Come to Jesus
DOWN THE HALL – PART V
In the last installment of Down the Hall…
R. Adrian Thorne
He stood in the middle of my room like he didn’t know what he wanted to do.
So I said it for him.
“If you’re going to touch me,” I said, “don’t pretend you didn’t.”
He looked at me. Really looked at me.
And then he stopped moving.
Like his body couldn’t decide if it was supposed to step forward or turn around and leave. His eyes dropped, then lifted again. Something in them — raw, restless — flickered and stayed.
“I didn’t come here to fuck with you,” he said. Voice low. Honest. A little wrecked.
“I just… I don’t know how to do this.”
My throat was dry. “Then why keep doing it?”
He exhaled through his nose. Ran a hand across the back of his neck like it hurt to say the next part.
“Because I think about you all the time.”
He let the words sit there.
“And when I don’t,” he added, “I miss it.”
There’s a pause that happens between people like us — people who want something they’re not sure they’re allowed to ask for.
It’s not awkward.
It’s suffocating.
“Miss what?” I asked, quieter now.
His jaw flexed.
“You,” he said. “Not the secrecy. Not the texts. You.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know how to hold it without cutting myself.
He stepped closer.
“I remember orientation,” he said. “That day in the courtyard. You looked at me.”
“I wasn’t the only one,” I said, voice quiet but steady.
“No,” he said. “But you saw me.”
Then he paused.
“And I thought… maybe you were someone I’d have to forget.”
I blinked.
He’d said that before. The night he kissed me. Right before he walked out.
“You said that already,” I said. “That thing about forgetting me.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just stood there — shoulders tense, eyes low.
“So what does that mean?” I asked. “You keep saying it like it explains something. But I don’t know what it’s supposed to tell me.”
He looked up again.
“It means,” he said, “you weren’t supposed to matter.”
My stomach tightened.
“But you do.”
I let that sit between us. Just long enough to hurt.
Then I asked what I really needed to.
“So why’d you leave?”
He blinked. “That night?”
“Yeah. That night,” I said. “You kissed me. You touched me. And then you looked terrified and ran.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. His hands twitched at his sides.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I panicked.”
“That’s not good enough,” I said. “You started something with me and then you just disappeared. Then came the empty text. Then the shower…”
Wes’s jaw tightened.
“I didn’t plan that. The shower.”
“You left the curtain open.”
A pause.
“Yeah,” he said. “I wanted you to see.”
That stopped me cold.
“You what?”
He didn’t move.
“I was thinking about you the whole time. Watching you standing there. I thought if I left it open… maybe you’d know.”
“That it turned you on?”
He swallowed. “Yeah.”
There it was.
The first time he said something I had only guessed—and hearing it out loud made my stomach twist in ways I wasn’t ready for.
“And that night,” he added, “in your room…”
He stopped.
I stepped in a little.
“What?”
He held my eyes.
“I keep thinking about it. How your mouth tasted. How you sounded. The way you looked at me after.”
His voice cracked slightly.
“I didn’t know what to do with that. Still don’t.”
This wasn’t just about being touched anymore.
It was about being yanked back and forth like I didn’t have a say in it.
“You can’t keep doing that,” I said. “You don’t get to touch me one night and then act like you’ve never met me in the morning. That’s not a miscommunication, Wes. That’s emotional whiplash.”
He nodded slowly.
“I know,” he said. “I know I fucked this up.”
He looked away for a beat. Then:
“I didn’t mean to run. That wasn’t the plan. I thought I could control it — just… try something, see what it felt like. But then it felt like too much. Like it was real. And if it was real…”
His voice trailed off.
“If it was real,” I said, “then what?”
He didn’t answer.
Didn’t need to.
We were already standing inside the “then what.”
“I just wanted answers tonight,” I said. “That’s all.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s fair.”
His voice dropped to something softer. “I’ve never done this before.”
“You don’t think I know that?” I said. “I’ve never done this either. Not like this.”
He looked up at me again — really looked this time — and for the first time, the distance in his eyes wasn’t about fear. It was about surrender.
“What do you want?” I asked.
The silence stretched. I held it.
And then—
Wes stepped forward.
One slow, deliberate step.
His hands didn’t move. His mouth didn’t twitch. His breath hitched just enough to count.
And then—
He kissed me.
TO BE CONTINUED…
