Kiss Me Like You Mean It

By the time I could see the Sykes’ living room analog clock reading two in the morning, the storm had only worsened. Tom, Oliver, and their parents had gone to their respective bedrooms, and I had indulged my sense of manners to give Hannah the guest room. Therefore, I found myself rolling back and forth uncomfortably on the sofa bed with my slight buzz gone and my slight insecurities back full force.

For the three hours since everybody had gone to bed, the power had gone out within the first, and during the last two, I’d heard multiple sets of footsteps back and forth nonstop from the second floor; and I couldn’t help but think that maybe Hannah had been running back and forth to Oliver’s bedroom or vice versa. There was nothing to stop them from making up and making out.

I just couldn’t understand why it was bothering me—bothering me so much to the point that I was losing sleep over it. After all, getting them to make up had been the whole point of pretending to date him, anyway.

Upon one of the times the footsteps from the second floor had carried down to my ears, I could hear them creeping down the stairs. Oliver’s thin frame came into my view when I peered up from behind the couch.

“Good, you’re awake,” he whispered. He made his way over to where I was laying and crouched down next to the mattress. “I can’t sleep.” He folded his arms atop the quilt beside my hips.

I pursed my lips. “How come?”

“You’re gonna laugh at me.” I could see his eyelids drop down to his hands in embarrassment.

“I laugh at you anyway, whether you divulge embarrassing information to me or not.” I smirked at him as he looked back up with a pretty grin on his even prettier face.

“What about you?”

Because I keep thinking you’re fucking your ex, I wanted to say. Instead, my response was just a shrug.

“Can you come upstairs with me?” he asked when I didn’t verbally respond.

I bit down on my bottom lip and sighed. “So Hannah thinks we did the dirty when she wakes up in the morning and sees me in your room?”

He snickered at that. “No—she can think whatever she wants. I just want your company.”

“Why?” Why my company and not his wife’s?

“You’re really gonna laugh, Violet.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just tell me. You tell me everything anyway.” At least, up until that point, I felt like he did.

He took a deep breath. “I’m afraid of thunder, and the dark is making it worse.”

I laughed out loud at that. “Yeah, right—how many times has that one worked for you?”

He swatted my arm and furrowed his eyebrows defensively. “I’m not kidding, Violet. I’ve never told that to anyone—don’t make me regret telling it to you.”

I stopped laughing then because the hurt in his voice sounded really sincere—like he was sincerely hurt that I was laughing at him—so I took a deep breath to make him feel better. “Well I’m afraid of pool drains.”

He grinned at that. “Pool lights are off, too.”

I chuckled as I slid off the bed and grabbed my pillow. “You can tell me all about your hopes and fears upstairs, then. Maybe we’ll both get some sleep before dawn.”

Oliver’s bedroom looked like everything I would’ve imagined—posters hung up haphazardly to cover almost every inch of his pale, blue walls, a messy, black quilt strewn over his full size mattress, and clothing scattered everywhere over the wooden floors—but it seemed so much more endearing in person.

“Your room makes you seem fifteen,” I whispered quietly as he scooted onto the bed.

He snickered. “That’s because I’ve barely touched it since I was fifteen.” He patted the spot on the mattress next to himself.

I obeyed to his call and laid down beside him. We both rolled onto our sides to face each other as he pulled the quilt up to cover both of us.

“So what else are you afraid of?” he asked once we finished shifting our positions.

I pursed my lips, taking a long moment to mull over it. “Bees are awful,” I finally confessed. “Satan definitely wasn’t a serpent. The authors of the Bible seriously fucked that one up royally—he was a goddamn bee, as far as I’m concerned.”

He snickered at that. “So pool drains and bees—what else?”

“That’s all I can think of,” I conceded honestly. “What about you?”

He was silent for a long while before finally rattling off his list. “Other than thunder, the dark, pool drains and lights, I’d have to say spiders; certainly bees, as well; circles placed closely and unevenly together—like bread, for example; I can’t look at it too long, or else I get too freaked out—clowns, heights; rollercoasters, I suppose; flying on airplanes, though it’s eased up a bit from all the touring; butterflies; and Venus flytraps are just about the worst things to ever be on the face of the Earth.”

“Oh, is that all—and how many of those have you told your therapist about?” I couldn’t help but giggle.

He just rolled his eyes but still smirked. “Rollercoasters are the only thing I think anyone knows about, but that’s only because I almost shit my pants my first time at Disneyland, and Tom got it on camera.”

“So Oliver Sykes—lead singer of rock band, Bring Me The Horizon—has like a billion irrational fears then, huh?” I mused, still grinning at him.

He suddenly slid his one arm over my waist and replied, “Yeah, and if there’s an article out about it tomorrow, I know who to kill.”

“I guess hemophobia is not on your lengthy list, then.”

He rolled his eyes and was just about to say something when a loud clap of thunder made him almost jump out of the bed. “Jesus,” he muttered, regaining himself and snuggling closely into me.

“Slide your pillow over, closer to me,” I told him.

“What for?” he questioned, though still obliging.

I pulled my own pillow out from under my cheek, moved my head onto his, and placed the second pillow on top of our faces.

“Are you trying to suffocate me?” he asked. I could hear the smirk in his voice.

I yanked his quilt up further so that it was stretched over the pillows to make a haphazard tent over us. “My mom used to do this with me when I was a kid. It gets kind of hot, but the pillows block out the noise of the thunder so that it’s not so startling.”

“Your breath smells like peppermint,” was his response.

We both laughed at that. “Yours smells like Big Red,” I offered back.

“At least we both know the other brushes their teeth before going to the kip.”

“For all I know, you just chew gum all day,” I mused.

“You must chew candy canes, then,” he countered lightheartedly.

“My teeth are fake. I just scrub candy canes on them every hour—you know how it is.” I was about to keep going with the joke, but the feel of Oliver’s lips against my own made me almost jump out of my skin. He was always much more affectionate than necessary, but he always kept his mouth to himself. Other than that one night of his party, his worst offenses were kisses to my cheek or his legs wrapped over mine when we’d lay on the couch—it was never that bad.

The worst part of it, though, was that I didn’t even push him away. I just laid there and responded positively, inviting him in for more.

I couldn’t tell how much time had passed when he finally pulled away, but it was the longest kiss I’d ever experienced, so much that my lips were actually tired and sore by the time we were done. I wanted to punch him in the face, though, because he didn’t need to be hooking up with me—hooking me in, really—when he was trying to get back with his wife.

The thought of the word wife made me want to gag.

“You’re also afraid of getting close to people,” he whispered. He was still so close that I could feel the frown etched into his lips.

I didn’t even know how to respond because I wanted to be offended, but the problem was that he wasn’t wrong. The only person I’d let get close to me like that was Shawn, and that relationship had blown up so far in my face that it was a miracle the TNT hadn’t left me unrecognizable to dental records.

“You don’t trust me as much as I trust you,” he added.

Why should I? I wanted to ask. I remained silent, though, and eventually, we both fell asleep just like that.