One Punch Man was absurd but hilarious, the perfect show to dispel my nerves. Within five minutes we’d given up on muffled snickers and had burst into full-on commentary and peals of laughter. I always knew when an especially stupid scene was coming because Ricky would lean back against the sofa and watch for my reaction, and every time, I would prepare a clever barb to make fun of his enthusiasm and promptly forget it because the scene would really be that funny. We watched the first episode, then silently agreed to continue to the next. By the third episode, our bowl of popcorn was empty, and I had graduated from sitting up straight against the couch to lying comfortably on my belly and swinging my legs against it. I looked up at Ricky, his face lit by the TV screen and the flickering of his fake candle, and felt myself flood with warmth. To think that I’d ever thought of him as anything other than kind. He had heard, secondhand, that I needed him, and devised a strategy to cheer me up on the spot. Michelle had been right—third year of medical school tore most people apart, but somehow, it was bringing us together.
Ricky glanced at me from the corner of his eye, and I looked away, embarrassed at being caught staring. A second later, something soft and plush struck me in the back; it took me a split second to realize that he’d just hit me with a pillow.
“Wh-what—！” I stammered, baffled. “You did not!”
Ricky raised an eyebrow in a challenge, the culprit pillow held in front of him like a shield. When I sat up and snatched a pillow out from under me, he scooted just out of my reach.
Lucky for me, I wasn’t an only child, and this was not my first time at the rodeo. I lobbed a pillow at him, let him bat it away, and then grabbed another and smacked him against his side. Keeling over with laughter, Ricky dodged my next toss but caught the one after that on the side of his head. Cackling, I scrambled under the canopy for the throw pillows on top of the couch and, finding one, prepared to launch my next attack—
Ricky was faster. Before I could pelt him with my newfound weapon, he caught me across the stomach with a swing, knocking it out of my hands. I reached for my throw pillow again, and he lunged for me, grasping my wrist and wrestling it back with one hand and tossing the pillow out of my reach with the other.
“No fair!” I said, struggling to get out of his grasp. He laughed thunderously, snatching a full-sized pillow and preparing to hit me with the finishing blow. He raised it high, fixing me with a smile that was all mischief.
“Do you yield?” he asked.
“Never,” I spat. Then I kicked his legs out from under him.
Our blanket fort canopy came flopping down onto us. I laughed myself breathless as I tried to push myself out from under the cloth, but found myself impeded by something heavy, firm, and warm—
Oh.
I froze, cataloging all the places that our bodies overlapped. Ricky had fallen onto me at a right angle, his head pressed into my stomach, one arm draped across my legs, the other perilously close to my breast. I could feel him chuckling too, his tone tinged with disbelief, and the sound rumbled through my belly. I fought to hold back a shudder, knowing that, pressed against me like this, he would feel it too. Slowly, he pulled himself up, adjusting himself so that his face hovered over mine. The sheet slipped halfway down his back.
He was close. So close that there seemed to be two Rickys overlapping each other, three beautiful, dark eyes, two sets of soft slightly parted lips. My gaze dropped to the hollow of his neck, and I watched, fascinated, as the shuddering of his pulse jumped and quickened.
“Hey,” he said, and I licked my lips, watching as he homed in on the motion. “I’m going to kiss you now. Is that okay?”
I didn’t trust my voice to work, and so I nodded instead. The corner of Ricky’s mouth quirked with amusement, and then, between one breath and the next, his lips were on mine.
I’d imagined what kissing Ricky—actually kissing him—would be like. I’d imagined it would be electric, that it would feel the way touching him felt but times a thousand. But I hadn’t expected it to feel like home. The first touch of our lips together was brief, like an experiment, or a question that we both answered with an emphatic yes. Warmth trailed down my body, like I’d taken a long draft of wine, and settled in my fingertips and the parts of my body where we touched. We kissed for a long time, my arms twining around his neck, his hands sliding down my sides to clasp me at the waist.
Eventually, Ricky pulled away. His hands came up to cup my face and he looked down at me reverently, his thumbs rubbing circles on the high points of my cheekbones. I felt like a fizzy drink, my body light and buzzing.