by Roan Parrish
I freeze. And yet, a warmth starts to bloom in my chest, melting the block of ice in my stomach. And apparently it melts it into tears, because I’m leaking again.
“You do?” I say, stupidly, which I know is not how this is supposed to go.
He shakes his head, like he can’t believe I don’t already know this.
“Yeah. Of course I do. How could I not?”
I throw my arms around his neck and cry into his hair. I have never cried like this in my life. Huge, surging gasps of tears that leave me feeling lighter instead of heavy, hopeful instead of desperate.
“I—I—” I start to say.
“Shh,” Rex says. “You don’t have to say it back. I know it’s hard for you and—”
What I was trying to say is that I know I’m messing this all up. But I don’t need to. Because Rex is holding me close and making the kind of promises that I could never have known how to believe before now.
He leans back, lying down slowly and taking me with him. He pulls the covers over us, enveloping us.
I feel like a washcloth that’s been wrung out, so drained I can hardly do anything except attempt to move every part of my body as close to Rex’s as possible.
“Oh god, I fucking love you,” I choke out into Rex’s neck, and I can feel his whole body electrify. “I do,” I mutter.
Saying the words makes my world tilt to the side.
Saying the words is the greatest jolt I’ve ever had.
Rex’s arms come around me and pull me down so I’m lying on top of him and he holds me like he’s never going to let me go.
16
Chapter 16
December
The next morning, I wake up in Rex’s arms feeling like days have passed. I feel floaty and spacey from crying, a sensation I’d forgotten since I last had it after my mom died. My eyes feel swollen, lashes stuck together with salt and gunk, and my head is muddled. I feel like a soft, cringing snail whose shell has been pried off. But instead of getting out of bed to shower it all away, I force myself to close my eyes and not freak out.
I name the sounds I can hear. Birds. Are the birds in the winter different? I wish I knew something about birds. The wind blowing through the pine trees just beyond the house. A sound that might be snow, but I can’t tell. The hum of the generator. Rex’s breathing. Then I move on to smells. My nose is a little stuffed up from crying and sleeping, but everything smells like Rex’s house. Homey.
Before I make it to breaking down the individual smells, though, Rex stirs next to me and I have to open my eyes to look at him. He’s so beautiful I still can’t believe that I could just reach over and touch him if I wanted to.
I don’t understand the way I feel. It’s no different than yesterday, but everything’s changed. I don’t know what kind of tether love is between us. The man lying next to me… all of his… stuff. Not belongings, but thoughts, feelings, history. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. Am I responsible for it and he for mine? Does love imply a promise of some kind? These are things I feel like I should know, but I just… don’t.
“Hey,” Rex says, and I feel like a bit of a creep for staring at him while he sleeps.
“Hey.” There’s so much I want to say to him, but I’m not sure how to start. “Um,” I say. “Do you think it’s snowing?”
“Yeah,” Rex says after listening for a moment. “I think we’re supposed to get a few inches today.” I stare absently at the window for a minute even though the shade is closed.
“Daniel.” Rex’s warm hand lands on my shoulder. I realize I’m still wearing my clothes from yesterday, though Rex must have stripped sometime in the night because he’s in his underwear. “Last night,” he continues. “I meant what I said.” He seems a little anxious, as if I’m going to claim not to remember anything, but he looks right at me.
“Me too,” I say, but I have to look away. I don’t know why I feel so embarrassed, but I do. I fiddle with the edge of the blanket, telling myself that if you love someone, you should probably be able to sustain eye contact with them, but I feel so shy.
“Can you look at me, please?” Rex says, tenderly but with the hint of an order.
I look at him, my heart racing.
“I love you,” he says, and somehow it doesn’t sound like a grenade of found language the way it always does when I hear other people lob it at each other casually. Loveyou, as they hang up the phone; Loveyou, when they’re running out the door. Loveyou, as they race to class, already texting someone else.
No, it sounds like something Rex has made up just now to try and tell me something real.
“I love you too,” I tell him, trying to make the words real also. “I really do,” I add, feeling like my delivery was lacking. I sounded terrified, tentative.
“I believe you,” Rex says, smiling at me. “Come here.” He scooches up to lean on his pillow and pulls me down on top of him. His kiss is sweet and slow and doesn’t demand anything in return.
“I just… I….” I mumble against his mouth.
“What?” Rex asks, stroking my cheekbones. His eyes are so warm, and I remember him telling me he’d do anything for me. I remember him telling me there is no right way to act in a relationship. I remember thinking that those things were easy for him to say, but I couldn’t comprehend them. But maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth all along.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I confess softly, running my fingers over his straight nose and down the dip of his upper lip. “I don’t know what… it means to… I mean, I do love you,” I insist, fingers scritching over his stubble. “But what if we don’t mean the same thing when we say that? We can’t mean the same thing, can we? No one ever really knows what anyone else means when they say those things, you know? So, maybe you say it and you mean this one thing that means you expect something and I say it and I don’t know you expect that so I don’t do it and then you think I don’t really mean it, only I do, but maybe it just means something different and—”
Rex puts two fingers over my mouth. I’m breathing shallowly, but he’s smiling, serene.
“Do you want to know one of the things I love about you?” he asks.
“I, uh, yes?”
“You’re so brave.”
“Huh?”
“All this stuff about meaning and never really understanding each other—that’s big words stuff.”
“Big words?”
“You know, philosophers and theories and all the smart stuff you read. Big words stuff. But you really believe it. Hell, you’re probably right. We might not mean the same thing when we say love. But you’re brave because you said it anyway.”
“I….” I don’t know what to say to that.
“But you started to say ‘I don’t know what it means to.’ What were you going to say?”
Oh Jesus, he really did learn from Ginger.
“Just what I said: like, I don’t know what you mean when you say love, and you don’t know what I mean, and—”
“That’s not what you were going to say.”
I drop my eyes to the blanket and shake my head, tracing the plaid with a trembling finger.
“Say it, baby.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“I don’t know… what it means… to have someone love me. And I know how I feel about you, but… I don’t know how to act about it.”
Rex kisses my closed eyes.
“I know,” he says softly.
“Sorry,” I murmur. He deserves so much better.
“No,” he says. “We’ll just figure it out. Together. Can’t say I’m such an expert either.”
I open my eyes and look at him. I know he loved his mom. I know he must have loved Jamie. And Will? I’m not sure.
“No?” I say.
“No.”
He kisses me and I stare at him. Can it really be this easy? Can you really just love someone and go about your daily business? How do you hold it all inside?
“What are you thinking about so
hard?” Rex asks.
And maybe that’s the point. Maybe the point of I love you is that it is a tether. A connection so you can find your way back to someone even when shit seems huge and unmanageable on your own. A promise to help just because you care about someone, a promise to help that doesn’t mean pulling away.
There’s a little warm flame above my stomach but below my throat. It’s been there for a while, I think, but I didn’t notice. Everything with my dad and Philly and Colin and the Temple job got in the way, so I forgot about it. But last night, it roared back to life. Okay, so maybe I don’t know how to do this. But I can learn. I didn’t know how to be a student once, either, but I learned. I didn’t know how to teach, but I learned. I dug in and watched other people and I learned. Not just how to do it, but how to do it well. And I can learn this too.
I smile at Rex.
“I was just a little scared,” I admit. “But I’m okay, I think.”
He cocks his head a little, but he seems to get that I’m just working shit out.
“See?” he says. “Brave.”
I push him back into the pillows and kiss him. There’s a type of joy bubbling under my skin that I’ve never felt before. It’s light and hopeful and a little cautious, but it’s there.
We kiss for what feels like hours, mouths meeting and parting exquisitely, tongues tangling together passionately, then turning sweet. We just kiss and, after a while, every touch of Rex’s mouth is like a touch to my whole body. I feel electrified, so shaky with warm pleasure that I can’t imagine what I would do if Rex stopped kissing me.
He manages to get my clothes and his underwear off while barely breaking the kiss. My hands move over his face, his neck, and down to his broad shoulders and strong arms. I’m on top of him, but I feel weightless, like his touch is the only thing anchoring me to the bed, the room, the earth.
I’m dizzy and my mouth feels swollen when Rex finally pulls away. His eyes are sleepy with pleasure and his mouth is puffy. When he backs off, I can feel how raw my mouth and chin are from his stubble. Not distracted by his kisses anymore, I can also feel that we’re both rock hard, our erections caught between us.
I wrap my arms around Rex’s shoulders and kiss his throat and I can feel his cock jerk against my stomach. I push Rex’s thighs open on the bed and grind my hips into his. He groans, brokenly, and his arms come around me.
Flipping us like my hold on him was nothing, he pushes me into the bed, breathing hard. He shakes his head, as if to clear it, and leans down, hovering over me, and kisses me once more, just a press of swollen mouths.
“I love you, Daniel,” he says. “I love you and I want you so bad.”
His words send a wash of heat through my chest and a pulse of arousal through my groin. My hips strain upward to meet his, but he slides down the bed and rolls my hips up off the blanket, slinging my legs over his shoulders in one effortless motion.
“Fuck, I want you,” he says, and then his mouth is on me. He licks my straining hardness from base to tip and I can feel his moan against my skin. When his mouth closes around me it’s like I’m suspended in a bubble of pleasure so exquisite I can’t move for fear it will pop. He holds me in his mouth and swallows around the tip of my erection and I cry out, writhing on the bed.
Rex rolls my hips farther back, exposing my ass to his mouth, and he licks into me.
“Oh fuck,” I cry, the sensation so sudden that at first I try to get away.
But Rex’s grip on my hips, his big hands spreading me open, are undeniable.
He relaxes my clenching opening with his soft tongue, and it’s a sensation I’ll never get used to. How can something so soft feel this powerfully good? I’m totally helpless under his touch, my breath coming in gasps as he opens me and slides his tongue inside.
“Oh god. Rex,” I moan. I fumble in the drawer for the lube and pass it down to him, but he ignores it. He just keeps licking and sucking at my sensitive opening until my cock is leaking a constant stream of precome and I’m breathing so fast I’m dizzy.
When he finally draws back with one final, slow lick over my hole, I whimper and let out a breath, my hands fisting in the blanket because I don’t even have the strength to lift them to Rex’s hair.
“Unngh,” I say, which means No one has ever made me feel like you do. Rex kisses up my stomach, licking the precome that’s pooled there, and then he bites gently at my nipples. He kisses my throat and my jaw under my ear and I mean to return the favor, but my body is so lost in confused pleasure that I actually can’t move.
“What are you doing to me?” I manage to whisper, and when Rex kisses my mouth softly, I can taste myself on his lips, dusky and warm.
“Just loving you,” he says softly. He kisses the corners of my mouth and my eyebrows and then his slick fingers are at my opening.
He slides two fingers inside me and my eyes roll back at the jolt of pleasure his fingers send through my ass. Rex groans low in his throat and watches my face. He strokes me from the inside, curling his fingers over my prostate lightly so the pleasure flushes through me but doesn’t overwhelm. He leaves his fingers there, moving gently inside me, just exploring with no urgency. As if he has all the time in the world.
This building pleasure has ratcheted up so slowly that when it catches up to me I feel torn apart by sensation. Rex’s fingers inside me, his muscular bulk hovering over me, the heaviness of his thick cock against my hip, and his mouth a breath away from mine.
His attention is so complete that I feel like, for just a moment, I’m seeing myself through his eyes, my body shaking with pleasure laid out before him, my lips trembling for his next kiss, my eyes wide and desperate. I’m pinned by his gaze, his body, his fingers inside me, and the love I can feel in his every touch.
Rex slides a third finger inside me, still just resting there, filling me up, stretching me with nothing but slow, gentle strokes, like seaweed inside me, undulating with an errant wave.
My eyes fill with tears. I’m not sad, just overwhelmed, full to the brim with his body and his attention and his love.
“You feel so good,” I say softly as he kisses away my tears. He slides even closer to me, the fingers inside me reaching deeper. His voice is a low, resonant growl.
“From the first moment I saw you, this is all I’ve been able to think about,” he says, eyes never leaving my face. “Being inside you in every way possible.”
I cry out at his words, my eyes squeezing shut as he pulses his finger against my prostate and my ass throbs with pleasure.
“Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod,” I’m muttering, barely aware I’m making a sound at all. “Please!”
“You want me inside of you, baby?” Rex growls, voice hot and possessive and just for me.
“Yes!” I’m shaking, my ass quivering and clenching around Rex’s thick fingers.
He teases my rim with his thumb and my opening spasms.
“Are you sure?” he asks, teasing edging into his voice. “I could bring you off this way, put my hand inside you and just stay here, like this.” He kisses me gently, almost a tease of lips. My whole body clenches at his words and my eyes go wide.
“You like that idea,” he says. “Being so full of me you can’t move. Just lie there and feel my fingers moving inside you.”
“Oh god.” I can’t even think. But I want Rex’s pleasure too. Want to see him come, smell it, feel it inside me. I shake my head a little.
“Later,” he says, and I nod frantically. “Right now I need to be inside you.” I can feel his erection, huge against my hip.
I hear the click of the lube, but I’m floating, my eyes on Rex’s. When he eases his fingers out of me, I cry out at the loss, and Rex kisses me, his mouth consuming mine as he pushes inside me.
I gasp into Rex’s mouth and he groans, burying his face in my neck. I can feel him trembling against me, and his hardness spreads me open so completely that my legs fall apart and I throw my head back.
“Oh, baby,” Rex says. He t
akes my ass in his hands and eases my hips back farther, then he readjusts his angle and thrusts the last bit into me. He feels deeper than he’s ever been, like he’s touching something inside of me that has never been touched before.
Eyes on mine, he pulls out and thrusts back in again, slowly, and the skin and muscle he so sensitized earlier tingles with delight. I’m caught, already on the edge, as if any movement of Rex’s might send me spiraling over. Rex is moving so slowly that I almost can’t tell when he’s pushing into me and when he’s sliding out. With my hips held off the bed, I’m totally at his mercy, my cock pulsing against my stomach with pleasure.
“Please,” I gasp into Rex’s mouth.
He pulls out and slams back inside me, nailing my prostate and causing my whole body to clench up in pleasure. He fucks me deep and hard, pulling my shoulders down to amplify his thrusts. I know I’m whimpering and babbling and I don’t care because he feels so good. He’s watching my every reaction and on his next thrust, he holds himself inside of me and pulls my hips down, penetrating me even deeper. I can feel the thickness of him pulsing inside me and pressing into my prostate, and as he holds me locked to him, he starts to move his hips, pushing impossibly deeper with tiny thrusts.
I can’t move away from this deeper penetration and I can’t control it. My mouth falls open and Rex licks my lips. He pulls my shoulders up, lifting me even closer into him, so my weight pushes him even deeper inside me.
“I can’t—” I say. “I need—” Rex kisses me hard and thrusts up into me. My insides are liquid, but his erection feels huge, so deep inside me I feel like we’re one. Rex cups my face in his hands as he kisses me and I wrap my arms around his neck.
“I love you,” Rex murmurs, “I love you.” He kisses me and lays me back down on the bed. I can’t think anymore. The whole world has narrowed to Rex. I try to say that I love him, but it comes out garbled, a mash of I and love and you that makes Rex smile.
“Keep your eyes on me,” he says, and he pulls out of me slowly, my muscles clenching and spasming around the emptiness he’s left behind. I feel bereft and I cry out, hating the sudden loss of him. He slides four fingers inside me, the fullness huge, but different, and presses on my prostate.