Chapter 2: The Morning After
The light through Demi’s kitchen window was a merciless, pale yellow. It cut across the peeling linoleum and found Josh’s eyes like a precise instrument of torture. His head throbbed in time with the hum of the ancient refrigerator. He was on her couch, a scratchy wool blanket tangled around his legs, still wearing his jeans from the night before. The taste in his mouth was a sour blend of champagne and regret.
Not regret for the kiss. Never that.
Regret for the six drinks that had followed it, for the nervous, babbling version of himself that had taken over once they’d re-joined the party, trying to laugh it off, to make it normal. He’d succeeded only in making it strange.
The creak of a door hinge. A soft pad of footsteps.
She emerged from her bedroom, and the sight of her punched the air from his lungs. Demi, but not the Demi of the neon labyrinth. This was a raw, uncurated version. Her blonde hair was piled in a messy, lopsided bun, stray wisps clinging to her damp temples. She wore an oversized, faded Navy t-shirt that hung to her mid-thigh, swallowing her small frame. Her face was bare, pale, with faint shadows under her eyes. She looked younger. More fragile. Impossibly beautiful.
“You’re alive,” she said, her voice morning-hoarse.
“Barely.” He pushed himself up to sit, the world tilting slightly. “I think your couch is actively trying to kill me.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. She moved to the counter, her back to him. The silence stretched, thick and physical. He heard the clink of glass, the rush of water from the faucet. She filled two mugs from a cheap coffee machine, the rich, bitter scent cutting through the stale air.
The kiss was in the room with them. A colossal, silent third presence.
She brought the mugs over, handed one to him. Their fingers brushed. A static spark, or just his frayed nerves. He took a scalding sip, the heat grounding him.
“Maya texted,” Demi said, leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen. She stared into her coffee. “She’s demanding a full debrief.”
Josh’s stomach clenched. “What did you tell her?”
“That we kissed at midnight and then you turned into a champagne volcano.” She looked up, her blue eyes clear and direct. “And that we haven’t talked about it.”
The words landed between them. Haven’t talked about it. The great, yawning chasm of the unaddressed.
“Right.” He set his mug on the crooked coffee table. The half-empty bottle of champagne from their post-rave stumble stood beside it, its bubbles long dead. A monument to cowardice.
Demi took a deep breath, her chest rising under the soft cotton. She hugged her own mug close. “So. We should. Talk about it.”
“Okay.” His voice was rough.
Another silence. A truck rumbled by outside, shaking the small apartment’s windows.
“It was…” she began, then shook her head, frustration flickering across her features. “I’m not good at this, Josh. The morning after. The feelings… stuff. I usually just… leave.”
The admission was like a small crack in her armor. He saw the vulnerability she hid so well, the fear of her own worth he’d only ever guessed at. It gave him a strange, painful courage.
“Don’t leave,” he said, quietly.
Her eyes snapped to his.
He stood, his body protesting. He took the two steps that separated them. The kitchen felt suddenly microscopic. He could see the faint dusting of freckles across her nose, the pulse fluttering in her throat. He took her mug from her hands, setting it next to his on the table. The act was slow, deliberate.
“The kiss,” he said, his voice low. “It wasn’t the champagne. It wasn’t the countdown. It was me. It was you. It was three years of me being a fucking coward.”
She stared up at him, her lips slightly parted. “Why?”
“Because you’re Demi.” The words tumbled out, raw and unfiltered. “You’re the sun. And I was just… orbiting. Terrified that if I got too close, I’d burn up or get thrown out into the dark forever. Losing you as a friend seemed worse than never having you at all.”
A tear traced a clean path through the pale skin of her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I know.”
“I’m not the sun. I’m a mess. I’m scared all the time.”
“I know that, too.”
She let out a shaky half-laugh, half-sob. “So what now? We… what? Go on a date? Hold hands? Pretend we don’t know every single one of each other’s dumb stories and annoying habits?”
“No.” He lifted a hand, cupping her jaw, his thumb catching the tear. Her skin was so soft. “We stop pretending.”
He kissed her again. It was nothing like the desperate, chaotic collision in the warehouse. This was slow. Intentional. A question asked with absolute certainty. Her mouth yielded under his, warm and accepting. A small, broken sound escaped her throat, and her hands came up to grip his shoulders, holding on as if the floor had dropped away.
The taste of coffee, of sleep, of Demi. It was a deeper intimacy than anything he’d imagined.
He walked her backward, step by step, out of the kitchen’s harsh light and into the dim hall, never breaking the kiss. Her bedroom door was ajar. They moved through it, a slow, blind shuffle of tangled feet and seeking mouths.
Her room was small, shadowed, curtains drawn against the morning. Clothes were piled on a chair. The air smelled like her perfume and sleep.
When the backs of her knees hit the edge of the mattress, she broke the kiss, breathing heavily. Her eyes searched his face, dark with want and fear. “Josh. Are we… is this really…”
“Yes.” The word was final. He peeled off his own shirt, dropping it to the floor. His lean frame was tense, his heart a drum against his ribs.
She watched him, then gripped the hem of her own shirt. In one fluid motion, she pulled it up and over her head, letting it fall. The pale light from the hallway sketched her silhouette. She was small, almost delicate, but her breasts were full and heavy, tipped with pale pink. He’d imagined, but imagination was a pathetic, ghostly thing next to the reality.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word ripped from him.
A faint, proud smile touched her lips, erasing the vulnerability for a flash. Then it was gone, replaced by pure hunger. She reached for the button of his jeans, her fingers clumsy. He helped, pushing them down along with his boxers, kicking them aside. He was already fully, achingly hard.
She touched him, her hand wrapping around his length, and he jerked, a strangled gasp escaping him. Her touch was firm, exploratory, her eyes fixed on his reaction.
“You’re so hard,” she whispered, almost to herself.
“For you. Always for you.”
He lowered her onto the bed, following her down, covering her body with his. The feel of her skin against his—everywhere—was an electric shock. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breast. He took a nipple into his mouth, sucking gently, then harder when she arched against him with a sharp cry. He lavished attention on one, then the other, his hand sliding down the flat plane of her stomach, over the curve of her hip.
She was wet. Soaking. He discovered this as his fingers trailed through her folds, a hot, silken proof of her desire that made his head swim. He rubbed circles over her clit, and her whole body bucked, a choked-off “oh god” bursting from her.
“Please,” she panted, her hips rocking against his hand. “Josh, please, I need you inside me. Now.”
The raw need in her voice shattered his last shred of control. He positioned himself at her entrance, the head of his cock nudging against her. He looked into her eyes, a final, silent question.
She answered by hooking her legs around his waist and pulling him down, taking him into her in one deep, claiming stroke.
He cried out. The sensation was blinding—a tight, hot, perfect sheath that clenched around him, drawing him deeper. He buried his face in her neck, gritting his teeth, fighting for composure.
“Fuck,” she moaned, her nails digging into his back. “Oh fuck, you’re so deep.”
He began to move. A slow, withdrawing thrust, then a hard, driving roll of his hips that slammed the headboard against the wall. The rhythm was instinctive, urgent. Every sound she made—every gasp, every whimper, every filthy, whispered plea—fueled him.
He shifted, driving into her at a new angle, and she screamed, her back bowing off the bed. “There! Right there, don’t stop, fuck me, please!”
Her words were a fire in his blood. He fucked her harder, faster, the slap of their skin a lewd, rhythmic punctuation in the small room. He felt the coil of her orgasm tightening around him, felt her inner muscles fluttering and grasping. He reached between them, his thumb finding her clit again, rubbing in time with his thrusts.
It pushed her over. Her climax tore through her with a raw, shattered cry that was nothing like her party laugh. It was a primal, broken sound. Her body clenched around him like a vise, milking him, and it was too much. His own release detonated, a white-hot torrent that ripped a guttural roar from his throat. He pulsed into her, deep and endless, his whole body shuddering with the force of it.
Collapse. A slow, boneless sinking into the damp sheets. The only sound was their ragged, gasping breath, mingling in the air. He was still inside her, still throbbing with fading pulses. He didn’t want to move.
Her legs slid from around his waist. Her hands, which had been clutching him, now came up to stroke his sweat-slicked back, slow and soothing.
A minute passed. An eternity.
He finally softened and slipped out of her. He rolled to the side, gathering her against him, her back to his chest. He wrapped an arm around her, his hand splayed possessively over her stomach. She fit against him perfectly, a puzzle piece he’d been missing.
The silence now was different. Heavy, but not with fear. Sated. Terrifying.
Her breathing evened out. He thought she might have fallen asleep. Then her voice, small and clear in the dark room.
“So.” A pause. “We’re not pretending.”
“No,” he whispered into her hair, breathing in her scent, now mixed with his, with sex.
“Good.”
She fell silent. Outside, the world continued—cars, birds, life. In here, everything had changed. The friendship was a country behind them. The future was an unmapped, treacherous, beautiful land ahead.
He held her closer, and she let him.