Not Without You

by Watson, A. P.

  RY AND I ATE breakfast in silence, and for the rest of the day, we mostly kept to ourselves. While he worked on a paper for his Economic Analysis class, I brainstormed a central theme for the art show. I’d been running from my fears for far too long. Everything Ry and I had discussed yesterday was a step in the right direction, but there was so much more I needed to do.

  I was applying the advice I had received from him just last night. He thought the sketch I’d done to commemorate our last set of family photos should be my sole source of inspiration for the show.

  If everyone wanted me to create art that would evoke emotion from my audience, then I was going to deliver. Lord knows I had enough feelings surging through my body to get the job done.

  After our earlier conversation in his room, the proper thing to do would've been to keep my distance. Yet, here I was. Ry hadn't asked me to leave, and truthfully, I wanted to stay. Even if there was tension hovering in the air around us, I couldn’t resist the temptation to be near him. Spreading out on the floor of his living room, I laid out a couple different sketches. The theme I was going to portray was lost love. My plan was to specifically focus on Mom’s battle with cancer. I would paint different depictions from her life—like her diagnosis, chemotherapy, and hospice care. She would be rendered in various images, times of happiness and times of sorrow. The point was to show people the harsh reality of a terminal illness and how it could impact the loved ones who weren't sick. Because eventually, those loved ones would be left behind. Using Wren and Ry as part of the show would make the entire thing even more meaningful. It would shroud the entire display in shades of truth.

  Dragging the tip of a charcoal pencil in a downward arc, I began to outline my mother's jaw. I could draw her straight from memory. In all actuality, I could probably draw her with my eyes closed. She was the one who had given me my first sketchpad and set of charcoal pencils. Her continued gifts of paints and canvases were meant to be a distraction. Something to keep me from noticing how pale and thin she was or how nauseated the chemo made her. But at the end of the day, it had worked.

  I sketched until my skin was smudged with black and my fingers went numb. Creating was my release. It was a way for me to purge all the stress my body seemed to soak up like a sponge. Not to mention, it had made mom happy. She used to love watching me delve into my own realm of creativity. Her dream had been for me to pursue art.

  However, above all else, she had simply wanted me to be happy.

  And that was the reason I wished I could talk to her right now. I was at a crossroads in my life—I knew that beyond the shadow of a doubt. But everything happening between Ry and me—the things we were brave enough to say and the things we weren’t—only added to my confusion about the entire matter. Mom would know exactly what advice to give. The comfort her voice had provided was ingrained into my consciousness from the time I was in diapers. I’d give anything to be able to share my newest adventures with her. No matter what, she had always been there with a hug and a kiss. Even though Dad and I had a special connection of our own, Mom had been the glue holding everything together, and her absence would always be felt.

  My hand flitted across the paper. Her eyes stared up at me as I continued to recreate her face. To my left, I could sense Ry hovering just a foot away. He didn’t speak but, instead, moved in so close that his knee brushed my thigh as he sat next to me.

  “Did you finish your paper?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That didn’t take too long.”

  “It only has to be six pages. So, it was a rather short assignment.”

  I giggled at the vast differences in our school coursework.

  “What’s so amusing?” he questioned.

  “Your major requires you to write papers about economics and finance, and mine requires that I spend my afternoon covering myself in charcoal and paint.”

  He smiled, playfully knocking his shoulder into mine. “Are you trying to insinuate that your major is more fun than mine?”

  “I didn’t think there was anything to insinuate. It’s rather obvious.”

  “Economics can be just as exciting as painting.”

  My eyes rolled upward and most likely slipped into an alternate dimension for a few seconds. Did he even believe the BS spewing from his mouth? “That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Even economists would disagree with you.”

  He reached for the pencil I’d tucked away in my bun and removed it, causing my hair to tumble around my face. “Well, we can’t all have lives that are as exciting as yours.”

  “Sure you can. All you have to do is not pick a major that’s a fucking bore.”

  “Why do I put up with you, again?”

  “Because you can’t live without me.”

  His fingers intertwined with the long strands of my hair. “Thought Wren and I were the only ones who knew that,” he said with a grin.

  My heart, which had been racing, suddenly halted. “What?”

  “You always have that same expression in your eyes.”

  I was in a daze. Was he just going to gloss over a revelation of that magnitude like it was nothing?

  Or, perhaps, he was just joking. That seemed like a more plausible explanation.

  “What?” I asked my question a second time, because I was apparently the clueless one between the two of us.

  “Pretty sure I was loud enough for you to hear.”

  Pursing my lips together, I set down my charcoal pencil and turned to face him. “Is there something you’d like to say to me?”

  He continued combing his fingers through my hair as he fixed me with an intense gaze. “There are a lot of things I’d like to say to you. Doesn’t mean you’re ready to hear them, though.”

  Not content with his reply, I pulled my hair out of his grasp and piled it into another bun on top of my head. “Well, if you’re going to keep speaking to me in puzzles, then you might as well at least let me practice painting on you.”

  “Fine,” he replied, sighing heavily. “What do you need me to do?”

  I set aside the half-completed drawing of Mom and began pulling out all the tubes of paint I’d brought. “I’m going to be painting all over your skin, so just strip down to a pair of boxers. Preferably ones you don’t mind getting dirty.”

  “Right.”

  “Which reminds me,” I added, laying a couple brushes and my palette next to the paint, “do you have an older shirt I can wear? I don’t want to get paint on this sweater.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bring it to you.”

  While Ry was in his room, I headed to the kitchen and grabbed a couple of unused trash bags. Cutting down each of the seams, I opened up the bags and spread them out as a makeshift drop cloth. I’d just finished taping everything to the carpet when he returned.

  “Here.”

  “Thanks.” I accepted the white button-up and tugged my cream sweater over my head. Sliding my arms through the sleeves of his shirt, I shifted my attention to Ry.

  He stood before me, dressed in nothing but a tight pair of black boxers. My eyes followed every single hardened line of his body. The fact I was going to be painting his flesh in an attempt to transform him into a part of my show was almost laughable.

  The guy was already a work of art.

  “Do you just want me to stand over there?”

  I tied the ends of his shirt together so the garment wouldn’t hang off my body. “Yeah, that would be great.”

  Ry moved to stand in the center of his living room while I assembled an assortment of paints on my palette. Mixing a bit of white, black, and brown together, I blended the colors until I had the perfect shade of gray. My idea included painting chains all over Ry’s body. I wanted to depict how grounded his body and soul were to the physical world, just as my father was.

  Starting at his feet, I painted for what felt like hours. Chains climbed up his legs and waist, all the way to his shoulders. I’d never painted on skin before, but my goal
was to attain realism. I needed it to really appear as if Ry’s entire body was bound in chains.

  Dabbing a bit of white paint on my brush, I leaned toward him. A tiny highlight on the metal link would give it more dimension. Carefully, I dragged the bristles across his flesh. Having a steady hand was imperative for this type of work. Usually, I never faltered. But Ry’s shirt was enormous on me. Every time I tried to move, the sleeves slid over my wrists. In a huff of anger, I stepped away from my canvas and ripped off his shirt.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  I threw the button-up on the floor and stared at him, my brow furrowing in confusion. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Well, you just seem a bit irritated.”

  “The sleeves kept sliding down my arms and it was making it impossible to paint anything.”

  “Oh.”

  As idiotic as it sounds, it took me a second to realize that I now stood before Ry in nothing but a pair of jeans and a black bra. Not that he hadn’t seen me in my underwear before, but the tension existing between us had more than tripled in the time since we first met. “I’m painting on a three-dimensional medium. If I can’t reach every part of your body, there will be patches of unpainted skin breaking up the continuity of my concept,” I explained in exasperation.

  Resuming my seat on the floor, I continued highlighting the metal links covering Ry’s thigh. Silence beckoned to us from every corner of the apartment. Most of the time, we couldn’t go more than a few minutes without teasing one another, but tonight, it seemed we were both content not to speak. I wasn’t sure how long we had been silent. Hours? Minutes? Either way, the lack of sound had almost become deafening.

  More than once, I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came from it. Even if I did find the nerve to break the silence, would he even want to hear my thoughts?

  “I lied to you earlier,” Ry finally whispered after an eternity of quiet.

  “About what?” Focusing on my palette once more, I mixed a touch of blue into the gray paint I was using.

  “I remember every single word I said to you on Halloween.”

  Breath caught in my throat as I gazed up at him. “You do?” He nodded, his eyes never turning away from mine. “Then why did you—”

  “I want you to answer me one thing,” he began, interrupting me. “Do you believe in love?”

  “I do.”

  “You just don’t believe it’s possible for you to experience it?”

  “I can’t hand myself over to someone completely enough to allow myself to feel it.”

  “I see.”

  Shame overpowered every other emotion swirling inside my brain. I wished I was brave enough to lay my soul bare before him. My view of love had been forever tainted, but did he even realize how badly I desired redemption? If he alone held the key to my salvation, then running away would be an unforgiveable sin.

  “But part of me does believe I could hand myself over to you.”

  One sentence was all it took for me to throw caution to the wind. Blood rushed through my veins at the speed of a raging river. My revelation had the ability to change everything between us. Safety was an attractive alternative when the things you feared the most could bring the entire world crumbling around you.

  Kneeling in front of me, Ry eased the paintbrush and palette from my hands. “I know for a fact I could hand myself over to you.”

  Those blue irises, which had seen me at my best and my most vulnerable, seemed to bore right through me.

  Could he really hand himself over to me? No sooner than I had the thought, his lips caressed mine so softly that I feared everything that had just transpired was all an elaborate hallucination created by my mind.

  “And whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here,” he promised.

  When he stood, I realized there was nothing I wouldn’t give to live in that moment until the universe ended and time ceased to exist.

  My mouth parched as I tried to think of the right thing to say. He was waiting for me to be bold enough to take a chance on something we both wanted, and I didn’t want to let him down.

  Sixty seconds later, it was as if nothing had happened. Ry resumed his stoic pose, allowing me to finish my work.

  I blinked and missed my opportunity to say all the words hanging on the tip of my tongue. My hands reached for the palette, but I stopped myself. I’d been safe for far too long. Jumping to my feet, I stepped so close to him, nothing seeming to exist between us.

  “I’m tired of being scared,” I breathed. “I want to hand myself over to you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life.” His responding smile was the only encouragement I needed to release the ledge I’d been clutching . . . and fall. His hands found the small of my back as my fingers slid up the length of his arms, smearing the paint that covered his flesh. Excitement lit up my skin like electricity, and when the anticipation of kissing him became too overwhelming, my lips united with his.

  The kiss we shared set off a chain reaction inside our bodies. Desire exploded between us as our mouths moved in a decadent harmony, stealing the very breath from my lungs. But just kissing wasn’t going to be enough—it wasn’t even going to be close.

  Everywhere he touched me, he left trails of color in his wake. I gasped with delight as his tongue traveled along the side of my neck. Control over my body was no longer a possible notion. The only thing I was now capable of doing was responding to each movement Ry made. Tangling my fingers in his hair, I jerked his face toward mine. His lips consumed mine completely, and I never wanted him to stop. Opening my mouth, I reveled in the way he tasted.

  Strong hands grasped the curve of my hips and lifted me into the air. I wrapped my legs around Ry’s waist as he began carrying me toward the hallway. In a few steps, my back met with the wall. As I touched my toes to the ground and sighed, his hips rolled into me, pinning me in place.

  My lip caught between my teeth as I considered the pleasure those hips could create.

  “Ry.”

  “What?”

  “Take me to bed.”

  The grin covering his face informed me there was nothing else he’d rather do. “I’m going to do a hell of a lot more than that.”

  In the next breath, he scooped me up in his arms and sprinted toward his room. I squealed as we landed on his bed, our bodies entwined. Dipping my head so I could kiss him again, I decided his lips were the best thing I’d ever tasted. For so long, I had wondered what it would feel like to be with him like this. I yearned for him to discover every dip and curve of my flesh. And now that it was happening, I wanted more.

  So much more.

  Laying on my back, I watched as Ry bent before me. This time, when his tongue slid down my abdomen, the desire lacing his gaze wasn’t a ruse. This time, every lick and touch were real. My heart pounded with a newfound anticipation as he slowly removed my jeans. His mouth left a path of kisses up my legs. Unable to help myself, I squirmed beneath the pressure of his hands, craving more.

  “Please don’t stop,” I begged.

  “I’ve wanted you from the first time I heard you speak, so believe me when I say that I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.” His devious expression disappeared as his face settled between my legs. The warmth of his breath on my skin elicited a rush of excitement to overtake every conscious thought I had. My back arched off the bed as his lips kissed the lace covering my most tender flesh. Then, in one fluid movement, Ry slipped his fingers underneath the edges of my panties and removed the garment before tossing it to the side. “Now, there’s nothing to keep me from tasting you.”

  I moaned with delight the moment his tongue delivered on his promise. “Oh my God.”

  His tongue moved in slow, deliberate strokes, and when that sensation became too overwhelming, he pulled back.

  Drawing ragged breaths into my lungs, I stared up at him.

  “May I?” he asked, his fingertips tugging at my bra.
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  Returning his smile, I nodded. “Yes.”

  When all my clothes had been removed and my body was no longer hidden from him, Ry hovered over me, his eyes studying every curve.

  “I want to be completely honest with you,” he whispered, pressing his lips to mine. “I’ve thought about seeing you like this, dreamed about it even. But touching you and tasting you is even better than anything I’ve imagined.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  “Do you even realize how beautiful you are?”

  “You could always tell me again,” I teased, sitting up.

  “I know I’ve told you before, but you truly are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

  “So are you.” Winding my fingers into his hair, I pulled Ry closer. My lips brushed against the tip of his ear as I whispered, “And now, it’s my turn to look at you without any clothes on.”

  No sooner than the words left my mouth, he slithered out of my grasp and removed his boxers. Scanning him from head to toe, I made sure to admire every muscle.

  He ripped back the covers, revealing crisp sheets. A streak of gray covered the skin between my breasts. I waited while Ry ripped open a foil packet and sat on the bed. Tracing the tip of my finger through the smudges blanketing his flesh, I crawled onto his lap. Slowly, I lowered myself on top of him. He inhaled at the sudden contact, and my head rolled back as I relished the way he felt inside me. His hands guided my hips in a steady rhythm as we moved together.

  “God, you feel good,” he panted.

  “So do you.”

  I rocked back and forth as a wonderful sensation pumped through my being—from the ends of my hair to the tips of my fingers. Somewhere in the haze of desire we had been swept up in, his lips reclaimed mine, and I moaned into his mouth. The sensation of pleasure was all-consuming. Just as the feeling was about to be too overwhelming, his fingers curled into my thighs. Holding on to me tight, he flipped me on my back and pushed into me in a smooth, single movement. My nails dug into his flesh as I begged for him to keep going.

  More paint from his body smeared over my skin and marred his sheets that were as white as freshly fallen snow. His bedsheet served as a blank canvas, and with each movement, each stroke we made together, we left our story behind.