All I Ever Knew Was Your Name [Nick Robinson]

FORTY NINE

The silence is once again deafening. Like it's screaming directly into our ears, right in our faces. It's mocking again, taunting all of us until someone says something.

Somebody please say something.

Nick and I have separated completely. I'm now standing as he still sits on the couch. I can only imagine the damage my fingers have done to his hair, messing it completely while my own looks just as similar. Heaving chests and reddened cheeks are shared between the two of us, put on display for our two friends to see.

Owen and Penny look like they've just discovered something they weren't supposed to, but something they've always hoped for.

They're smug. I can feel it.

And I fucking hate it.

"Penny's cousin bailed on us," Owen says first, but it's brief. Too brief.

It's evident he's trying to conceal what he and Penny just saw, but even he finds difficulty in this. He's been wanting this for us since the moment we were separated.

He and I both.

"How was dinner?" I ask through slightly swollen lips, breathless as can be. Lips that have been kissed and tugged and sucked on with such angst. Lips that ache for the attention they just lost from the boy on the couch.

"It was great," Penny can't help herself from batting her pretty eyelashes at me. She looks like she's ready to explode with some kind of filthy comment.

I almost wish she'd get it over with already.

"I had bolognese," Owen says. His voice is empty, like he's just talking to talk. Like he needs his voice to fill this silence.

God, get me out of here.

Owen reaches for a bottle of red on the counter, then two long stemmed glasses that hang from the wine rack.

All I want to do is lick my lips and taste him. Fuck the wine. I want to taste my boy's tongue, his lips, everything.

"You guys want any?" he asks me and Nick.

"Oh, I um—" I stammer, stepping back a little so that I can now see Nick, too. "I'm getting kind of tired, so I should um," I pause, looking at him only briefly. "I should go to bed."

He's touching his lips with three of his fingers.

"Bed? Already?" Penny chirps.

I scratch the back of my neck, then lightly tug on the collar of my sweatshirt. "Yeah, must not be feeling well."

Nice one, Mary, I tell myself. I can only see it now: Penny saying, "You're feeling well enough to let Nick stick his tongue in your mouth."

But she doesn't.

"Feel better," she shrugs, moving to the kitchen to retrieve her wine from Owen.

In the meantime, I find myself looking at Nick one last time with eyes that are nearly begging him to stay— pleading for him to kiss me over and over, just for tonight.

Maybe tomorrow, too.

I slip into my room away from the self induced train wreck in the living room, and I can't help myself from closing my door with my back and touching my lips like a thirteen year old girl who has just had her first kiss.

The taste of Nick is on my lips and tongue to remind me of what I once had— such a beautiful taste. A taste that I'll crave forever and ever for as long as I live and breathe.

"Fuck," I sigh to myself with a smile on my face.

My lips touch each other again, and I'm instantly flooded with more thoughts of our loosely sealed lips gliding against each other so passionately.