1:13
by Eric Ross
Copyright© 2026 by Eric Ross
Fiction Story: At 1:13 a.m., he sent the message he never meant to send—no meme, no joke, just a confession. By morning she’s read every word. On a borrowed couch in thin daylight, years of almost rupture into something neither of them can laugh off. There are no clean exits left, no undo button—only heat, breath, and a decision to be made.
Caution: This Fiction Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Heterosexual Petting AI Generated .
Her laugh is wrong.
Too bright. Too clean.
Like the night never happened. Like 1:13 never existed. Like the blue glare of his phone didn’t burn into his eyes while the room went quiet around him. Like the whoosh of the message didn’t split the dark open.
He hasn’t breathed properly since.
“Look at this stupid meme you sent me last night. You were clearly drunk.”
Meme.
His stomach drops so fast the borrowed rug seems to tilt under him. Not a meme. Not even close. It was 1:13 a.m., the room dark, the wine sharp on his tongue, the truth louder than it had ever been. He’d typed her name and kept going.
I think about your mouth.
I think about your legs wrapped around me on this couch.
I think about the sound you make when you fall asleep—
and how I want to be the reason you make something different.
He had watched the message whoosh away. Frozen. Whispered oh God into the dark. Turned the phone face down. The message stayed sent.
Now it’s in her hand.
Sunlight presses through the windows. Dust floats in it. Coffee cooling on the table. Someone else’s laundry detergent in the air. Everything ordinary. Everything wrong.
“I saw the notification this morning,” she says.
Not laughing now.
Her voice is lower. Controlled.
“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
Waiting.
He feels fourteen and forty at once. Idiot. Coward. Exposed animal.
“It was the wine,” he says too quickly.
“It didn’t read like wine.”
Her eyes don’t blink.
The refrigerator hums in the kitchen. A car passes outside. The world still turning.
“You wrote that you think about me when you’re lying in bed next to someone else.”
His lungs forget what they’re for.
He did write that. He wrote about leaving rooms because he didn’t trust himself. About the night she fell asleep on him and he stared at the ceiling until dawn because if he moved he would have crossed something permanent.
“Yes.”
The word scrapes on the way out.
“You wrote that you’ve wanted to kiss me since that night.”
Flash—her head on his chest. Her breath warm. His hand hovering inches above her waist, trembling.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t delete it.”
The floor shifts.
“I read it before I got out of bed. I read it while the coffee brewed. I read it just now.”
Each repetition tightens something in him.
“Why?” he asks, voice cracking.
She shifts closer. The couch dips. Their knees press fully together now.
“Because I needed to know if I imagined it.”
“Imagined what?”
“The way you look at me.”
He almost laughs. It breaks instead.
“You look at me like you’re bracing yourself.”
That hits.
Her hand lifts. Touches his jaw. Intentional.
The contact detonates through him—chest, throat, lower—everywhere at once.
“You’re always halfway out the door,” she says softly. “Even when you’re sitting right next to me.”
“I was trying not to ruin it.”
“Ruin what?”
Us hangs in the space between them.
“You wrote about imagining what I’d sound like,” she murmurs.
Heat floods him—sharp, metallic, the taste of panic.
He nods.
“You don’t get to pretend that’s an accident.”
Her thumb brushes the corner of his mouth.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
He always offers exits.
She shakes her head.
“I’m tired of you leaving rooms.”
That lands. Sharp. True.
He leans in anyway.
His mind fractures mid-movement—her laugh at nineteen, her tears at twenty-three, airport goodbyes, the thousand times he swallowed it.
His mouth hovers inches from hers.
If this ruins everything—
Her lips part. Slightly. Tremor.
Invitation.
He kisses her.
Not careful. Not polished. It’s unsteady because he is. Years of almost collapsing into one reckless second.
She inhales sharply.
Then she kisses him back.
Certain.
Her fingers slide into his hair like they’ve been waiting. She pulls him closer and the contact is real—warm, electric, devastating because it isn’t imagined anymore.
His hands find her waist. Not friendly. Not safe. Real.
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