Chapter 4: Cuddles and a Video
The golden light through the white curtains was softening, the afternoon bleeding into something slower and sweeter. Savannah lay propped against a mountain of pillows, the cool cotton of her sheets a contrast to the warm, solid weight of Ethan stretched alongside her. His head was a comfortable anchor on her shoulder, his breathing a steady, quiet rhythm against the thin fabric of her tank top. She scrolled absently, her thumb moving through a blur of sunsets, latte art, and gym selfies, the blue light painting her face in the room’s dimming glow.
Then she stopped.
The video was simple, maybe seven seconds long. A girl was filming herself, smiling widely at the camera, when her boyfriend, off-screen, mumbled something and buried his entire face in the side of her neck, nuzzling deep into the space between her jaw and her collarbone. The girl laughed, a real, unguarded sound, and shoved playfully at his head, but he didn’t move, just hid there as if the whole world outside that patch of her skin was too much to bear. The caption read: “when he’s allergic to the camera 😂”. It had a million likes.
A soft, understanding smile touched Savannah’s lips. It was cute. It was unbearably intimate. She felt a sudden, profound kinship with that anonymous girl, because she knew that feeling—the weight of a person seeking shelter in you.
Her gaze drifted down from the screen.
Ethan was already there.
In the quiet of the settling evening, without any fanfare or request, he had burrowed. His face was turned into her, his nose and mouth pressed softly against the curve of her left breast through her tank top and the lace of her bra. He wasn’t asleep; she could feel the slight, intentional pressure of his cheek, the way his fingers had curled loosely into the fabric at her ribcage. He was just… hiding. Existing in the scent and the warmth and the softness of her. It was the same instinct as the boy in the video, but quieter, more innate. Ethan didn’t need a camera to retreat from the world. He just needed her.
A low, fond laugh bubbled up from her chest, a vibration he must have felt. “Hey,” she whispered, her voice husky with affection.
He didn’t reply, but he shifted minutely, a silent acknowledgment.
She let her phone drop screen-side down onto the duvet, the world outside the room forgotten. Her free hand came up and her fingers slid into the messy, sun-bleached waves of his hair. It was soft, still slightly damp at the roots from his own earlier shower. She scratched gently at his scalp, the way you would soothe a nervous cat, and felt him melt another degree into her. His sigh was a warm puff of breath that seeped through the fabric and onto her skin.
“See something funny?” he mumbled, the words muffled against her.
“Just a video,” she said, her fingers continuing their lazy, rhythmic journey. “Of a guy doing exactly what you’re doing right now.”
This made him go still for a second. Then, emboldened by her laugh, by the permission in her touch, he shifted. It was an awkward, sweet movement—he tilted his head back just enough to glance up at her through his lashes, his green eyes hazy and close, then buried his face again with more purpose. His arms tightened around her middle.
And then his hands began to move.
One hand splayed wide on her back, holding her to him. The other lifted, tentatively, its journey a map of his shy determination. His fingers walked up the ladder of her spine, tracing each knob through the thin tank top until they found the territory of straps and hooks. He fumbled.
She heard the slight, frustrated intake of his breath. He was trying to undo the clasp of her bra with one hand, blind, his touch hesitant and clumsy. The metal hooks resisted, sliding against each other without engaging. A soft, metallic snick-snick sound whispered in the quiet room.
Savannah’s heart swelled. He wasn’t trying to be suave. He wasn’t performing. He was trying, with a painfully earnest focus, to get closer. To eliminate the last barrier of lace and elastic between his skin and hers. The simple, physical want of it, devoid of any agenda, was the most honest thing she’d felt all week.
“Here,” she breathed, her own voice barely audible.
She guided her hand down, not taking over, but covering his. Her fingers were surer, navigating the familiar topography. She aligned the hooks, feeling the tremble in his hand beneath hers. “You just push here,” she whispered, pressing his thumb, “and slide this one free.”
Under her guidance, the clasp gave way.
The tension across her back released with a soft, sighing looseness. The straps slid an inch down her shoulders. Ethan’s hand froze for a moment, as if surprised by his own success, then he slowly, so slowly, drew the now-loosened garment aside. The air of the room, cool and carrying the faint scent of lavender and drying cotton, kissed the newly exposed skin of her breast.
She watched him. His ears, visible to her now, flushed a brilliant, transparent pink. The color bloomed down the back of his neck. He was staring at the curve of her pale skin, his lips parted slightly, his breathing shallow. He looked reverent. Overwhelmed.
“Ethan,” she said, not to prompt him, just to say his name.
He moved then. He didn’t grab, didn’t take. He bent his head and pressed his lips to the upper swell of her breast, just above where her heart beat a steady, accelerating rhythm against her ribs. It wasn’t a kiss of passion, but of devotion. A soft, closed-mouth press that lingered, warm and slightly dry. He held it there, his eyelashes brushing her skin. Then he turned his head, just a fraction, and rested his cheek fully against her, his skin finally meeting hers without any intermediary.
The sigh he let out then was from his core. A release of some deep-held tension she hadn’t fully known was there. It was the sound he’d made in the mint-green bathroom when she’d hugged him and told him it was okay to look. It was the sound of a lonely person finding harbor.
“You’re so soft,” he murmured into her skin, the words shaping themselves against her. “You feel like… everything good.”
Savannah’s throat tightened. She cradled his head, holding him to her, her fingers tight in his hair. The Instagram video, the million likes, the performance of intimacy for an audience—it all seemed so cheap and distant now. This was the real thing. This awkward, fumbling, breathtakingly sincere boy, who thought she was perfect even when peeing, was now worshipping a patch of her skin with a purity that left her dizzy.
She didn’t tell him he was perfect. He wouldn’t believe her. Instead, she bent her own head and pressed a long kiss into his hair, breathing in the clean, soapy scent of him. They stayed like that for a long time, as the gold in the room faded to blue-grey, the only sounds their mingled breathing and the distant sound of a car passing on the street below, carrying on with a world that didn’t matter at all.
They stayed like that for a long time, as the gold in the room faded to blue-grey, the only sounds their mingled breathing and the distant sound of a car passing on the street below, carrying on with a world that didn’t matter at all. His cheek was a warm, permanent weight against her skin, and his breathing had deepened into a rhythm so steady she thought he might have fallen asleep. She traced idle patterns on the back of his neck, her mind floating in the quiet, until a thought, sharp and unbidden, hooked into her and refused to let go.
It came from a place she rarely let anyone see, a vault of whispered insecurities she kept locked even from her reflection in the cheer squad’s locker room mirrors. The silence between them felt so complete, so safe, that the lock just clicked open.
“Do you…” she started, her voice sounding too loud in the hushed room. She cleared her throat, her fingers pausing on his neck. “Do you ever hate anything about me?”
The question hung in the dim air, stupid and raw.
Ethan didn’t jerk away. He didn’t laugh. He just went very, very still. The steady rhythm of his breath against her breast stuttered and stopped for a second, as if the words had physically winded him. Then, instead of pulling back to look at her, he did the opposite. He pressed his face deeper into the softness of her, a firm, deliberate nuzzle, his nose and lips seeking the warmth as if to bury the question itself. His arms around her waist tightened, cinching her closer.
“No,” he said, the word muffled, vibrating directly into her skin.
It wasn’t enough. The vault was open now, and a cold draft was coming out. “Really?” she pressed, trying to sound light and failing. “Nothing? Not my laugh? I know I snort sometimes. Like in the bathroom that time.” She forced a small, self-conscious sound. “Or the way I get all intense about practice schedules? My friends say I’m a tyrant with a pom-pom.”
He shook his head slowly, a movement she felt more than saw, his hair tickling her chin. His voice, when it came, was low and slightly strained, filtered through the cradle of her body. “Your laugh is my favorite sound. Ever. The snort thing… it’s real. It’s the part that isn’t planned.” He inhaled shakily, his breath hot. “And you care about things. You’re not… performative about it.”
She blinked up at the darkening ceiling, her throat tight. “My shoulders are kinda broad for a flyer. Coach says it’s an advantage, but in photos sometimes I look…”
“Savannah.” He said her name like a plea, a quiet protest against her own voice. He finally lifted his head just an inch, just enough so his lips weren’t buried, but his forehead remained resting against her. In the twilight, his eyes were dark pools, serious and fixed on a point just below her collarbone. “You’re asking me to find a flaw in… in sunlight. Or the ocean. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Everything has a flaw, Ethan,” she whispered.
“Not you.” He said it with such flat, unshakable certainty that it stole her breath. “Not to me. I see you. All the time. I watched you for a year before I ever talked to you, remember? From the bleachers.” His voice gained a ragged, earnest edge. “I saw you miss a catch and skin your knee on the gym floor. You cried for maybe ten seconds, then you got up and your smile was all wobbly but you got the sequence right on the next try. I saw you share your protein bar with a girl who forgot her lunch. I saw you get that fake, bright look when Jessica makes a cutting remark about your clothes.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I saw you let me follow you into a bathroom because I was too scared to let go of your hand. I saw you tell me it was okay to look.” His hand came up, trembling slightly, and his fingertips, calloused from holding textbooks and bike handles, brushed ever so lightly over the skin his lips had just been pressed against. A feather touch tracing the curve of her breast. “This is you. The laugh and the snort and the intense schedules and the broad shoulders that hold everyone up. The girl who’s kind to awkward guys. It’s… it’s a package. And I love the package. I love everything inside the package. I love the wrapping paper. I even love the stupid tape.”
He was babbling now, his words tumbling out in an awkward, lovely river. “I love that you use lavender soap. I love the little wrinkle you get right here,” he brushed his thumb between her eyebrows, “when you’re trying to do calculus. I love that you eat the green jelly beans first to save the good flavors for last. I love the sound of you peeing. It’s… it’s just you. It’s a part of you. So how could I hate any part of the only thing that’s ever made sense to me?”
Silence filled the room again, but it was a different silence. It was swollen, charged, and utterly complete.
Savannah felt a hot tear escape the corner of her eye and trace a path down into her hairline. She didn’t wipe it away. She looked down at the top of his head, at the vulnerable part in his blond hair, and her heart didn’t just swell—it cracked open, clean and final. This was it. This was the real thing, hidden in plain sight all along, not in grand gestures but in a thousand tiny, unobserved moments of being truly seen.
“Come here,” she breathed, her voice thick.
She gently guided his head up from her chest. His expression was worried, open, completely defenseless. She cradled his face in both hands, her thumbs sweeping over the high pink of his cheekbones. Then she kissed him. It wasn’t a fiery kiss, or a playful one. It was deep, and slow, and sealing. A silent transfer of everything she couldn’t say back—the gratitude, the awe, the sheer relief of being loved so thoroughly in her entirety.
When they finally parted, both breathing a little unevenly, she rested her forehead against his. “You’re incredible,” she whispered.
He just shook his head, a small, bewildered movement against hers. “I’m just me.”
“Yeah,” she said, a real, unsnorting laugh breaking through. “That’s what makes it incredible.”
Outside, a streetlight flickered on, casting a long, yellow geometric shape across the foot of the bed. The world outside was still there, with all its noise and judgment and performance. But in here, in the blue-grey dark, there was only this: the certainty of his hands on her back, the echo of his words on her skin, and the profound, quiet truth that for this awkward, lovely boy, she was, and would always be, completely without flaw.