When You Can't Have It, You Want It

I woke up in the morning to the sunlight streaming through the windows; it was well past noon. An arm was draped loosely around my waist and I didn't have to turn around to know that it was Zack's. After our movie night last night (early this morning?), I was too tired to drive home, so he let me spend the night. I ended up staying for a few nights, actually. It has only been a few days since I started ignoring Alex but the results were astounding. He called me at least three times a day and texted me nightly. To be quite honest, it was annoying, and I didn't want to deal with him at all at this point, so I stayed with Zack to distract myself.

Unfortunately, my heart would still beat faster whenever an All Time Low song played through my iHome and that is how I knew I wasn't completely over that damn boy.

“Good morning,” I heard a raspy voice from behind me say. I turned around to face Zack who still had his eyes closed.

“Morning,” I whispered.

He opened his eyes slowly and I found myself staring straight into his hazel green eyes. My breath got caught within my chest as I realized how close we were lying next to each other. Zack smirked slightly and pulled me closer to him, forcing me to let out the breath I was holding. A giggle escaped from my lips.

“You know that you're gorgeous, right?”

I smiled slightly. I'm sure I had droopy eyes and smeared makeup from the night before all over my face, but it didn't seem to phase my best friend of all time.

“And any guy would be stupid to not realize what he had in front of him all this time?”

I nodded slightly with my head still laying on the pillow. I closed my eyes. I was about to fall back asleep when I felt Zack's nose nuzzling against my own.

“Hmm?” I mumbled with my eyes still closed. Before I knew it, Zack's lips were on mine. It was a gentle kiss but it was long enough for me to pop open my eyes, realize what was happening, and then close them again.

Our lips moved slowly and rhythmically against each other's until I had to break away to catch my breath. I furrowed my eyebrows but met Zack's eyes regardless. He stared into me with a slight smirk on his face. Then, he moved forward again and reconnected our already swollen lips. I took a deep breath and deepened the kiss; to me, this felt right. Maybe I was just horny, or maybe all the time we spent together caused some sexual tension to arise... either way, I pushed myself off of the mattress so that I was sitting on top of Zack straddling him.

I left a trail of kisses starting from his lips, going along his neck, and ending at his collarbone. When I hit a certain spot at the base of his neck, he let out a little moan. I smirked and disconnected my lips from his neck to grin at him.

“Oh, shut up,” he said, reaching up to my neck with his right hand in order to pull my head back down so our lips could reconnect. I smiled into the kiss and as minutes passed, things became more heated. His hands found their way under my shirt while mine wandered through his hair and down his bare chest. A familiar tingling feeling found its way through my veins and it took all of my will power to resist grinding my hips into Zack's. His hands moved from massaging my breasts to unclasp my bra and as soon as he did, the door burst open.

“Man, we need to talk,” Alex announced seemingly frantically. I squealed and rolled off the side of the bed that was farthest from the doorway that Alex had just burst through. I got up on my knees and leaned against the bed, trying my best to hide my unrestrained boobies from the two hormonal boys.

“God damnit Alex, have you ever heard of knocking?!” Zack groaned.

Alex stood frozen just inside the door, taking in the scene that he had just interrupted. He was wearing a red checkered flannel and knee-length cut off jean shorts. His usually tousled hair was hidden beneath a gray beanie and his eyes seemed puffy, as if he had stayed up all night. As I was trying to calm down my breathing, I was staring at the boy in the gray beanie, wondering what was going through his head at that very minute.

Inwardly, I found myself pathetic for still caring.

It felt like several minutes had passed before Alex began to back out of the doorway. Finally, upon reaching the door frame, he turned and bounded down the steps.

“Shit,” I heard Zack mumble.

I pushed myself away from Zack so that my back was resting against the footboard. Drawing my knees in to my chest, I wrapped my arms around my legs and rested my chin on my knees.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Neither of us said anything but we both knew that one of us had to go after Alex and explain what he had just seen. The only thing preventing that from happening was the fact that neither one of us was exactly sure what had happened either.

“Rosaline.”

Something in Zack’s voice made me avoid his gaze. Whether it was determination, desperation, hurt, or hope, it was indistinguishable to my bungled thoughts. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it out. I stood up, charging toward the door and took the stairs two at a time. I made it outside just in time to see Alex sitting behind the wheel of his car that was parked in Zack’s driveway. He had his head in his hands, resting on the dashboard.

“Get out of the car,” I said, walking over to the driver side door and opening it.

“What-”

“Now.”

Alex unbuckled his seatbelt slowly and stepped out of the car, unsure of himself. I stood back from him a few feet thinking to myself until I heard his car door slam shut.

“What did you come here for, Alex?”

Alex chuckled in disbelief and squared his jaw. Leaning back against the car, he said, “To talk to Zack.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. In my rush down the stairs, I had forgotten to put my bra back on. “About what?”

“What does it matter to you?” He nearly yelled, letting out some of the anger that came from the situation. “You’re just his fuck buddy!”

I scoffed. “Why are you avoiding the question? You’ve known me practically as long as you’ve known Zack—why can’t you tell me what’s on your mind? We’re friends, right? What are you so afraid of Alex?”

He stayed silent. But that just fueled my emotional turmoil. Finally, everything that I’ve ever felt towards Alex and about this situation came boiling up and to the tip of my tongue and I had to consciously remind myself to breathe steady.

“Alex, I need you to listen to me,” I pleaded. His eyes and mine were locked together. The sun was beating down but the breeze reduced the harshness of its tone. “I’m not just Zack’s ‘fuck buddy’. And I’m not going to be yours either.”

Alex furrowed his brows together, probably wondering who would get the girl in the end.
“For years, Zack watched me pine over you from a distance. It seemed as if everyone in the room would know how I felt toward you except for you,” I began to explain. As an afterthought, I added, “And Jack, but that’s not the point.

“The time came, months ago, when Zack was tired of it. So he’s been pretending to be interested in me in order to set me off limits for you. And of course, once you can’t have something, you want it. And that’s what this is. Don’t you get it?

Alex shoved his hands in his pockets, probably to hide his fidgeting fingers that had begun to form a fist. He was frustrated, but so was I.

“You don’t actually love me, Alex. Not how I thought I loved you from afar. The thing is, I’ve had these past few days to reflect on the fact that you are the guy that every girl wants. You are the hot, charming, lead singer of a successful band and at the same time, you’re a complete douchebag. All of the other fangirls tolerated the douchebag aspect of you because in reality, they never have to deal with it on a daily basis and, when you do meet fans, you put on a great front because your fans mean everything to you, and that’s great. Really, it is. And I thought to myself, ‘Ros, he doesn’t treat you like a fan, he’s a friend, he cares about you more than that.’ But in reality, you were still a douchebag to me. I had fallen for you just like every other fan girl had without realizing who you really were.

“I only began to realize who you were in this time, when Zack and I spent more time feigning interest in each other. Our interest eventually turned real... because he actually cared to notice me in the first place, before the plan even existed. And that’s what you saw upstairs. Something real. Not something pulled from a fandom or staged. That just... happened.”

“I’ve had the past few days to realize that you and I, Alex, we were never going to work out if I had to work this hard to get your attention in the first place. I should’ve known better—you see what you want and you go after it. You usually don’t need to be baited. And I shouldn’t have gone against your nature and I’m sorry that we played you like this but it was never our intention to-” I trailed off, realizing what I was about to say.

“Never your intention to what? Hurt me?”

I frowned. “Fall for each other,” I whispered quietly. Quickly, I said, “But hurting you wasn’t in the plan, either.”

Alex closed his eyes and pulled his hands up to cup his face. I stayed silent; after all, I had said all that I needed to say.

“Thanks for calling me out on the douchebag qualities,” was the first utterance that came from Alex’s lips. I raised an eyebrow, silently asking for an explanation.

“You’re right. I treat my fans better than I treat some of my closest friends, and it shouldn’t be that way. I guess this–,” he paused for emphasis, motioning to Zack’s bedroom window just visible from the driveway. “–is what I get for letting things go to my head sometimes, right?” He tried to chuckle.

I licked my suddenly dry lips and backed away from the car as he slid back in to the driver’s seat. With a meager wave, he backed out onto the street and drove away.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and walked back into the house slowly, as if bumping into anything would make my seemingly defenseless-self bruise. I had just poured out everything that I had been keeping within me, and I felt frail because of it. Like a zombie, I trudged back up the stairs and when I reached Zack’s room, I saw him closing the window.

“I didn’t think you were going to come back,” he said, turning to face me.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He shrugged. “I thought you’d get in the car with him and then drive off into the sunset to live happily ever after.”

I offered him a weak smile. “Well, you thought wrong,” I said, locking the door behind me and walking further into the room. Upon reaching the spot where the shirtless Zack Merrick was, I stood on my tiptoes in front of him and reconnected our lips in the sweetest kiss. He broke it off just moments later.

“Ros, are you sure? We spent months working for this—you’ve always wanted him,” Zack murmured, resting his forehead against mine.

“I know,” I admitted. “But I was wrong.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” he picked me up and threw me onto his bed. I let out a squeal of delight and he followed me onto the bed, making it bounce with the unexpected added weight. He slowly crawled over to me, eventually coming to straddle me. He gently pushed stray strands of hair away from my eyes and I put my hand on his chest, stopping him from going any further momentarily.

“After all, it would be stupid to not realize what I had in front of me all this time.”

He let a small smile form on his lips, and then he leaned down for a kiss.