That One Summer...

Chapter 8

"Liam. We need. To take things. Slow." Liam interrupted me practically every other word with short kisses. He was pressing his body to mine as we stumbled into his house, not content with just holding hands.

All through the fireworks display, Liam and I cuddled with each other and shared subtle kisses, shy of the hundreds of people around us. Surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of press there, and the whole group was thankful of that.

Liam led me into his room. "Emma." That's all he had to say to get me to shut up and put my mouth back on his.

He sat at the edge of his bed and pulled me onto his lap.

I started talking again. "Liam." Kiss. "We're still." Kiss. "Transitioning." Kiss. "From friends." Kiss. "To more than that." Kiss.

He laughed and bit my lip. It was hard to remember what I was talking about.

I pulled away suddenly and rested my forehead on his. "Liam, seriously. What's going to make this time different than last time?"

He smiled and tucked my hair behind my ear. "We know who we are now, and what we want. You're my best friend, Em. You know what they say about best friends."

I laughed and gave him a small kiss. "What do they say?"

Liam looked me in the eyes, and I could see his brown eyes sparkle. "Those are always the happiest marriages." He winked.

I smiled. "Marriage?"

He shrugged. "We've got time."

This was what I meant by moving too fast. There was no way we were even considering marriage now, no matter if it was a year in our future or twenty.

He reached in for another kiss, but I pulled away and sighed. "Liam, tonight...here...right now... The way things are going... Do you really think sex is going to improve anything?"

He stroked my hair, but kept the smile on his face. "Whatever happens, happens."

I raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Well it's not happening tonight, buddy."

Liam winked and gave me a very convincing kiss.

I shook my head and sighed in the middle of the kiss. I bit his lip and pulled away. "You're pushing your luck, babe."

He sighed and laid back on his bed. "Will you at least sleep with me tonight? Just sleep?"

I sighed and laid next to him. "Liam, there is no way I can sleep right now. My adrenaline is pumping."

He pulled me closer to him. "What do you wanna do?"

I looked around the room, and my eye caught his laptop. "Do you still use Twitter?"

A smile lit his face from ear to ear. "Would you like to do a Twitcam?"

I jumped up from the bed and nodded. "Get it started while I go change!" I hollered from the hallway as I went to my room to change.

I heard him get off the bed and grab his laptop.

I changed out of my dress and into a tank top and pajama shorts. I washed my face to get rid of all my make-up and threw my hair into two side braids. Looking at myself in the mirror, I shrugged, not exactly realizing I was about to show my face to thousands of people all around the world.

Liam smiled at me when I came back in and opened the covers for me to slide in next to him. He held my hand underneath the covers and winked at me before he started the Twitcam.

We did nothing for a while as the number of viewers slowly increased.

I looked at Liam after a few minutes. "Is this all you do?"

Liam's eyes went wide and he reached across to his nightstand and turned on some music. "Let's get this party started!"

Chris Brown started playing, and he looked at me and started mouthing the words. I didn't know the verses, but when it came to the chorus, I had it down.

The number of viewers dramatically increased after the song, and questions for Liam started pouring in. A majority of the questions asked if I was Liam's girlfriend.

As an answer, Liam showed our intertwined hands in view of the camera. "This is my best friend, Emma. I'm sure everybody will find out about it eventually, but she and I are..."

I smiled and finished his sentence. "Taking things slow."

Another question asked, "On a scale of 1-10, 10 being in love, 1 being pure hate, how much do you like each other?"

Liam and I looked at each other and laughed. I answered the question. "Infinity."

Liam replied, "And beyond!"

Everybody went crazy over the Toy Story reference.

We stayed up for a long time with the viewers, even playing a game of truth or dare with them. Might I say, some of their dares were absolutely disgusting. One of my dares to them was to take pictures of every object of food in their house and send the pictures to Niall. Hopefully, Niall would have a sense of humor. Liam dared them to eat a bunch of cans of alphabet soup and spell out "One Direction" and send him a picture.

Once Liam started yawning, I faked like I was exhausted so they wouldn't feel like Liam was being a drag. We said goodbye to everybody after 3 hours of playing games and jamming with them.

"Liam?" I said with a yawn after he put his laptop away, and we were wrapped up together in bed.

"Hmm?" He replied, obviously not wanting to put in any effort to use real words.

I snuggled even closer to him. "Do you think they like me?"

He kissed my forehead and laughed. "Don't worry about that. I like you, and that's all that should matter, right?"

I nodded and closed my eyes. "Liam?"

"Hmm?"

I smiled. "I love you."

It took a second for him to reply. "I love you, too, Emma. Remember that, okay?"

I sighed and leaned forward a little to give him as meaningful of a kiss as I could. I guess he expected it to be a short kiss, so I surprised him when I got even more into kissing him. I pulled his neck closer to me and opened his mouth a little. He took advantage of my leniency and wrapped his arm tighter around my waist and adjusted us so that he was halfway on top of me. We continued like this for a while until Liam came to his senses and pulled away.

"Em, you should go sleep in your room."

I let out a breath that I guess I had been holding in and nodded. "I'm sorry."

He smiled and got off of me. "Not until you're ready. I promise."

I gave him a small kiss this time and got out of his bed. I stopped at his door and whispered, "Goodnight, LJ."

But the sounds of his steady breathing told me he was already fast asleep.

It was hard for me to try and fall asleep in my room. My mind wandered from Liam to Vincent to Sage and Aden to the boyfriend I had at the beginning of summer to Liam again.

I glanced at my clock and saw that it had nearly been an hour and a half since I left Liam's room. So I quietly got up and went into his room again. I crept into his bed, careful not to wake him.

The next time I opened my eyes, very bright light was shining through the window, and Liam was staring at me with a smile.

I grinned. "I couldn't sleep."

He nodded. "I could tell. You were snoring really loud."

I rolled my eyes and shoved his face away, getting out of bed. "I do not snore."

He laughed and rested his hands behind his head. "I'm going to record you sleeping one night, and you'll find out the honest truth!"

Yeah right.