Gabriel

GAbrIEL

I underestimated the amount of snow we get pretty fucking epically. When I open my eyes the next morning, it’s still coming down outside my window. I turn my head to get a better look. There’s that already-too-familiar jump scare when I see myself, but today it all comes back to me a bit faster, before I can fully freak out like I did yesterday or the day before that.

Today, I simply blow out a breath, rub my palm over my face, and check Josh once more before concluding that yes, we’re somehow still stuck in each other’s bodies, and no, I still have no idea how to fix it.

I mean to look away, but my eyes stay stubbornly on Josh. He’s gathered the covers over the top half of his body, and his right leg is thrown over my blanket, which he’s somehow hoarded for himself overnight. His toes are pressed against my calf. His head is half-hidden by his arm, lips slightly parted, and his cheeks are flushed. He’s breathing softly, eyelids fluttering.

So this is what I look like when I sleep, I guess. Only, no. I don’t think I’ve ever woken up like this. Josh is messy in a way I never have been. Not in the sense that he’s a slob or anything. It’s just… Who does that? Who covers their top half with a blanket but not their legs? Who the hell sleeps with a pillow mostly on their head instead of under it? Sometime during the night, he’s also lost the T-shirt he was wearing when we went to bed.

I should move. I should get up.

Instead, I turned my head and look up to the ceiling.

Okay.

Cards on the table.

I remember the first time I saw Josh. I was sitting in the dining hall. New kid. Alone. Bristling from the principle’s relentless determination to point out that I was only there by the mercy of other people.

And then there was suddenly this kid in front of me, sort of nervous, but still all smiles. For a moment, I was relieved. And then it all went downhill from there.

By the time I got to know him a bit better and started to suspect I might’ve overreacted, the rivalry between us was already established.

It was easier to let it continue. It was a constant in my life, and it made me keep going and put in all the extra effort I otherwise might not have.

He’s always been a bit of a contradiction. Easygoing but accomplished. Funny but with a bite to it. Whimsical but with a serious side. Most people only seem to see the flighty, funny, whimsical side. It gives me some form of perverted pleasure to bring out the others.

Honestly, I’m not even sure when exactly attraction wandered into the picture. My best guess? It just slowly grew, increment by increment, while hiding itself so well that I didn’t even realize it was there at all.

And maybe I still wouldn’t have to this day.

But then there was last New Year’s Eve. We’d gotten our parents a cruise to Alaska for Christmas, and all my siblings had come to New York to celebrate. We went out and all got drunk, and somehow, in the middle of being drunk off my ass, Josh came up. I say somehow, but all my siblings have heard me rant about him a lot over the years.

I remember shit all about what exactly was being said this time, but I vaguely remember bitching and moaning about losing some kind of scholarship to him, and then bitching and moaning about Josh in general.

The next part is clear as day.

Erin sending me a loopy smile, and saying the six words that have haunted me ever since.

“You two should just fuck already.”

Boom.

She threw a grenade into the middle of my life, and the fucking thing exploded, and made me suddenly realize something I really didn’t want to acknowledge.

I’m attracted to Josh.

The next stage of my plan was brilliant. I got even more drunk in the hopes of forgetting everything come morning.

It didn’t work.

The hangover was magnificent, but even while I was lying in my bed, actively wishing for death to come and have mercy on me, Erin’s words still stubbornly circled in my brain.

“You two should just fuck already.”

Almost exactly a year later, and here we are.

For almost a year, I’ve been trying my best to bring myself back to sanity. I’ve gone on dates. I’ve tried to keep my distance. I’ve made lists of everything I don’t like about Josh—an incredibly childish thing to do and completely useless at that. When you really want to know what it’s like to kiss the fuck out of somebody it’s very little use making a list with intelligent points like ‘smiles too much’ or ‘dips Doritos in peanut butter—disgusting.’

To my ever-growing horror, this Josh thing turned out to be a Pandora’s box, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t force the lid shut anymore.

Even my annoyance with him has changed. It used to be straightforward. I don’t like Joshua Van De Bogart.

There.

Easy.

Now, I’m not sure about any of it anymore.

Now all the annoyance and irritation has morphed, and I’m no longer annoyed or irritated by him , but with myself.

I have a slew of reasons why lusting after Josh is a terrible idea, but however clearly my brain lists those reasons out, the rest of me is pretty much, ‘Fuck all of that. We want him!’

In conclusion, it’s a mess.