Callie
I sit in the kitchen, hearing his words over and over in my mind.
"When you — you come out of the bathroom after a shower in your towel with your hair all combed to one side and I bump into you in the hallway and I'm —pretending to be really focused on the carpet or the wall or whatever, but that's not what I'm doing. I — I'm watching you and I'm wishing I could stroke your hair. I'm trying not to, but I am.
I am a man and when you and I reach for the orange juice at the same time or you end up next to me on the couch when the moms call a meeting, and you're always so careful that we're never touching, never touching anymore, I sit there, so painfully aware of everything that you're doing, of how you breathe, of where your hands are, of the smell of your hair and it takes every ounce of my being to not want to reach out to you. I care about you. I want you. I'm dying to reach out for you."
I will never understand what I've done to inspire such a beautiful, impassioned speech. All I've done is make his perfect life hard since I arrived.
It kills me that he thinks I don't want to touch him. Because I do. Every day when I hear him practicing on his keyboard when I get home from group, I want to sneak up behind him and smother his neck in kisses. When I see him sitting on the couch, I want to curl up next to him and lay my head in his lap. I want to feel his perfect, talented fingers running through my hair, rubbing my back. Actually, I want his hands all over me. All the time.
But I also want this family. And so all of these feelings that I have, that we have to go nowhere.
I need to go to bed. I need to somehow forget this encounter in the kitchen. We need to go back to status quo. Me and Wyatt. Him and Lou if that's what he wants. Siblings albeit with sexual tension that will probably never entirely go away. Avoiding each other if we have to until college. I'll be fine. That's what I do. I'm a professional when it comes to enduring heartache.
I head up the stairs and instead of going to straight to my room, I find myself outside his door. I just want to hear him breathing for a minute. I've done this before late at night. It's my one little indulgence. I listen for a minute and then I force myself to walk away.
Except tonight his words are still ringing in my ears. "I care about you. I want you. I'm dying to reach out for you."
And in that second, my hand ends up on his doorknob. I care about him. I want him. I'm dying to reach out for him too. And I want him to know. Everything else, all the problems, all the complications, all the reason we can't, can wait until morning.