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For the third day in a row, I wake up with Caitlin in my bed.
For the second day in a row, I wake up with a naked Caitlin in my bed.
I don’t understand how a guy like me could get so fucking lucky, but somehow, it’s happened. She’s here. It’s the stuff of my dreams.
“Merry Christmas, Caitlin,” I say when her eyes flutter open. I brush my lips over her cheek, and she smiles at me, all dopey-eyed and beautiful.
I kiss my way down her neck, and I’m about to reach between her legs when she stills my hand. “I want to ask you something first.”
I bring my hands back to her shoulders. “What’s up?”
She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. It’s not like her to be nervous like this.
“I want you,” she says. “I want a relationship with you.”
I go utterly still. “You want a relationship. With me?” I repeat stupidly, my voice going high-pitched.
“I do.”
Yes, we’ve been great in bed together. Yes, the past few days have been amazing, and that single question is everything I’ve wanted since the first week of university all those years ago.
I’d planned to ask her yesterday, and now she’s asked me instead.
Caitlin Ng wants me, or at least she thinks she does. For now.
“I’m not your type,” I point out. “I’m nothing like the other guys you’ve dated.”
“Maybe my type has changed.”
Caitlin’s a success story, and I’m not. My sister is a doctor who married a doctor and has two adorable kids—I’m the screw-up in the family. Always have been, as last night reminded me. Caitlin was lovely and stuck up for me and said I shouldn’t do anything that made me miserable, but...
No, I can’t let her do this.
“You’re too good for me,” I say, because in the end, that’s what it comes down to. I may talk about “types” and all that, but I’ve known from the beginning that she deserves better than me, and there’s no way she’ll stay interested in the long-term.
“Wes.” She laughs uncomfortably. “That’s ridiculous. You’re a good man, a caring man. You didn’t make a great computer engineer, but you’re smart and creative and hot as fuck.”
I can’t help laughing at that, even though I feel hollow on the inside.
Caitlin and I have laughed a lot together this weekend.
“I was the perfect fling for you,” I say, “but we’re better off as friends.”
“Stop being an idiot.”
I can’t. It’s just who I am.
I take a few deep breaths. God, I want to pull her back into my arms and tell her yes, I want her, I can be what she needs. I love her more than anything; I’ve always loved her.
But I say nothing.
“Oh,” she says quietly. “I see. Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“So you can’t watch when I get out of bed naked to get dressed.”
We’ve spent so much time without our clothes on in the past few days, but all good things must come to an end.
I do as she requests.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I’m sipping a cup of coffee and looking morosely at my festive Christmas tree, which she helped me decorate. The last few days have shown me that being with Caitlin is indeed as amazing as I always imagined it would be.
And so, because she is wonderful and amazing and fantastic and sexy, I must let her go, so she can find some CEO to make little CEO babies with. Some cocky white dude who thinks he’s all that and doesn’t dance around in an inflatable T-Rex costume on Christmas Day.
Because that’s how I’m going to spend the afternoon.
I look at the holly—not mistletoe—hanging in my bedroom door, and the container of shortbread and gingerbread cookies on the counter. All things that remind me of her.
I haven’t eaten breakfast. I’m not hungry. I assume that has something to do with heartbreak and consuming a week’s worth of food last night.
Still, I’m craving sugar right now, and I might as well console myself by stuffing cookies into my face. I’m just being festive, right?
Merry fucking Christmas to me.
I drain my cup of coffee, then make myself a mocha—gotta get my sugar in liquid form, too—with a generous amount of Bailey’s. I take a bite of a shortbread Santa, which has an excessive amount of sprinkles, thanks to Caitlin, and try not to start weeping.
I’ve had years of practice at burying my feelings for her. I should be able to do this. Though no matter how deep I try to bury them, they always manage to pop up again.
And now I know what it’s like to snuggle her for warmth...and to snuggle her just because. Now I know what it feels like to be inside her. Now I know what it feels like to make a gingerbread house with her, to pepper her with kisses throughout the day.
Oh, God, I’m so screwed.
But it’s Christmas Day, and I have a job to do. I’ve got to wear a T-Rex costume and dance to Christmas songs sung by a barbershop quartet.
I’m such a weirdo, I know.
A noble weirdo: I let Caitlin go.
It’s for the best, isn’t it? She’ll see that soon enough.