I like her a lot.
So much so that I’m breaking all of my own rules.
I wander to the window, which is my favourite part of Lizzie’s place. It’s a metre wide and reaches from floor to ceiling, with an amazing view of the city stretching out beneath us. Lucy presses her nose to the glass, her fingers splaying as she rests the weight of herself against it. I get the feeling she does this a lot, and that thought makes my smile widen as I move to stand beside her, looking out at the neighbouring block, mere metres away. And then my thoughts skid to a halt again.
Lizzie’s flat is opposite. Literally opposite. I can see the outline of the crappy coffin decorations we strung up for her leaving party in June, now gathering dust in her absence. I’ve been in that flat so often I could draw it from memory. I’ve stood at that window more times than I could count. Have I ever looked atthiswindow before? I must have.
Then I clock the familiar gingham bunting strung up above my head. Idefinitelyhave.
I can’t believe she’s been here the whole time.
‘Look,’ I say, pointing. ‘That’s Lizzie’s place.’
‘What?’ Her tiny laugh mists the glass in front of her mouth. ‘That’s crazy. I look at that window every day. I love her skull tinsel!’
‘How long have you lived here?’ I ask, slotting into the space beside her. I can never bring myself to fully lean against the glass the way she’s doing– I mean, that’s a whole new level of trust– but I can’t deny there’s a magic to being this close to it. It kind of feels like we’re flying.
‘Four years,’ she replies. ‘What about your sister?’
‘Almost ten.’
‘Wow,’ she says quietly, and she touches her index finger to the glass like she’s trying to reach something out there.
Wow is right. Four years she’s been here, right under my nose. Although I can’t imagine she would even have looked twice at me if we hadn’t been thrust together in the way we were. She existed in a world of Jons– guys who look like they’ve been plucked from some social media influencer’s timeline.
But when I’m with her, all of that outside kind of stuff just fades away. There’s something there that runs deeper than the spark of attraction. Beyond the vast differences between us, there’s something at the very heart of us that makes us the same.
‘I can’t believe we were this close the whole time and we’ve never seen each other,’ I say, as much to myself as to her.
She smiles, still touching her finger to the glass. ‘Maybe we have, a hundred times, but we just never noticed.’
I shake my head, and she turns to look at me, a soft crease between her brows. ‘Maybe it was a long time ago, in another life?’
I don’t say my next words deliberately. They just tumble out of me unbidden, a truth I can’t keep a grip on.
‘I would notice you in every life.’
She stills then, her mouth falling open a little way. She’s as shocked as I am by what just came out of my mouth, but there’s no taking it back now.
I wouldn’t even if I could.
She takes a step towards me, and it’s so cautious that I don’t reach out for her the way that my body is aching to. I have to know that she’s into this– that I’m not reading too much into the sparks I feel, or that almost-kiss on the beach. But she answers my unspoken question with another step forward, tentative fingers reaching for my chest as she rises on her tiptoes and presses the smallest of kisses to my cheek.
It’s like a damn fairytale.
In another situation, I might read a kiss on the cheek as a graceful decline, but this one is more like dipping a toe in water before diving in headfirst. Like it’s the start of something, and we both know it.
She doesn’t pull back all the way, and I feel her fingers leave my chest as they grab a fistful of T-shirt and use it to tug me towards her.
There are no rules in existence that could hold me back at this point.
I meet her halfway, reaching out for her jaw to pull her closer, and when our lips finally meet it’s like music– the perfect chord reverberating through my whole body. Her mouth is soft against mine, blissfully warm and still sweet from the sticky rice dessert we shared. I can feel it curving into a smile as she pulls back for a beat before kissing me again, so softly and slowly that it’s damn near making me lose my mind.
I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed like this before. I’mnot sure I can even describe it. There’s nothing hesitant about it– more like she’s holding herself back, enjoying every second. I feel like she’s savouring me, and that’s somehow sexier than if she were to strip naked right here in front of me.
The hand holding my shirt begins to move, reaching up over my shoulder and around the back of my neck, and she uses it as leverage to ease her body closer until we’re connected at the heart and at the hips. Heat floods through me like a tidal wave. I want to touch her, taste her, worship every last inch of her, but I hold back. The slow burn is just too good.
My hands start to move almost of their own accord, discovering the silky-smooth skin of her cheek, the curve of her waist, the thump of her pulse in her throat. My face follows my hand, my nose trailing down her neck before I graze the base of it with my lips, wondering how it would feel to suck on the skin there. Wondering what she’d taste like.