It was essential that they not get too close, that they never touch.
Jeff Winger knew this to be true.
He refused to think about why, though he did know. He pushed the reason to the back of his mind and kept it there; knowing that there would be disastrous consequences if they did was good enough for him.
He spent the months following the damn debate carefully manufacturing the essential distance between the two of the, hollowing out the chasm. He found this, for the most part, relatively easy. He had other conquests and priorities to distract him from the vague curiosity and panic associated with the memory of touching that ridiculous, beautiful girl.
Sometimes, though, he would catch a glimpse of her stretching her neck and narrowly avoid kissing the hollow just below the edge of her jawline; the struggle of lifting his eyes from her hemline was a challenge he faced far more often than he would have liked to admit. Even her hair—which, he thought, should really have been a safe zone—posed a problem to him, as it always looked so soft and his hands itched to be run through it as they had once before.
Despite this natural pull he seemed to have to her, he continued to build his wall, to pull himself away when they were so close that he could count every lash around those absurdly blue eyes. They mustn't touch—he knew this.
So it shouldn't have come as so much of a goddamn surprise that everything came undone when they did.
("Come undone," however, was a term he applied later, because what he felt when it happened was much bigger and scarier even than falling apart. Kissing Annie Edison had felt like home, like he was finally, finally, safe and sheltered. He hadn't felt dirty when he touched her, as he reasoned he should; he had felt clean, as if her innocence had flown into him and changed him for those few, beautiful moments when Annie Edison was his and he was hers.)