He wished he hadn't met her, because now, having discovered her under the stairs with him, being devoured and face twisted up in ecstasy, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to forget her.
He wished it wasn't true, that this whole time, she hadn't been meant to be with one of her own kind. He wished it wasn't true that she'd fisted her hands in his shirt and pulled him toward her.
He wished he didn't have to look away, half to try to stave off the pain of seeing her so happy at someone else's touch – someone who wasn't him – and half to remove his glasses; a futile effort to rub the unfair images off on his button-up as if they'd been specs of dirt.
He wished he could be angry at her, but she hadn't lied when she said they were together. She hadn't liked when she said he had to let her go, that she was suffocating. She hadn't lied when she said she knew him well enough to know they couldn't be around one another for a while. And she hadn't lied when her expression revealed how scared of him she'd been that night, when she'd broken in during the brownout to leave Joshua's necklace on his white board.
Replacing his glasses, he saw their darkened movements, unapologetically voyeuristic as he watched him touch her. Watched him sweep his fingertips along her collarbone and pull the neck of her top over a bare shoulder. Watch him cover her smooth skin with the warmth of his mouth. Watch him hold her rib cage with such confidence. Watch him taste her.
He wished he could blame her for how she'd broken his heart.
He just needed to back off, disappear for a while. He didn't know if he was capable of being the friend she would turn to when things inevitably went awry. When he messed up. Not after seeing this display. Not after seeing how close they actually were.
She reached out to put her arms around the dark blonde's neck and pulled him into a deep, intimate kiss. Even from the bar, he could see the way their tongues echoed the sensuality by which he'd been tortured in his worst nightmares.
He backed her further against the wall under the stairs. When she raised a leg to circle around his waist and their bodies grinded in place, he saw his arm disappear between them, gone to some place not visible, and her resulting sharp intake of breath. They broke apart, breathless, and exchanged some very quiet, and by the looks of it, intimate words, before hurrying out of the bar, leaving their unknown audience to his scotch.