THE LIQUOR I added to my hot chocolate helps me feel less lonely as I watch the couples on the television kiss in anticipation of the new year.
They jump up and down, waving at the camera before grabbing for each other and standing close. A make out session begins, and I chug half the contents in my mug.
My heart drops to my stomach when I spot the timer in the bottom right corner of the screen. Another minute closer to midnight, and another minute without Shawn.
I miss him so much, and I hate that he has an away game tomorrow.
I can’t stop thinking about the feel of his lips. How he sucked on my skin, just below my ear, and left a little mark I had to hide with a turtleneck on Christmas night.
I can’t stop replaying the noises he makes; the soft groans of approval when I take him in my hands and twist my wrist.
His heavy exhales when he’s asleep and holding me in his arms.
When he whispers my name and makes it sound like a prayer.
I can’t wait until he’s home.
My phone rings, and I grab it off the coffee table. I smile when I see Shawn’s name on the screen, and I set down my mug.
“Hey,” I answer, and I rest my chin in my hand. “Happy almost New Year. Where are you?”
“I’m heading somewhere that feels like home. The place where I feel the safest,” Shawn says, out of breath, and I wonder if he’s running through the airport. “What are you doing?”
“Sitting on the couch and getting ready to watch the ball drop. Pretty uneventful night over here,” I say.
“Are you alone?”
“Jealous, Holmes?”
“Curious, Daniels.”
“Yeah. It’s just me and my favorite blanket. Oh, and a spiked mug of hot chocolate.”
“Sounds like the perfect night,” he says.
“It’s not half bad,” I say. There’s a knock on my apartment door, and I sit up. “Hang on. Someone’s here. That’s weird; Maggie told me she and Aiden are spending the night celebrating with a nice dinner out.”
“Maybe they’re stopping by to say hi.”
“And interrupt time they could be home alone doing God knows what? Doubtful. You know those two can’t keep their hands to themselves.”
“Ah. Young love,” he says.
I walk across the living room and turn the lock. I open the door and freeze when I find Shawn standing on my welcome mat, right over the words that say go away. “What are you doing here?”
He ends the call and slides his phone into the pocket of his jeans. The tips of his ears are red, and his nose is, too. His cheeks are flushed, and it looks like he’s spent the last twenty minutes outside in the freezing cold.
“Hi, Lacey girl,” he says.
“Hi,” I whisper. My voice cracks around the edges, and I suck in a sharp breath. I reach out to touch him—his cheeks, his chest, the scruff of the beard he decided to grow—to check if he’s real. “You’re supposed to be on a plane to… to somewhere. But you’re here?”
He lifts an eyebrow and leans against the door frame. “Keeping track of me?”
“No. Yes. Maybe.” I squeeze my eyes shut then open them, and he’s still right there. Six inches away from me. “Aren’t you—are you allowed to not fly with the team? Won’t you get in trouble?”
“That’s the best thing about being the head coach.” Shawn takes a step forward and crowds my space. Heat radiates from his body, and I want to wrap myself in one of his hugs. “I get to make the rules. Can I come in?”
“Yeah.” I nod and gesture for him to join me inside. “Of course.”
He walks into my apartment, and I hold the fleece blanket tight around my shoulders. It’s my shield in case I need it.
“You still have your tree up?” he asks. “Decorated, too.”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to take it down yet. I’m not ready to let the holiday season go,” I say.
Shawn glances at me over his shoulder. “I’m not either,” he says. He pulls off his beanie and runs his hand through his hair. Snowflakes fall from the dark brown waves and litter my floor like confetti. “Come here.”
I walk to him on instinct. If he told me to jump, I’d ask how high. I’ve become reliant on him, the other half to my whole.
My feet glide across the floor and my shoulders shake. “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” I say.
“There was going to be a whole thing with magnets and a planned speech, but I couldn’t wait. I had to be here with you. It’s almost New Year’s.”
He looks at the television and the countdown plastered on the screen. There are only four minutes until midnight, and the camera pans to the ball high up in Times Square. It glitters and sparkles, the sequins catching in the spotlights. Another second passes, then another and another.
Three minutes and thirty seconds to go.
I stop in front of him and tilt my head back so I can look him in the eye. The blanket falls into a heap at my feet, and I shiver at the change in temperature. “The end of our arrangement. You wanted to tell me in person,” I whisper, and my chest aches.
I’m not ready to say goodbye to him yet.
Shawn’s eyes roam down my body and his smile melts into a grin, a bright and beautiful thing that makes his eyes sparkle and his hand twitch by his side. I think he wants to reach out and pull me to him.
“You’re wearing my shirt again,” he says.
“Oh.” I glance down. The threadbare material has seen better days, torn on the left sleeve and a hole forming under my right breast, but it smells like him and it feels like him. I never want to take it off. “Yeah. I am.”
“What if we don’t end it?” he asks.
I stare at him. “Not end what?”
“Our arrangement.”
“What do you mean?”
“What if we were in a relationship? A real relationship?”
“For real? For real how?”
“Well.” He runs his knuckles down my jaw and hums. “For starters, I could sleep over. I could spend every night with you, then wake up next to you in the morning. I’d cook you breakfast; scrambled eggs, just the way you like them.”
“You want to cook me breakfast?” I whisper, incapable of any other words except for his own mirrored back to him.
“I do. I could give you a key to my apartment and let you have free rein. I could stop by when I got back in town from games and not have to go home alone. Bring you with me on the team plane and sneak you into the bathroom so I could kiss you senseless without anyone teasing us. And I would tell you I love you. Very much and very often, because I do. I do love you, Lacey. I don’t want to let you go just yet. Can I keep you a little while longer?”
My bottom lip wobbles. My hands tremble, and I sniff. “How much longer?” I ask.
“How does forever sound?” Shawn asks. His lips pull up higher in the corners and his nose scrunches. Little wrinkles form around his eyes, and there’s so much joy on his face.
“You want to be with me?”
“More than I want anything else in this world, Lacey girl,” he says, and my heart nearly bursts out of my chest.
I grab the lapels of his fancy coat and pull him toward me. He chuckles when I stand on his boots to make myself taller, but I need to be as close as I can to him.
“Forever is a long time,” I say.
“And it still wouldn’t be long enough. I love you so very much. I think maybe I’ve always loved you,” he whispers. His voice is hoarse, but he’s sincere, resolute, a sure thing he knows with absolute certainty.
“I love you too,” I whisper back.
I choke out a sob as I say it, the four words barreling into me with a wave of emotion. My fingers dig into the wool of his jacket, and I clutch onto him for dear life. I’m afraid that if I let go, my feet will come off the ground.
“Sometimes I think you’re this perfect person I dreamed up.” He takes a deep breath, and energy builds between us. “And it scares me you might not be real. That what we have might not be real.”
“I’m real,” I say, and my eyes prickle with tears. “And this is real. What I feel for you is as real as the sky is blue.”
“I think about you when I’m away. I miss you when I’m gone. I count down the seconds until I can see you again,” Shawn says. He wipes a tear from my cheek then kisses his thumb, as if he’s collecting the drops to save for later. “I can’t—I don’t want to go through life without you by my side.”
“You won’t have to. I’m here with you, Shawn. I’m yours. I’ve always been yours, and I’m always going to be yours.”
I loop my arms around his neck and pull him close. I stand on my toes and kiss him so hard I think I might explode. His nose brushes against mine, and a giggle lodges its way into my throat.
“You make all of this tolerable,” he says. “The traveling, the long days, the sleepless nights. But I’d give up football tomorrow if it meant keeping you. If you want to do this without cameras and without games on the road and without stretches of time where we don’t see each other except for once or twice a week, say the word, baby, and I’ll walk away from the sport right now.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Football is who you are. There’s room in your heart for me and the other part of you that you love. I know there is. It’ll take some getting used to, but we’ll make it work. We’re going to make it work. You’re my best friend, Shawn.”
“Fuck.” He scoops me into his arms and walks toward my bedroom. His shoulder knocks a picture off the wall, but he ignores it and keeps going. “I missed you so much. I saw you yesterday, and I still missed you. There’s a hole in my heart when you aren’t around, Lacey. Do you know I hear you in the crowd? I hear you scream my name and I hear your laugh. I listen for you. I don’t care about the other seventy thousand people. I only care about you.”
“I love you.” I bury my face in his neck and revel in the smell of his cologne and the heat of his skin. “You’re the only one I’m ever going to cheer for.”
Shawn kicks the door to my room open. He sets me down on the mattress and takes off his coat. “Let me touch you,” he says. He runs his hand down my bare leg and tugs on my sock. “Let me take care of you.”
“You always take care of me,” I say.
My breathing hitches when he moves his hand up my thigh and under my shirt. His warm palm travels over my stomach and up to my breast. His thumb brushes over my nipple, and my back arches off the mattress.
“Because you’re mine.” His hoodie and T-shirt come off next, and a heap of clothes forms on the floor near my bed. He presses a kiss to my knee, and I let out a soft moan. “I know what you want. What you like. I know what makes you happy. I know that this…” he runs his fingers down the front of my underwear and shoves the fabric aside. “This turns you on. Look how wet you are for me.”
“Fuck me, Shawn,” I whisper. I hook my fingers in the waistband of my underwear and pull them down my legs. I toss the cotton away and take off my shirt. “This time, I’m really yours.”
“You’ve always been mine. You were mine from the first time I saw you. The first time I kissed you. The first time I sank inside you,” he says, low and rough in my ear.
He kicks off his boots and slides his pants down to his ankles. He steps out of his jeans and nudges them away. His briefs come next, and soon he’s naked, too.
It feels different from before; slower. More tender as he kisses every inch of my body.
My neck. My chest. The spot on my stomach just below my belly button. My hip bone and the small scar on my right knee. He claims all of me, leaving no spot untouched until I’m twisting on the sheets and panting his name.
“Shawn,” I say. “I need you.”
His laugh is sweet like honey, and he slips two fingers inside me. I can’t even get a groan out before his mouth is on mine, his tongue silky and smooth as he swallows down whatever noise I try to make. “Are you going to come for me, Lacey girl?” he asks, and fireworks explode in my blood.
He bites my bottom lip, his teeth sinking into the skin. His question ricochets down my body, and I wrap my arms tightly around his neck.
When he presses his thumb against me and starts a slow and cruel circle, I tip over the edge, stars in my vision and my limbs heavy against the mattress. It’s explosive. It’s electric. It’s the best it’s ever felt. A cry slips out of my mouth and he takes that, too, again and again until I push him flat on his back and straddle his legs.
I curl my hand around his length, and he’s hard and warm in my hand. I stroke up and down, his skin slick and my name tumbling from his mouth. His large palm folds over mine, and he guides himself to my entrance.
We gasp in unison when he pushes into me, and I rock forward, needing him deeper. I want to feel him everywhere.
“You were made for me,” he says into the valley of my chest, his hand cupping my breast and his tongue circling my nipple. His hips lift, and there’s no more space between us.
I look to where we’re joined, and my breath catches in the back of my throat. “I love you,” I say. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too, Lacey girl,” he says. He drags his gaze up to meet mine, and he stares at me with adoration in his eyes.
“Show me,” I whisper, and he does.
Over and over again until the moon turns into the sun and the starry night gives way to morning.
