Problematic Summer Romance (Not in Love, #2)

by Ali Hazelwood

Conor has a funny way of taking up my mental space, and I’m no fan of the brainpower I am expending on someone who hasn’t thought of me in years.

Honestly, he’s not my type. Too overworked. Too incapable of letting go. Too single-minded. Too much of a dickhead.

I throw it out like a dare, mostly to get him off my back, but the glint in his eyes, the sudden tension in his fist, they are dead giveaways. That he’s considering it. He’s considering spending the day with me.

even if it’s obvious that there is no romantic future in store for us, I’m not ready to move on from him.

He’s my friend. I missed him. If this is all I get with him, that’s enough.

The world is so big, and we are just clumps of atoms. What’s a tiny little bit of heartbreak, when faced with the vastness of mankind? Does it matter that a love is unrequited, if the universe started with a hot fireball and will end the same way?

“Listen, Maya—he doesn’t want Tamryn, or Avery. He wants you.”

“You want me, Conor,” I repeat. It’s a statement. An axiom. We can fight over what to do about it, we can disagree on every letter of every word we say to each other, but I refuse to negotiate this simple truth. He lets out a single, bitter laugh. Takes several angry steps closer, pointing his finger at me. “Of course I fucking want you. You are stupidly beautiful, and too fucking smart for your own good, and I refuse to go there, Maya.”

He is desperate, clenching his jaw, all his muscles tense. So out of options, he backtracks all the way to our axiom. “Maybe I just don’t want you,” he says through gritted teeth. I smile. Poor guy. “Yeah? Maybe. Though you already admitted you do.” “Maybe I fucking lied.” I bite back an even wider grin. “I get it. You didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I bet you don’t really find me beautiful. Or smart.” His eye twitches, like he’s dying to contradict me on that. It’s sweet. It makes me want him even more.

The class is open to more than just our party. It requires working in pairs, assuming couplehood as the default state, as though the world and its activities are built for two. Discomfort in all social situations is the toll loveless singles must pay for not conforming to its demands.

Even sober, I don’t regret what I told him last night. It did, however, end in something that felt a lot like another rejection, and I don’t want to deal with the fallback of it.

Because one day, Conor Harkness decided that he wanted someone to know him. And he chose me.

The problem is: I haven’t had sex in nearly a year, and I miss it. The problem is, also: I haven’t wanted to have sex with someone who isn’t Conor since the day I met him again in Scotland.

“Was it necessary, sending me up alone? I doubt Lucrezia patrols the hallways.” “That’s not why, Maya.” “What, then?” “A chance for you to change your mind. Clear your head.” “You’re assuming that I can’t think clearly when you’re around.” “I can’t think clearly when you are around.” He breaks eye contact. “You’re way too fucking young to—” “To consort with boys, to have sexual desires, to choose who to satisfy them with.” A still moment. “Conor?” His frown is displeased. “Can I tell you a secret?” He nods once. “You are so fucking boring.”

“You don’t even know how grateful you should be, Conor.” “Is that so?” “It’s not revealing at all—” “It’s not about revealing, Maya.” His fingers dip down past the waist of my bottoms, and my breath catches. “It’s the way you take over the space around you. You remind me constantly, loudly, indecently, of all the little things that make you you. It’s impossible to escape, and it makes me very angry.” His hand inches down, and I bite my lower lip. “I’m sorry for being myself.” “You should be,” he says, but the last syllable becomes something groaned and choked and dragged out, and he’s touching me right between my legs. I’m wet, because…because of him. It’s not new.

“I like you, this way,” I tease. “What way?” I point at his body. The shorts plastered to his skin. The thick outline against the cotton. “When you can’t hide that you want me.” “I always want you, Maya. And I’ve never been good at hiding it.”

“I think you’re impatient. I think you can be ruthless when it comes to getting what you want. And given the hand you have been dealt, you have every right to be.” He wets his lips. “I don’t think you’re childish. And even if you were…You’re young. You have so much room to grow. And…” A long, long pause. “It doesn’t matter, Maya. Because I like you the way you are.”

I like to think that contact helps. That his flesh is whispering to mine. All the things he cannot say, all the things he never says, all the things he doesn’t want to say. I let myself get lost in the fantasy of his body and mine eloping together. Building the future we’ll never have.

“She asked if it hurts.” “Tell her: less than Conor Harkness’s persistent rejections.”

“Maya, he wasn’t pretending. I guarantee you that every boy your age wants you. Men my age want you. Wherever you go, every-fucking-body is looking at you.”

“I’m not afraid of you. I am afraid of myself, and of the person I become when I’m around you.” He leans over me, crowds me, his eyes a cold burn into mine. “I have never wanted anything as desperately, as ungovernably, as persistently as I want you. Not a single goddamn thing. Not my dead mother back. Not revenge. Not the well-being of the people I love. Not professional success, not even my own happiness. Absolutely nothing has consumed me as mercilessly as you have.”

Out of all the lucid dreams my brain could have conjured, this one is the cruelest. But I don’t wake up. He kisses me forever, and even when he stops, his hands stay around my face. In my hair. I blink. The world is the same as it was before, but the corners are not quite as sharp. A kinder, gentler place, where breathing is easier. I might be going mad.

“Conor.” My hand slides across the table, knuckles brushing against his. “If it’s pegging you want, you only have to ask.”

Between the two of us, there’s a lot of love that had nowhere to go for a long while. We’re making up for lost time. That’s what I tell myself when we can’t seem to carve time or space for anything but each other.