a long time. You were my first crush back when I was a horny teenager. You were the person I thought of the entire time I was trying to get clean, locked away from the rest of the world. When I got sober, one of the first things to cross my mind was looking you up and seeing how you were and asking if there was any way you could forgive me. I’m not a kid anymore, and the way I want you is very, very adult.”
I wasn’t expecting him to throw down the gauntlet without any warning.
Only an idiot would miss the fact that we’d both been tiptoeing along a very thin line between tentative friendship and something more. I’d been better at keeping my balance than he had. He leaned over to the ‘something more’ side more often, and definitely more deliberately than I did. But I swayed, and I wavered. It did something to my insides when he told me he’d been thinking about me when his life was at its lowest point, because I’d also thought of him when I was struggling. There was a slight bit of comfort in knowing we’d suffered in similar ways. Pain was easier to make sense of when you realized you shared it with someone and you weren’t alone in your anguish.
Without really stopping to consider the implications, I reached out and grabbed the strings dangling from the hood of his sweatshirt and gave them a yank to pull him inside. He grunted as the fabric bunched up around his face when he lurched forward. As soon as his sneakered feet crossed the threshold, I maneuvered him out of the way so I could close the door behind him.
“I’m okay with you kissing me. I’m all right with you touching me. I’m going to let you convince me to fuck you, and I am more than likely going to allow you to fuck me.” We stared at each other, both breathing hard and carefully considering the other. “But you have to understand it’s just for tonight. We are two lonely, sad people who recognize those feelings within one another. Nothing more or less. This can’t become a habit, and you can’t read more into it than there is. Our relationship is already too complicated and confusing. Adding sex into the mix,” I blew out a breath. “It’s bound to be a disaster.” But I was going to do it anyway because the longer I looked at him, the more I understood I wasn’t going to be able to say no.
His script had been the first thing to spark any kind of emotion inside me in too long to count, and Salinger was the only man who made me both hot and uncomfortable in forever. He was the only person capable of making me forget about what I no longer had, and instead had me focusing on what could be in the future.
Plus, I wanted him—point blank. I could deny it until I was blue in the face, but it was a lie. I thought he was hot, and I was endlessly flattered that he felt the same way about me. I knew I looked pretty good and that I took care of myself. But I would never be a twenty-something bombshell. Not that I wanted to be. I liked that he liked me back then because it was cute and charming. I liked that he liked me now, even more because it showed he was serious that’d he’d had a long-term crush on me.
The whole of America considered him their first crush. It was something special to hear that I was his when he had an endless pool of beautiful people to choose from.
Salinger didn’t say anything as I caught his hand and guided him through my house. I kept the lights low, so it wasn’t obvious I was expecting a guest so late. The moon shone through the skylights and the big bay windows that faced the ocean, offering just enough light that I didn’t trip on the stairs, and it prevented Salinger from fumbling around behind me.
He moved silently and gracefully for being such a big guy. I could feel him staring at the back of my head as I moved toward my bedroom. He was going to stand out against the primarily white and pristine décor. All that ink that covered him everywhere was going to be the only spot of color in the entire room.