“There’s no reason for you to get jittery about it.” Steven neared the settee and spent an age making me wonder if he was just going to bloody well sit before he did, but beside me, not twisted round to look at me. As if we were side-by-side on a sports bench, or in a doctor’s waiting room. As if I made him just as fidgety as he did me.
But that made no sense. His wandering around the living room, picking things up, giving them a cursory glance, putting them down again, pacing, trying and failing to make small talk…none of that was the jitters, surely. It was just him being annoying. Inflicting his presence on me.
“It was just a fucking…” He slumped back, running both hands through his curly black hair and I wished they were my hands. The first time I’d laid eyes on him I’d fantasised about tangling my fingers in his hair while he knelt in front of me and it was possible.
Distinctly possible. He would—I knew it. If I so much as hinted… “Just a fucking hand-job, you know?”
“Yeah.” More excuses leapt into my mouth but I swallowed them back— gulped, even, because that’s all they would have been. Excuses.
“Look.” Steven moved lightning-fast, and if I’d had any hope of regaining my equilibrium with him sitting so close by when we had the house to ourselves, it vanished then, when he twisted to one side to face me. One leg curled up in front of him on the settee, one arm along the seat back, he frowned, concentrated—I thought—on my mouth and waited for it to spew forth the excuses I tried to silence. “I know something about this doesn’t sit well with you.” The furrows in his brow deepened and I realised he was waiting, again, for me to say no. He’d grown used to that. He’d probably also grown used to it being bullshit. “And whatever it is—”
“I’m not good with people.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, giving in to a laugh, which he quickly smothered. “I noticed.”
“No, I mean you.”
“I noticed that too.”
“Look. Anyone I get involved with…”
“I wanked you off once—let’s not start planning the wedding, eh?”
A chill ran up my spine and for a moment, just a moment, my heart stopped. Exactly what I’d been afraid of. Me mentioning anything like ‘involvement’ or a ‘relationship’ and freaking the other person out was such a deep-seated fear I went completely the other way, held everyone at arm’s length. And this was exactly why. Just the vaguest, most tentative hint and he thought I thought…
“We live in the same house; that’s kind of involved, even if it means we co-sign a tenancy agreement rather than a marriage certificate,” I threw at him, embarrassment roiling my stomach like one too many Tequila shots when I was already bombed on cheap beer and grass.
“Jeez, Blackman, I was only kidding.” He drew back, inclined his head a touch.
I was completely useless at getting deadpan humour, especially when it related to interpersonal relationships. Kit Blackman, computer nerd, was devoid of any sense of subtlety when in close proximity to a hot man.
“Whatever you meant by it, you don’t have to worry about me planning the wedding or any shit like that,” I said, scrabbling around for the remote control again. Maybe if I switched the sound back on it’d give me something to listen to besides Steven, and my own confusion.
“I was only trying to explain to you why I don’t get involved with people; and somehow it’s been twisted to make me feel like—”
“Hey, will you stop that?” Steven laid his hand on top of mine before I could grab the remote and nearly every part of me froze at his touch.
I managed to look at him, though. God knew how. I let my gaze drift over his face rather than focusing on his eyes. “…like…” I’d thought speaking would jolt him into moving his hand, but it stayed on mine. “Like I’m the one who’s crowding you.”
Steven’s lips parted, his gasp near-silent. “Wow.” He lifted his hand away from mine, rested it in his own lap. “Is that what you really think? Am I crowding you?”
“Steven. Just listen.” I hadn’t thought to interrupt him, but the words were out before I could stop them and I had no idea what I was going to say next, what I wanted him “Fuck. This has got all mixed up. I don’t know how… Okay.” I took a deep breath and some sick, twisted part of me wondered if the living room had shrunk to the size of a confessional box.
“Anyone I get involved—I mean, fool around with… I’m not good with people.”
“Duh. Yeah, we’ve established that. And how.”
“I tend to back off. Quickly. I don’t do serious. You know?”
Steven bit his lip and I watched as his eyes narrowed. That incline to his head was back again, and I wanted to know what was going on inside that infuriating, intriguing, gorgeous head of his. “So…”
“So?” I was the one who was pushing him away, but I was the one who waited on his verdict.
“You are so tightly wound it’s untrue.”
“That’s as may be—”
“You really need to get laid.”
“I— What?”
“Seriously. I mean, I know my hand-job would have relieved some of the tension, but let’s face it, any guy can give himself the five-knuckle shuffle. Still, I didn’t want to move too fast on my first night here.”
“Oh. Clearly.”
“Just thought I’d help you out, yeah?”
“How very…noble?”
“But it seems to me like you freak out every time someone gets close to you and I don’t mean emotionally. That is, it’s clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that you’re an emotional retard, but—”
“This is you trying to seduce me?”
“—physically, you’re like a frightened rabbit at times. I’m not gonna kill you, for fuck’s sake, Kit.”
“Thank
