by Ace Gray
“I feel the same way,” he murmurs just before his hands move to his belt.
My eyes flutter shut, and I can’t breathe. I will likely self-combust if I watch his long fingers, moving just the way he moves, undoing his belt and pants.
But then I make myself open my eyes.
As tormenting as watching him might be, missing out on this moment would be even worse. His face is a reflection of mine. Worry creasing his brow but hunger lights his eyes. His movements are slower and more practiced than usual. His defined muscles tense and flex with each small shift. He’s all man but he’s even more James—vulnerable, too, like this—and this version makes my stomach flip.
“You’re beautiful, James.” My words slip out—my truth, my reassurance, my everything given just because I have to.
His eyes fall from mine, studying the pattern on my floor, but his smile spreads. And his fingers move. To his fly.
The slow descent of his zipper sends shivers down my spine. The rest of my body reacts. Something deep in my chest sparks a wild thrill. Then all too quickly, and not nearly quick enough, James Larrabee is naked in front of me.
His defined forearms and long fingers that always bewitched me were not kidding around.
But it’s that he’s hard—for me—that really is miraculous. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t pictured this moment, right here, right now, for far too long. Cold nights, lonely nights. When I was with Tanner and when I was alone. And when I hated myself for still thinking of him.
None of them lived up to this for the simple fact that this is real.
There’s a shyness and timidity to James’ movements as he bends down for my shorts. He doesn’t waver, the very distinct and deliberate way he moves is still his, but each small shift asks for my permission. My permission that I give with every look, every heartbeat, every fiber of my being. Even if I know this is the cliff I’ll never climb back up if I fall off.
He reaches for my button, that same shy hunger coloring his face as he focuses on my skin. My skin that slowly goes on display. I help shimmy out of my shorts and underwear; each little wrinkle of my comforter noticeable against my electrified skin. When the denim hits the floor, I’ve never been more naked to someone.
Wordlessly, his knees slide between my legs. I gasp at the contact and for a moment my hands ball into the comforter beneath me. But then he presses against me, the length of his body against mine, and my hands want nothing more than to touch him.
They skate up him arms, across his shoulders before one traces his collar bone. The other climbs his cheek, then my fingers tangle in the mess of his hair, the pad of my thumb skates the corner of his lower lip. Until he bites it.
When he lets go, he smiles a straightforward and disarming smile. Mine answers a moment before I arch up to kiss him. I can’t help it. I can’t wait anymore.
He meets me eagerly and settles his weight against me. I’m hyperaware of his erection pressing against me. Of how close we really are. Of how the smell of James and sex and sweat is a heady thing.
I’m not sure how long we make out, just that our lips tumble over each other over and over and over again. Our tongues learn the steps of an erotic tango that I know I was meant to dance. With him. I try not to add the word forever. I want to. Desperately. But even now, I know to hold that little piece of me back.
But I won’t hold back with my kisses. My caresses. My gentle exploration of his body. Of those muscles and skin I’ve always wanted to know.
“Do you have a condom?” he asks, breathy against my lips.
“You don’t?” I ask just before my lips seal back over his.
“I was furious with you a few hours ago.”
I pause, and my body tenses beneath him.
“I thought I was going to lose you. Again,” he clarifies as he takes my bottom lip between his teeth. “It’s enough to boil any man’s blood,” he finishes when he lets my lip go. “Condom, Mina?”
“Bathroom. Second drawer.” I barely get out the words. James has disarmed me, body and brain.
I vaguely register that he’s walking away. That I’m getting the perfect view of his long legs walking his walk and his ass on display. The all-consuming way I miss him overshadows everything. I want to fill my lungs with James, taste his flavor, subsist entirely on him, and that is a massive problem.
Before I can think of the consequences, he reappears framed in backlight from my bathroom. Some of the strands that have fallen from his loosely knotted hair frame his face as he bends to roll a condom down the length of him. The hands that I have studied for so long are doing something entirely new. Something so erotic, my eyes flutter shut as I throw my head back and thought leaves my brain completely.
I’m left with only the ability to feel.
Feel as he slides back onto bed. Up against my skin. His lips as they press to my breastbone. Then as he… I gulp. I squinch my eyes even tighter as my hands find purchase on his shoulders. Then the familiar and all too new pressure between my legs appears as he guides himself into me.
James groans. And if his voice has always been my own personal siren song, then that groan is my ruin.
I don’t know what my answering one sounds like. Or if I even make one. Just that it feels as good as I always hoped it would. Better.
Because it’s real.
Because maybe, this time, we are too.
“Is it wrong to say that we should have been doing that from the beginning?” James asks as he sprawls across my bed. “We’re better at that then a lot of other things.”
I can’t help but giggle as I pull my comforter up around my shoulders.
“No,” he says as he rolls over and kisses the cap of my shoulder. “I mean it, Mina. I hope you know what I’m trying to say to you.” He leans over me, nearly all of his long golden locks falling out of his messy knot.
I don’t answer as my hands drift to the rubber band, holding loosely, and tug. The shiny golden brown of his hair falls in a cascade around his face. His face that is so earnestly pleading with me.
“Well the second orgasm tipped me off that you like me.” I push my hand into his hair and gently comb my fingers through. “I think,” I add with a face.
“God yes. How many times do I have to tell you?” He shakes his head. “And I’m particularly fond of…” He lets his voice trail off as he whips the blanket back.
“James!” I shriek as I scramble to pin the blanket.
“So, you’re telling me you don’t want another orgasm?”
I don’t. Not really. Each one makes me cling to him a little tighter. Fall a little further. But each time he catches me. Says the right thing. Holds me the right way.
And those kisses…
He’s good at this, better than I thought he’d be. No one lives up to expectations but James… James has always studied and practiced. Researched even. Then his expansive breadth of knowledge was only put on display when he wanted.
Like now.
As I let go of the comforter, and he slides beneath and between my thighs, his mouth closes on the apex of my thighs.
“James,” I cry out. Tortured. Delighted. As his tongue traces my most sensitive bits.
“You’re going to have to yell a lot louder than that,” he murmurs against my thigh just before he sets back to work and makes me do just that.
Sun kisses my naked skin just above where I’m snuggled beneath the covers. I keep my eyes closed as I adjust the sheets and expose more of my skin.
But the sheets move too easy.
I know before I open my eyes. He’s not in my bed. My heart thumps against my chest, and I have to hold my breath so I can listen to the world around me. He has to be in the house. The bathroom, the kitchen. Just reading in the living room. I don’t care, as long as he’s here.
The only sound I hear is the whir of my internal spiral. The I knew it and I told you alternating in time with my rapid heartbeat.
It only takes one second for the tears to puddle
in the corner of my eyes and another three for them to start falling down my cheeks. The heat of the sun dries the tracks, but I keep crying, retracing the tracks on my cheeks and re-carving the cracks in my heart, one by one. I have not cried over James Larrabee since March 30th, 2018 but today, I let them all pour out.
His absence is like missing half of myself. The hurt left in his wake is by far my more constant companion but I was starting to hope. The throb still left between my legs reminds me that I had reason to.
Until this moment.
This moment where he dashed my hopes against the rocks and left me to drown.
I cry. Then cry some more. Until my ribs and shoulders hurt. Until I can’t breathe. Until I’m numb.
Until they stop because there isn’t a single tear left in my soul for James Larrabee.
When they finally stop, my body aches and the closest thing I can relate to is garbage, but I pry myself out of bed. I shove down that it’s the bed we shared over and over last night and strip the sheets instead.
My shorts are sitting in the middle of my bedroom floor, halfway to the door on the way to my laundry. Right where he left them when he…Stop! I scream inwardly, swooping down to get them and throw them in the wash too. Something has to get him out. Out of my sheets, out of my shorts. Out of my house, and out of my heart. Something…
One of my black leather-bound notebooks is sitting on the table. Next to the bowl of ashes from the letters I burnt. Both are screaming at me.
I drop the laundry into a heap, slide onto the bench at my table, and word vomit onto the page.
August 15th, 2020
Dear Broken Trust. Again.
I am angry with you. Furious. Seething. Beside myself. Beside myself, inside myself, and warped completely outside too.
I trusted you. With my body, mind, and soul. I thought that you deserved it this time. I thought you deserved me. So I gave you everything and got nothing—the nothing I always expected—in return.
You were blinding in your beauty last night. I saw a passionate man with his walls down in a way that I’d never seen you before. Your hair was tangled on my pillows, your hat thrown into the corner of my bedroom. Your chest rose and fell against my sheets, your clothes piled by the foot of my bed. Those silhouettes will haunt me, ghosts in their own right. Specters that remind me what I had and what was taken away.
No, what WALKED away.
That’s my move. My scared and shitty move. I didn’t think you’d do that. I didn’t think I deserved it but maybe…
Maybe this is all about getting even. I love you; you love me back. I hate you, and you hate me back. We’re just really bad at timing our bouts. They come at inconvenient times, when the other is fully immersed in the opposite.
I hate you today. I hate you for hurting me. For having my heart and shattering it. For owning my body and making me feel so good, so loved, so cherished that I imagined what it would be like to feel that way forever. To wake up with you.
To trust that I had you.
I am angry with you for taking my future away. One I didn’t know I could have a few weeks ago but hoped for with all the fibers of my being deep below each waking moment. One I wanted even when I wouldn’t admit it to myself.
Like I said, I am beside myself. You made me be honest about my feelings and my shortcomings. You made me face myself and now…
I am warped with anger and fury. And hurt. So much hurt. All over again.
What I wouldn’t give to walk away. Three years ago, a few weeks ago, yesterday. Any time really, so long as you were gone. Not like this morning, waking up smelling of you, joints unhinged by you, and heart flying because of you, gone but gone for good.
Gone forever.
It’s splattered with tearstains by the end, droplets spreading the ink in small splats. Purging the words doesn’t make me feel better this time. I still ache—my bones, my heart, my all. Whether I stare at the words and the patterns of my tears for one minute or one thousand, but eventually that old familiar feeling hits.
The one that I associate so perfectly with James Larrabee. Forward. It hurts, my steps always feel so heavy, and a breakdown is always just below the surface, but it’s trudge forward or let him destroy me completely. Since he’s already destroyed so much, I can’t let him have the last little bit too.
I shuffle back to my bedroom and close my eyes rather than look at my empty, naked bed. My body sags against the doorframe of my closet, my weight suddenly too much for me. I remember this feeling too. Like I’m my own burden. And maybe I am because I made all the shit decisions that got me here.
Without much thought or notice, I get dressed. Brush my teeth. It’s not until I leave the house that I idly wonder if I brushed my hair. What does it matter anyway?
I think about going to Courtney’s but what would I say? There aren’t any words right now. I know them all and I don’t want to hear them. My mistakes are clanging through my empty heart, they don’t need to echo through my head too.
So I drag myself forward.
I have to pick up my car and eventually go to work. My body revolts against the idea of going to Gold Mine where I parked—and at the idea of having to be a highly functioning adult later—but…forward.
My heavy sigh rattles my ribs and I try not to think about how each breath, each step feels like it might snap my skeleton in two. Instead I focus on the town as I walk its small blocks. On how the colors aren’t as bright as they were yesterday and the buildings blur together. I refuse to acknowledge why. Just on the pigment, on the dull of it all.
Until a little whap, whap, whap in the breeze catches my attention. A little whap, whap, whap that belongs to the piece of paper tucked into my windshield wiper.
The piece of paper with my name written on it in James’ handwriting.
My hand trembles as I reach for it. I stop halfway and ball my fist, ready to pull it back and shove it in my pocket and scrap the whole day.
But forward.
I grab it and brace for the I can’t. Don’t hate me, a la Burger in Sex and the City. At least that’s an end, right? A real answer. So I steady my hand the best I can and smooth the paper.
I will never forget last night.
What? I reread his six cramped words. Then again. Is that a I will never forget last night, thanks for the memories, get your car out of my parking lot? Or is it a that a I will never forget last night, let’s do it again?
No.
I stop myself from thinking such toxic thoughts. Ones that could give me hope. I crumple up the paper and shove it in my pocket then reach for my door.
“Were you going to leave without saying hi?”
That voice. That beautiful sultry Satanic voice.
“Yeah.” My voice is a little rough and broken.
“Well good thing I saw you,” he says as he wraps around me from behind, his arms around my stomach, his face cradled into the curve of my neck. He presses one kiss to my skin. “Did you get my note?”
“Yeah.” I have to shove the word out past the knot in my throat.
“Is it wrong to say that I can’t wait to do it again?” He presses his lips to the hollow behind my ear.
“Yeah.”
“What?” His arms drop away, and he stands up. My body misses him as soon as he steps away. But my head reminds me that he left. “What’s going on, Mina.” He steps around to face me, leaning against my hood.
“You left.” I wrap my hands around my middle, trying to hold something inside of me.
“I went to work, Mina. It’s a Tuesday.” His brow crinkles.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I throw my arms up.
He sighs and his hand wipes down his face. “Are we doing this again? Really?”
“Doing what?” My eyes fall to the dirt beneath my sandals.
“Having a fight about whether this means something.” He twists and stares at the hood of my car. The body I held, the muscles I explored last night show just the slightest bit benea
th his t-shirt as he leans onto his forearms and presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t wake you up because I had to be here at 6 a.m., and I had to go home and change so I didn’t show up in the same clothes I wore yesterday.”
“I would have walked you home,” I say weakly.
“We had sex until 4 in the morning,” he exclaims, and my eyes automatically dart around to see who heard. I’m surprised his don’t. “And when I woke up, I felt like trash, I wanted to call in sick and go back to bed, wake up in your arms, and do it all over again. But then I looked over at you—you’re gorgeous in the morning by the way—and thought about how I’m not going to let you down. Not again.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Mina. I’ve always been professional, but this job is a future. With you. I never wanted to, but I could fuck up before. Now I can’t.”
“You see a future?” I mumble.
“When you’re not being insane, yes. Unequivocally.”
“You know my feelings are valid.”
“Yeah, I do.” He reaches both hands for my cheeks and tilts my chin up so my eyes meet his. “But so are mine and I’m fighting really hard not to feel betrayed every single time you tell me you don’t trust me.”
I want to tell him I do but the bottom line is I don’t. It’s my bullshit that keeps me from it, but I make my mind up not to lie to him. Not anymore.
“I’m trying, James. I really am.” I turn into his palm and away from the icy blue of his eyes.
“I know. And each time we hit stuff like this, I realize just how much you loved me, just how much I hurt you. I promise I would take it back if I could.”
I let the silence settle between us as I turn back to search his eyes. They never tell me what he’s thinking but are always starkly honest and an unbelievable shade of ice blue.
“I’m sorry.”
“I hate it when you say sorry.” His thumb brushes across my cheekbone. “You always look as if the world is ending.”