The Friend Zone

Chapter Sixteen: My New Favorite Thing

 I laid awake in bed that night for hours after Taylor had gone to sleep. I wasn't sure if it was because my body was chilled to the bone due to the fact that I was naked under the thin covers that I had buried myself under or because of what had just gone on between the two of us a few hours earlier. I had fallen asleep for a little while but there were noises coming from the room next to us and from outside that had woke me up and my mind hadn't let me fall back to sleep yet. I didn't want to regret it when I woke up, I didn't want to regret it next week, or next month, or next year, but now that my mind seemed to be a bit clearer I wasn't sure if we'd made the right decision or not. We were trying to take things slow, one step at a time, but that all went out the window last night.

After staring at the ceiling for an hour or two, I sat up in search for my shirt, which I had no clue where he had tossed it hours earlier in our mess of exploring hands and sloppy yet passionate kisses. There was no doubt that we had those feelings built up inside of ourselves but I would've much rather made that decision sober than shitfaced like I was tonight.

"Hey, you okay?" Taylor asked groggily, rubbing his barely open eyes.

"Cold," I replied, pulling the sheet close to my ice cold bare skin.

"My sweatshirt's on the dresser," he replied, "After you fell asleep, I put my clothes back on and I left it out, I figured you'd be cold if you woke up like this but I didn't want to wake you up," he yawned before turning back onto his side and going back to sleep.

I let a small smile creep onto my face after he turned back over but it didn't last very long because I was going to have to walk to the dresser naked. All of the sudden I was embarrassed, I felt awkward and dirty and ashamed and didn't want to be parading around the damn hotel room naked. I wasn't used to just having sex with someone without a second thought. I didn't even begin to even think about it until I was 15 and now here I was, four years later, and both times I had slept with someone I was shitfaced. I didn't even remember the first time and I wasn't one hundred percent sure I'd fully remember tonight either.

After a minute or two of thinking, I managed to take the top blanket off the bed and wrap it around my freezing body to grab his sweatshirt and my underwear which had ended up in the corner of the room. I quickly slipped on the sweatshirt then pulled my underwear back on before diving under the warmth of the covers once more.

Once I had crawled back under the covers, Taylor turned over toward me and scooted closer, wrapping his arm around my torso tightly and his other arm found my hand under the pillow. And that was enough to get me to go back to sleep and stay there the rest of the night.

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I woke up at eleven the next morning with my head resting on his chest and his arm wrapped around me tightly. Any regrets I might've woken up with were gone for the time being because this was my new favorite thing in the entire world.

"It's about time you woke up," Taylor laughed, turning off his phone he had been playing on while waiting for me to wake up.

"I didn't sleep well," I said, my head still resting against his chest and my fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt.

"I know," he said, wrapping his other arm around me so that he was almost hugging me, "You were out for an hour but I think I woke you up when I got up and put my clothes back on and went to the bathroom," he said, kissing me on the forehead

"Yeah," I replied.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked after a minute.

"There's nothing to talk about," I replied quietly.

"Tess, please don't bottle it up, you're upset, I can tell, remember?" he said, "It's fine if you regret what happened, whatever, I kind of figured there would be a chance of that happening and I don't care if you do."