And I’m only now realizing I’m still wearing thisfucking salmon-colored shirt.
The guy’s brows are bent in an analytic squint, like he can’t figure out how he got here, listening to a stranger divulge his disastrous evening, but he’s not jotting down notes, so it’s unlikely he’s press after all. And he looks… sad, almost? Mournful. Like he understands.
Which is crazy. I’m drunk.
I wave my arms pathetically. “I shouldn’t be saying this to you.”
“No. I get it.”
My face screws up in question.
He looks away, the absence of his gaze a visceral pull, and I stagger a step closer, one hand bracing on the wall because the alley is still undulating at the edges of my vision. He doesn’t react to my movement, seemingly lost in thought.
Then he lifts his chin and looks up at me. “We can feel like we have the best of intentions,” he whispers, “and still cause disaster.”
His rawness beckons to me, bait on a line, and before I can stopit, I’m saying, “I just want to feel good. To feelreal.” I sound as fragile as his voice was, void of any of my previous self-deprecation, stripped down to the core of me, and I go immobile.
His gaze pins me in place, keeping me from shoving back inside to avoid the burn of reality.
“I don’t know if feeling good should be the goal,” he says, still in that brittle, aching tone. “It’s more realistic to center on little things. One thing, each day, that isn’t sullied by grief. One by one by one until you’ve started to rebuild the foundation that got obliterated. Because that’s what happiness is, at the root. A foundation. And foundations aren’t ever one thing, they’re many little things interlocked together.”
It’s a pretty concept. But. “That’s never been my experience, that little things have a long-term impact. They shatter the moment weight is put on them.”
“Maybe you’ve been putting your weight on the wrong things.”
“What are the right things?”
His smile changes. It’s the contained kind where it doesn’t reach any other part of his face, a kick of response more than an emotion.
“My,” he says. “This is awfully philosophical for a bar alley chat.”
“Wait.” I put my hand up. Only he turns for the door, into my hand, and my fingers curve of their own accord around his arm.
He stops. Half turned away, my arm across his chest.
“What are the right things?” I ask again.
He’s staring up at me, pupils shifting back and forth through mine. Then he licks his lips, and I’m dazed by the sheen of wetness on his lower lip, the quick flash of his pink tongue.
I should let go of his arm. I’m spellbound by the words out of him,happinessandfoundation,and that’s all I see, my disaster fading to the edges of my mind so everything is whittled to this moment. No, tohim,and I can’t tell if he’s at all feeling this too or if I’m blowing it out of proportion in a combination of my regret and drunkenness.
The air is charged and drowsy and I don’t think it’s me at first. But suddenly there’s a mouth, a mouth and a tongue and those lipsagainst mine, and it had to have been me, and I collapse. My fingers dive into his hair and that is my anchor now, his face beneath mine, the taste of soda in his mouth but something else, something dazzlinglymaleand my pulse is driving hard against every vein in my neck and fingertips.
His hand clenches into a fist against my hip and his tongue darts out to lick at mine. I snatch it up, sucking on it, and am rewarded with a palpitation resonating from his throat—he’s moaning.Moaning,and my god, I feel those vibrations in the arches of my feet.
There’s a metallic squeal next to us, and reality knocks politely on the wall of my drunkenness and murmursthe door to the bar is opening,and I’m plunged back into this world like I got dunked in an ice bath.
The bar. The paparazzi. The breakup. The disaster I created. And here I am, kissing a stranger instead of doing the barest minimum.
I launch back from the guy, but he’s already flying away too, and I spin, hands out, to see Iris pushing the door the rest of the way open.
“Shit,” I say, because it was her sister I only recently got dumped by, and she’s the one who catches me doingthis?
She blinks, eyes adjusting to the shadows, and when she frowns, it’s concerned, not accusing. “You’ve been out here awhile. You okay?”
“I’m—”
I turn. The alley is empty, and I spin again, which reawakens the heaving whirl of the bricks, and I grab the sides of my head. My headache is toppling down the back of my neck and my lips are all soft and warm and—
