He brings a hand up and rests it above my heart. “Wait,” he says, pushing me back slightly, his hand still resting on my chest. “We shouldn’t do this outside. People could see.”
“Right.”
We rush back toward to the hotel, walking closer to each other than we probably should, our hands occasionally brushing before the other pulls away. Finally we make it to the hotel, and climb back up the fire escape, way more quickly than going down it. On the rooftop I jab the elevator button. Then Ruben grabs me by the jacket, spins me around, and presses me up against the cold brick wall.
“Hey,” I say, laughing at the suddenness of it.
“Hey.”
He kisses me, and it makes me dizzy. It feels as amazing as I remember. Better, maybe.
“Sorry,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine, his hands gripping mine. “I couldn’t wait.”
“I’m not complaining.”
The elevator opens, and we go inside.
As soon as the door closes, we fall onto each other. Our hands are a scramble, and the kiss is frantic, but in the best possible way. He pulls me right to him, so our bodies are flush, his chest against mine.
The elevator chimes, and we spring apart. There’s nobody in the hallway, though, so we start up again. Suddenly he’s up against the wall, and I’m kissing his neck. Then he spins me around, and I’m up against the wall, and he’s kissing me. He presses himself fully to me, hip to hip, and I think we might need to go inside before I lose all sense completely.
“Hey,” he says, nuzzling his nose against mine. ‘“You good?”
“So good.”
We reach his door, and he opens it, and we rush inside. Our coats are off immediately. The room is dark, lit only by the light coming in from the balcony’s sliding glass doors. I double-check to make sure the door is locked. If anyone at Chorus knew about this … holy shit. I don’t even want to imagine. Not now.
“Too many clothes,” I say, and he laughs, shucking off his sweater.
We go into the bedroom. I start unbuttoning his shirt, all the way to the bottom, so it’s hanging open. He takes it off and jumps up onto his bed, now only in his jeans.
He smirks at me, all devilish.
I pull my shirt off and join him.
ELEVEN
RUBEN
“What’s better?” Zach asks, reading from his notepad. “‘Your smile spills the secret you can’t keep from me,’ or ‘Your smile tells me we’re meant to be’？”
We’re lying side by side on top of my fully made bed, propped up on a mountain of fluffy goose-down hotel pillows. We have about twenty minutes before we need to head to a choreo checkin, but as much as we all begged Erin to let us explore Cologne for a second, the answer was, as usual, no. She claimed it was because there wasn’t enough time to assemble guards for a public outing on such short notice. （When we go out in public, Chorus insists on assigning at least one guard for each of us, as opposed to the more lax ratio they allow for interviews and photo shoots held inside. A part of me gets it, but another part of me resents being treated like we’re made of porcelain. We were never kept this holed up on the American tour leg, and Angel and Zach were still seventeen for most of that.）
So, instead, we told the others I was going to help Zach with his lyrics in my room while we waited. I’d low-key hoped Zach understood that was code for “make out until we’re dizzy,” but it turned out he actually did want my thoughts on some new lyrics. Luckily, even lying next to him on my bed is more entertaining to me than anything we could be doing outside, so I’m still fine. More than fine, really. I’m giddy with happiness to be this close to him, knowing he wants to be close to me. That he wants to be alone with me.
I glance at the lines scrawled in Zach’s neat, tiny handwriting. Above them are some others that he’s obviously drafted and decided against, because they’re mostly scribbled out. I make out the words nuclear explosion, billowing curtains, and string cheese beneath the mess of ink.
“That sounds like a couplet to me,” I say, then I lean over to run a finger over the page to point to the two legible lines remaining. “Just needs a bit of editing and they match up. Although I don’t know why you scribbled out the line about string cheese, I think you really had something there.”
He flicks my hand, scoffing. The simplest contact, but time stops for a beat.
How did he get the power to still everything within me through one touch? I’ve had crushes before. Boyfriends before. But I’ve always felt in control. Completely separate from them. Me, the individual, happy to be around them, the individual. Content, but not engulfed.