A Jingle Bell Mingle (Christmas Notch) by Julie Murphy & Sierra Simone

Author:Julie Murphy & Sierra Simone [Murphy, Julie & Simone, Sierra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Isaac

I woke up to Sunny sitting up in bed, staring down at me.

The morning sunlight this close to the solstice was the faint, silvery stuff that felt more like the idea of light than light itself, and it gleamed along the tousle of Sunny’s black hair and the colorfully inked curve of her shoulder.

She was biting her lip, and even with my morning wood valiantly trying to hoist the pile of quilts away from my pelvis, I could perceive that the lip bite wasn’t the sexy kind.

She looked . . . unhappy.

I sat up quickly, ready to fix whatever needed fixing, because the mere thought of Sunny being unhappy was like having my liver tenderized with a meat mallet, but she scooted away before I could reach for her. I could see her laptop half on a pillow, like she’d been working a little bit before I woke up.

“So,” she said, her back to me as she pulled on a pair of fleece-lined leggings with strangely jerky movements. “I, um. Have another date with a potential muse lined up for you.”

I stared at her back, at the way her hair revealed shifting slivers of tattoos. Just last night she’d squeezed my hand as I walked past her at dinner, like it was her hand to squeeze. A few hours after that, we spent so long kissing after sex that she fell asleep with her mouth pressed against my jaw.

And now she wanted me to go on a date with someone else.

My chest hurt, and I scrubbed at it with my hand, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do about this. I didn’t want to go on dates with other people, and clearly—despite me thinking that maybe something was shifting between us—she did. I wasn’t going to be an asshole and press the issue. She shouldn’t have to repeat herself that she didn’t want to be my muse, and that she didn’t want us to be exclusive was painfully evident.

But I did not feel good about this, and worse than the meat mallet feeling was realizing that I wanted Sunny more than she wanted me, that whatever I was feeling right now was not reciprocated. And despite having written reams of lyrics about pining in vain, I’d never felt the misery of it until now. Brooklyn and I had fallen together, mutually and at the same time, and there’d been no one since her to pine for.

. . . And oh my God, this felt awful.

Why had all my songs about unrequited longing been so goddamn peppy?

I slid out of bed too, reaching for my pajama pants without really seeing them, just needing to get myself somewhere—anywhere—where I could brood or maybe stand in a shower about my feelings for a while.

“It would be tomorrow, if that’s okay,” she said. Her voice was a little strained. “I know you’ll like this one. I can promise it, even.”

Mr. Tumnus was on the T-shirt I’d worn to Sunny’s room

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