Love Expectations (Season 1 of Nata and Phillip's Romance) ✔️

29. 'Inside me'

Nata

"No." I wrinkle my nose. "I'm jealous. I was a fountain of insecurities in high school, wishing I could be like some girls in my class."

"Like what?"

"Too pretty not to fall for." The wall behind my back feels like all the walls I stood by as a teen at dances, watching the couples form, make-out, and break-up. "The girls men's gazes lingered on."

"Have you tried to attract their attention? Us, men, we don't need that much encouragement."

I pull my knees up and rest my chin on them. "I tried a couple of times." The longing and anxiety I that filled me in those days resurfaces. "It never worked." The recollections coat me in disappointment in myself, like after an experiment gone wrong. "Maybe I should’ve gone your route and practiced, but I never progressed beyond conversations with my crushes in my head." Conversations that lead to graphic scenes I would've never dared to reenact in real life. I scoff at myself. "My flirting skills never matured."

Phillip sets his head on the wall next to me with a soft thud. "Why didn't you tell me in college? I could've helped."

I roll my eyes. "As if."

"What d'you mean?" I feel his gaze drilling through the side of my head.

If we are baring more than our bodies today, I might as well tell him the truth. Grateful for the darkness, I rattle out, "I flirted with you every chance I got, cursing myself for doing it, because I was your tutor."

I peek to the side at him and catch his eyebrows doing the confused climb up his forehead thing. "It was unethical."

"You flirted with me?" Phillip opens his mouth and closes it several times as he slow-shakes his head. "Are you sure?"

"I didn't doubt anything you told me about yourself, but you are doubting me?"

"No." Phillip narrows his eyes. "I'm usually great at picking up clues, and I don't remember ever thinking you were into me."

"I told you." I wrap my arms around my knees as if I can squeeze the embarrassment out of my chest. This truth-telling business is exhausting. "I'm awful at flirting."

He runs his hand across my back, every inch of his progress sending small heat bombs down my spine. Phillip tugs me into his side. "Were you flirting with me because of my reputation?"

My ear rests on his chest. Too cozy. Too comfortable. I should stop my confession and laugh it off or change the topic of the conversation. Better, I should get up and go home to sleep because I still have to be up at five. I burrow my cheek into Phillip's warm skin and do none of that. "Because I liked you," I say in a semi-whisper.

"I liked you too." Phillip's lips touch my forehead and stretch in a slow grin, like I'm a cute pet. "We were friends."

"I liked you liked you." I shut my eyes and let everything I kept in for years out. "More than friends. I thought that after we graduated, you'd tell me you wanted me and had to struggle to keep your feelings away not to mess up our professional relationship." The flood of long-suppressed fantasies I shoved away years ago come gushing like the water out of a broken dam.

"You wanted to sleep with me then?" He mumbles into my hair.

"Yes."

His thumb rubs circles into my elbow, coaxing every drop of the truth out. "With kissing?"

"Yes," I whisper.

"And now you have changed your mind?"

"Yes." My reality definitely changed. My dreams...