Page 81 of Any Port in a Storm

I arch into him as a moan slips out.

“Fuck,” he swears.

It’s at that moment I notice his erection against my hip. I grind against him a little before I realize I’m doing it.

Are we actually doing this?

Just then, clarity peeks through, the worst kind of intrusive thought. This is Nick. We definitely shouldn’t be doing this.

“Wait,” I murmur, pulling back.

His eyes grow wide. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry.” I squeeze his hand in mine, trying to catch my breath; to stop the alcohol and lust from controlling my thoughts. “I just…we can’t.”

“What do you mean, we can’t?”

“We can’t have sex.”

“So we can kiss, but we can’t have sex?”

“No,” I shake my head. “We shouldn’t…we can’t do that either.”

Confusion settles over his features like acid rain, slowly disintegrating the beauty of the moment. “I don’t understand,” he murmurs at last.

“You’re the most important person in my life,” I say shakily, trying to ignore the moisture that’s still pooling between my thighs. “I can’t risk losing you.”

“Hey,” he slides his arm over my waist. “You’re not going to lose me.”

I almost melt back into him before I realize I need to be strong. The look on his face tells me he’s about a millisecond away from kissing me again.

I have to be the one to stop this. Because we can’t sleep together. We just can’t. Nick’s my best friend in the entire world. If we have sex and things get weird—especially if he was about to drunkenly confess his feelings—what would that mean for us?

And…yeah. He was about to confess his feelings, and then this turned into a drunken makeout session. How can I know that he meant what he said? After years of fraught subtext, I think any exploration of romantic feelings deserves a little more gravitas than this.

All the sexual tension evaporates in an instant, boiling off into the atmosphere by way of one lone sob that shakes my whole body. “If we do this…and it goes poorly…” I shake my head. “Things would never go back to the way they were.”

His pupils are huge on me in the dark. “I’m not sure they can go back to the way they were regardless.”

I taste saline. “What do you mean?”

Nick reaches for my hand again. “Laurel, I think I love⁠—”

“Shh.” I press my finger to his lips, the most depressing bookend to the start of this conversation. “You’re drunk.”

His eyes flash. “I’m not.”

“Well, I’m a little drunk.”

“I’m sorry, then.”

“I already told you,” I whisper. “You don’t have to be sorry.”

He pulls his hand from my hair. “It certainly wasn’t my intention to confess my feelings while you were drunk.”

“Hey.” I squeeze his fingers again. “You didn’t do anything wrong. And…I mean it when I say I want this, too.”

“Then why,” his voice cracks around the words, “can’t we have it?”