Hate You Still by Lyssa Lemire

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EMMA

For what feels like an hour or more, Knox and I simply lay in bed, wrapped in each other’s arms, with barely a word passed between us.

Our voices are more exercised in laughing than speaking as we lay back on my soft bed, both of us nude, the cool and gentle breeze from my open window slowly working to dry the sweat covering our bodies and to cool our temperatures.

At intervals, I’ll suddenly start to giggle, not at anything Knox’s has said or anything that’s happening in the room – because Knox hasn’t said anything, and nothing has happened – but just to giggle out of a giddy and headless joy; Knox will respond with an easy, rumbling chuckle, his voice fully relieved of the stress that’s been present it in to greater or lesser degrees every time I’ve talked to him this semester.

I trace my finger on his chest. It’s a wide, expansive plane, a large canvass for my index finger to glide over, tracing arcing lines and geometric shapes against his flawless skin, supple and damp from the recently cooled sweat.

“We should stay here,” he says, looking at me calmly with his eyes, two deep lakes of emerald.

“Stay here?” I ask, grinning.

“Call out tomorrow,” he says as he snatches my index between his own and his thumb, lifting it from his chest and massaging it gently. “And the next day. And the next day. Stay here in this room and never leave.”

My heart stops. From the zoo this morning – which already feels like a lifetime ago, although it was on this very same day – to the drive back to my house, to the mad and ecstatic sex we just had in this bed, we never talked about what, if anything, any of this means.

We never talked about what comes next. We never talked about what this means for our relationship – or if the word relationship could even be used to describe what’s between us.

I didn’t know if, for him, this was just a one-time thing, maybe hotter than, but not fundamentally different from, the litany of hookups I know he’s engaged in over the years.

I didn’t know if, once he got the one thing he desired, he’d be content to let things go back to the way they were between us.

After this last statement, though, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I giggle, both at his joke and in relief at the sentiment that lies behind it. I still don’t know what I want out of this, to be honest, but I know one thing for sure – I don’t want it to be a one-time thing.

“We’ll have to leave sometime,” I say.

He shakes his head. “Says who?”

“Well, we need to eat, for one thing,” I smile.

“We’ll have Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream delivered every day.”

I blush, the memory of that night last week was already a cherished one, but its sweetness and meaning are now magnified tenfold as Knox recalls it as we’re lying together naked, coming down from a paroxysm of bliss and passion.

“I think we’d get tired of that eventually,” I say, still giggling.

He drops my finger from between his and moves his hand to my chin. He props up my head and reaches his forward, guiding our lips together and falling on me with a slow, smooth kiss.

“I’ll never get tired of eating Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream with you,” he says, a playful smirk on his lips. Those aren’t words I ever thought would strike me as romantic, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more romantic sentence spoken in my life – and I’m not sure I ever will.

“It does sound tempting when you put it like that,” I say, almost a sigh, resting my head against his chest, it’s impossibly hard yet comfortable at the same time.

We continue to luxuriate in the comfort of lying together, but before long we both realize we need to get up. I have to finish my lesson plans, he has homework to do. He mentions that his coach is demanding the highest grades he’s ever gotten as one of the conditions of him being able to play again.

That makes me realize there’s a big part of his story this semester that I still don’t know: why he got assigned to Marshall in the first place.

I ask him about it again and he chuckles. “How about you let me take you to dinner tomorrow and we’ll talk about that and anything else you want to know.”

My stomach does a somersault. Hell, forget a somersault, it feels like my stomach is trying out for the Olympic gymnastics team.

“Like … a date?” I ask.

A single breathy chuckle passes his lips. “Yeah, like a date.”

I feel like I’m about to melt.

I can’t suppress the wide, strong smile that overtakes my face while we’re getting out of bed and getting dressed. I wasn’t sure what I wanted with Knox. Truth be told, I’m still not totally sure. But I know that the fact that we’re going to go on a date stirs a warm, bright happiness inside me.

We walk downstairs and I bid him farewell at the door. I close the door after he leaves and then I lean against it, heaving a silent, but happy, sigh.

I walk back up to my apartment and casually stroll into the living room, and almost have a heart attack.

Katie shocks me, sitting on the couch staring straight at me with a saucy, knowing smile on her face. I didn’t even know she’d gotten home.

“When did you get home?” I ask, catching my breath.

“About an hour ago,” she says, grinning.

“Oh,” I draw out the word, feeling awkward. “So, you heard …?”

Katie practically cackles. “Girl, I think everyone on the block heard you two.”

My face burns with an embarrassed blush, but Katie’s laughter and the look in her face that says she’s happy for me helps me overcome my natural bashfulness. I sit down next to her on the couch.

She turns to me with a smile and a strange look in her eye. “Well, at least this means I don’t have to keep this secret from you anymore,” she says cyptically.

“What secret?”