Right Now, I'm Anyone's

“Come on in,” I heard George’s voice call from inside the dressing room. I pushed the door handle down slowly and took a huge, deep breath before walking in – a last minute attempt to calm the lump in my throat and ease the churning knot in my stomach. Chris, George and Wade were settled in on the collapsed sofa, while Dallas and Jordan sat on folded out wooden chairs. George smiled warmly at me when he saw me while Dallas stood to fetch another fold-out chair.

Wade eyed the folder grasped in my fingers and smiled as well. “George said you had some stuff for us?”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded, holding back a hysterical laugh.

They laughed at the use of a formality and George extended his hand towards me, to take – more like prise it from my frozen fingers – my portfolio from my hand. I handed it over sharpish, like it was on fire and burning my hand. I watched as he opened the black folder, skimming through the four designs very quickly before handing it along the line to Jordan, who analysed it with a little more depth and noticeably more nods of his head. Nods of approval? I’m not sure.

“What we were thinkin’ was that it’d be easier for you to leave your number with us,” George explained. “And we’ll get back in touch after we’ve had a chance to talk about it as a group.”

I felt slightly disheartened. “Oh, that sounds okay.”

“We’re just pretty tired after that show,” Dallas said, turning the page over very slowly, keeping his eyes trained down on the current design. He ran his hand over the page briefly before looking up at me and half-smiling. “But so far, I’m pretty sure I like what I’m seeing.”

I returned his smile, only a little more enthusiastically. Honestly, I don’t think I planned to hold my breath when they mentioned getting back in touch with me about it – my designs weren’t as good as they could’ve been, most likely because of all the drama going on at the time. I scrawled my mobile phone number down on the scrap piece of paper Wade handed to me and wrote my name above it so there would be no confusion. George took the paper from me and stood up off of the couch, stretching his arms up over his head.

“We’ll get in touch,” George assured, once we had reached the corridor outside of their dressing room. Funny, how those words of reassurance weren’t too assuring – mainly because I always pictured big time music producers saying that, which I suppose made some sense. Alexisonfire and I separated, after giving quick hugs, and I made my way along to the main room again. I yawned deeply – I didn’t realise just how exhausted I actually was – as I collected my belongings as fast as I could from the staff room. Georgia’s things weren’t there, so I knew she’d already gone home.

I grabbed my iPod from the bottom of my bag and turned it on, scrolling through my song list until I found one I wanted – Like O, Like H by Tegan & Sara. I walked out of the staff room, switching the light off and closing the door behind me, then walked downstairs to the main room again.

A small spark of what felt like happiness appeared somewhere in my chest, making me smile without initially think about doing it – like it was a natural reaction. It was the first time in days that I’d felt even slightly happy, and it was a good feeling. Levi and all the drama surrounding him and our relationship was at the back of my mind, locked into a little box, being saved for another time.

I pushed down the bar of the fire exit at the back of the building, stepping out into the cold night air, feeling the wind skim sharply over the skin of my cheeks. Along with the happiness came nervousness; what would George and the guys think about the designs I gave them? Would they like them? Find them mundane? Average? Exactly what they need?

Or would they hate each of them, and not bother getting in touch at all about setting something up. My heart sank at that possibility and I tried to stop myself from mulling over it. I’d worked hard on my designs, and if they didn’t like them, then that’d be okay; different people have different taste and style. I distracted myself by running through the scenario that could happen if they did like what I gave them.

I screamed when I felt something knock me to the ground, yanking my earphones sharply from my head as I went. I felt the weight and heat of a body land on top of me, pinning me to the damp, black tar of the road underneath me. I searched around wildly, another scream building up in my throat. I thrashed my elbows against any part of my assailant I could reach, and then I heard them laugh.

It wasn’t evil, or malevolent or the laugh of somebody that was out to do me harm. It was light.

“Oh, you’re such a prick!” I groaned, giving Dean my hardest shove so that he would get off of me. He continued to snicker, not even trying to lift his weight off my back, his leg either side of my struggling body. I complained again, “You scared the life out of me!”

“You look like you’re still living – ow! – and feel like you are,” he grumbled, rubbing the part of his leg I managed to get my elbow into contact with. I heard him laugh before feeling his weight lift. I looked around and saw him offering me his hand – I pointedly ignored it and collected my belongings up from the ground and clambered to my feet. He only laughed a bit harder when I glared at him.

“Shut up,” I said, for lack of anything better to say. I felt my heartbeat regulate and my breathing slow to normal. He smiled at me and rolled his eyes dramatically, shaking his head at me.

“I forgot that you’ve got a stick permanently stuck where the sun don’t shine,” he joked. “Anyway, the reason I scared the living shit out of you.”

“Are you ten or something?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “And you had one?”

He shrugged. “I may as well be I suppose. I had two reasons; one was to ask if you fancied coming for a drink or two.”

“Compelling.” I rolled my eyes witheringly. “Reason number two?”

“It was hilarious,” he snickered. I slapped him again and he laughed, muttering, “Touchy.”

I narrowed my eyes at him and gave him a look. My look was promptly ruined, though, because I felt the muscles of my jaw pulling, making me want to yawn. I covered my mouth with my hand and held the index finger of the other up to signal for him to hold on for a moment.

“I don’t know,” I sighed, giving up the pretence of my former irritation. “I’m really tired and I haven’t got much money.”

“Ah, come on,” he said. “Just one drink, as a celebration of the festival. And I’ll make sure you get home okay once we’re done.”

He made it sound a lot more attractive when he mentioned me getting home, rather than sleeping in his van – in close proximity to him – again. I considered it a moment longer, trying to find potential harm in going. I couldn’t find any. If I stayed for one drink, I’d easily still be in my right mind to get home, on my own, without any troubles. And it’d probably be quite tame, since that whole big night out in Liverpool had been arranged for the next night.

I turned back to Dean’s expectant face. “Fine.”

I acted like it was some big effort, but it wasn’t really. Dean smiled happily at me and led the way back over to the cluster of vans – I could easily identify his bands van because of the lack of noise. He pulled the door open quietly and poked his head into the gap.

“Anybody coming to the pub?”

There was a moments silence before I heard a muted chorus of voices, each of them telling Dean they were too tired and – in Jake’s case – had an infant to take care of. Dean brushed off their apologies and told them not to worry, before coming back out of the van and closing the doors until they clicked. He walked along the street, quickly, to the next van, while I followed behind – not attempting to keep up with him. He stuck his head inside the neighbouring van he had approached and asked the exact same question as earlier. Eventually, he re-emerged, followed by James, Tom and Chris.

“I think this is going to be all we’re getting,” he scoffed. “After the last show too!”

“What about the twats in your van?” Chris asked.

“They either have no money, no energy, a child to look after or all of the above,” Dean shrugged. “Won’t be too bad with just us.”

“Sounds alright to me.” I smiled, walking between James and Dean along the street to the alley leading to the pub. James and Dean both lit up cigarettes on the way and I shuddered – remembering that I had let Dean pressure me into trying one. I mentally scolded myself for thinking that it wasn’t as bad as I had been lead to believe. Of course, I wasn’t going to start it up – it was another bad habit that I didn’t need.

‘Just one drink’ soon turned into around three. Dean had insisted on getting the first round in – with assistance from James in carrying them back to our table, tucked away in one of the quieter corners of the almost empty pub. Chris got the second and Tom got third. When we had arrived, Tom had sat down heavily in the seat directly opposite my own, and was still sat in a similar, slumped position an hour or so later.

“Everything alright?” I asked, taking a sip of my double vodka and orange – which Dean had told me was a lot nicer than double vodka and Coke. Of course, he was right.

“Yeah, just worrying,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He folded his hands and rested them on his flat stomach before turning his eyes to me. “How about you?”

“Things are getting better, I think,” I said, tracing the condensation dripping down the side of my glass. James and Chris were up, playing darts with a couple of old men that were locals here, and Dean had excused himself to use the bathroom. I asked, “What are you worrying about?”

“Just little things, y’know,” he shrugged. “Excited to go back home, actually.”

I smiled. “That’s good, you only have to wait til Thursday now.”

“I was thinking,” he said. “I’d just hop a train down tomorrow.”

“You aren’t coming to Liverpool?” I asked, feeling a little disappointed – I had been looking forward to a night out with everybody, including Tom. He shrugged his shoulders and sighed, making the paper cloths on the table rustle. Tom picked up one of the beer mats and started tearing it in little pieces absentmindedly.

“Not sure,” he answered. “I want to like, I just really miss people back home. We were on tour for a month and a half before we came here, so it’s been a while.”

“Wow,” I said. “I understand that, it’s a long time.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “No worries if I don’t go tomorrow, I’ll get your number off you later, then we can keep in touch and that, yeah?”

“That sounds amazing, Tom,” I smiled. Tom laughed and picked up a couple of pieces of torn up beer mat, before flicking them at me and laughing again when I tried to dodge it. We didn’t get a chance to speak again, because Dean arrived back at our table with three glasses balances between his two hands. He set a fresh pint down in front of Tom, before setting another vodka and orange juice in front of me.

“Dean,” I said as he took his seat beside me. “It was supposed to be my round.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he laughed. “The barmaids paid for these ones, as long as I go back over and talk to her.”

Tom sat up straight in his chair and tried to see over the heads of the few people at the bar. He craned his neck and a moment later I saw him shudder. He gave Dean a disgusted look and took a huge drink of his beer. He said, “Man, for my sake, don’t go back over.”

“Why not?” Dean said, smiling like he already knew the answer.

Tom put his glass back down and took a breath. “Absolute creature.”

“I know,” Dean laughed. I laughed too, before taking a generous mouthful of my drink and swallowing it instantly. I liked it more than Coke, because all I tasted was orange juice. The vodka didn’t even burn my throat on the way down. Usually, I wasn’t that big of a juice drinker.

“I’m going to go see if James has punched Chris yet,” Tom said, after belching. “See you two in a few.”

I wafted my hand in front of my nose – I swear, it was completely necessary – and Tom laughed at me as he walked away from our table with his glass in hand. Dean and I sat together in silence, sipping our drinks and chuckling nervously when one of us caught the others eye. I was frantically trying to scrounge together something – anything at all – to bring up and start a conversation about. I briefly skimmed over the two months in London, six years ago, but decided against that as it had potential in ending awkwardly or with one of or both of us screaming at the other.

“Why were you out so late before, anyway?” Dean asked, breaking the silence and my train of thought. “Maddox and Zoë and everyone left ages before you came out.”

“I was dropping off those designs,” I sighed, shrugging my shoulders nonchalantly. I finished off the last of my drink before turning back to Dean, who was staring at me expectantly.

“And? What did they think?” he asked. Actually, I was surprised he remembered.

I shrugged my shoulders again, trying to keep my hopes at a bare minimum, at least. “They said they’d call when they’ve talked it through. I suppose if they did want to use what I had, they’d have told me then and there.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Dean laughed. “Things like this have to be presented and talked through – not with just the band but with the record company and the producers and everybody in between.”

“Yeah, but some reassurance that they liked it would’ve been enough.”

“Maybe they didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Dean reasoned with me. “Just because they like it, doesn’t mean the record company will – at the end of the day, they’re the ones who decide what will sell the band.”

I nodded. “Okay, you’ve made your point – I’m being impatient.”

“Nah, you’re not,” Dean smiled, shaking his head. “It’s a really good opportunity, it’s good they even asked you to design something.”

Dean wrapped his arm around my shoulders and gave them a tight squeeze. I smiled and leaned into his embrace a little more than I should have – if anybody asked I would’ve spun off the excuse that I had been drinking, and been extremely vague about the amount consumed.

“That’s only if they decide to use any of them,” I said, feeling a little more optimistic. “If they don’t, well everything’ll just be the same, right?”

“I suppose so,” he nodded and made a face. “But I know you’re work, Leila. They’ll use it.”

*****

After the first hour and a half, James, Tom and Chris had said their goodbyes to Dean and I, before making their way – drunkenly – back to their van for the night. Tom hugged me, almost taking my eye out with his phone, before making me save my number to it and slurring that he’d text message me the next day, letting me know if he was going home or not.

Dean and I hardly paid attention to the time after the other three left. We sat together and talked, the alcohol loosening our tongues. Against my own common sense, I decided to use the last of the money I had on me to buy a couple of drinks for us – I couldn’t expect him to keep providing. After a couple more drinks, we were talking freely, starting to trip over each syllable and slur the rest.

“Wow, what time is that?” Dean asked, swaying in his seat while he tried to concentrate on the clock hung on the far wall. “That thing just keeps...moving all over the place.”

I felt a laugh bubble its way up my throat and out of my mouth. “It isn’t moving.”

“Then, Leila, why can’t I read the time?” he asked, a triumphant edge to his voice as he tapped my nose with his index finger.

”Because, Dean,” I mimicked. “You’re drunk.”

Dean turned his body in his chair so that he was facing me, his long legs clad in their grey skinny jeans swinging over the arm of his seat. He balanced his elbow on the table and leaned to the side to cup his chin in his hand. He was holding his head up, like his neck didn’t quite do the job for him. He tilted his head to the side – so it was almost horizontal – and said, “I think I am quite drunk.”

I nodded my head and clumsily took another sip of my seventh or eighth double vodka and orange juice – I decided that there wasn’t a lot of point in being tight with the little amount of money I had. Dean chuckled and crossed his ankles – right over left – and began swinging his legs, making his feet repeatedly thud into the side of my chair.

“Want to know something?” he asked, his voice like that of a small child.

“Sure.”

“You’re quite drunk too.”

I raised my eyebrows and laughed. “I already knew that.”

Dean smiled and pulled a face at me, squeezing his eyes tight shut. “Sh. Want to know something else then?”

I nodded my head and ran my finger lightly around the rim of my glass, mostly missing it, of course. Dean looked like he was thinking as hard as he possibly could. Eventually, his perplexed expression changed and he looked triumphant.

“I missed you!” he said. I chuckled – a little bit nervously, I’ll admit – and he smiled broadly at me. He swivelled around to sit in his chair properly again and picked up his pint glass, draining the last couple of mouthfuls in one. The barman announced that they were going to be closing in five minutes. I looked around and realised that Dean and I were the only two people – besides two old men dribbling into their pints of bitter – left in the pub. That probably meant that it was almost two in the morning.

“I think we should get going,” I slurred to Dean, carefully pushing my chair out from the table – if I’d have done it carelessly, I would’ve fallen over or something – stood up and collected my bag from the floor underneath it. I stumbled very slightly as I stood back upright, then felt Dean’s hand resting on the curve of my waist, steadying me. He took his hand away from my body as I felt the blush creep into my cheeks. We walked out of the pub door, out into the cold night. I was well aware that we were both clutching each other for support.

“Right, I’m walking you home,” Dean announced, breaking away from my side and marching in a wobbly line – losing his footing twice – along the darkened street. Obviously, in completely the wrong direction.

“Dean,” I shouted, trying to get him to come back to me. “You’re going back to your van, and I’m walking home.”

“Leila,” Dean said, putting on a high-pitched voice in a failed attempt at mimicking me. “They’ll go absolutely mental if I go back now, and no, you’re not walking on your own.”

We stayed that way for a little while, calling our arguments between the three foot distance between us in hushed whispers. Obviously, not as hushed as we thought, because the window of a neighbouring flat opened and somebody told us to be quiet before they called the police. Dean and I looked at each other and snickered, before he grabbed my hand and rushed the both of us down the street, in the direction of my flat. I made him agree that if he walked me home, he had to sleep on the couch for the night – I wasn’t having him walking around, drunk and on his own all night.

A short ways away from my flat, Dean said, “This reminds me of that time.”

“That one time in that nondescript place? I remember that.”

He laughed and nudged my shoulder with his own, his fingers still laced tightly through my own. “Shut up, I meant the time we went to see that god awful film – what was it called?”

“The Final Destination,” I said straight away. It wasn’t easy to forget, me and Dean only saw one film together back then. He chuckled to himself and kept his eyes down on his feet and, as he walked, wobbled slightly on them.

“Yeah, and you kept jumping,” he laughed.

“I wasn’t scared it wa-”I began.

“I know!” he interrupted. “I meant after the film anyway, when we walked home in the rain” – he paused for a second to chuckle and sigh – “that was a really good night.”

“It was,” I agreed in a small voice. I waited for my stomach to tie itself into impossibly tight knots, or the lump to materialise in my oesophagus. But when it didn’t, I was kind of scared. Talking about the night Dean and I first kissed properly should’ve been painful, so painful that I couldn’t have done it, even if I wanted to. But, it wasn’t and that scared me. I shook off the feeling and listened while Dean reminisced and talked about Anna and everybody in the years that I’d missed.

“She was atrocious,” I said, making a face as he started talking about Jay. “What did you ever see in her?”

“She let me shag her whenever I wanted to,” he shrugged while I unlocked the front door to my flat block and shuddered as I started climbing the stairs. “That sounds really bad and like I was a whore or something, but I was only sixteen.”

I rolled my eyes at him and laughed lightly, holding onto the railing at the side of the stairs to keep my impaired balance under check. “I think I can let you off. I just really couldn’t stand that girl.”

“She hated you too, y’know.”

“Good!”

Dean laughed at me and kept following me, complaining the entire time about the amount of stairs we had to climb to reach my home. I watched my feet very closely on every step I took up the stairs, but I still managed to stumble. Whenever I did, Dean’s hand would dart out and steady me by my elbow. On the last flight of stairs, I almost fell again and Dean grabbed my hand tight before I could fall.

“Easy there,” he chuckled a little bit and kept his hand clasped around mine. I shifted my own and curled my fingers around his loosely, continuing to walk more carefully up the stairs. I rummaged around in my bag for my keys and, upon finding them, wrestled with them until I got the right key into the lock.

“Shhh!” I said loudly as Dean and I fell through the open door. Dean walked into the small table next to the door and made it smack against the wall and I put my finger to my lips. He laughed and let go of my hand before placing both of his own flat on the tables surface, as if he was steadying the still table. I laughed and quietly let the door click shut behind me, locking it and leaving my key in there. The two of us walked through the dark living room – I just about managed to stop Dean from smashing the coffee table to pieces – and through the hallway to my bedroom.

Dean paused and looked around the room – similar to the last time, just more brief – before walking straight across the room to the window. He slid it open and pulled his cigarette packet out of the pocket of his jeans, while I shut my bedroom door. I approached him, my eyes hazy, as he was lighting his own up. He offered me one, and I clumsily took it – I was hoping it wouldn’t turn into some kind of habit, though.

He lit mine for me, before I slid down the wall and sat heavily on the floor. I crossed my legs in front of me and laughed as Dean did the same, sitting in front of me so that his knees touched mine. He contemplated the end of his cigarette ash while I stared at him.

“I don’t know if I told you this before,” he laughed, taking a drag on his cigarette and almost missing his mouth. “But you look really good, Leila.”

I laughed and shrugged my shoulders, flicking the ash from my own cigarette into a discarded mug that sat on the floor near my bed. “Not too bad yourself.”

“I’m serious,” he said, doing his trademark grin – the one I remembered. “I could never have pictured you with your hair as short as it is, though; I always remembered the long black hair. But I do like this colour” – he transferred his cigarette to his left hand and threaded a couple of fingers through a loose piece of my hair – “it looks like melted milk chocolate.”

I looked away – tugging my hair away from his fingers in doing so – and felt bashful for a second or two. “It was a huge change, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, leaning back on his hands. “But you’re still Leila.”

“You don’t know that,” I said, a triumphant smirk on my face. “I could be a totally different person to who you knew.”

He sat for a minute, giving me an odd look – probably because my words were spoken too fast and all slurred together into one long word. “I don’t know. I can still see bits of you from back then in you now. You’ve still got some of the same habits, you haven’t worked on your comebacks and I can still understand you without you having to say a word.”

“I really wish you couldn’t,” I confessed, breathing a laugh. “I have habits?”

“I wouldn’t know you at all if I couldn’t,” he said, ignoring my question.

“What do you mean?”

He exhaled a lungful of smoke and stubbed his cigarette out in the mug. “You seem to...well, hide how you’re feeling, a lot.”

I shrugged. “Other people don’t need to deal with my moods.”

“But you have to deal with theirs?”

I shrugged again. “I like it.”

“I bet your boyfriend doesn’t know half of what’s wrong with you most of the time,” he challenged, watching me while I took the last drag of my cigarette. I winced, and I think he noticed, because he looked sadly triumphant. It was true, Levi wasn’t really that perceptive about how I was feeling – definitely not as perceptive as Dean was – and it hurt that he never seemed to ask if I was okay. We never talked about what bothered me, just what bothered him.

“He does,” I lied anyway.

Dean scoffed incredulously. “You need to stop lying, Leila.”

“I’m not lying!”

“Yes, you are!” he laughed. “You still focus somewhere over my ear.”

Damn my bad habits. I looked away from him and let the conversation lap into an inevitable awkward silence. Everything was still just a little bit too hard to focus on entirely, so I didn’t try too much because it made my head ache. I stared out of the window, because looking out of the window didn’t actually require focussing on any particular thing.

“It’s strange,” his voice made my head snap back so I was looking at him. He had already been looking at me.

“What is?” I asked, my voice quiet.

“What happened with us on Saturday,” he said. “I just can’t seem to...regret it, at all.”

I shifted uncomfortably and said, “I felt guilty, but it isn’t nearly as bad as it was now.”

“Because your boyfriend almost beat you up,” he growled, clenching his jaw and his fists. “That’s why it doesn’t feel bad for you now. Zara’s probably more than I can ask for myself, but I still don’t feel guilty about kissing you.”

“Dean,” I said, reaching for the mug full of ash and cigarette butts on the floor and taking my eyes away from him. “Don’t tell me that.”

I pushed myself up off of the floor of my bedroom with my free hand. I walked out of my room as fast as I could manage, without knocking into anything on the way or knocking something over even though, unfortunately, I was still quite drunk. I went quietly through the living room and into the kitchen. I emptied the ash and cigarette butts into the bin, before I rinsed the mug out quickly.

I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself down and tried to form coherent thoughts, but neither worked. When I returned back to my room, Dean had taken his jacket off and was sitting on the very edge of my bed. I sat down in a similar fashion, but kept at least two feet of distance between him and me.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” Dean said, turning to face me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I’m just telling you the truth.”

“But it shouldn’t have happened,” I sighed. “Even if there was no Levi, no Zara, it still shouldn’t have happened.”

“Why?” he asked, raising his voice and shaking my shoulders a little bit. “Because I was stupid? Because you left me without so much as a goodbye? What?!”

“Because,” I said, exhaling slowly in an attempt to stop the stupid, irrational tears from falling down my cheeks and make a mockery of me. “Seeing you again, without any kind of warning, hurt.”

He didn’t speak to me after that; he just kept watching my face and my desperate battle against my own tears, his hands relaxed on my shoulders. Mentally, I scolded myself for comparing Dean and Levi again; I never cried over Levi or something he did, but Dean just had to say one thing to me, or make me say something I didn’t want to – hell, he just had to be there – and it’d be a desperate battle against the tears. I felt Dean’s fingers brush along my cheekbones; that’s when I noticed a couple of tears had escaped.

“I suppose I’m going to have to stop hurting you,” he sighed. I felt the tug against my shoulders as Dean pulled me carefully into him. He wrapped his arms around my body and I felt his hands moving slowly up and down my back, while I leaned my right cheek against his chest and made small, gaspy breaths like little sobs. He rested his cheek on top of my head.

Finally, I felt my stomach tie itself into a tight knot, shortly followed by the lump forming in my throat. I wrapped my arms around his waist as tight as the knot in my stomach seemed and breathed him in, revelling in the contact for the time being. He carried on stroking my back, and his fingers skimmed over a bare piece of skin on my lower back, making me jump slightly. I pulled back a little bit, just to look up at him.

“Can I ask you something? And can I have an honest answer?” he blurted out, keeping his voice quiet but unable to disguise the slur still.

“I don’t see why not.”

He breathed in and out for a couple of minutes, avoiding eye contact with me for the entire time. Once he was done, he looked at me, straight in my eyes and said, “When we kissed, were you glad about it?”

I took my arms slowly away from his waist and turned my head away so I didn’t have to look at him. His arms tightened around me and I couldn’t pull away entirely. He knew that I was being evasive and he was stopping it. I said, “You can’t ask me things like that, Dean.”

“Okay,” he whispered. His right hand slid up my back to my left cheek, while he kept his other hand in the centre of my back – probably because he thought I would try to get away. I felt slight pressure as he turned my head back to face him before he spoke. “Would you be glad if it happened again?”

I stared open mouthed, vaguely registering that the hand on my back had moved down to the patch of bare skin at the small of my back. I didn’t fail to notice how terribly close together we were at that point, or that Dean’s thumb was stroking my cheekbone in a way that made me feel dizzier than I already felt. I found myself fighting an internal battle about my answer.

“I-”