by Laney Wylde
“Well, today is your first day as a fighter, so you’re going to run.”
I rolled my eyes, but I followed him down the driveway into the overcast morning. Forty-five seconds later, my lungs were chafing against the cold, humid air as I tried to keep up with his pace. Between pained breaths, I muttered any Spanish expletive that came to mind, making sure Jake knew each was directed at him. Eventually, I got into a rhythm that kept the side stitch plaguing me at bay. His street was finally back in sight. Warm relief washed over me.
Then Jake said, “Let’s go around the block one more time.”
Oh, hell no. I pushed his back with both hands, partly because I was too winded to shout my objection, but more so because I wanted to hurl him to the ground for even thinking of making me run more. I stumbled into a sloppy jog before stopping. Bracing my hands against my knees, I watched black spots float over the sidewalk under me.
Jake was laughing. “Are you pissed enough to hit me for real now?”
I managed to tilt my face to see his while hyperventilating and nodded.
“Prove it.” He tilted his head toward the garage.
I tried to kick his ass, I really did. In my mind, I was this sexy female version of Rocky, jabbing the punch mitts with a ferocity even Jake couldn’t compete with. In reality, I probably looked like a clumsy kitten batting at a string. Wavy strands fell out of my ponytail and stuck to the sweat on my neck. My skin was well past girly glistening, covered in swollen beads of perspiration—after only fifteen minutes of training. I flopped backward onto the mat.
Jake dropped his knees to either side of my hips where I laid on the floor. My chest was surging as I tried to breathe. “My lesson’s done, right?” I panted.
“Just about.” He smiled and pressed his hands into the mat above my shoulders.
“I’m not going to be able to defend myself if you kill me.”
“Okay, one more thing and we can be done. Here’s the most crucial rule of self-defense. Are you listening?”
I glowered and nodded, still taking short breaths.
“Go for the groin.”
My eyebrows scrunched together.
“Seriously,” Jake added. “There’s never any shame in hitting below the belt. If someone’s going to attack my gorgeous girlfriend, they don’t deserve to have children.”
“So, here?” I moved my hand over his shorts.
“Yeah.” He laughed. “But we’re not going to practice on me.”
“How am I supposed to learn?”
He pushed my hand away, then leaned down for a sweaty kiss. As he pulled away, he said, “We should do this every Saturday if you really want to learn.”
“Make out in the garage?” I winked. “I’m down, but I refuse to run more than half a mile.”
“A mile.”
“Three-quarters.”
“Done.”
4
DECEMBER 2014
Jake got a motorcycle. As if he wasn’t hot enough.
He turned seventeen a month before my sixteenth birthday, so he was my ride everywhere. Maybe his parents were sick of him borrowing their Camry seven days a week to see me, or maybe this deal had long been established. Either way, a week before his December birthday, his dad took him used car shopping. Jake’s parents kicked in two grand, and the rest came from what he had saved up from doing yard work for neighbors for years. In some flurry of testosterone and male bonding, Jake and his dad purchased a 2005 Honda street bike from a guy who lived south of the harbor.
I heard the vroom coming up Third while I was in my garage. Like a good mechanic’s daughter, I was changing the oil in my mom’s car. Okay, fine. Maybe I was buttering her up, so she’d hand it down to me. When I heard the engine cut in my driveway, I inched out from beneath the car. I sat up in time to see him take off his helmet, flick his hair out of his eyes, and then comb his fingers back through it like a damn movie star.
“Holy shit,” I said under my breath.
He climbed off the bike. “What do you think?”
What did I think? I wasn’t thinking about anything but taking off all his clothes—except for that collarless leather jacket.
Ah, crap. I did not just think that. Did not just become one of those girls who was infatuated with her boyfriend, who couldn’t keep her hands off him, who felt like the sun wouldn’t rise if he left her. But there I was, fifteen feet too far from him, unable to restrain myself from closing the space between us.
Had this been Jake’s plan all along? Did I really get sucked into his nice-guy, let’s take it slow act? I had been fine two months ago when he had suggested we start over, but now I wondered how I existed before him.
So nauseating.
* * *
“Really, Sawyer?” Jake hissed with his face inches from mine. This was our third time having sex, a few days after that last football game.
“What?” I snapped. Was it over yet? I felt him pull out of me, and my stomach settled. Three times and I only threw up once, and it wasn’t even on him. I was killing it.
He sat back. “I can tell you don’t like having sex with me.”
I scooted to lean my back against the headboard, pulling the blanket with me. “What are you talking about?” Had he seen me wince every time his fingers slid under my clothes? Maybe he tried to tell me something, and I hadn’t answered because I wasn’t in my body. How would I even begin to explain…
Oh, shit. It was the puking last time. He’d heard. He must have.
I couldn’t help it. It was some weird mix of disgust and motion sickness. Not disgust with Jake. Just disgust with any sound or sensation I registered.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry, this tiny voice repeated in my head when Jake pressed into me. He doesn’t like it when you cry. But holding in those tears Sunday night had made my head pound and my muscles itch, taunting me to scratch them, to do anything to alleviate the urge to score my skin and scrub my hair until it was like it had all never happened. I couldn’t cry, so my body purged itself of sex the only way it could.
But I kept volunteering for this. Guys left girls who didn’t put out. And if Jake was gone, I’d be Travis’s again, so I’d volunteer for this as many times as I needed to.
“It’s okay,” he said. Furrowing my eyebrows, I watched his hand stroke my thigh in a peculiarly asexual way. “I know it’s not, you know, easy for you.”
“It’s fine.” Please don’t make me talk about this. Please don’t make me talk about this. We hadn’t talked about the abuse. I wasn’t eager to share details or discuss it at all. With anyone. Ever. Especially not naked in bed with my boyfriend.
“Don’t be mad, okay?”
Why did people say that? Those were the four most infuriating words.
“I read a couple of articles online about having sex after, you know, being—”
I glared at him during the uncomfortable pause. Say it, asshole.
“—raped.”
“What?” I seethed through gritted teeth. As if sex wasn’t humiliating enough?
“And, well, basically, they said…um…that…”
I watched him sputter for a second before grabbing the pillow on my right and throwing it at him. Next, I clutched the one below it and beat his head with it.
“What?” I shouted. “I’m so fucked-up that you have to research how to have sex with me?” I smacked him again and again with the down pillow. “Go ahead! Tell me how I’m supposed to do it!”
He ripped it from my grip, and then took my face in his hands. His lips opened mine, drawing my lower lip with him as he pulled away. “No,” he breathed against my skin. “I’m not having sex with you again. Definitely not tonight.” He slid the condom off and threw it on the floor. Wow, so he just quit without coming? Guys could do that?
My voice caught in my throat, thick with hurt. Not again? What did that mean? Was he dumping me? No, no, no, no. “What? I’m sorry. I want to—”
“Lay back.” His voice was a tender whisper, his hand
s still on my face.
A terrified pounding started in my chest. What was he going to do to me? I shook my head.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, sweeping my dark hair behind my shoulders.
I studied his chocolate eyes as they pleaded with mine. Finally, I forced out a quiet, “I don’t know.”
Letting out a defeated breath, he nodded.
My hand grazed his chest. I bit my bottom lip to try to hide the desperation in my voice. “I can try.”
A crooked smile flickered across his lips when I rolled my back down to the mattress. Jake slipped the pillow I hit him with under my head, then laid down on his side next to me. The sensation of his bare skin against mine pricked each of my nerves, setting my skin on fire with confused desire while leaving my muscles frozen with fear. My body was rigid next to his as I fought to keep it in place.
“Tell me when to stop,” he said. His hard fingertips grazed the underside of my wrist, stroking it up and down, hand to elbow, elbow to hand, and back again. They did the same to my upper arm: back and forth from elbow to shoulder. Then my shoulder to earlobe. “This okay?”
I was warm. Warm and shivering somehow, slowly easing at his touch. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
His lips pressed to my throat, soft on their way to my ear. “Is this okay?” he breathed.
I closed my eyes to inhale the scent of his skin. “Yes.”
I was all too aware of his hand skimming over my collarbone, slowing at my breasts. My heart raced like it was trying to escape my body. I grabbed his wrist and jerked it away. After a few cutting breaths, I glanced up at Jake. His face was understanding, or at least pretending to be. Noticing my fingernails digging into his wrist, I gasped. “Sorry.” I let go, too embarrassed to look at him.
He let out a light laugh, one that sounded as nervous as I was. “Don’t apologize.” He skipped down to my abdomen, his fingers drawing wide circles around my navel piercing.
“Umm…” I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
He flicked my arm. “Stop that.”
I flinched away. “Ow!”
He smirked. “I said no apologizing.” His hand moved lower.
My muscles seized up. Please don’t. Please stop. Please!
“I’m guessing this is out, too?”
I tried to sound calm. “Right.”
He lifted his hand from my hips. “Okay. Turn over.”
I hugged the pillow into my chest as I rolled onto my stomach. Jake’s hands brushed my long hair off my back. He kneaded into my shoulders and neck. I felt just his hands, never the weight of his body pinning me to the bed. My eyes closed as his calloused fingers pressed into my tight traps, the fibers of which slowly loosened.
His touch glided down my back to my thighs, his skin blazing a trail of sparks down my spine. That instinctive urge to bolt left me when I realized Jake would stop each time my muscles tensed, each time I was afraid. After a few minutes, he drew the covers over us and wrapped his arms around me. I relaxed into him.
“Now what?” I whispered into his chest.
“Whatever you want.”
My hand crept down his torso, following the thin trail of hair below his navel. He inhaled sharply. “It’s okay. You don’t—”
I covered his mouth with mine, feeling inside his lip with my tongue. “You said whatever I want,” I exhaled in his ear before pulling the skin of his neck gently between my lips. I wanted him to feel what I couldn’t. Wanted him to know what that fifteen minutes of touch without pressure, expectation, or force meant to me. I wanted him to feel wanted. Because maybe I could eventually want him, really want him.
We pushed a little further each time. First my waist, then my breasts. First his hands, then his mouth. After a couple of weeks, I didn’t have to tell him more than occasionally when something was too much. He heard my breath cut out or saw my fists clench and would stop.
I hadn’t known any guy could have that kind of patience, that kind of discipline. And I wasn’t sure why Jake was doing this for me. He could have dumped me after I took his virginity, left me for someone less complicated. Instead, he was spending most of his nights in bed with me—not getting laid. And I knew it wasn’t okay, that it wasn’t fair to him. But life had been so damn unfair to me, had me thirsting for something sweet and cool, something that could keep me alive, but had surrounded me with only oceans of undrinkable salt water. I couldn’t say no when Jake offered me a sip of what I needed. Then another and another. Even though it felt like stealing, soaking up all that clear water when all I could offer him was my useless ocean of salt and sand, I was too deprived to abstain.
Which was probably why everything changed that night in December. His lips and tongue were hot between my legs. For the first time, I wasn’t scared or nauseous. I was with Jake. He didn’t stop, and I couldn’t ask him to. And maybe I should have expected it, but it still struck me like lightning when warmth rose from his mouth and spread to my thighs, making them quiver. I gasped for air and gripped the sheets as that intense feeling flooded through me, causing my toes to curl and my fingertips to hum. The sounds that escaped my mouth and the stiff arch in my spine exposed me to him completely. When it ended, I was mortified. That had never happened before. Sure, I’d given more than my fair share of orgasms, but I hadn’t had one in front of anyone.
Of course, I’d had plenty alone, my first when I was only ten. Jeff was in prison, but my body still expected to be fondled and entered. It was invaded by heat at every touch. When my gymnastics coach would spot me or correct my waist or shoulders, the sensation through my hips was sharp and warm. The same happened when my mom hugged me, or a friend wrapped her arm around my back for a photo. One night in the shower, I ran my hand down my swollen labia, soap sudsing between my fingers. My fingertips spread and softened and pressed and ventured inward until that sharpness spiked at their touch.
I was in the shower so long trying the textures of bar soap, shampoo, and conditioner, feeling what it was to be inside myself, that the water was running cold against my back when I finally shook and panted with relief. I collapsed weak and sick in the tub under the cold rain, waiting for the punishment for my pleasure. After all, I had learned by then that what Jeff did with us was bad, though no one ever told us so because no one ever knew. But I was a smart girl; I connected the dots.
At church, they said sex was bad, but Jeff said I needed to obey and have sex with him to be good. He said heaven and hell were between my legs. Heaven if I let him in. Hell if I didn’t. He did everything to get me into heaven. Still, my unwilling heart bound me for hell. But then, Jeff was in prison, and the church said he was bad. Now nothing but hell lived between my legs. So, I huddled there, cold in the water but warm and whole inside, warm and whole because I had done something bad. I felt no shame. I couldn’t have if I tried. It felt too good to stop, and I would burn in hell anyway because of what Jeff did—now because of what I did—so I’d be bad as many times as I wanted.
This time, though, I had been bad with Jake, really bad because it felt so good, so much better than it had without him, really bad because Jake saw and heard and knew just how good. It was one thing to know how much I loved sinning. It was another to revel in it with someone else.
I stared at the ceiling, the white bumps clouded by purple, while I fought to catch my breath and stifle the moaning still rising from my chest. I couldn’t look at him after he had seen me naked from the inside out like that. Jake crawled to my side and tucked the covers around us.
“So—” I said without enough air. I took a second to catch my breath and tried again. “Do we get to have sex now?” Maybe seeing him the same way again would make me feel less like an idiot.
“Hell yeah.” I heard the smile in his voice. I finally turned to see him on his back, his fingers combing through his straight hair. His dark cocoa irises met mine.
Nope. Too soon for eye contact. I buried my face under the covers.
“What are you doing?” He laughed.
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I let out a long, muffled groan into the blankets. When he tried to pull the covers down, I fought against him and whined, “You’re too cool for me to be around right now.”
His voice was broken up by his laughter. “What the does that mean? Are you embarrassed or something?”
I nodded under the covers.
“Sawyer…” He finally overpowered my grip on the comforter and stared straight into my wincing eyes. “That was hella hot.”
“I don’t believe you.” I reached down for the blanket.
As I pulled it up to my neck, he caught my wrist. “Let me prove it then.” He leaned in to kiss me and rolled me on top of him—a position he knew kept me from feeling trapped.
I pulled my face away. “Jake, I’m sorry. How did you do that? I must taste disgusting.”
His tongue sliding along my nipple, he breathed, “Shut up. You taste amazing.”
I eased onto him, trembling as he pushed into me. My eyes closed, and a gasp escaped my lips at the sensation rippling under my skin. This was what it was supposed to feel like to have a man inside me. Not pain, not a numbness to shut out, but this—this sort of safety and wholeness I hadn’t known existed in any kind of touch.
Those rough hands skimmed my ribs. “Sawyer, you okay?”
I opened my eyes and lowered my face to his, my hair meeting the pillow before our skin touched. After guiding his lips open with mine, I whispered, “Perfect.”
* * *
Jake showed up with his motorcycle the next afternoon. I pulled him against me by the open zipper of his leather jacket and drew a deep kiss from his lips, like taking a first drag of a cigarette. “So…” I drawled with his arms still around the small of my back. “This is how your dad rewards you for not getting home until seven this morning?”
Apparently, I fell asleep right after Jake and I had sex, because the next things I remember were Jake’s kiss on my cheek and his voice soft in my ear saying, “I’ll be back in a few hours.” I only managed to open my eyes long enough to smile at him and see dawn illuminating the clock on my wall, which read 6:45. Then I melted into the warmth from his body that remained in the sheets.