It needed to come up. I needed to bring it up… but I was scared. I didn’t want to ruin this sparkly golden night. I just wanted this feeling to go on forever, for the sun to never come up and for me and Jake to be permanently frozen into this time and place, locked in a shining globe of amber.

Jake and I toweled off as he explained to me the rules of chess, which was something else he was apparently great at. He continued to talk about pawns and knights and checkmates as we went back into his bedroom, but I had a hard time focusing on any of it. All I could think of was cuffing this man to my side. It was made even more intense when we both got into bed, still naked, and he wrapped me up in his big arms, the firm muscles of his bicep serving as a pillow for me. He tucked one of his legs through mine and kissed the back of my neck, and I completely and totally haywired, words coming out of my lips before I could think:

“What are we?”

“Huh?”

“What are we?” I asked again, looking directly ahead at the dark wall. I could feel Jake breathing against my back, his chest rising and falling, our skin pressed together. “I know we’re friends. Good ones. But do you feel anything else?”

He didn’t even miss a beat. “I do. I feel like I won the lotto over the fact that I get to hold you right now. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way with anyone else I’ve been with. This happy. This comfortable.”

“Me neither,” I said honestly. “And that’s a little scary.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m scared you’ll just disappear. Like you’ll wake up and decide to keep things as friends between us. We aren’t anything official, so it’s not that far outside of the realm of possibility.”

Jake chuckled, kissed my neck again. “I can guarantee you it is very far outside the realm of possibility.”

I took that moment to turn over, facing him now. I looped an arm through his, letting my fingertips softly trace random patterns across his back, following the dips and curves of his muscles. “You sure?”

“Very sure,” he said, kissing my nose. The lights in the bedroom were off, but enough moonlight spilled in through the partly opened curtains so that I could still see his Tiffany-blue eyes, swirling like two mini-galaxies. “So sure that I’m ready to say fuck being friends.”

I arched a brow, licked my lips.