chrissy’s got to get herself together.”
Chrissy. That was it. I knew it was something like that, but Mal went through hookups so quickly I’d need a spreadsheet and a flow chart to keep them straight. And dear Chrissy had no need to freak out. As much as I wished it weren’t the case, I had about as much interest in seeing her naked as I did in seeing my seventy-year-old astronomy professor do a striptease. I’d tried the
boob thing in high school. Saw them. Touched them. Even tasted one. Well, two, I guess. It wasn’t something you could just do one of, apparently, but the whole experience had been clumsy and uncomfortable.
“Um, you don’t have to leave because of me,” I said into the dark. “I can, you know, go hang out in the lounge until y’all are, uh, done or whatever.”
Awkward, aisle one. But what else was I supposed to do? It was a high bullet point on the bro code that one should not cock-block a friend. I’d learned this freshman year from our dorm neighbors Howie and Jun. Apparently, Howie could never remember the sock tied around the doorknob signal and interrupted Jun and his girlfriend regularly.
“Dude, it’s two in the morning,” Malcolm said. “What the hell are you going to do in the lounge?”
Not listen to you. Not think about you in completely non–best friend ways. Not wonder what’s she’s doing to get you to make those sounds. “They have cable out there.”
“No, it’s okay,” Chrissy said. “I need to get out of here anyway. I’m leaving early to drive home for Thanksgiving break, so I better get some sleep.”
“Baby, you don’t have to go so soon,” Malcolm said in that voice that I was convinced channeled the Force because it was so damn effective. Chrissy could probably feel her underwear being tugged down by invisible hands.
“Aww, you’re sweet,” she said, and the click of heels hit the linoleum as she apparently slipped on her shoes. “But I really shouldn’t have stayed this late anyway. Call me when you get back into town, okay?”
“Definitely,” Malcolm said, all Alabama charm and promises. But I knew definitely probably meant never. Mal was good at finding girls to make out with but rarely hung out with any of them more than once or twice. This was Chrissy’s second rotation, so her library card was about to expire.
There was a quick smooch sound, more clicking of heels, and then a shaft of light cut across the room as she opened the door to the hall. She gave a little finger wave to us both and then slipped out.
I blew out a breath, thankful that my body was finally calming down and cooperating, but still feeling like a dick for interrupting. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t meant to—”
“Nah,” Malcolm said, cutting him off and flicking on his desk lamp. “I knew you were awake the whole time.”
“What?” I pushed up on my elbows.
He grinned, a flash of white teeth in the lamplight, as he climbed out of his bed. He grabbed a rubber band off his desk and tied his hair back, somehow making wavy shoulder-length hair look masculine. “Dude, you snore like a fucking lumberjack when you sleep, and you were quiet as a mouse tonight. Perv.”
My face went hot. “Y’all were noisy.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “I have that effect on women.”
I snorted. “If you knew I was up, why didn’t you say something sooner? You know I would’ve made myself scarce.”
He stretched his arms above his head, causing his pants to sink lower on his hips and his abs to flex in their full glory. God, did he have to preen? I was having a hard enough time focusing as it was. The talk I gave myself on a daily basis lately ran through my head on loop. He’s your best friend. He’s straight. He thinks you are, too. Ruin this and you have nothing.
“I was kind of over it anyway. She’s hot and all, but I just wasn’t feeling it tonight.”
