He steps into the bathroom and strips his t-shirt. The worn cotton falls to the floor—thesoakedcotton. But it’s the moisture sheening Sol’s torso that bothers me, not the water pooling on the tiles.
I lose my own shirt and join him in the bathroom, grabbing the only towel hanging on the rail. “Get out of those jeans.”
Sol’s gaze flickers. “Get out of yours.”
“In a minute.”
He sighs, a rueful grin lighting his face. “Why are you like this, eh? Been telling you our whole lives water isn’t going to hurt me.”
I know that. I’ve always known it. But I don’t like damp things. The smell. The spongey texture in the air. Reminds me too much of the shitcan bedsit me and Mal lived in with our dad, and of all the fucking things I’ve forgotten, why not that?
Sol takes off his jeans. I force the towel on him and retreat to my room to grab him dry underwear from the basket of clean laundry by my bed.
When I go back, he’s not dry. And he doesn’t give a shit. He’s too busy fiddling with the analogue radio that lives on the windowsill, searching for Saltkiss FM, the pirate radio station transmitting from the town up the coast of the same name. Modern Cornish folk—if there is such a thing—filters from the tinny speakers, filling the low lit bathroom until it hums with an energy I don’t usually feel at this time of night.
Unless he’s with me.
Sol straightens, turning to face me. The air is damp and heavy, but it dries as I near him, his underwear clutched in myhand, and I drink him in without making a conscious decision to do it.
That inked skin.
Those work-honed muscles.
The dark hair low on his stomach that wasn’t there when we were gangly teenagers trying to buy weed to choke and splutter through on the beach.
I swallow, reeled in like a moth to something I don’t understand. We’re a breath apart. His bare chest and mine. A situation we find ourselves in most days. Only tonight, it feels different. It feels old and brand new, as though I’ve stepped into someone else’s life and can’t find my way back. A borrowed memory that has me narrowing the distance between us until Sol has to flatten himself to the tiled wall. Until too much heat pools in my wet jeans and I realise what the hell I’m doing.
“Hey.” Sol holds my face with both hands.Steadyhands. “Are you okay?”
No. I’m not. I have a fucking boner and the only reason he doesn’t know it is because he won’t break my gaze.
I grip his wrists and take a shaky breath. “I need to go to bed.”
Sol nods. “Go on. I’ll dry my hair and tidy up, I promise.”
He knows me so well.
So how can it be that he lets go of my face? For a charged second, I don’t move. Then my faculties return to me and I make my escape before Sol can look at me too closely.
I shut my bedroom door behind me and lean against it in my rain-damp jeans.
Take them off.
I want to—Ineedto. But that means facing the throb in my groin and I just fucking can’t. Not without shattering a moment that doesn’t belong to the storm. A moment that’smine, if only I could grind the gears in my brain enough to know what it means.
I’ve learned the shite way not to push myself too hard. To reach for things that aren’t there yet, and might never be. I close my eyes, breathing deep and slow as I listen to Sol move around in the bathroom, taking a shower. I need one too. A cold one. But I like knowing he’s warm again. It feels good in the face of the barbed anxiety scratching my nerves, and my dick calms down.
I strip my jeans and underwear. Dress in the only pair of sweatpants my brother hasn’t stolen and go to my bed.
Lie down.
Get up again, unruly animation pumping in my veins.
I need to sleep. If I don’t, I crash to the floor and my body becomes a force I can’t control. A thrashing, dribbling monster who makes Sol cry. But I’m so fucking drawn to him I can’t stay in my room. Can’t close my eyes without seeing him one more time.
Sol.
I open my bedroom door and slip onto the landing, the floor cold to my bare feet. Follow the sound of the radio he’s taken from the bathroom and into his own room.