an armor-piercing question.

"So..." Kyle took another pull of beer. "Now that you've asked me a very personal question, I have one for you."
"Yessss...." Beth leaned close, squeezing his knee for balance.
"Why have you been throwing yourself at me all night?" He gave her a sidelong look.
"What?" she tried to play dumb, but beneath her fuzzy blanket of intoxication, her brain was screaming in terror. "I...I don't know what you mean...I'mm juss..."
"Come on, Beth. You didn't wear panties. You absolutely meant to flash me when you hit that shot. You're rubbing my arm and brushing up against me, squeezing my knee..." he swallowed. "I may have been in the service for a while, but I still know when a girl is flirting with me."
Beth tried to make words come, but her throat closed up, letting out only a squeak. He's right. Of course he's right, and of course that's what I've been doing... she could feel her stomach roil. She could taste that metallic, thick saliva in her mouth, the warning sign of....
"Hrrk...." she ran, scraping her bare leg painfully against the side of the bench. She barely made it to the garbage can in the corner of the patio before losing every ounce of liquid she had poured down her throat. To her surprise, Kyle was beside her in an instant, holding her hair and rubbing her back. She hurled a few more times before letting him half-carry her back to the bench. When he was satisfied that she wasn't going to puke again, he sat back, pouring out the rest of her vodka tonic and his beer.
"I...." Beth had to stop to suppress a hiccup that tasted vile. "I'm....sssrry...." despite emptying her stomach, she was still drunk. She couldn't seem to open her teeth, and so she had to speak through a clenched jaw. "I don't know what possessed me..."
"I didn't really peg you for the fooling around type."
{if Formation = 5
} You should have known me a few years ago....
{endif
}"I'm not... I'm really not. I'm... I don't know...." Slowly, haltingly, she spilled it out: her unhappiness with her current situation with Brian, his absence, his distance when he was around, her uncertainty about the kind of future they were going to have together. {if TomCry = 1
}Jesus, am I just going to spill my life's woes onto every guy I see today? {endif}
By the end of it all, Kyle had one of her hands in his. He was rubbing the back of it in a very soothing way. "I get it. I really do. You aren't wrong for feeling lonely, for feeling frustrated. I wish my brother was doing a better job of taking care of you."
"He IS taking care of me. That's the fucked up part of all this. He's trying to make partner so that we can have a good life together, without worries."
"You've got needs beyond material shit; it's not wrong to want them fulfilled."
"But that doesn't mean I can go trying to get filled by you..." she paused. That hadn't sounded...oh, fuck. "Get them fulfilled by you! Christ."
Kyle laughed. Damn, even his laugh is cute.