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Rolling my eyes, I struck a match and puffed my cigarette to life.
“Don’t start, Ada,” I warned. My best friend merely shook her head.
“Y/N, it’s becoming ridiculous! I shouldn’t have to be subjected to you pining after my brother-“ I opened my mouth but she held up one slender hand to silence me. “But since I do, I wish you’d just do something about it!” I pulled hard at my cigarette, watching the parlor fire instead of Ada’s knowing expression.
“John doesn’t think of me that way and I don’t plan on embarrassing myself.”
“You’re fucking mad, you know that? I can assure you John would have not a single problem thinking of you that way. I mean, for starters, look at you-“
“Stop.” I said harshly. She opened her mouth again and it was my turn to hold a hand up. “John’s known me since I was a fat, toddling thing. He saw me with no hair when I had those lice in school, some things you can’t un-see.” She giggled, remembering.
“Maybe, but you knew John when he was a gangling arse, oh wait, he still is, isn’t he!“ She laughed in earnest and I threw a pillow at her head.
“John’s always been John,” all confidence and charm, I thought. “He looked like an angel as a child, and-“
“And he looks like an angel now?” Ada mocked. I felt my cheeks color but I nodded at the fire a little.
“He does though, and you know it.” Ada rolled her eyes at me but I was lost in the flames and in thoughts of John. “He’s like the sun, Ada, so bright and warm. It’s like I’m in his orbit, irrevocably, and-“ I stopped talking, blushing down to my toes. I sounded like a lovesick idiot. But Ada wasn’t laughing at me anymore. Instead she was looking at me with unbearable pity in her pretty eyes. “Christ, I’m a sap.” I stood, smashing my cigarette into an ash tray.
“No, Y/N, you’re-“ But I didn’t want to hear what I was. I waved her off and ducked out of the parlor, closing the door behind me and letting my weight fall against it only to shoot up, ramrod straight again. Because John was standing in front of me filling the hallway.
“John!” I yelped. His eyes were wide and dark and I slowly looked between him and the door at my back, horror dawning on me with icy clarity. “How much of that did you hear?”
For once, the corner of his mouth was free of any toothpick or smirking curl. There were several horrible, silent heartbeats that I felt in my throat where I really thought I’d offended him beyond repair.
“Enough,” he said in a ragged voice that sent a thrill skittering down my spine. Then he reached for me. One of his hands wrapped around my waist, the other braced my neck and he kissed me. It was rough, confidant and commanding, just like the man and I kissed him back. Both his hands migrated to cup my ass, pressing me undeniably against the want in his trousers, making me moan into his open mouth. I pushed my own hands into his jacket, yanking it down and off of him. He hoisted me bodily, my legs wrapping readily around his hips. He carried me down the hall and up the creaking stairs to his room. I never let my lips leave his skin.
---
Ada nearly stepped on the discarded jacket when she left the parlor later. Picking it up and shaking it out, understanding slowly dawned across her confusion and she smiled triumphantly.
---
Upstairs, tangled in sheets and in John I smiled with equal triumph. He pushed the hair away from my neck to lay a kiss there before leaning into my ear.
“So which is it?” he whispered. “Am I an angel or the sun?” I laughed at him and pulled his face level with mine.
“You, John Shelby, are certainly no angel,” I giggled and kissed him again.