A Little Bit... A Little More. (Huh?)

Type: Chapter 17

The next morning, I was still wide awake. I could still feel his arms wrapped around my waist as he pulled me closer to him in that dark club. I could still recall how my heart was hammering against my chest at that moment. I didn't know what to make of any of it. 

"You horny bastard!" I exclaimed out loud as I threw my blanket off my face. 

"Is that why you came back home with me last night?" Tharn said, which made me jump up in surprise. He was standing at the bathroom door, smirking, with his arms crossed on his shirtless body and my eyes were immediately transfixed on his chest. The same one I had been pushed up against last night… I pulled myself back from my ridiculous thoughts as I slapped myself mentally. 

"Umm… you came back home with me too. So, I guess neither of us actually scored," I said to throw him off from the thoughts that were actually going on in my mind as I nervously glanced around, throwing my blanket off my body and grabbing a change of clothes to go take a shower. I avoided Tharn's eyes who was just staring at me silently, with that same smirk on his face, I imagined. 

"Don't be discouraged. Now that we've unlocked the secret of getting into a club, we can go back as many times as it takes to score," he said through the closed bathroom door which made me hit my forehead on the wall in front of the shower that I was standing under.

'What the hell am I thinking? This is Tharn! Tharn! Your best friend! You were just drunk last night. Clubs are designed to dull your senses. You were drunk and you haven't gotten laid so it's natural for the body to react like that to someone being that intimately close with you in such a setting. I wasn't attracted to Tharn, it was just my body reacting to someone else's. Yes! That's all that was,' I thought as I scrubbed myself raw.

I had pretty much convinced myself that it was a one off thing and felt a lot better as I walked out of the bathroom, freshly showered. 

"Come have breakfast," Tharn said as he sat on the island with two boxes of take-out set in place. Looking at him smiling up at me, I felt the old feeling of warmth and comfort that I had felt since the beginning with him which immediately made me feel really silly to think that I allowed myself to think that it could ever get awkward with him. 

'He's just Tharn. My best friend, Tharn,' I thought to myself as I sat myself next to him, smiling. I felt a lot better. I had just needed a good shower to clear my head. Things could never get awkward between us. 

Tharn handed me a spoon and I reached for it without looking. As I grabbed it, I felt a shock run through my body because I felt his finger graze mine. I stared at my offending hand and then at Tharn who looked at me with equal amount of shock in his face. I quickly pulled the spoon from his hand as I started shoveling the food into my face, being painfully aware of how close Tharn was sitting next to me. 

All that progress in my mind was nullified by one measly touch of a finger that could not even qualify as touching. I could feel the panic rising inside my chest as I tried to understand why my body was betraying me so.

I thought about taking a shower again to clear my head, but I could feel pain everywhere my shirt touched my body on account of me rubbing it raw with the loofah, so I decided against putting my body through more pain by letting water run on it again.

I scrambled to arrange everything I was feeling to make sense of it as I choked on the food that I was shovelling at a dangerously fast pace down my throat and grabbed for the glass of water in front of me and gulped it down in one go. 

"Are you okay?" Tharn asked, looking at me with concern in his eyes. As soon as my eyes met with his, I felt a tingle run down my spine and quickly avoided his gaze.