“Really?” She leans her head on my shoulder, and I feel her hot breaths slapping against my neck. My gosh…I really like holding you. Her body wiggles even closer to mine, making me think she somewhat likes me holding her, too. “You’re playing the ‘I almost died’ card? At like four in the morning?”
“It’s three, and yes, I am.”
Her hands rub across her face, and she slaps her cheeks back and forth, trying to wake herself up. “Fine. But you’re cooking.”
I yank open the fridge and see what I have to work with. “How do you like your eggs?” I ask, pulling out the carton.
“Sunny-side up. At eight in the morning.” She mopes around the kitchen in her slippers and damn cute puppy dog pajamas, and I snicker at her tired attitude. Her hair is all frizzy and wild, and her make-up is smeared across her face, but I don’t mention it. It’s kind of cute, and it works perfectly with her early morning personality.
“Pancakes it is,” I say, pulling out all of the ingredients. Jules hops on the barstool across from me, and watches as I start mixing everything together. “Chocolate chips or blueberries?”
“Blueberries.” Her fingers open the blueberries and she pops a few into her mouth. Her nose wiggles at the tartness of the fruit and she shakes her head. “Chocolate chips.”
As I start to prepare our early-early breakfast, she lays her head down on the kitchen island, watching all my moves. Even though she doesn’t say a word, her body language speaks for her. She’s comfortable and relaxed around me—as if we have always awakened at three in the morning for breakfast dates. Her lips hold a soft smile upon them, showing me that she’s pleased I woke her from her dreams. For some odd reason, I feel as if I’m still dreaming.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
Her question should be random, but I’m surprised she hasn’t asked before. I turn on the skillet, dreading the idea of turning my body toward her and answering her. The words are there, my reasons are clear, but I don’t want to talk about it. Our eyes finally meet and we stare for a moment, neither of us blinking, neither of us wanting to blink. Until I turn away and go back to making pancakes.
She doesn’t push the subject, but I can tell she’s still wondering. “You cook a lot?”
“I used to.” My reply is curt, and I feel bad about it, but I can’t go into more detail. Tossing a few pancakes onto a plate, I slide it over to her and pull out the syrup from the cabinet.
“Thank you,” she yawns, covering her lips with her hand. “There are a lot of things about you that you don’t talk about, aren’t there?”
“There are a lot of things about me that I can’t talk about. Otherwise, I’ll turn into you and someone will need to pin me against a wall, feeding me a pep talk.” Turning off the stove, I grab my plate of pancakes and join her at the island.
“I give pretty decent pep talks.”
“I’m sure you do, I just don’t receive pep talks very well.”
“Oh my gosh.” Her eyes close as she takes the first bite of the pancakes and I swear it looks like she just had a moment of personal pleasure. “Three a.m. pancakes shouldn’t taste this good. No pancakes should taste this good.” My insides twist in a knot knowing that she enjoys them, creating some kind of weird satisfaction within me.
“You smell like smoke again,” she blurts out, eating her food.
“I’m trying to quit.”
“Why did you start?” Another question left unanswered. She blinks once, and when her blue eyes look up, I ease myself away from her in the opposite direction. She notes the new distance between us. “I’m sorry, I get personal. I’m nosy. Sorry.” Her apology is authentic, but it’s not necessary. She has no reason to apologize for my personal issues. There’s so much of my history I’ve learned to block out of my world, and there’s no reason for me to revisit it out loud. Inside my head those demons are free to float around, but the idea of the words actually leaving my lips is terrifying. There’s such a realness to talking about Penny, and about what happened, that it scares the living hell out of me.
“I wish I could be more like you. Able to shut up and forget things.” She stares at her pancakes, cutting them into pieces. “But I gotta say I also wish I knew more about you, about your history. It’s safe to say I fall for guys fast. I become weak searching for love or lust. Any emotion, really. But it’s different with you, Kayden. With you it’s hard to find the weakness inside of me. With you I feel strong. So, I simply wish I knew more about you, because you make me stronger.”
“What do you want to know?” I ask.
“Anything. It doesn’t have to be personal at all. I just want to know more.”
I cut my blueberry pancakes as she forks her chocolate chips, and we both open our mouths, feeding each other a bite. She arches a mischievous smile and I laugh. Then we each lift our plates and switch our pancakes around.
“I believed in Santa Claus until I was ten.” My confession doesn’t seem too thrilling, but her smile is so wide that I’m almost certain I can feel my face heating up from her joy.
“Are you trying to tell me that Santa isn’t real? You bite your tongue with those satanic lies!”
She’s wide awake now and more sexdorable than ever. “I also didn’t vote during the last election.”
“Un-American and Un-Santa. I’m so happy you’re only my made-up boyfriend. Because clearly this relationship would never work. Come on, what else?”
“I may or may not have thought it was ridiculously cute when you farted in your sleep.”
Her hands rush to cover the horrified expression on her face. “Shut up!” She shoves me in the arm and I cannot stop laughing. “Shut up! Are you serious?” Nodding, I continue eating. She shoves me again, and her cheeks are now the color of a tomato. “Did it smell bad?”
“Kind of like old burritos.”
She starts to giggle, and then she bursts out into laughter, her head flies back, and she snorts. Again. I’ve never been so happy to hear snorts. “That makes sense because I had tacos for lunch.” It’s weird, sitting here, talking about her farting. Most girls would be extremely embarrassed, and she was for a moment, until she turned around and started cracking up at herself. Her laughter makes me want to join in. Jules Stone is somewhat addicting.
I stare at her lips as she chews her last bites of pancake. I move closer to her, mere millimeters away from her face, and without thought, I run my tongue against the side of her mouth. Her body stills, and her doe eyes widen in a sudden shock. I pull back quickly. “Sorry, there was some syrup.” Moving her finger to the plate, she wipes up some syrup, and smears it across my cheek. Then she does it again, only this time it runs down my neck. When her tongue strokes my cheek, it takes every ounce of my willpower not to lift her up and carry her back to the bedroom. Her tongue retreats back into her mouth momentarily before she bends forward to lick the syrup from my neck. Her sticky fingers brush against my lips, and I lick them clean, sucking gently on the tips.
“Let’s go build a snowman.” Her random comment is the complete opposite of what I want to do.
“No.”
“Let’s go build a snowman,” she repeats, standing from her stool and pushing her body against mine.
I laugh. If I don’t laugh, I’ll kiss her and then she might realize that I want to kiss her as Kayden, not as an actor in a make-believe scene. “No.”
With that, she turns those irresistible, pleading puppy-dog eyes on me, and her bottom lip drops to a pout. She places her hands on my chest and whimpers, “Please, made-up boyfriend who I am made-up in love with? Pleeeeze?!”
How can I say no? How can I turn down the pouty lip and the puppy-dog eyes? She knows I will give in. She rushes back to the bedroom, glancing over her shoulder to make sure I follow, and gives me the matching hat, gloves, and scarf she packed for me.
Yup. Matching hats, gloves, and scarves for both of us. The hat has some weird fur on it, and when it goes on my head, I’m pretty sure I’ve j
ust lost at least seven points on the manliness scale.
“You’re so cute.” She grins, looking at my ridiculous accessories.
“ You don’t call guys cute. You don’t call them adorable and you don’t call them cute,” I argue as I step into my boots.
“Even if it’s sexute?” She pauses, tapping her finger against her nose. “Okay, so sexy and cute don’t work as well as sexy and adorable do, but still. You look like the type of guy I would love to roll in the snow with.”
I narrow my eyes in on her and follow her into the living room. Pulling her fur hat onto her head, she smiles my way. “It’s faux fur. When I was a kid, I saw this documentary about what they do to get the real fur, and let’s just say I’m anti-fur. And anti-watermelon…but that was a different documentary.” She’s so fucking weird and I hope she never changes. I think the world could benefit from more people like her, more weirdness. Plus, she looks pretty damn sexute herself in her winter getup.
“Well the faux fur goes perfectly with our faux relationship.” When I say this, I see the corners of her mouth turn down for a split second before she reverses her frown and reaches for my hand.
“Let’s go.”
How is it already colder than it was when I walked out earlier for a smoke? I even have more layers on, and I’m pretty sure my dick is a popsicle. Why couldn’t we stay inside, licking syrup off each other? I like the licking of the syrup.
Jules is already knee-deep in the fluff, balling up snow as I stand on the edge of the drive-way watching her go at it. All the trees surrounding the cabin are decked out in white Christmas lights, and it’s a perfect setting for a perfect scene. The way she smiles as she continues to build a snowman is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Sliding my hands into my pockets, I sway back and forth. “Her name was Penny,” I blurt out. The world comes to a halt, everything freezes, and the sounds of my own words fight me, wanting to rip me apart, but I remain standing. The only thing keeping me upright is Jules staring back at me, interested in what I’m saying, interested in the words that are forming sentences, that are forming my history right before us. “My grandmother gave me her engagement ring before she passed away. It was six years ago, and I was planning to propose to my girlfriend Penny. I had it all planned out, some real romantic crap…flowers, music, tears. She was supposed to meet me at our favorite restaurant and she never showed. Penny had a lot of personal demons that she fought constantly. She tried to overcome them, but that night she lost the battle and overdosed.”
I see Jules’s eyes filling with tears, and the burning sensation in the back of my eyes is painful; but with effort, I don’t break down.
“I don’t talk about it.” I laugh, but nothing’s funny. I laugh because I’m still angry with her. I laugh because I’m still sad. I laugh because if I don’t I will crumble. Every part of me will fucking crumble. I laugh exactly for those reasons, because nothing’s funny at all. “I never talk about it.”
Jules studies me, tilting her head to the left, trying to find something, trying to find me. “You blame yourself?”
“Every day, every night, every moment.” I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head back and forth. And when I reopen my eyes, Jules is much closer; she’s marching closer to me, taking big strides through the snow. Her mittens are covered in snow, and her arms wrap around me. She holds me, and I allow it. All I want her to ever do is let me hold her in return.
“There’s nothing you could’ve done differently. It’s not our job to fix people. We can’t fix people.” She pulls me closer and my arms wrap around her, breathing in her fragrance. “It’s simply our job to love them, even when they’re broken. No matter what you could have done, no matter how much you told her you loved her and that she was enough, it wouldn’t have made a difference. You couldn’t save her. People have to save themselves.”
I kiss the top of her faux fur cap and thank her, even though a thank you will never be enough.
She wiggles in my arms and pulls away a tiny bit. “Yeah well, there was a time I was talking to a stranger while driving to a cabin and he told me that no one was coming to save me and that I had to save myself. I get the feeling he was onto something.” I barely notice the cold air that still surrounds us. Jules nudges me in the arm and holds her hand out to me. “Come on. Follow me.”
She leads me into an untouched layer of white snow and stands shoulder to shoulder with me. “What are you doing? What are we doing?” I ask, and she smirks.
“The first Christmas after my grandfather passed away, Grandma and I lay out here and made angels for him. Now lie down on your back. We’re making snow angels.” Before I can reply, she plops down into the freezing flakes and spreads her arms and legs, moving them back and forth to create her snow angel. It seems so fitting too, because she is an angel. Somehow I stumbled across this astonishing earth angel, and I cannot tear my eyes away from her.
Her soft voice orders me to lie down, so I follow suit, losing myself in the moment. When we have both created these snow angels, we lie still and hold hands and gaze up to the dark, starlit sky.
“This is for her…for your angel who’s stronger today than she was before. Merry Christmas, Penny.”
As the tears flow freely from my eyes, I turn my head away from her so she won’t see them. Our fingers tighten against one another, and effortlessly, she sends waves of warmth through me, and touches my soul.
I’m still angry at Penny for the choice she made, for not fighting harder, and then I become angry with myself because how do I know she didn’t fight? I’m still sad, and wish I could have held her one last time and told her everything would be okay. Yet Jules makes it a little easier to forgive, to not fear the sad memories, and to not allow the angry feelings to overtake me.
The snow picks up and floats down on our faces, painting us with its beauty before it melts away. I part my lips to taste it, the wetness of the night gracing us in the moment. It’s therapeutic, this moment. It’s real, and it’s very much needed after all of these years of never speaking about it. If anyone should be paying anyone, I’m pretty sure I owe Jules a check.
My heart beats a slower rhythm, and it’s easier to breathe. It’s beautiful, this made-up relationship.
Before we stand to move toward the house to dry off, I look up to the sky one last time to see a few stars shining in my direction. Perhaps the stars in the sky are loved ones letting us know they are nearby, guiding us through the night.
Merry Christmas, Penny.
Soaking wet, we make our way to the bedroom, leaving puddles of water trailing through the cabin. I can’t stop thinking about what Kayden shared with me, of how he opened up to me. If we could make believe forever, I know I would never tire of the sound of his voice and the stories he tells. He’s intriguing and intense, but he’s equally just as humorous and sweet.
I would never have imagined that the tattoo on his chest had such meaning associated with it. When he opened up to me, I saw it, the cracks inside of him. The hurt. I feel honored and immensely grateful that he allowed me to enter his private world.
Grabbing a pair of black sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, I head to the bathroom to change while he changes in the bedroom. Sliding out of the wet clothes, I toss them into the tub, a problem I will deal with at a later time. Staring into the mirror, I study my wild hair and the eyeliner that is awkwardly spread across my face. In the past I would have cared about guys seeing me look like a hot mess, but with Kayden I don’t care at all.
It feels good to not care.
Then I realize I do care—a little at least. As I leave the bathroom, I kind of hope that Kayden wants me. Okay, that’s a lie. I need Kayden to want me, because I want him so bad. I miss his taste. I crave his touch. I can’t help it—he’s everything I’ve always wanted and nothing I’ve ever had. Pulling my hair together, I toss it into a high ponytail, and I wipe all of the make-up off my face. Holding my hand in front of my face, I do a br
eath check, blowing into my palm. Holy crap! I have monkey ass breath. I am heavily suffering from morning breath with a mix of pancake breath, and a dose of what-the-freaking-hell-is-that breath. Gross face. Reaching into my duffle bag, I pull out my zipped up toothbrush and paste and prepare to kill mega things that decided to live—or die—within my mouth.
After disinfecting myself from head to toe, I open the door and see Kayden standing there in a white Henley shirt and a pair of grey sweatpants. The way the shirt hangs from his body and the sweats fall against his hips makes my lady parts want to follow him until he allows me to taste every single part of him.
“Can I tell you something without it being weird?” he asks, rubbing his hand against his jawline. What a perfect jawline it is.
“No. Please make it weird. I like weird. I love weird.” He crosses his arms and smirks, and I am almost certain that my heart has never loved the idea of making someone grin more in all its life. If I could, I would make it a daily routine to make those lips curve up in pleasure.
“I lust you, Jules. I lust you so hard right now. It’s almost impossible for me to be around you and remember that this is all an act. I just, I haven’t felt…” His shoulders shrug up and he bites the bottom corner of his lip. “I haven’t felt anything in such a long time. I avoid my feelings like the plague. I sleep with random girls to forget about emotions, to get lost in the act of sex, to make those kinds of moments lose their true meaning. I haven’t made love in years, but after meeting you, I want you to know that I may consider it someday in the future. I may consider falling in love again, because I like the way I feel when I’m with you.
“I want you to know I appreciate the fact that I can talk to you about who I am and where I come from and not feel awkward about it. I appreciate that I can kiss you and not want to retreat after the kiss. I really appreciate how whenever I make you laugh I feel like a better man. I know this isn’t real or anything, and I know I may be suffering from actor’s syndrome where you fall in lust with your co-star. But dammit, if I had to be in a fake relationship with someone, I’m really fucking happy it’s with you.”