Remember Us This Way

by C. R. Jane

  The only thing I had left after that were memories and regrets. Why didn’t I tell Ari that I loved her when I had the chance? I had known it the moment I had seen her in our History classroom. I know the truth of it. I was a coward. I’d already seen how much better she was than me, and I didn’t want to love her and then risk her figuring that out … I didn’t want to hear that Ari didn’t want me. As I stare up at the white ceiling of the room and take a swig of my whiskey, I think about how I got to this moment where the girl I loved is the woman I barely know.

  In my trip down memory lane I almost miss the fact that the woman in question is on her way out of the room. Desperation like I’ve never experienced courses through me. I can’t let her go again.

  Ariana

  “Ari!” Jesse snaps, before I can sneak out of the room. I freeze, unable to run away from the blatant longing and panic in his voice. “Where are you going?” he asks, grabbing my arm softly to turn me around to face him.

  “I need to leave,” I tell him. “I can’t take anymore tonight.”

  “Stay with me tonight,” he says, his eyes digging into my soul. I think of Gentry and how he actually hadn’t called again tonight and how strange that was. I think of what will happen if Gentry finds out any of this. I think of the fact that Jesse needs to know that I’m unhappily married. And then I push all of those thoughts away and I decide that I’ll take whatever consequences I get to spend one more night with Jesse. Everything else can wait until the morning.

  “I’ll drive and we can pick up your car in the morning,” he tells me, and I nod. We walk out to a flashy red convertible that’s a far cry from his black truck. He blushes when I tease him about it, and he explains that the car is a rental that the label picked out for him. I love that he’s still enough of the old Jesse to be embarrassed about things. We drive out of the stadium backlot, listening to random songs on the radio and not really saying anything to each other.

  I’m surprised when he pulls into the driveway of his old house, shifting the gear stick into park, and turning down the music. Sitting in one of our old make out spots I’m hit with a wave of longing. Longing to go back to the beginning with Jesse.

  “I think the new owners of the house are probably going to have a problem with us sitting in their driveaway at midnight,” I tell him, leaning back into the seat and absorbing how he looks in the moonlight streaming through the windshield.

  “I bought the house after my parents decided to move. I guess some part of me just couldn’t part with my memories here,” he says.

  “You bought the …” My words trail off as Jesse leans in towards me, his scent, his Jesse scent that I remember so well … sunshine … grass… clean, surrounds me. My pulse races. The car’s headlights reflect off the white fence in front of us, slicing across his eyes, making them glow. A vibrant light blue, sucking me in. “Jesse—” Our air mingles. Mine are quick shallow breaths un-synched with my starving need for oxygen and reality.

  “You think we’re only back because of the tour, don’t you?” he says quietly.

  I lick my lips nervously, and nod. Jesse’s eyes follow the movement.

  “We begged,” he whispered. “We pleaded, and we sold a little more of our soul to make it happen.” His mouth tilts up into a grimace.

  “I don’t understand why you’d do that, Jesse.”

  “Yes, you do.” He leans closer, and his arm comes up to brace on the driver’s side door. “Seeing me whisper in that girl’s ear tonight bothered you, didn’t it?”

  “No,” I manage.

  “Liar. Do you want to know what I was telling her?” I shook my head.

  “No, definitely not.”

  The car suddenly goes still and silent as he turns the ignition off, then he shifts his body closer, sharing my air and not leaving enough for me. His hand goes around the steering column and flicks the headlights off. We are plunged into darkness. I swallow. It is a deafening sound. Every other sense goes into high alert. Closing my eyes, since there is no point in keeping them open, I feel his rough fingers skate up the column of my neck setting my nerve endings ablaze. His lips are close, close enough to taste again, if I just lean forward a little. I resist. My mouth waters.

  Fingers dance over my cheekbone then slide behind my head pulling on my long locks of hair. Jesse inhales, breathing me in. “Ari,” he murmurs. I know I should stop him, stop this, because my earlier behavior was already enough to damn me, but for a moment I just want to … feel again. A thumb pad brushes down over the pulse beating wildly in my neck, and I let out a breath that hitches without my consent. I am thirsty for Jesse’s mouth, but I refuse to close the miniscule distance.

  “How can you tell me this isn’t real?” Jesse whispers, his words caressing my mouth. Then his tongue flicks gently across my lower lip. Oh gosh. A small sound escapes me. I should have stopped him sooner.

  “This is as real as it gets, Ari. This is Technicolor. Technicolor, when everything else is black and white. This …”

  His hand trails down over the exposed skin of my chest then brushes over my top and the tip of my breast sending shock waves through me. I arch into his hand without meaning to. Damn my traitorous self. His hand doesn’t stop, but floats down my belly to my thigh, and I tense, my mouth pressed tight to keep my reactions in, trembling on the edge of a place where my pride would cease to exist.

  “This …” he continues and begins bunching up my skirt in his fist and drawing it up my thigh, “what we have … is extra-sensory overload … where everything else is a silent fucking movie.” I pant out a breath then jam my jaw shut. My skirt glides up. Heat pools low in my belly. It is intoxicating. Would anything in my whole life ever feel this way? I’d been numb before they had first touched me and numb since they had been gone. I want to sob with the injustice of it. How could I still want to be consumed by them after all this time? I want to be inside on his bed underneath him. I want him to keep looking at me as if I’m his salvation. His benediction. His release.

  But I know why I don’t want it. I have nothing to give him in return. “This,” I manage just as his hand releases my bunched-up skirt and lands hot on my bare upper thigh, sending waves of sensation cascading over my skin, “is just lust.” Grabbing his face between my hands in the pitch dark, I close the distance and slant my mouth over his, sliding my tongue into his delicious mouth. Jesse groans deeply, and his fingers on my thigh dig in. He tastes so good. So … Jesse.

  His face is hard and rough beneath my fingers, his mouth soft as he lets me in, kissing me back gently, not responding to my aggression. So, I kiss him harder, wanting to punish him for doing this to me. Wanting him to take over for me, make it so it wasn’t my fault we were here. Make it so it was him kissing me. This was so messed up.

  His gentleness and his refusal to respond to my fierce need do me in. And make me crazy. I pull my mouth from his, our erratic breathing reverberating around the interior of the vehicle. I struggle to shut down my body. He is heavy as I push at him in the pitch black, moving him away from me. Turning in my seat, I flick the car lights back on, and the light sloshes over the heated moment like ice water.

  “I need you to take me back to my car, Jesse.”

  “What?” His voice is ragged, but I refuse to look at him. “Please. I can’t do this with you. I won’t. How can you even want to?” Jesse blows out a harsh breath and adjusts in his seat. Silence and unspoken words stretch out, winding their way around the car, sliding into all the available space between us and pressing me back into my seat with their weight. And then, I hear him move to start the car. He pauses as the interior light flickers on for a second, and the pressure between us releases.

  “Tonight, that girl, like all of the girls, the interchangeable, available girls, that girl—offered to blow me.”

  I flinch and my stomach drops. “I don’t want to hear this, Jesse. I’m very well aware of how busy all of you are kept.”

  “But I told her,” he continues. “I tol
d her that I had no intention of taking her up on her offer.”

  “Poor girl,” I mutter sarcastically. He sighs and looks at me. His eyes are fierce, bitter, and vulnerable at the same time. “I’m telling you about that girl to illustrate a point. I’m not just trying to get laid. I can get laid anytime I want. I’m a potential trophy fuck to pretty much every woman I meet.”

  There wasn’t even a hint of arrogance in his expression, despite his words.

  “Well done, Jesse. Very restrained. But seriously, while I appreciate you not rubbing my face in it because I was actually present in the room, what the hell does it matter?” I shrug my shoulders.

  He gets out of the car suddenly and I hear rocks skittering away as he kicks at the ground, his back to me.

  “Fuck!” he grinds out, and clutches both hands to his hair, grabbing fistfuls, his shoulder blades flexing under his t-shirt. He exhales loudly then turns back to me, his expression pained. “When this tour was approved, I decided I wanted to try and be good enough for you in the small chance there was that you even wanted me. I haven’t slept with anyone in eight months.”

  “What?” My mind reels and my forehead creases in surprise and confusion. I know this is the moment I should tell him about Gentry, but I can’t muster up the words with everything that he’s telling me.

  Jesse takes my hesitance as a negative. His jaw clamps down hard, and he takes a step back, before running a hand through his hair that’s still damp from the shower he took after the show. My palms itch to do the same.

  “I’m just going to say what I should have said five years ago when we were lying on that blanket under the stars at our park. There is nothing on this earth that I want more than you,” he says, finally looking at me. “And from this moment on, I’m going to make sure you feel that every second of every day. You’ll see it in my eyes when I look at you. You’ll know, pretty girl, even when I’m gray, you’re gorgeous, and we’re rocking in chairs on our porch, that I love you. I fucking love you. And on the day I get down on one knee with a ring in my hand, when I beg you to be my wife because you’re the best woman and the only one for me, you’ll see love in my eyes.”

  He reaches up and roughly grabs two fistfuls of his hair before abandoning them in an unruly mess. “And you, Ari? What do you want?”

  You, Tanner, and Jensen I think in my head. “I want … I want to be more than I am now,” I say instead even though it’s only partly the truth. I inhale deeply and then the words I’ve tried desperately to keep in spill out. “But, most of all, I don’t want to have to keep living a life where you aren’t in it.”

  He blinks, seemingly processing what I just said, storing it away, but I know what he heard was that I was saying yes. And I was. There was no way I was walking away from this. From him. From them. I couldn’t deny it anymore, even if I couldn’t figure out in the moment how I would get a divorce from Gentry.

  Pursing my lips, I blow out a breath. I really hope I know what I just did. If we fail this time, it would break me irreparably. I reach my hands out slowly, hesitating before my fingertips make contact with his chest.

  I can’t wait anymore. I get out of the car and walk around to his side just as the sky decides to open and we begin to get soaked. We’d figure out the details later, and we’d do it together. I take a deep breath and press my palms against his now wet skin. Jesse’s eyes close as he exhales and moves forward towards me. Sliding my hands around his ribs and up around his muscled shoulder-blades, I step into him. His arms curl around me, drawing me against him. One hand slides up into my hair and presses my face against his damp chest.

  A barely controlled groan comes out with his next breath, reverberating against my skin. I revel in the feeling of his hot wet skin, his heart pounding beneath my cheek, my body pressed flush against his. So strong was the feeling of relief of being in Jesse’s arms, it seems in that moment that nothing bad can ever happen to me ever again. The scent of his raw masculinity slides into my every pore, and my face turns to press my lips to his skin before I can question it. His body reacts beneath my touch. Bringing both hands to cup my face, he tilts it to look at him.

  “I think this deserves a kiss,” he rasps, staring at my mouth. I nod and moisten my lower lip in anticipation as he lowers his head. My pulse picks up a frantic beat as he closes in on me. I will myself to calm, but my breathing hitches as it gathers pace. I slide a hand up and around the back of his neck, tugging his mouth closer, because he was taking too damn long to get to me. The last thing I see is his dimple flash before his mouth meets mine.

  This kiss is different than all the ones before, including at the stadium. We’d waited what seemed like forever for a kiss where there were no doubts between us. I open under him, meeting the slide of his tongue and moaning at the exquisite sensation. His lips are firm against mine, withdrawing and opening again, capturing my lips between his then sliding inside my mouth once more. I can taste the rain on them, and it only makes the kiss more perfect. Our heads shift and move, our mouths trying to find the perfect fit. The perfect rhythm. Trying to get closer, even though we are already drinking in each other.

  Neither of us seem to want to stop and breathe more than the needy and necessary gasps that punctuate the moment. I grab a fistful of hair at the nape of his neck, and as his lips move over mine, I suck desperately at his bottom lip, grazing it with my teeth. My entire body is tuned to the kiss, focused on tasting him, the sweet mint on his tongue and the salt from his sweat, and every nip and pull of his mouth reach and pull sensation after sensation from the very depths of my body.

  “Fuck,” Jesse rasps against my mouth, pausing between thorough kisses. One of his hands leaves my face and wraps around my middle drawing me up and against him. Hard. “I realize you might want to move slower than our current pace...”

  His fingers dig into me, pressing me closer. The hand at my face moves down my throat, tilting my head back, making room for his hot mouth as it leaves mine and slides to my chin then my ear, causing goosebumps to break out over my already sensitized skin. Slow? A giddy laugh bubbles up my throat, and I swallow unsure how to answer.

  “You have to guide me here, pretty girl, or I … shit,” he says suddenly and lifts me off the ground. Swiveling around, he heads for the side door that leads into the kitchen. It’s where I spent many an evening eating dinner with him and his family. As we walk in a thousand memories assail me. The house looks pristine despite the fact that it hasn’t been inhabited for a few years.

  “I pay a housekeeper to come in and keep it up,” he explains, seeing the question in my eyes at the lack of dust on anything.

  Still holding me, we ascend up the stairs and go into his bedroom. He sets me down in front of his bed that still has the same sky-blue comforter that I always thought matched his eyes. Standing there in front of the bed, I feel incredibly nervous. I’m no longer the innocent virgin I was when he knew me. I gave that up to Gentry on my wedding night, one of my biggest regrets considering how little he deserved that gift.

  This feels like my first time again though just because they were always the one who I should have given it to. The gravity of the moment hits me and suddenly I can’t do this with all these secrets between us. “Jesse, we need to talk. I have things I need to tell you,” I whisper as he stands in front of me devouring me with his eyes as I stand in the moonlight streaming in from his window.

  “I know there are five years’ worth of life that we’ve both lived. And I know there’s going to be hard conversations that we need to have. But I don’t want to do that tonight,” he says, lifting a hand to stroke my face. “I don’t want anything from the past to change the future we are starting right now. No more thinking.” He moves close, so close his nose brushes across the edge of mine. All I can feel is him. “Little by little, I’ll prove this is real. When I’m done, you’ll know this is about the beginning of you and me. You’ll have a new truth.”

  “But I’m not . . .” His lips touch mine. />
  “Stop talking.”

  “Jesse.” His mouth is on me. Touching.

  “Ari.” He kisses me. Pressing. Pressing hard.

  He doesn’t ask, he takes, nipping at my lips until they part and his tongue teases inside. The thick ridge of his growing erection digs against my stomach as he aligns his body with mine. Thoughts retreat as I get lost in him, in his kiss, his mouth and arms as they wind around my waist and haul me up so once again I freefall into Jesse’s emotions. I give in. I mold to every rigid line of his body, my nails dragging down his shirt to feel his muscles ripple beneath my hands. My nipples pebble into hard knots, aching as they rub against cotton and his chest. Gosh. His fingers find my hair, tugging my head back to open my neck. He drags his teeth along my jaw and to my ear. “I love you.” I groan, a lusty, wanton sound that brings his mouth back for a hard and demanding, totally mind-blowing follow-up kiss. My head spins. I’m going ’round and ’round on a roulette wheel.

  Our clothes disappear in an instant and I don’t even have a chance to admire his body before he’s inside of me, crying out my name when our hips meet. I whimper and he pulls out all the way and slams back inside of me. I tremble as I rise to meet each thrust, every stroke, and it’s my name that he chants. His name is on my tongue as he hovers above my mouth, taking in each grunted breath as I release it. And something happens. Something unlike anything I’ve experienced before, brighter than life, bigger than death, where lines between us blur, disappear, until we are new, born into one earth-shattering shape, whole and singular. Ari and Jesse don’t exist, but we do. Us, just us. Together.

  “More,” I beg from beneath him.