“You don’t need to be embarrassed about it, okay? We all masturbate.” I pull down a coffee mug and move around to her other side to grab the carafe. The last thing I need is Avery spilling hot coffee on herself.
“Please, Deck, I’m good without the pro–self-exploration pep talk.”
“It’s a good thing you’re getting your drive back, right? It means you’re healing.” I fight a cringe. There’s a solid chance I’m making things worse. While we’ve jokingly talked about my masturbation habits in the not-so-distant past, talking about it and witnessing it firsthand are two totally different things.
“Seriously, Declan, can you please drop it? The cheerleading isn’t really all that helpful.” She dumps a heaping spoon of sugar into her coffee and stirs it aggressively. Coffee sloshes over the side of the cup.
“You’re not mad at me, are you? It was an honest mistake.” I can’t read her right now.
She sighs and tosses the spoon into the sink. “I’m not mad at you. I’m frustrated.”
That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. “Shouldn’t you be relaxed?”
“Yes, Declan, I should be relaxed, but I’m not because I couldn’t finish. I can’t maneuver properly and it’s too freaking awkward to manage dual stimulation.”
“Dual stimulation?” I have no idea what she’s talking about, and I’m pretty sure where my mind has gone can’t be right.
Her face turns red. “Both buttons need to be pressed at the same time.”
“Both buttons?” What the hell kind of high-tech vibrator is she using?
“The G-spot and the bean! I don’t even know why I’m explaining this to you. It’s the girl equivalent of blue balls!” She waves her left hand around. “I’m probably not going to have a freaking orgasm until this stupid cast comes off, unless you’re planning to help me out with that too!” She spins around, leaving her coffee on the counter, and clomp-crutches back down the hall to her room, slamming the door behind her.
I don’t yell after her to stop, or try to apologize again. Frankly, I’m stunned and working to process all of this information.
I’m not sure how to deal with a sexually frustrated Avery, especially if it means I’m going to spend the next few weeks having my head bitten off on a daily basis. If this morning’s reaction is anything to go on, and her frustration grows over time—I’m imagining what it would be like not to be able to take care of my own needs for more than a month, and the prospect of that looks pretty damn grim—then I’m thinking the coming weeks are going to be rough.
This morning is definitely not going how I thought it would. And now, faced with what I walked in on, my body is telling me something I’ve been trying very hard to deny—I have feelings for Avery. Non-platonic, very unfriend-like, and nowhere in the realm of brotherly.
I don’t want her to be embarrassed or angry, so I steel my resolve and head down the hall, prepared to face her—with her coffee in hand, of course.
This time I knock on her door. “Ave? I have your coffee.” I’m met with silence. “Can I come in?”
I can almost hear her sigh. “Yeah.”
I poke my head in the door and find Avery sitting in bed, laptop tray in front of her, tapping away on the keyboard, her face red, her gaze unable to meet mine.
“Are you okay?” I glance around the room as I set her coffee on the nightstand, trying not to visualize what I walked in on not that long ago.
She pauses her typing and arches a brow. “Do you actually want the truth or do you want me to tell you I’m fine?”
13
IT’S A GREAT IDEA
AVERY
Declan is standing beside my bed with his hands jammed into his sweatpants pockets. It’s basically all he wears these days. Gray sweats that, depending on how he’s standing or sitting, sometimes give me a great view of what he’s packing behind that fabric.
I’ve been trying and failing not to notice how good he looks in those sweats, but this morning was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and apparently my resolve. I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s deprivation that makes him more appealing these days, but that’s a lie. We’ve been spending so much time together and he’s been so attentive, so good about anticipating all of my needs, there to motivate me with physical therapy, with everything really, that it’s become impossible not to see him through different eyes. And realize that what I’m feeling has been there all along. I just pushed those feelings down and tried to suffocate them.
He clears his throat. “I don’t want you to lie, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable either.”
I sigh in defeat. “Unless you have the sudden magical ability to make me spontaneously orgasm, I don’t know that there is anything you can actually do.” I try to make it sound like a joke, but I’m not sure I’m successful. Spontaneous orgasms would be a great superpower, though.