King," I say through a yawn.
"Oh, Xia. It's just you." He laughs. "I thought I busted in on my boy in here with a real girl."
My brows furrow and Jordan's rise as we watch King catch his slip.
"I mean. Not to say you aren't a real girl. You know you’re hot, baby. But you get what I mean. You're the buddy. No smashing." He laughs. I try to pretend my lungs didn’t just completely deflate as I look at him. Shit, is it that obvious? I’m just the buddy. Jordan’s little buddy that he could in no way ever be attracted to. Not even our friends could imagine anything more happening between us. I’ve been fooling myself.
I look from King back to Jordan with mock amusement as I shake my head, trying to play off the fact that I’m crushed. Jordan, on the other hand, doesn’t look amused as he stares daggers at King. Maybe he’s pissed he woke him.
"Yeah, King. No smashing," I force a laugh. King hesitates at the door as if he’s trying to decide if he should come in or not. I guess the awkward moment caused him to change his mind.
"Right. Well, bring y'all asses down here. Roe and I got some beers."
"Nah, we're going to pass." Jordan says, looking at me. "I think we're going to hang up here for the night."
"No, it's fine," I say, lowering my voice and meeting Jordan's gaze. "I'm okay. We can go." He looks at me with a question in his eyes but before he can protest I decide to speak up.
"We'll be down in a few," I say to King who nods and steps back into the hall.
"Zee, you sure? I'm good just hanging out up here with you. We can grab some food, watch TV."
"I'm sure. I want to go." I know he's doing this for me and I seriously love him for it, but I'd feel horrible if he spent the whole night up here because I'm upset. I don't want to ruin his evening and I could probably use people right now. "Plus we need to drink to you getting the teacher's assistant job for Satchi. That's huge."
"Yeah." He smiles. "I left out one part. I get the job pending on how well I do on the exam."
"And, you’re gonna ace it. You know you are.” I slide from the bed, feeling a bit lighter than I did when I first lay down. Being in Jordan's arms made all the difference.
"We'll see."
“Is Felicia coming over tonight?” I ask, doing all I can to suppress the eye roll that’s brewing.
“No, um…” He turns to me. “We actually broke up this morning.”
“Seriously? What happened?”
“Come on, you know there was nothing really there to start. I don’t know why I let it go on for so long.”
“Yeah,” I say. Don’t smile, don’t smile. "Okay. I'll tell you what. Tonight, we hang out with everyone, have a little fun, then tomorrow we close ourselves up in here, study our asses off. Then, after I get back from my parents' dinner, we can spend the evening binge-watching Disney."
"Okay, deal—wait, binge-watching what? Hell no. I'm not watching Disney."
"But I'm sad and Disney makes me happy."
"Zee, I'm not watching The Little Mermaid. I don't care how sad you are."
"Come on, don't you love me?" I pout, trying my best to lay it on thick.
"I do," he says, meeting my gaze. "But I'm still not watching the damn Little Mermaid."
I fall back onto the bed as he stands. "Fine."
"I wouldn't watch it when we were kids, and I damn sure ain't watching it now," he says. Walking over to the closet, he grabs a T-shirt and shorts.
"Don't worry, I'll break you one day," I say, grabbing my phone from his bedside table.
"Yeah, good luck."
Jordan keeps his back to me as he begins unbuttoning his shirt and… I should leave. It's not that I haven't seen his body before, or even that it's weird for him to change in front of me. Hell, I lived through the Superman tighty-whitey phase with him. But seeing his body never has the innocent effect on me that I'm sure he assumes it does. I pretend to busy myself with my phone as I watch him peel his shirt off, revealing a back that looks like it was chiseled from stone.
I’m such an idiot. He doesn’t want me the same way, and the constant fight to ignore my feelings just used to be annoying, but damn if