The Other Fish in the Sea (Grab Your Pole, #2)
Page 29
Roughly fifteen minutes before midnight our gang minus Tristan was in the hot tub which had turned bubble bath again, with a handful of other well-prepared and not-so well-prepared kids (some brought suits and a few others chose to forget they were fully dressed). Tristan was over talking to Wayne and a couple of stoners—Tristan is not getting high however—when Pete, who’s in an exceptionally great mood tonight, rolled a cooler filled with ice and bottles of bubbly over to the edge and hopped into the Jacuzzi to join us. I was kind of surprised when he handed those of us who make up our little group our own individual bottles of Dom Perignon with little decorated and laminated name tags tied to the neck.
“Hey! What about everyone else?” A girl named Jasmine asked, feigning hurt that she and the other kids sitting in the hot tub hadn’t been singled out for special treatment like the rest of us.
“I brought a couple of spares, but you’ll have to share…everyone else will have to fend for themselves,” Pete responded with an unconcerned air and waved a hand in no general direction indicating everyone not in the Jacuzzi. Then he looked around and having mathed it out, Pete realized Tristan wasn’t present so he whistled with his fingers for him to join us.
Tristan was pulling his long-sleeved, black Henley off while walking towards us when Wayne called back out to him and said something like “It looks fuckin’ awesome.” Now shirtless—just how I like him—and only clothed in swim trunks, Tristan turned around to say something in return and that’s when we all saw “it.” Right there on his left shoulder blade.
In all its black, permanent glory.
“Dude! Lemme see that,” Jeff said (said, slurred…whatever) as Tristan, having grabbed his personal bottle from the cooler, walked into the hot tub and sat down on a step, keeping most of the upper half of his body completely out of the water. “Jesus Christ, that’s not fuckin’ Sharpie, is it?” Jeff asked, inspecting his best friend’s shoulder.
Everyone in and around the Jacuzzi was now staring at Tristan. Everyone except Jillian, Jeff, Kate, Pete and Melissa. They were staring at me. As was Tristan.
He gave me one of the most deliciously wicked grins I’ve ever seen him wear and I’m pretty sure my mouth was hanging open like it was when my dad asked him to move in when he answered, “Nope. It’s not fuckin’ Sharpie.”
I didn’t know what to say so I did the only thing I could think of in response to him having literally tattooed our contract on his body. I waded up to him and kissed him. Fiercely.
After our lips separated, I learned he’d gotten it on Christmas Eve as a present to himself. At least that’s what he said to everyone when he was asked, but I think it was more of a non-verbal declaration to me because he went straight from my house after that deeply intimate moment we shared to the tattoo parlor that Wayne’s older brother owns and had him do it. That’s also how he got around having to be eighteen to have it done.
He has to keep it out of chemically treated water for a bit, so that’ll be rough on him, but I had dried my hands so I could get a better look at it and found that it’s very similar to the one he’d drawn on me originally, with all our contract points and flames rising out of the baseball diamond and stuff. Although there were a couple of additions, like ocean waves at the bottom and sides of the diamond and some dates hidden in the flames and waves. One being the first day he saw me over the summer at the beach, the second being when he asked me out and the first time we kissed, another was our first date when we adopted Phineas and Ferb, and the fourth being Halloween, which we both acknowledge as our “official” anniversary. I LOVE IT! Seriously, it’s freaking hot and a total turn-on! Not that Tristan needs any additional help in that department, I’m just sayin’… OMG, H-O-T!
“My want one,” I told him in my itty-bitty kitty baby speak.
“Uh, if you keep talking like a two-year-old then yeah, no,” Tristan answered over his shoulder, chuckling at me.
“Okay fine, I want one. Is that better?” I asked with a little sarcasm and crawled around to sit in front of him in the steaming water so the winter air wouldn’t turn me into a popsicle.
“Mm-hm…much better. You really want one?” He asked from behind me after having wrapped his arms around me and given the spot where my neck meets my shoulders a kiss that made me feel like I was being electrocuted.
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled and then found my words again to say, “Yeah, I really do.” I’m also thinking I might like a kite with a key attached to the tail floating somewhere to represent the electricity between us, but that could be considered a wee bit cheesy.
“Alright, when do you wanna do it?”
He laughed at me when I said, “NOW,” but we ended up deciding to see if Gary, Wayne’s brother, would be up for it tomorrow and if not, then probably Monday or Tuesday after school. We could wait until my parents are gone, but I want it now. I’m actually a little peeved he did it without telling me because I could’ve had it a week ago. Well, I was still under house arrest then, but still. And yes, I’ll probably welcome a baby heifer as a sibling when my parents have a cow, but I don’t care. I’m thinking by the time they actually have a chance to see it, I’ll have worked up the nerve to be truly rebellious and defiant.
Before we knew it, the countdown to midnight had begun and I kind of felt bad for Melissa because Brandon was still playing so she wouldn’t get to kiss him. She was, however, kissed. All the girls in the hot tub aside from me were…by the same guy.
I actually didn’t even get my New Year’s Midnight Kiss. Here’s why:
Everyone in the Jacuzzi was flabbergasted and forgot to kiss their significant other, if they had one present that is, when as soon as everyone shouted “Happy New Year,” Pete took Jillian’s head in his hands and planted a this-time-not-so platonic kiss on her and then again, he turned and did the same thing to the girl sitting on the other side of him…and it went on like that with the six or so girls in the water.
I’m thinking Pete has been seriously enjoying his own party and I was absolutely dying with laughter when right after he’d kissed Melissa, there was some feedback from where the band was playing an electric version of “Auld Lang Syne” and then Brandon’s voice was heard saying, “Pete, you kiss my goddamned girlfriend again and I’ll be makin’ a fuckin’ bonfire…oh, happy fuckin’ new year, you dick, you too, Sexy.” Neither the band nor Brandon ever stopped playing during his impromptu announcement which made it just that much funnier.
It got even harder to breathe when Pete came to me.
“And happy New Ye—oh…no kiss for you, high-five?” He asked jovially. I answered by raising my hand and laughing my ass off at him. Then Pete set his sights on Tristan. “Come here, big guy, your wait is finally at an end…”
Tristan stopped laughing to gasp “oh shit” and immediately took flight. Hysterically, Pete gave chase for a few minutes, saying stuff about biting Tristan on the scruff of the neck, until Tristan was able to procure the key to the guest house in which he locked himself while waiting for Pete to give up. Tristan was watching through the window, but before Pete left him alone, he went up and kissed the glass right in front of where Tristan was laughing inside. Everyone, including Jillian who’d recovered fairly quickly from her unexpected kiss, was practically crying and I think Jeff was in danger of drowning because he was laughing so freaking hard at the spectacle the two of them made, that he kept slipping down in the water only to have to push himself upright again.
Shortly thereafter, Jeff and Kate stumbled into the guest house and passed out together. Tristan and I joined them a couple hours later, but, we didn’t pass out.
I was sober…
19.
Champagne Kisses & Tattoo Dreams
I was starting to turn into a prune so Tristan went into the guest house to fetch me a towel and thus having been wrapped up all snug, but being pretty much done with group celebrating, he and I adjourned to our room. I was very pleasantly surprised when I found that while he was retrieving a blanket
sized piece of cushy terry cloth for me, he’d turned the fireplace on, so not only was the room nice and warm, but it was also highly conducive to quality togetherness. Not that either of us are thinking tonight’s the night, seeing as how he’s consumed a moderate amount of alcohol and everything, but the idea of making-out in front of a fireplace is pretty damned exciting to me.
“They’re totally gon— Baby, what are you doing?” Tristan asked, seeing me struggling with the bottle in my lap.
He’d just come back from checking on Jeff and Kate and I was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace with my towel still wrapped around me while trying to open my bottle of champagne that I never got to drink at midnight. After the novelty of Pete chasing Tristan around wore off, everyone except me popped their corks. I was all set to, but I suddenly remembered the last time I drank champagne in Pete’s hot tub and thought better of it. But damn it, I wanna know what one hundred-some-odd dollar champagne tastes like!
“I’m trying to open this damned bottle…” I grumbled, still trying to push the cork up with my thumbs.
“Oh, here…I’ll do it.” He took the bottle from me but right before he uncorked it, he actually looked at it and that’s when it dawned on him. “Baby, this is the bottle Pete gave you.”
“Yeah, I know. I didn’t wanna drink it in the Jacuzzi because, well…you remember the last time I drank in a Jacuzzi, I puked on that poor dog and had that horrific hangover…I just didn’t wanna risk it again.”
He looked at the bottle and then at me for a moment, and then it clicked. “You’re sober?”
“Stone cold,” I told him, trying to keep from giggling at the incredulousness in Tristan’s tone and expression. I mean really, it’s not like he’s never been around me when I haven’t been drinking and he knows I’m not a lush, so his surprise is amusing to me.
“Then I’m not fuckin’ opening this,” he informed me like he thought I was insane for wanting it and plunked the bottle down on the dresser.
“Wh—why not? It’s mine and I wanna drink it! I didn’t get a New Year’s kiss and I didn’t get New Year’s champagne, so I want it now, damn it!” I told him, getting a kind of steamed at his refusal of letting me have what I want. Yeah I know, I’m being a whiney brat again, but this time I don’t have alcohol to bla—OH.
Even with only the firelight to see, I could tell his eyes were already deep, dark pools of arousal that instantly incited a different kind of fire to spark around us, and as he made his way over to me, I was wondering if this is what it feels like to spontaneously combust.
“Baby, I’m really…very sorry…about you…missing out…on all that…but…I’ll make it…up to you…if you’ll stay…sober…for a little bit…longer…” Tristan promised me through a veritable onslaught of incandescent kisses, leaving me breathless and no longer able to remember what it was I’d missed out on.
Some time later, and I’m not sure what I did or said, I think I might’ve gone still, but whatever it was, he stopped short of removing my bikini bottoms and continued kissing my body when he sort of asked for permission to get me one hundred percent naked.
“Do you want me to stop?”
My mind was racing for more than one reason but realizing what he was, in fact, intending, I answered honestly, “I’m not gonna reciprocate.”
“Baby, I’m not asking you to.”
“And I don’t think I’m quite ready for you to round thir—”
“Camie, I’m drunk, but I’m still sober enough to stay on base, so, your call…do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
I heard and felt his low chuckle before he said in a voice so intensely steeped in desire that it had me thinking his eyes must be so dark they might even look black, “Happy New Year, Baby.”
I lost all thought completely when I felt his hot breath and his lips whisper over the inside of my thighs as he let loose the pyromaniac that simmers just below the surface of his otherwise composed and self-possessed mien, igniting my entire body in an ardently fervent blaze.
Um, I’m not gonna go into any more detail here, but let me just say OH OH OHMYGOD!!! That’s all I’m sayin’…
As conscious thought began to make itself known to me again and Exile’s “I Want To Kiss You All Over” finished playing in my mind, I was thinking about how much I enjoy Tristan doing things he’s good at when it occurred to me that he was almost panting and using my stomach as a pillow for his forehead, and I had my fingernails practically embedded in his biceps.
“In my next life, I wanna come back as a pig,” I managed to say, barely audible, but I managed all the same, and I let go of the death-grip I had on him.
He barked out a distinctly strained laugh and said, “I’d be all for that, but Baby, I don’t think I’d survive it…Jesus Christ, you’re uh…spirited.”
I was sort of contemplating speech again (truthfully, making words come out of my mouth right now is taking a lot of effort) when Tristan started to get up, which really disturbed me for some reason and provoked my desperate whispered plea and me to hold onto his arms again.
“Don’t go. Please.”
He let out a sigh that sounded like he was irritated and said, “I have to.”
“Why? Are you mad or—”
“Oh God, Camie, no, I’m not even remotely mad,” he told me softly while hovering over me on his hands and knees so that I could see his face which more than confirmed his words.
“Then wh—”
“Because I am going to ex-plode, so I’m gonna go take a quick shower. Unless…you um, wanna give me a hand and help me out…”
This time I know I became still.
See, the thing is, in all the seriously hot make-out sessions we’ve had, I’ve never touched him. Oh and for the sake of aesthetics, that’s how I’m going to refer to his penis. I have no problem saying the word whatsoever, but it’s just not a very dulcet or mellifluous one. Anyway, the closest I ever got was that time at Mike’s when he took my hand with the intention of having me touch him and that was when I mentally freaked and threw us into another volley of arguing. And even though he’s never brought it up or done anything like that again, I know it bothers him more than a little bit that I don’t go there. So that’s why it was very easy to pick up on his heavily veiled disheartenment when I turned into a piece of petrified rock.
With the release of a quiet breath that I think he’d been holding and eyes that wouldn’t meet mine, Tristan gave me a swift kiss on the cheek and in a more upbeat manner than I knew he felt, he said, “I’ll be back in like two minutes.” And then he got up and left me laying alone in front of the fire.
I spent the very short period of time while he was gone trying to understand what it is about touching him that freaks me out so much. All I came up with is that it’s more of me not knowing what to do and being afraid of looking like an idiot. Also, I think I’d prefer to learn how to have actual sex before I learn how to give a hand job, or any other kind of job for that matter, but that’s just me.
“You melting yet?” Tristan asked, lying back down next me.
“Mmm…melting?” I asked in response, thinking his voice sounded a little distant. Distant physically, not emotionally.
“You’re a melter, Camie…I had a feeling you were when you sounded drunk before. It’s what I call it when it feels like you’re melting or sinking into whatever you’re laying on like you’re actually becoming part of it,” he answered, giving me a pretty damned decent description of how I was feeling at the time.
“Mm-hm…yeah, I’m melting…I’d throw in being boneless too, just for good measure,” I told him as he gathered me close and gave me a sweet kiss on my temple. Actually, I’m hearing “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd in my head. Simply due to the title of course, because the song itself has absolutely nothing to do with having an orgasm.
“That works too…oh, I almost forgot…” He let go of me and got up again only to return seconds later with my pricey bottl
e of bubbly. “Now you can have it.”
“I can wait.” I really don’t feel like exerting the energy to sit up and drink anything right now, but I am curious about something he’d said before. “What did you mean when you said you don’t think you’d survive me coming back as a pig?”
Tristan started chuckling again and almost cheerfully hugging me to him, he tried to explain. “Seriously, Camie, I practically came when you did…completely shocked the hell outta me too. I’ve never literally gotten off from getting a girl off like that, but fuck, you’re really responsive and not that that’s a bad thing, it’s not, it’s a really, really great thing, but if you keep diggin’ into me like that, I’m gonna have to think about wearing some kind of padding to avoid scarring,” he answered with what was clearly a gratified grin in his voice while pointing out the little crescent shaped wounds on one of his arms.
“Holy shit…I’m so sorry!” I apologized as profusely as my still boneless state would allow. I can’t believe I actually drew blood. Not a lot, but still…that’s just not okay.
“Honestly, Baby, I uh…” he started to say before trailing off and running a hand through his hair.
“You what?” I’m really hoping he’s not terribly upset with me for that because I wasn’t even in my right mind when I did it. Hell, I don’t really even remember doing it.