I Think I Love You | Randy

track 12. i think i love you - the partridge family

"Oh you were so cute, boys," Rye's mum gushed. 

"Hey, I'm still cute," I whined, and Rye ruffled my hair.

"Wait, look at this one," my mum said, pointing at a particular picture. "Do you boys remember when you got married?"

"Oh my god," Rye cringed. I looked down at the picture, we couldn't have been more than eight, holding hands while our little gap-toothed smiles beamed out at the camera. Rye was drowning in one of his dad's blazers and a bow tie, while I was wearing what I supposed was intended to be a wedding dress and veil, fashioned out of a bedsheet and pillowcase.

I let out a dry laugh. "I wonder which one of them grew up to be gay." Rye snorted next to me.

"Whole thing looks pretty gay to me," Robbie commented, Rye shoving him away as they started wrestling on the floor.

I stayed behind after my mum left to get properly drunk with Rye and Robbie on leftover bubbly wine. Love Actually was playing on the telly, though none of us paid much mind to it, having seen its reruns just about every Christmas anyway. I happened to glance at my phone, instagram notifying me that Brooklyn had posted a story, making me realise I hadn't thought about him once this entire day. I checked the story, seeing a selfie of him smiling with a group of people who were presumably his family, noticing Jack in there next to him with a Santa hat on his head. Brook had never told me that he and Jack were spending the holidays together, and I supposed that should have bothered me, yet somehow it didn't. In fact, I found that I couldn't care less about what Brook was up to, nothing able to spoil the wonderful day I had had. I simply closed my phone again and put my attention back onto Rye and Robbie, who were arguing over which one of them was the better footballer.

We were still tipsy as all hell when Rye and I finally wandered into Rye's room to crash for the night, his childhood bedroom bringing fourth another flood of memories. I watched Rye as he stripped out of his clothes, a goofy smile on my face as I thought about how happy I was to have him in my life, my heart about bursting with love. The heart palpitations returned at the sight of his near naked body, but I was too drunk to bother repressing them, humming instead at the warm fuzzy feeling I got in my tummy when I looked at him.

"What you staring at?" Rye asked, noticing me.

"You're preeeetty," I drawled back and Rye laughed, walking towards me to wrap his arms around me.

"Bedtime, you," he said, kissing my nose several times, making me giggle.

I let him pull me into his bed, snuggling into him straight away, loving the way our bodies fit together. Loving how small I felt when he held me, how warm, how safe, how loved. Loving him, my best friend, so much I didn't know what to do with myself. So I just held on.

I could hear his heartbeat against mine, racing as if it wanted to burst out of his chest. His arms gripped me tighter than normal, erasing all the space between us. If I wasn't careful I was going to get turned on, or at the very least do something stupid, because I knew exactly where his lips were even in the darkness, and I could feel his heavy breaths ghost across my cheek. But even as the alcohol made my vision blurry, I could still see the line, and I didn't dare to cross it. Because there would be no more nights like this one if I did something dumb to ruin us. He was so important to me that losing this wasn't an option, and that thought alone let me keep myself in control.

"Merry Christmas, Rye," I mumbled into his chest, squeezing my eyes shut and willing sleep to take over.

"Merry Christmas, baby," he whispered back. I forced myself to take another deep breath, not letting the words affect me as I drifted to sleep in his arms.