“The Christmas party?” I ask, my mind drawing a blank. I haven’t attended a Christmas event since living here, so I don’t know what he’s talking about, unless… “Wait, the one you had at your house in college?”
“Yeah.”
The memories begin to flash through my mind one by one, as if playing on a movie screen.
"How could I forget?” I state. What I don’t say is how I remember every moment of that night. Every unexpected touch, every flirty comment and the way he held me close, held me in a way he never had before.
“It was freezing that night,” I chuckle awkwardly. “I thought I had to wear a dress and be fancy, then I show up to what was pretty much a frat house, and everyone wasalready drunk and you were wearing a Christmas sweater yousworeyou weren’t going to wear!”
“Hey, I lost a bet, remember? I didn’t have a choice,” Jason retorts.
Those words are so similar to the ones he whispered against my ear that night as he held me close for the first time. The memory still sends a shiver down my spine.
“Sure,” I say, sarcasm thick in my tone. “You were‘coerced’, right?”
“I was!” In the background, there’s the sound of a door softly closing as he whispers. Jason sighs. “Remember how you grabbed a hard lemonade, even though you hated it? It was better than the beer though. It always tasted so watered down.”
I laugh softly. “Yeah, that gross hard lemonade was much preferred to the beer.”
“I had to take you on a tour of that shitty house to get you alone,” he confesses. The memory practically replays in my mind. “In the few minutes you’d been there, I could already see five or more guys leering at you. They all wanted a piece of you, but you were my friend. Selfishly, I wanted to keep you to myself. We wouldn’t have had a moment alone had I not brought you up to my room.”
“Is that why?” I ask. I’ve always wondered why he was in such a rush to get upstairs when the party was on the main level. “It definitely confused me.”
“In what way?” His voice is as confused as I was.
“You showed me your room.”
“Can you blame me for wanting private time with you?”
My stomach swoops and I shake my head, even though he can’t see. “No. If I’m being honest, at the time, I had this idea that things had been changing between us,” I say, my voice shaking.
Jason hesitates, not speaking for a long moment, then, his voice cracks as he speaks. “Maybe they were.” There’s a long pause. “Can I tell you something, Fallon?”
Something about the way he asks his question sends my heart racing. “Of course.”
He swallows audibly. “That night… I wanted to kiss you.”
“You did?” I ask stupidly, even though I remember it so clearly. The way we sat side by side on his twin sized bed, his hand resting on my thigh as he leaned in, his dark eyes flicking between my eyes and my lips, and when he finally said my name, his voice breathless and whispered, I knew it was going to happen. Iwantedit to happen.
Jason softly chuckles. “Yeah. I did, but then we were interrupted. Fuck, I was pissed at that guy. He ruined it, and I’ve been cursing him ever since.”
I laugh in response, though my mind is whirling. He’s been more open in the last five minutes with me than he has in the last nine months since we reconnected. What changed that he’s suddenly talking to me? I don’t say anything for a long moment, and neither does he. I think we are both reminiscing on that time in our lives.
“Why’d you leave?” Jason asks, his voice soft.
I grimace to myself. The moment after the almost kiss is painful to think about. “You were drunk,” I whisper. “I figured it was the alcohol in your system, and you were acting on a whim.”
“I wasn’t,” he admits. “Sure, I’d had a few drinks and was buzzed, but I knew exactly what I was doing. I wanted nothing more than to kiss you that night. To finally have your lips on mine. I was so scared to change our friendship and the way things were, but fuck, Fallon. I wanted you asmore than a friend. I dreamt of it, dreamt of having you in my arms all the time.”
His words hit me like a ton of bricks. “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice breaking as tears well in my eyes.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Jason says. “It’s not like I ever told you.”
“I am sorry. I wanted it too, wanted you to kiss me. And then I panicked, and soon went on that date with Brad. I convinced myself I imagined that night. That I was being a naive teenage girl, and that you’d never really be interested in me.”
“I was. But the past is in the past, and we can’t change it, right?” Jason says, trying to placate me.
“I guess that’s true. You’ve changed a lot since then,” I say, almost regretting the words. He was such an easy going person then, nothing fazed him. Now, though, he’s focused on his daughter, and while I can’t fault him for that, it seems like anything besides his family and his daughter makes him cranky.
