The night Beck and I made love, things changed. Wildly. Not in a bad way, not really, just in a super…duper…strange way.

“You babysit quite a bit, don’t you?” Beck asked that night, lounging back on the couch and watching me. Our bodies were turned towards each other, his socked feet resting on the spot next to my hip, mine the same way. “If you’re not at the restaurant, you’re there.”

“Mrs. Michaels needs me a lot,” I told him, running my fingers along the top of the blanket. It was velvety soft, warm—perfect for the chilly November evening. “Which is fine. Cassie’s really great, and I love spending time with him. He’s a good kid.”

Beck rested his hand on my foot. He had dinner ready for me when I came home from the diner tonight, much to my surprise. He’d made sub sandwiches, with extra mayo and tomato—exactly how I liked it. In the two weeks since we officially ‘moved in together’—it took much longer than that to transition all my stuff over, but two weeks since I started sleeping here—things just found their normalcy quickly. He’d cook dinner, I’d do dishes, we’d watch Criminal Minds until we were both too tired to function. We slept together, but not slept together. A state line ran down the middle of the bed. Neither one of us had crossed it yet. Beck’s eyes slipped over mine a little lazily. “He sounds pretty important to you.”

“He is,” I said seriously, nodding. “I’ve seen him grow up, you know? Watching him makes it feel like I have a little brother.” He was a good kid. He had his moments, sure, but he was a good kid. “Speaking of brothers, have you spoken to yours lately?”

The lazy quality to Beck’s gaze diminished slightly, but the light touch on my toes didn’t disappear. “I have. I spoke with my younger brother a few days ago, actually.”

I sat up, leaning forward. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It was only a five-minute phone call, really,” he said, shrugging it off. “Just a check-in to make sure we’re both alive, really. It didn’t mean anything.”

I knew him well enough to know that his lack of conversation meant something, but I didn’t know if he’d appreciate me prying. Not yet. What I’ve learned from Beck is that he liked to keep things to himself, liked to ruminate on things. Sometimes he’d get envelopes in the mail and he’d read them and they’d leave him…quiet. He didn’t talk about them though. He just woke up the next morning as if he hadn’t read whatever he’d read.

“You’re trying to psychology me,” Beck said after a moment, drawing my mind back to the present.

“Psychoanalyze,” I corrected gently, wiggling my toes underneath his hand. “And I’m not. I’m just thinking.”

“About me?” His voice was hopeful, fingers sneaking their way up the bare skin of my ankle, moving to my calf. Following his fingers was heat, a warmth that raised goosebumps.

I bit the corner of my lower lip to keep from smiling like an idiot, especially as his hand kept traveling up. He leaned forward to reach higher. “Conceited much?”

“Never.”

“Psh.” When his fingers found the inside of my knee, hidden underneath the blanket, my breath stalled a little. “That tickles.”

“Tickles?” he demanded. Beck pulled his legs back from where they touched my hip so he could readjust how he sat. He leaned over me, using his elbows to hold his weight off me. It created divots in the sofa cushions underneath me, and his body heat was a whisper against my skin. “I must be doing it wrong. I don’t think it’s supposed to tickle.”

I stared into his gunmetal eyes, trying to find any trace of purple in their depths. “What are you trying to do?”

When I first saw Beck, I was immediately drawn in by his looks, sure. But upon coming closer, the air seemed to charge, like lightning about to strike me down. It felt like that now as we looked into each other’s eyes, like any second I was going to be electrified.

He reached up and drifted one fingertip along the line of my temple, a feather-light touch, barely there. I made a noise in my throat at the contact, reaching a hand up and slipping it around his neck, pressing each of my fingers into his skin. “You’re taking forever to kiss me, you know.”

“Am I?” His own lips twitched, the gray tone to his eyes turning liquid. “I’m sorry.”

Too much talking, I thought to myself, dragging his mouth down to mine. I tried to arch up against him, but the only thing that moved against me was his own mouth, lips soft and kissing me greedily. When Beck kissed me, all conscious thought was lost. Obliterated. I’d never really had a boyfriend before, so kissing seemed strange to me for the longest time. How I had lived without it for so long, I had no idea. Because this? I couldn’t live without this.

I reached with my other hand grasp the front of his shirt, rucking up the hem until I found bare, warm skin. His stomach tightened under my fingers, tensed. Kissing like this, it was like music. Choreography. An up and down of crashing symbols and elegant steps, a story being written by our hands and fingertips and lips. One kiss on the jaw could be followed by five fingers trailing on bare skin, a kiss on the throat accompanied by a beat of a gasp. He slipped one of his legs between mine, using it to leverage himself closer.

I lifted his shirt up, and after a second, he gathered the point; he eased up just enough to strip free of the cotton, and I threw it over the side of the couch. “Better,” I said almost breathlessly, the word sounding like it could’ve been gibberish. His skin was hot, hot, hot, flushing my own. “Much better.”

Beck didn’t respond to that, but placed his mouth back over mine. As our kiss lengthened, it also intensified—my blouse came undone by Beck’s clever fingers, our bodies pressed so no air existed between—to the point where I had to break away, just for a moment. “Do you want to go to the bed?”

Beck’s pupils were blown wide, nearly swallowing their irises whole, the black consuming the gray. He blinked deliberately, and it looked like he wasn’t breathing. “What?”

I trailed a finger across his pointy collarbone, angling down his chest. “To the bedroom. I mean, this is hot and all, but I—” suddenly, I was too shy to answer that sentence aloud. This is hot and all, but I don’t want my first time to be on a couch. Even thinking it caused heat to flood my face.

He watched me for a moment, still above me, before clarity cracked across his features. He looked down from my eyes, gaze catching on my exposed bare skin, and he once again deliberately closed his eyes. “Oh. Oh. Uh, sure—yeah, that’s—that’d be great.”

My lips twitched when I saw red patches on his cheeks. “We don’t have to, Beck.”

“I just…I’ve never done this before,” he confessed with a rueful smile, leaning back off me. “And I know that’s supposed to be embarrassing, but I just—”

“I haven’t either,” I hurried to tell him, sitting up. The back of my hair felt rucked up every which-way—and it probably was. “It’s not embarrassing. Seriously.” I reached out and placed my hand on his, weaving our fingers together. “It’ll be special, you and me.” I leaned forward and pressed a kiss against his lips, slow, drawing it out until I felt him gasp, and I pulled away. Rising to my feet, I reached a hand out to him, already backing toward the bedroom door. My smirk was a little devious. “Are you coming?”

I blinked my eyes awake, frowning a little as I was greeted with a wave of darkness. Usually by the time I woke up in the morning, the sun was out, and Beck would raise the blinds on the window. But no trace of light came in through the window—in fact, I didn’t even think it was light out. I couldn’t pinpoint what could’ve woken me up.

I shifted underneath the sheets, feeling Beck’s warm body beside mine. In the darkness, I could only make out the outline of his shoulder, his amber colored hair fanning out across his cheek. His head was away from me, his bare back facing the ceiling. I reached out and lightly ghosted my hand across his skin.

Beck had said that he’d never done that before—never made love before—but wow. Wow, wow, wow. Honestly, I was prepared for it to be mediocre. I’ve heard mixed reviews on the act itself from Kelsey—it hurts, it feels good, it’s just meh. And since we were both inexperienced, I thought it would lean towards meh on the spectrum. But it wasn’t meh. Not even remotely close.

I’d thrown on one of his tshirts before I fell asleep that night, so the soft cotton hugged my skin as I sat up, wiping the sleep from my eyes. I glanced around the dark room, listening as the hum of the heater kicked off, filling the bedroom with an even deeper realm of silence.

And then I heard it. A soft tinging noise. Ting, ting, ting. It reminded me of the sound Mrs. Michaels’s fridge made when it was left open. I frowned a little, not sure where it was coming from. I mean, I knew I was a light sleeper, but I didn’t realize that light.

As quietly and gently as possible, I pushed the comforter back off my legs, pushing to my feet. A soreness accompanied my movements, one that left a smile on my lips, remembering Beck’s hands on me, my legs tangled with his. This is what perfection feels like, I thought to myself, trying to keep my ears aware for the noise.

Ting, ting, ting. I stopped in front of the door to the closet, the one that I’d never gone into. Two weeks into living here with Beck—countless more of me actually being here—and I’d never gone inside. Beck had said that he kept junk in there—boxes of crap he never bothered to unpack—so I guess I never thought twice about it. What would be dinging inside?

Before I opened the door, I never would’ve anticipated what I found on the other side. But as soon as I opened the door, I had a strange thought work over me, one that almost felt foreign. Were you expecting anything different?

The lights were off in the closet, but several items hidden inside glowed in the dark, blinking with different colored lights. The tinging sound grew louder since I opened the door, and I found a sphere-shaped item sitting on something in the far corner. The glow of the red light on it seemed to go in time with the sound. I stepped inside, looking around.

The stuff in here…it all looked futuristic. Shiny, glowing, curved. There was a desk against one of the small walls in the space, and it housed much more strange equipment. And the closet wasn’t as small as I’d been expecting—it was an eight-foot long box.

Ting, ting, ting. I drifted my fingertips across the sphere object, and it was so smooth that it almost felt wet. Without thinking twice, I pressed my finger over the red light, which turned out to be a button.

The sphere exploded into a burst of light, sending me tumbling backward, tripping over my feet and landing on my behind. Beck’s shirt pushed up to the tops of my thighs as I tried to scramble backwards, but not before the light of the sphere materialized into a shape of purple light. It looked almost human-shaped—or, at least, it looked like it had a head. The projection cut off about halfway down where a normal torso would be. But this thing was so not a normal person. A chittering noise came from the shape, loud and almost ear-shattering as it bounced off the walls. The purple figure moved and morphed as the light shifted, and an arm appeared from the picture, reaching down for me.

I only realized Beck came into the space after he slapped his hand on the sphere, effectively cutting off the image and the projection, sending the closet back into darkness. The tinging had stopped, as well as the red flashing light. His chest moved up and down as he breathed hard, his pajama bottoms hanging low on his hips. I couldn’t see the color to his eyes as they widened, looking down at me. His voice was rough with sleep. “I can totally explain that.”

“Can you?” I asked, surprised that my own voice sounded so even, so normal. My heart wasn’t racing, though—maybe I felt even, normal. Maybe because I had no idea what just happened or what I’d just seen. “Does it include the truth?”

He let out a slow breath. “It can.”

“Always tell me the truth, Beck,” I said, unwavering in the severity. “Always.”

He nodded, once, and bent down to sit on the ground in front of me. “Always,” he said, and told me everything.