Controlled Burn by Erin McLellan

Author:Erin McLellan [McLellan, Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2017-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Paulie and I spent the days following Christmas pretending to live together at my dank old rent house, sans Travis, reading the silly dime novels I’d given him and banging in the living room every chance we got. New Year’s Eve rolled around without much fanfare. I’d never had a boyfriend on New Year’s Eve, except Diego, and for the first time, I kind of wanted the fanfare.

Diego and I had pretended to be straight best friends at the big high school parties. Our junior year, while at a New Year’s Eve kegger at the river, I’d tried to talk Diego into sneaking into the trees to kiss at midnight. He’d wanted to—it appealed to his romantic side—but in the end, we’d been too scared. It should probably cut me to think of all the moments we’d missed out of fear, but part of me had loved the secrecy. Still craved it sometimes. Missed the thrill and excitement of pulling one over on the idiots around me. Missed the knowledge that no one in the entire world knew Diego the way I knew him. And it had made those moments when we could be together, those stolen breaths of time, even sweeter.

But now, for the first time ever, I had a boyfriend I could wrap my arms around in a crowd of people and kiss senseless when the clock tipped over into a new year. And that was just . . . better.

We ended up at Angie’s house because she was throwing a raging, blowout, orgiastic party—her words. I recognized about every third person there from the Yard, and all the others were fratty. The queer guys smoked hookah, the frat guys played beer pong, the girls comingled, and we all existed in perfect harmony.

And Paulie was like this bright beacon among all of them. He was the funniest, shiniest, most irrepressible person there, and I was so awed that he was there with me. That he was holding my hand and sitting on my lap.

As the seconds ticked down to midnight, with people all around us screaming “ten, nine, eight . . .” I looked at Paulie, really looked at the play of emotions on his face and the miniscule flaws in his skin, and felt like I knew him in that moment. Like I could see the real him, just like I’d always seen the real Diego. The way I could see the inside of him—the tendons and grit and bone that made up all the things I loved about him.

And I wished, violently, that I could say, I love you too. That I could say the words with nothing but truth between us, like Paulie deserved.

But I couldn’t, and I didn’t, because I might know Paulie, but he didn’t know me.

So instead, I held his precious face in my hands and kissed him like I loved him and wanted him and couldn’t breathe without his breath. He smiled against my lips and deepened the kiss. It was clearly designed to turn me on, his tongue stroking into my mouth and lips sucking sweetly on mine.

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