Chapter 10

Alyx thought he was going to explode. Every time he breathed, he wondered if he was pushing into Sam’s space, taking up too much room and being too big as usual. If he shifted his weight, he could feel the whole couch cushion move. And he could feel every time she moved through the same cheap cushion. She didn’t seem nearly as aware of him as he was of her, though, and he was thankful for that. Alyx knew he was glancing at her out of the corner of his eye every few minutes, ignoring the movie as he got caught up in his own head.

The movie passed before he knew it and he started to get up, but Sam looked up at him with a sleepy smile. “What are you doing?”

“Uh..” He glanced at Mick and Paxton, and Mick just grinned, using the remote to find another movie. “It ended?”

“Movie night has at least 3 movies. Rules.” Sam grinned. “But since you are already up, will you bring more snacks?”

He glanced at the pile on the tiny table they used, and realized most of it was wrappers and empty bags, so he nodded. But adding more food to the table would have been a mess, trash spilling over the edges onto the floor and food mixed in with empties, so he started gathering up the wrappers and cellophane and crinkly bags. Mick stood and started helping him, wiggling his eyebrows at Alyx once they moved to the kitchen and Paxton and Sam couldn’t see them.

As he reached for the chip bags, Mick leaned close and whispered, “So…. you aren’t taking my advice?”

Alyx didn’t even bother responding with more than an eye roll. Mick’s advice had been as cliché, obvious, unhelpful as a bucket of mud in a gunfight. Mick, who could flirt like Don Juan and convince anyone to do just about anything, had given him bullshit advice that included: get close to her but not too close, touch her on the arm and lower back but be gentle, look in her eyes but not like he wanted to fight her, and help her but don’t do things for her.

The worst? ‘Be natural. Be casual.’ Alyx didn’t do natural or casual. He didn’t know how close was too close, how to look in someone’s eyes without scaring them, or how to help someone without doing things for them. Being gentle was next to impossible. He’d broken enough furniture, tableware, and a variety of military equipment to know that unless he was concentrating really hard, he was too rough.

He didn’t know how to act around girls, especially the ones he liked, and it had been so long since he had feelings for anyone that he couldn’t remember what to do. Micks advice didn’t seem plausible because he was obviously wrong and Sam did NOT like him like that. How could she? The scars on his face only scared women away, but if only they knew what he had been through, the darkness he had endured. Maybe they would look at him differently.

He just grabbed a stack of water bottles out of the fridge and carried his haul of junk food and hydration over to the table. The second movie passed much the same as the first, though Mick moved to the other couch next to Paxton. Alyx was far too tense, but the four of them worked through the junk food as the movie rolled on.

The third movie was where things got… strange. All his tension slowly started seeping out of him, and once Sam went to the bathroom, he relaxed.

The next thing he knew, Sam was leaning over him. The screen was playing the final credits, and Paxton and Mick were missing.

Sitting up abruptly, he narrowly missed banging heads with the younger girl, and grumbled a soft apology. She just smiled and shooed him away when he tried to help her clean up, and he rubbed the back of his neck before moving towards the table. “I’ll help…”

Sam stepped to the side and motioned to his door. “Don’t even think of it. You got roped into this and obviously need to sleep.” Her own face was sleepy too, but she smiled at him, anyway. “Go.”

He didn’t feel right leaving her to clean up everyone’s mess and couldn’t afford to get on her bad side again. Alyx never wanted to be on her bad side again. Not after having her so close to him at the gym, smelling the sweet scent of her perfume, the way her soft hands touched his chest. His dick got hard just thinking about it.

Since Alyx failed at everything else Mick told him to do, he pushed a little. He wanted to show her that he wasn’t the raging asshole he had been to her this entire time. “You sure?”

“Positive.”

She didn’t even look up, her hands full to the brim of trash.. “Okay… Night.”

He was trying very hard to keep his face calm. He didn’t want her to see him beating himself up again, but it felt like she was rejecting more than his help.