Chapter 3: Remote Control Revelations
Amy
My dorm room had never felt so small, or so loud with silence.
I’d cleaned for two hours. Not just a tidy, but a frenzied exorcism. Every textbook was stacked with military precision. The fairy lights I usually kept dim were blazing, casting a warm, forgiving glow over the worn blue rug. I’d even shoved the entirety of my closet’s chaos behind the door, a precarious bulwark of fabric and forgotten shoes. The space was ready. I was a wreck.
Friday. Seven PM. The text had been simple: Door’s unlocked. Room 308. My thumb had hovered over the send button for a full minute. It felt like launching a missile.
Now, I paced. The scent of lemony cleaner warred with the vanilla candle I’d lit and then immediately blown out, deciding it was trying too hard. I changed my shirt three times. The soft grey sweater felt safest. It hid everything, revealed nothing.
He’s seen everything, a voice in my head whispered, the same one that replayed the sharp snap of my bra in the dark. My skin prickled.
A knock at the door, firm and familiar. My heart performed a violent, percussive slam against my ribs. I froze, mid-pace.
“It’s open!” I called, my voice an octave too high.
The door swung inward, and there he was, filling the frame. He had a brown paper grocery bag in one arm and a six-pack of fancy ginger beer in the other—my favorite. He looked… different. Not in a button-up, thank god. He wore a dark green henley, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and his usual worn jeans. But his expression was a map of gentle anxiety. His eyes found mine instantly, a silent question hanging between us.
“Hey,” he said, stepping in and nudging the door closed with his foot.
“Hey.” I stood rooted to the center of the rug, arms crossed. “You found it.”
“The dorm? Yeah, I’ve only been here like, fifty times.” He offered a tentative smile, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes. It broke some of the ice in my chest.
“Right. Duh.” I uncrossed my arms, then didn’t know what to do with my hands. I gestured to the bag. “You, uh, you really cooked?”
“I attempted,” he said, moving to my small desk and setting down his burdens. He began unpacking with a focused intensity. A container of pasta. A jar of sauce. A bag of pre-washed salad that looked decidedly sad. “It’s basically assembly. But I didn’t burn water, so that’s a win.”
I drifted closer, watching his hands. Long fingers, deft with the containers. I remembered those fingers tracing my jaw in the park. “Salad? You’re hedging your bets.”
“Always have a backup plan,” he said, glancing at me. His gaze dropped to my sweater, then back to my face, so quick I almost missed it. “You look nice.”
“Thanks. So do you.” The exchange was painfully polite, a script from a parallel universe where we hadn’t torn each other’s clothes off a week ago.
The next twenty minutes were a ballet of forced normalcy. We boiled water for the pasta. He told a rambling story about almost setting off the smoke alarm in his apartment toasting garlic bread. I laughed, the sound strange in my own ears. We bumped hips near the mini-fridge, a casual accident that sent a jolt through me so severe I nearly dropped the salad bowl.
We ate at my desk, two chairs pulled close. The food was… fine. The sauce was bland. We both complimented it extravagantly.
“So,” he said, twirling pasta on his fork. “How were your classes?”
“They were classes.” I poked at a crouton. “Professor Ellory droned on about metaphysical poetry until I thought about gouging my own eyes out.”
“Standard Thursday, then.”
“Pretty much.”
Another silence descended, thick and sweet as the mediocre sauce. This wasn’t working. The elephant in the room wasn’t just in the room; it was sitting at the desk, eating penne.
I looked at him, really looked. He was picking at his food, his brow faintly furrowed. He was nervous. Noah. My confident, goofy Noah was nervous with me. The realization was a key turning in a lock.
“This is weird, isn’t it?” I said, abandoning pretense.
He let out a long, relieved breath, his shoulders dropping. “So weird. I feel like I’m on a job interview. A really, really important job interview for a position I’m wildly unqualified for.”
“What’s the position?”
He met my eyes. “Boyfriend,” he said, the word simple and devastating.
The air vanished. I put my fork down. “Oh.”
“Yeah. ‘Oh.’” He pushed his plate away. “I don’t know how to do this, Amy. The pasta is a disaster. I’m talking about poetry. I just want to…”
He stopped. The sentence hung there, unfinished, but its shape was clear in the sudden heat of his gaze.
“Want to what?” I whispered.
Noah
I looked at her. Really looked. At the way she was biting her lower lip, just a tiny press of white teeth. At the rapid flutter of her pulse in the hollow of her throat. At her hands, folded tightly in her lap like she was holding herself together.
The careful charade crumbled.
“I want to stop pretending,” I said, my voice rough. “I want to stop talking about fucking pasta.”
Her eyes widened. A flush spread from her neck up to her cheeks.
I stood up, my chair scraping back. The small room suddenly felt like the deck of a ship, tilting. “Can we just… not do the date? Can we just be us? But the new us? The one where I can…” I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated. “I don’t know. Where I can touch your hand without writing a pros and cons list in my head first.”
She stared up at me, unblinking. Then, slowly, she nodded. “Okay. No more pretending.”
“Okay.” I reached out my hand, palm up, an invitation across the gulf of the desk.
She placed her hand in mine. Her skin was cool. I pulled her gently to her feet. We stood there, inches apart, hands linked. The tension wasn’t gone. It had just changed form. It was a live wire now, humming between our bodies.
“Now what?” she breathed.
“I have no idea.” I gave a shaky laugh. “Movie? Something dumb. Something we don’t have to think about.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
We migrated to the small loveseat wedged under her window. It was old, the cushions worn deep into valleys. We sat, and the old springs sighed. There was a careful, deliberate inch of space between us. I found the remote, flicked on her laptop connected to the TV. We scrolled through streaming menus, a numb, silent ritual.
We settled on some animated comedy we’d both seen before. Background noise. Safe.
The opening credits rolled. I dared to lift my arm and drape it along the back of the couch behind her. Not touching. Just… available.
Ten minutes in, I felt the faintest shift. The delicate weight of her head came to rest against my bicep. A sigh escaped her, one that seemed to release the last of the day’s rigid anxiety. Her hair smelled like apples and something uniquely her. My whole arm sang with the contact.
This was it. This was the new us. Terrifying and peaceful all at once.
I let my fingers gently brush her shoulder. She didn’t pull away. She sank a fraction deeper into my side.
On screen, characters yelled in exaggerated voices. I didn’t hear a word. My universe had narrowed to the point where my skin met the wool of her sweater, to the slow, even rhythm of her breathing. My own body was a symphony of hyper-awareness—the heat of her, the way her knee was almost, but not quite, touching my thigh.
The movie became a vague smear of color and sound. My mind drifted, unanchored, to the closet. The darkness there had been a blanket, a permission slip. Here, in the soft fairy-light glow, everything was exposed. I could see the faint dusting of freckles across her nose, the dark sweep of her lashes against her cheek. She was more beautiful here, real and vulnerable, than any memory my mind could conjure.
My thumb began to move, a slow, unconscious stroking against the curve of her shoulder. She made a small, contented sound in the back of her throat.
It was a mistake.
The sound. The feeling of her, warm and pliant against me. It lit a fuse.
The careful peace ignited into something else entirely. The awareness wasn’t gentle anymore; it was a sharp, hungry focus. The inch between our thighs became a canyon I needed to cross. The weight of her head on my arm became a pull, a demand to tilt her face up to mine.
My breathing hitched. I was sure she could feel the sudden hammering of my heart.
She felt it. She went very still. Not rigid, but alert. The movie dialogue became meaningless chatter.
Her hand, which had been resting in her lap, drifted slowly to the cushion between us. Her pinky finger brushed against the side of my leg.
Electric.
It was an accident. It had to be. But she didn’t move it away.
The conflict on screen escalated into a frantic chase scene. The remote was on the cushion next to her hip.
“This part is dumb,” I murmured, my voice strange and thick. “Want to skip?”
She tilted her head back to look up at me. Her eyes were dark pools, reflecting the dancing lights from the TV. “Yeah. Skip it.”
I leaned forward, reaching across her for the remote. My chest brushed against her arm. She shifted, turning slightly towards me, and as I grabbed the plastic controller, her movement caused our bodies to press together more fully. My hip against hers. My forearm against her ribs.
I froze, remote in hand, looking down at her. Her lips were parted. Her breath warmed my chin.
I didn’t move back.
The moment stretched, taut and shimmering. The intention in the air was a third presence on the couch.
Then, a clumsy, desperate idea. A return to the familiar.
I fumbled with the remote. “Here, you pick,” I said, my voice husky. I went to hand it to her, but my movement was awkward, off-balance. Instead of placing it in her palm, I sort of tossed it lightly toward her lap.
She reacted on instinct, her hands coming up to catch it. In doing so, she leaned forward, and I leaned back, and the space between us became a tangled, playful grappling for the slippery device. Our hands met. Our fingers intertwined around the plastic.
“Give it,” she said, a sudden, real smile touching her lips. A challenge.
“No, you said I could pick,” I countered, a grin breaking across my own face. This was our old language. Wrestling for control of the music, the TV, the last slice of pizza.
I tugged. She held on, laughing now, a genuine, surprised laugh. She pulled back, using her weight. I fell with her, over-correcting, and suddenly we were tilting, tumbling sideways onto the wide cushions of the loveseat.
She landed on her back with a soft oof, half-laughing, half-protesting. I landed mostly on top of her, caught on one elbow, my legs tangling with hers. The remote was crushed between our chests.
We stopped.
The laughter died in our throats.
The play-fight was over. We were frozen in its aftermath.
I was straddling her hip, my weight braced on my arms above her. Her white, soft-knit dress had ridden up her thighs, revealing pale skin and the delicate line where her leggings ended. My jeans were rough against the bare skin of her leg.
Her laughter had transformed into sharp, shallow breaths. Her eyes were locked on mine, wide and unblinking. Her hands, which had been pushing against my chest in the game, now lay flat against me, feeling the frantic beat beneath.
The air was gone. The room was silent save for the chaotic soundtrack of the forgotten movie and the ragged sound of our breathing.
Every atom of distance had been annihilated. The careful inch was now a negative space. I could feel every curve of her beneath me, the soft swell of her stomach, the sharp points of her hips, the solid line of her thighs. Heat radiated from her, through our clothes, into my bones.
The closet had been a revelation. The park bench, a promise.
This was a confrontation.
Her lips were inches from mine. Her chest rose and fell, brushing against mine with each panicked breath. I saw the memory of the dark in her eyes, the same wild, wanting confusion I felt screaming in my own veins.
My arms began to tremble with the effort of holding myself up. Or maybe just with the effort of not collapsing onto her, of not covering her mouth with mine, of not finishing what the dark had started.
“Noah,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a stop. It was just my name, a sound torn from the center of the storm.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
I just held there, suspended above her, drowning in the breathtaking, terrifying truth of her body under mine, and knew, with absolute certainty, that the game was over forever.
Amy
The tremor in his arms vibrated through my palms, through the thin cotton of his shirt, into the very center of me. His eyes were a storm, darker than the library closet, more exposed than the park bench. I could see the pulse hammering in his throat, a frantic echo of my own. The remote dug into my sternum, a tiny, painful anchor to a reality that was dissolving.
All my life, I had waited. I had been still. I had been quiet.
The game was over. The pretense was a sheet of glass between us, and it shattered.
My hands moved from his chest. They slid up, over the tight cords of his shoulders, feeling the strain there. I let them settle on the back of his neck, my fingers threading into the hair at his nape. It was soft, and slightly damp.
His breath caught. A sharp, ragged inhalation.
I applied the gentlest pressure.
My eyes fluttered closed a second before I felt it.
I pulled him down and kissed him shyly.
It was not the desperate, gasping kiss from the party. It was not the soft confirmation in the library. This was a third thing entirely—a slow, searching permission. My lips were hesitant against his, a question mark made of flesh. I felt him jolt, a full-body shock at my initiative, and then he melted into me. His arms, which had been holding him so rigidly above, gave way.
His full weight settled onto me, a warm, solid reality that forced the air from my lungs in a soft sigh against his mouth. The remote tumbled away, cracking against the leg of the coffee table. The sound was distant, irrelevant.
He took the invitation of my sigh and deepened the kiss. His mouth opened over mine, and the shyness burned away in a sudden, liquid heat. His hand came up to cradle my jaw, his thumb stroking my cheekbone, holding me in place as if I might vanish. I wouldn’t. I was solidifying under his touch, turning from vapor into something wanted and real.
The movie’s noise receded into a meaningless buzz. The only soundtrack was the wet, soft sound of our mouths moving together, the rustle of fabric as I shifted beneath him, the low groan that started in his chest and vibrated into mine. I tasted the faint, bland ghost of tomato sauce and the uniquely sharp, clean taste that was just him.
One of his legs slid more fully between mine, and the contact was an electric shock. A memory of the closet, of his hips against me in the dark, flashed behind my closed eyelids. My back arched off the cushion, seeking more, and a sound escaped me—a whimper, needy and unfamiliar.
He broke the kiss, panting, his forehead resting against mine. His eyes were closed. “Amy.”
It was a prayer. A wrecked, beautiful sound.
My hands were fisting in the fabric of his henley at his back. I didn’t have words. I had only this gravitational pull, this need to eliminate any space between us. I turned my head and found his mouth again, less shy now, more certain. I kissed him with the courage I’d found in the park, with the desperation I’d harbored for years.
His hand left my face. It slid down my neck, over the collar of my sweater, his touch leaving a trail of fire. He hesitated at the hem, his fingers brushing the skin of my stomach where my dress had ridden up.
I stilled. My breath stopped.
He paused, his mouth still moving gently against mine. A question.
In the closet, it had been dark. It had been a consequence of a game. This was a choice, in the soft, accusing light of a hundred tiny bulbs.
I nodded, a tiny, frantic movement. My skin was humming.
His hand slipped under the sweater, under the waistband of my leggings. His palm was hot and slightly rough against the flat plane of my stomach. I jerked against him, a violent, involuntary spasm of pleasure and shock.
“Okay?” he murmured against my lips, his voice shattered.
“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes.”
He lifted himself up on one elbow. His other hand found the hem of my soft grey sweater. His gaze was locked on mine, asking without words.
My lungs tightened.
Slowly, he began to pull the fabric up. The cotton whispered over my ribs. A cool rush of air hit my stomach, then my chest. I gasped, the sound thin and sharp in the quiet room. My body arched, not away, but into the motion, off the cushions.
She trembles shyly but with need as he lifts her sweater up exposing her white dress beneath.
The sweater pooled around my neck, a loose collar. The white cotton dress beneath was simple, almost childish. It felt exposed in a way my bare skin in the closet hadn’t. This was daylight, and choice.
His eyes drank me in. His breath hitched. “God, Amy.”
I was trembling, a fine, constant vibration. It wasn’t from cold. It was from the depth of my wanting, a well that had just been uncovered and was threatening to drown us both. I tried to hide my face, turning it into the cushion, but his hand gently guided my jaw back.
“Don’t,” he whispered.“Please. Let me see you.”
His palm smoothed over the dress, over my ribs, feeling the frantic flutter beneath. His touch was unbearably hot through the thin cotton. He traced the neckline, the tiny seam over my shoulder. His thumb brushed the side of my breast, and a jolt of pure, undiluted sensation shot through me.
I cried out, a broken sound.
My hands, which had been clinging to his back, now pushed at his henley. I needed to feel his skin. My fingers fumbled with the fabric, clumsy and urgent.
He understood. He sat back, straddling my hips, and in one swift motion pulled the henley over his head. It joined my sweater in a heap on the floor. The fairy lights painted his torso in gold and shadow. I’d seen him shirtless a hundred times—at the beach, after surfing. This was different. This was for me.
I reached for him. My palms settled on the warm, smooth skin of his stomach. He was lean, taut. He flinched at my touch, his muscles jumping under my fingers.
I slid my hands up, feeling the contour of his ribs, the firm plane of his chest. A scattering of dark hair beneath my palms. He watched my hands move, his expression one of rapt, stunned concentration. When my thumbs brushed his nipples, he made a choked sound and caught my wrists.
“Wait,” he breathed, his eyes screwed shut. “Just… wait a second. That’s… it’s too much.”
I stilled, my heart pounding. Had I done it wrong?
He opened his eyes. They were glazed. “You’re going to kill me. In the best way.”
He lowered himself back down, but slower this time. His skin met mine, the heat of his chest pressing through my dress. The contact was shocking, seamless. He buried his face in the curve of my neck, his breath hot and ragged against my ear.
“You feel… impossible,” he mumbled into my skin. His hips settled against mine, and I felt the hard, insistent press of him through our clothes. The memory of that feeling in the dark flooded back, bright and terrifying and welcome.
I moved against him, a shallow, instinctive roll of my hips. He groaned, a deep, pained sound. His hands framed my face. He kissed me again, but it was different—deep, consuming, wet. It tasted like surrender.
His mouth left mine. It trailed down my throat, over the pounding artery there. His teeth grazed my collarbone, a delicate, sharp promise. I clutched at his back, my fingers pressing into the muscles. He followed the line of the dress’s neckline, his lips burning a path toward the center of my chest.
He hesitated over the thin cotton covering my breast. His breath was a hot brand through the fabric.
“Can I?” he asked, his voice wrecked.
I couldn’t speak. I guided his head down with a hand on the back of his neck.
His mouth closed over me, cotton and all. The heat, the gentle suction, the rough scrape of his tongue. The sensation was muffled, yet magnified by the barrier. It was an agony of anticipation. A raw, desperate sound tore from my throat. My head thrashed side to side on the cushion.
He made a frustrated noise against me. His hand slid down my side, over my hip, and gripped my thigh. He hitched my leg up around his waist, opening me to him. The new angle was devastating. Every shift of his body against mine shot arrows of molten need straight to my core.
His mouth abandoned my breast. He looked down at me, his lips swollen, his eyes black with desire. “This dress,” he said, his voice rough. “I need it gone. Please. I need to see you.”
I nodded, frantic.
He sat back on his knees, pulling me with him so I was half-sitting in his lap. My legs wrapped around his waist. His fingers found the zipper at the back of the dress. The sound was loud, a metallic purr in the charged silence. He pushed the straps off my shoulders.
Cool air washed over my skin.
The dress slipped down, pooling around my waist. I was left in only my leggings, the closet’s ghost, and a pale pink bra. I crossed my arms over my chest, a last, vestigial reflex.
He gently pried my arms away. “No. Don’t hide.” His gaze was a physical touch, warm and heavy. “You’re so beautiful it actually hurts to look at you.”
He bent his head. This time, his mouth found my skin without any barrier. His lips closed over the lace of my bra, his tongue finding the peak beneath. The sensation was direct, sharp, and blinding. I cried out, my back bowing, my fingers gripping his hair.
“Noah… I can’t… I’m going to…” I didn’t know what I was saying. The words were fragments of a language I didn’t know.
He unsnapped the clasp at the back with a surprisingly deft twist. The bra loosened. He eased it off my shoulders, letting it fall away.
Then he just looked. His breathing was harsh. His expression was one of pure, reverent shock.
I felt myself blushing, my skin flushing from my chest to my hairline. But I didn’t cover myself. I let him look. The trembling had moved inside me, a seismic quake in my very center.
He touched me then, his fingertips tracing the outer curve, so gently it was a whisper. He leaned in and kissed the slope, then took me fully into his mouth.
The world dissolved into white static. My vision blurred at the edges. The only point of clarity was the heat and pressure of his mouth, the flick of his tongue, the faint graze of his teeth. My hips moved against him, seeking friction, seeking anything to ground me.
One of his hands slid down my stomach. His fingers slipped under the waistband of my leggings. They dipped lower, tracing the line of my hip bone.
My whole body went taut. Every nerve ended where his fingertips hovered.
“Tell me what you want,” he murmured against my skin, his words hot and damp. “You have to tell me.”
I couldn’t. My vocabulary had evaporated. I was pure, wordless need. I grabbed his wandering hand and pressed it lower, my own desire a guiding, shameless force. I held it there, over the last thin layer, and looked into his eyes.
Understanding flashed across his face. A raw, vulnerable hunger. He nodded, just once.
He shifted us, laying me back down on the couch. He knelt between my legs, his hands hooking into the waistband of my leggings. He looked at me, a final, silent question.
I lifted my hips from the cushion. An answer.