Lily sat in front of her vanity, staring at the mask drying on her face as she finished her joint. Her mind wandered to the last time she'd seen him, two weeks ago. It has been late, they had been drunk, the party had dwindled. When they'd gone outside to sit around a table with a dozen friends and smoke and drink and bullshit, the party had been in full swing and chairs on the patio were in short supply, but hours had passed and the crowd had thinned and Lily was still in Derrick's lap. Why had she still been on his lap? At what point did she realize? How long had his cock been hard before she felt it?
She stubbed the joint out, put the roach on the side of the ash tray, and went to the bathroom to rinse her face. She was about to see him again, at another party, and after two weeks of thinking about him non stop she had no idea how she felt about what she'd felt, or what she wanted out of the situation. Her rational brain laid out the facts - they had been friends for years, and if something was going to happen between them wouldn't it have years ago, in college when everyone was sleeping with everyone? They'd been in the back yard with friends, everyone was somewhere between loosened and fucked up, and she'd been sitting on his lap for hours. Who knows what made his body react to hers, it didn't mean there was anything behind it, right? They were friends, there was no desire there, and isn't that how she liked it?
Her irrational brain though - well that made a different case. Her irrational brain pictured what he looked like with his shirt off when they had gone tubing last summer. Her irrational brain remembered putting sunscreen on his back and how hard it had been to stop before her fingers followed his hips down and around to the v that trailed to his shorts. Her irrational brain found the little corner where she'd collected all of the private looks he'd given her over the years like they were baseball cards; there was the pensive one, the quizzical one, the sorry one, the impish one. She reexamined all of them for signs of lust, but she couldn't be sure. She had to be sure.
She padded over to her closet and pulled out a pair of jeans and a just-see-through-enough see-through top and laid them on the bed. She opened her top drawer and fished around, then pulled a pair of simple black panties out. She didn't want to assume, she didn't want to jinx anything. No one would be seeing her underwear, she thought, trying to see if she was ok with that. She was only a little disappointed.
Next came a sheer lace bra, a swipe of lipstick, a final check in the mirror, and a little perfume. She checked her phone - no messages from him, but the group chat had been busy as everyone got ready to head over to the housewarming. She let them know she was on her way and called up her rideshare app on her phone. It was time.
On the way to the party, her mind wandered to the only other time they'd come that close. It was their sophomore year of college. The two of them had gotten to know each other the first week of freshman year through his roommate and they became fast friends. Throughout that first semester their circle grew and settled into a core group of friends who were inseparable for most of the rest of the next decade. By sophomore year they were comfortable, but they all still barely knew each other. When Lily had complained that her sisters always brought dates to thanksgiving and she thought it was so rude, he joked that he'd be her date, as a gag. They could give her sisters a taste of their own medicine. He didn't have plans, his family were going out of town and he'd chosen to hang back. So she brought him along to her parent's house, and they pretended to be dating.
***
They arrived at her parent's house, arm in arm, the night before Thanksgiving. Things went normally, at first. It's weird to be super affectionate with a new boyfriend in front of your family anyway, so they passed pretty easily as dating just by being their normal selves. No one thought they were anything but truthful through dinner Wednesday night, but at the bar after the truth started to leak out at the edges. She just couldn't help herself - both of the boys she had dated in high school were there, both looked great, and both seemed disappointed she wasn't alone. She gave them more attention than she did to Derrick, and she worried a little that her sisters noticed. Then she realized something as they stumbled home from the night before - her mom had them sleeping in the same bed. She'd spent the night at the bar flitting between two guys (three if you counted Derrick) and in that moment Lily was young, she was drunk, and she thought it was possible she had never been this horny. They went straight to bed after grabbing two glasses of water, and as they crawled under the covers together with most of their clothes on, a thousand scenarios ran through her head. All of them involved him deciding tonight he'd take his boyfriend role especially seriously. Unfortunately for her, he was snoring in seconds.
She pulled her dress off under the covers and tossed them it to the floor. She grabbed a t-shirt from the bag at the side of the bed and sat up to pull it on over her bra. As she did the covers came off of him to the thigh and she could see the strong muscles of his bare back and the perfect curve of his ass in his jeans. She pulled the covers back up most of the way and laid down on her side facing him. She stared at his sleeping form as she slid her hand down her side, around her thigh, and then up between to over over the wet spot on her panties. It was throwing heat and she was dying to touch herself. She hovered there for a moment asking herself what she was doing before the alcohol and the lust took over. With her other hand she rolled her left nipple between her fingers through the tshirt and bra. She concentrated on matching his sleeping breaths as she slid her fingers into her panties and started circling her clit, stopping every few rotations to frantically rub her fingers back and forth across it in short, sharp motions. After a few moments, she began to feel weird about what she was doing, and but only weird enough to turn her back to him to finish. She closed her eyes and imagined him waking up, imagined him reaching around and taking over for her, imagined his fingers probing her, stroking her, filling her up as his palm slapped against her clit. She imagined his hard dick digging in to her back, imagined herself grinding up against it as she bucked his fingers. She came with a muffled sob as she imagined him, unable to take the friction, unloading in his underwear. She turned back to face him again and found him unmoved. She wiped her fingers off on the sheets between them and went to sleep.
The next morning, he acted like nothing had happened, so either he had never woken up or he was exceedingly polite. They busied themselves around the house, helping her mom. She didn't go out of her way to touch him, but she was looking at him differently since her fantasies the night before, and she leaned in to their fake relationship. After dinner he drank on the back porch with her dad and sisters and their boyfriends while she helped her mom in the kitchen. She was hungover from the night before so she was drinking water to everyone's wine, and the turkey had made her exhausted, so after they were all cleaned up she headed up to bed. This time she put on a nightgown and panties - no bra - and she fell asleep clutching her own breast, imagining his hand there.
When she woke up, his hand *was* there. Holy shit! She looked at the clock on the end table - it said 3am. He was leaning on her, snoring softly, his arm thrown across her, his hand cupping her hand cupping her breast. She'd spent the whole day convincing herself what she did last night had nothing to do with him, but now she was in his arms and she knew that was at least partially wrong. She wondered what she'd find if she closed the distance on the bed keeping her ass from his pelvis. Of course she had a hunch, but it seemed time to find out.
First, she slowly extracted the hand that was between his hand and her breast, and the breath hitched in her throat as her nipple glanced his palm. Next, she started inching backwards across the bed, until she felt his full length up against her back. Even through his shorts and her nightgown she could feel its heat, feel it throbbing.
Suddenly though, he was awake, and she heard him mutter "oh fuck" as he rolled away from her and put some distance between them. She pretended to be asleep and waited until he was snoring again to get up and go into the bathroom. She was embarrassed and a little disappointed. It occurred to her she could still get herself off, but it just seemed desperate, now. The next morning he seemed slightly sheepish, but pretended nothing had happened, so she took his lead. They never spoke of it again.
***
As her ride pulled up to the party and she got out, Lily wondered why she'd buried that trip in her mind. Was it more because she was embarrassed, or because she regretted not waking up, rolling over, telling him she wanted him? This was the moment she had to decide, did she want to try to fuck him tonight, or did she want to pretend it never happened like she had with Thanksgiving? And then he opened the door and stepped out onto the porch light and she knew.
Derrick lit a cigarette on the porch then looked up and saw her. She saw the smile start in his eyes and a shiver went through her, stopping between her legs. As his smile reached the corners of his mouth she felt herself flush with anticipation. He pulled her up into his arms and she swore she felt him smell her hair, drink her in. She pressed her chest against his and said "hey" in a heavy sigh, and then pulled away and held him at arm's length for a moment before dropping her hands to her sides.
"Hey!" he said, "good of you to join us. They're running tours of the new house on the half hour," here, he paused to roll his eyes playfully at his friends "and there's wine in the kitchen and beer on the back porch."
"Great!" she replied. "I'm going to go grab a wine and try to catch a tour."
"Ok, see you in there" he lifted his cigarette up to indicate he'd be in shortly. She swayed her hips a little as she walked away from him, hoping he was looking at her ass.
Throughout the night, she kept finding reasons to be next to him, to brush against him, to touch him. As he stood at the buffet table nibbling on appetizers, she reached around him to grab one and pressed her chest against his back. As they sat around a table playing cards, she reached across him to "try his beer" and her breasts lingered against his arm longer than could be construed as accidental. And when, around midnight, everyone decided to go out back to smoke weed, she made sure to find herself without a seat. She looked around the table at her friends and caught his eye. Raised her eyebrow. Smiled as he patted his lap with one hand and nodded her over.
She perched gingerly at first, not ready to give the whole game away yet. As two joints circulated the table, she made small talk with her friends but every nerve in her body was on fire with the awareness of his proximity. It felt like every inch of her knew exactly how far away it was from touching him, and it was all tugging at her to close the gap. One of the joints made its way to her and she inhaled deeply, feeling the warmth spread over her until she was buzzing. She exhaled and realized her nipples were visibly hard through her shirt. Thank god for the low light on the porch. This show was for him, not everyone.
She inhaled again and turned around slightly to face him, ready to hand it to him, only to see that he was holding the other joint and his own lungfull of smoke. They exhaled into each other's faces and fell into giggles, passing the joints on. When their laughter subsided, she had settled further into his lap, and there he was. She estimated he was half hard, but the night was young.
