red hill - jamie mcguire

“You’re so romantic,” I said, watching him with a smile as he pulled my jeans down over my hips
and knees, and finally my ankles.
Bryce stood at my feet, unbuckling his belt and then unbuttoning his jeans. He used the toes on his
right foot to pull off his left sneaker, and then repeated the action on the other side before kicking it
aside. He pulled his cream henley over his head and tossed it on top of a growing pile of his clothing.
I reached down to the sides of my panties and lifted my hips and pushed down the fabric at the
same time. It had stopped being romantic for him to undress me over a year ago, and that was one
thing that hadn’t changed in the last few days. My feet fluttered back and forth a few times before my
panties catapulted to a dark corner of the room, and then Bryce reached down to pull off my socks at
the same time. We were smiling, relaxed and comfortable; our sexcapades had graduated from trying
to be sexy or feeling uneasy long before that evening.
After pushing down his jeans and stepping out of them, he lowered himself on top of me, kissing
the corner of my mouth. To my surprise, he kept kissing me without advancing to any other part of my
body. Just before I asked him if everything was okay, his head slumped and he buried his face in my
neck.
“I can’t.”
“You . . . can’t”
He fell onto his back next to me on the mattress, staring at the ceiling. “I think I’m too stressed. Or
tired. Or both.”
“Oh. Oh.” I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Sometimes before a basketball game he couldn’t get
it up, either. The end of the world definitely qualified as a source of anxiety. I guess knowing it had
been over a week made me assume he would be beyond capable. “It’s okay,” I said, snuggling closer
to his chest. “I like just being like this, too.”
Bryce took a deep breath and blew it out, making my hair tickle my face. “We’re going to be at
your dad’s tomorrow. We may never have sex again. It’s not okay.”
I giggled. “We’ve been sneaky before.”
Bryce wrapped both of his arms around me, and kissed my temple. “I wouldn’t want to be
anywhere else, you know. I’m glad it happened this way.”
“Yeah”
“I might have gone crazy worrying about you otherwise.”
I closed my eyes and listened to Bryce’s breath as he inhaled and exhaled. He fidgeted more than
usual, still restless for any number of reasons. I fantasized again about the look on Dad’s face as we
pulled up into the drive, and wondered what his reaction would be to Nathan and Zoe. He wouldn’t
turn Zoe away, but desperate times made people do weird things.
“Bullshit!” Cooper said from the living room.
Bryce and I stood up quickly and got dressed, both awkwardly reentering the world, feeling like
everyone knew what we were supposed to be doing but weren’t. My fingers knotted in my hair as I
twisted it up into a messy bun and sat on the floor with my sister. She sat next to Cooper, and Joey
was standing by the window, peeking intermittently through the crack.
Joey managed a small, amused smile. “No, I’m completely serious.”