“I am,” he said.
***
It was actually another two months before we finally hit the wall of tolerance, and anticipation gave way to action. We had been sitting in his room, watching TV. He lived in a big, shabby, old Victorian that was close to his school. As usual, we were both all touchy feely, but not going beyond that. I realized, with a shock, that he was waiting for me. So much for age being able to give me all the answers. I decided to take one for the team and make the first move.
I entwined his hand with mine, and then lifted it up. I let go of his hand and started tracing his fingers with my thumb, one by one. I felt him move next to me, and I glanced up to see him looking down at me. I could see the heat in his eyes. But he was still waiting. I’ll be honest, I wanted him to pounce on me, but I was going to have to lead him to it.
I gave him a small smile, and then looked away from him and back to his hand. Slowly, deliberately, I pulled his hand towards me, and then very slowly took his index finger in my mouth. I closed my mouth around it, and then pulled his hand out, sucking gently on it as I did so.
I didn’t even have time to look at him before he had me on my back kissing me fiercely. He was rubbing his hands up and down my body, which was, to my dismay, still fully clothed. I had hoped for some shredded clothing. He’s so nice, I thought. I love that.
So I pulled on his shirt, tugging it over his head. He raised himself up on his arms, and took the back of his shirt, pulled it off, and tossed it to the floor. I reached for his shorts, unbuttoning the button and pulling down the zipper as he kissed me again. He shrugged out of them. While he was doing that, I unbuttoned my top, and he pulled it over my head. I started to take my skirt off, but he stopped me. Reaching under it, he tugged off my panties. Oooh, I thought. Nice.
He took my bra from me and tossed it to the floor, then he leaned back, looking at me.
“What?” I resisted the urge to cover my chest. It was unnerving, the way he looked at me.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, reaching down to run his hands from my hair to my breasts and then down to my hips and legs. “Even more than I imagined, and trust me, I’ve been imagining a lot.”
I pushed myself up to twine an arm around his neck, pulling him towards me for a kiss. I kissed him hard, biting his lip, starting to lift myself off the bed to him. He stopped me.
“I want this to be special.”
“It is special,” I whispered. “You’re my first.” Which was true.
Whatever he’d been expecting from me, that wasn’t it. His mouth fell open, and he let go of me a little.
“What? You’re kidding me.”
I shook my head, feeling shy, even as my twenty-six year old self. “No. I never slept with anyone before this. I wasn’t ready.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why are we just having this conversation now?” This was so sweet that tears sprung to my eyes.
He sounded upset. I needed to head that off at the pass. Guilt wasn’t going to do anyone any good here.
“Rick, this isn’t rocket science. We both want it so bad we’re about to explode. I’ve been having sex dreams about you for years. Now it’s time to make it real.”
That distracted him. “Years?”
I smiled, hoping I looked sexy. “Well, yeah! I told you, I’ve liked you since I met you.”
“Oh, man. I don’t want to screw this up.”
I could see the concern and nervousness on his face. I hastened to reassure him. “You’re not going to.” I knew I wasn’t his first, and let’s face it, I wasn’t truly seventeen and clueless. “Now stop worrying and start making love to me. I can’t wait another second longer.”
With that, I laid back on the bed, and waited. I found that in spite of being the older me, I felt breathless and my stomach fluttered. I hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed in me. I appreciated his concern, and it made me weepy as hell with love for him, but damn. This was one beautiful man in front of me, naked and ready. It had been too long since I’d seen one of those. It was time to get down to brass tacks. I stifled a laugh that encompassed both nerves and excitement at the practical nature of my thoughts.
I was very late getting home that night. I ended up with a week’s grounding for blowing off my curfew. It was worth it.
***
We dated the rest of the summer and all through our respective senior years. A week before graduation, he asked me if we could get together one night. While he was done with his finals, I still had two to go and was studying like mad. I agreed to meet him and went over to his place after I had studied for a couple of hours.
He was sitting on the front porch waiting for me. He stood as I walked up the steps and scooped me up. It was his way of greeting me, and I loved it.
“Hey, you,” I said.
“Hey you,” he answered.
“What’s going on? I see you all the time. Why the special invite?”
His eyes changed, and his whole body appeared to stiffen.
Oh holy hell. I caught myself before I said anything else. Why didn’t I see this coming? This was the breakup scene. I took a deep breath and tried to steel myself. Even though Dhameer had told me it wasn’t permanent, I had been here a long time. He hadn’t yanked me from this yet. I often wondered what was going on in my old life, but this life was so much better, I didn’t care. I was with Rick, X and I were still friends—there was nothing else I wanted. Things were even better with my parents, somewhat.
Maybe this was it for me in this go-round. Maybe I’d used up this do-over. Rick and I were on the cusp of going different ways. Maybe…maybe…I looked up as he came closer.
Rick looked normal, not all stiff and deer-caught-in-the-headlights as he had a moment before. He took my hand and drew me to him, putting his arms around me, stopping all the thoughts racing through my head. However, he still looked sort of cagey. Well, it was amazing while it lasted. I was glad to have had the chance to be with him. If I went back now, I knew that I had changed. For the better.
“I wanted to talk to you, and my roommates are out tonight. It’ll be quiet most of the night.”
“Until they come home roaring drunk,” I said.
“Well, yeah, but hopefully we’ll be done talking by then.”
Yup. This was it.
He took my hand and led me up to his room. Crap crap crap. This was our place together, and now I was going to remember it as the dump-o-rama.
When we went into his room, he had all the candles lit. We both liked the candlelight, so over the past year, his room became candle central. It had taken him some time to light them all. Wait. This didn’t look like he planned on dropping the hammer. What was going on? In spite of how happy I’d been with him, my head went to worst case scenario at the first hint of anything outside of perfect. Maybe he wanted to tell me he got one of the jobs he’d interviewed for? Followed up with some extra-special saucy us time? Please let that be it!
He stopped and turned to me when we got to his bed. “Would you sit down with me?” He asked.
Weird. All formal and everything. He must feel bad about something. I sat down. My legs were shaky.
“I know we haven’t talked about what happens after we both graduate,” he started. “It kinda feels like we’re both waiting for the other one to make some sort of move. Don’t you think so?”
I nodded. “I haven’t known what to say, or how to bring it up. I don’t want you to feel held back, so I thought you might want to be free. I still have college, then there’s another three to four years, depending on whether I go to law school or not, and you’re at a different place.” I stopped. I knew it wasn’t going to be permanent, I always knew it. I had cheerfully ignored that fact during the past year. As Dhameer had warned, it was a mixed bag, getting what you wanted. I could feel the tears in my eyes starting to roll out onto my cheeks.
“What? What are you talking about? Why would I leave you? You think I would just date you while I was here, and then say
see ya? C’mon Tibby, you know me better than that.” He looked completely put out and almost mad.
“I just didn’t want to be the reason why you didn’t do something you wanted to,” I said. Now the tears were sliding down my face. I couldn’t help it.
“Baby, why would you think that? That’s not it at all. Here,” he grabbed one of his shirts from a basket near the bed. “Stop crying. Please. You are part of the reason I am choosing the things I am. Why wouldn’t you be? I love you.”
I wasn’t mopping up my face fast enough for him so he took the tee shirt and wiped my eyes and my cheeks.
“Would you please listen, without crying?”
I nodded. Tried to compose myself. This wasn’t a break-up. It just felt so…great to not have the worst happen. I couldn’t explain that to him though.
“You know I have been talking with the two different places,” he said. I nodded again. “One of the things I have been trying to negotiate was where they would send me. I got them both to agree on the same places you narrowed down for your colleges. So depending on where you want to go, I’ll have a job there. I want to be with you no matter what.”
I couldn’t stand it. I burst into tears.
“Wait! Why are you crying? This is a good thing, baby, not something to cry over.”
“I’m not, not crying because I am sad,” I got out, still crying. “I’m happy. I am so happy you would do this for me, for us.”
“Why wouldn’t I? I can’t leave my wife to live on her own in some college town. Too many college guys for my peace of mind.”
“Your what?” I asked. I was so surprised, and kind of in disbelief, that I stopped crying. Did he actually say—?
“My wife. Well, hopefully my wife. You know, if you’ll have me,” he said, giving me that smile of his. “Will you marry me? I know you’re not even of legal drinking age yet, and I am totally a dirty old man, but I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Marry me?” With that, he reached behind me and pulled a small box from underneath his pillow. He opened it, and offered it to me.
It was beautiful. I looked up at him, and he was looking at me with such love, and heat, and desire. I felt awash in everything I saw in his eyes. He was amazing. He was fiercely protective of me, kind of jealous about other men around me, which was hard as my best friend was a guy. It had taken a while for everyone to stop glaring. I was glad, because I had started to feel like the fire hydrant on the corner that everyone was trying to pee on. He was smart, and funny. If I married him, our house would be a disaster, because we both hated to clean. We liked completely different music, and our politics were not the same. But we had the same ideals and felt the same way about how to live life. I figured music and politics could lead to discussions that would keep things spicy.
Not that we needed a lot of help in that area. Sex was fantastic. He was very playful in bed. Having gone through a stage when I was in college in my old life where I slept with a lot of guys for all the wrong reasons, it was wonderful to be with someone who knew you and cared for you, who would laugh with you, even while naked in some truly awkward positions.
I knew this was right. I opened my mouth to say yes.
chapter nine
The glitter from the untimely appearance of Dhameer floated in the air around me as I realized I was in my bedroom. In my old apartment. It was morning. “God damn it all to hell!” I pounded on the bed. The room smelled like pee. Oh, that’s right, I thought. A giraffe peed in here. It took too much to keep track of which reality I had fallen into. Not to mention I felt too depressed to care.
Dhameer was, once again, sitting on the corner of my bed.
“Are you kidding me? You drag me out NOW? After I’d been there a year, and he was proposing?”
“I told you, no promises of anything other than another chance. I explicitly told you that it was not permanent. More than that, you came to another crossroads. You had to make a decision that would alter your path, your destiny. You still have two more wishes before your fate is decided.”
“What are you talking about? I want to marry him! Let me go back! And what day is it? My room stinks. How long has the pee been sitting here, stinking?” I was close to tears again, but these were tears of anger and frustration. I focused on the least important issue. Unless we were talking about my nose. How could he not smell that?
“You have two more wishes, two more times in your life to go back and do things over. Each will offer you choices. When you get to a significant crossroad, you’ll come back. So that’s three choices that will be available. Then, there is also the choice of staying here, in this life, now.”
Figures. He ignores the part about the pee. “So I get to make the decision? I want to choose now!”
“No, not entirely. How that will come about, I don’t know yet. And it’s the day after you left. Basically, you have been asleep while you were getting your wish. As for the pee, I would guess since yesterday. I don’t know. I don’t do pee.” He looked offended.
I sighed. Looked like I’d be cleaning the pee with no genie help. To hell with it. What did it matter at this point? “What about Rick? What’s going on with him?”
“Unike you, he is waking up from a deep, dream-filled sleep. He won’t really remember, although he will know it was a happy dream, and your face will pop up as he is thinking about it, but that’s about it.”
“What if I end up back with him?”
“Then life will go on with those choices you both made, and the lives you are living now will stop.”
“Oh, god. What about his life? Is he married? Does he have kids?” I couldn’t rip a dad from his kids.
“Anything in his life will be covered. That is to say, where he was will be filled with a positive replacement. If things are meant to be, and meant to have a second chance, then they are meant to be.”
“That seems rather cruel.” I couldn’t get past the idea of kids.
Dhameer shrugged. “Fate is what it is. What is supposed to happen will happen, Toots. I was meant to come across you and offer you this. Where you are supposed to be, whether it be here or elsewhere, will become clear. I can’t stop fate any more than you can. So onto the next order of business. You need to pick another crossroad and make your second wish.”
My eyes filled with tears. “Can I have two days to think this one over? I’m still where you found me. I need to sort that out before I go and give some other life a try.”
He actually looked sad for me. “I can do that. Two days. As much as I love to grant wishes, it pains me to see how getting what one wants can be so painful.”
“Everything in life has some pain, right? At least, the things worth having in your life. I agreed to this, and I will stick to it. I just need a day to cry over Rick, and then another day to think about where I want to look at next. If I don’t take this little bit of time, I won’t give the next thing a fair chance.” I hoped I sounded stronger than I felt. In truth it felt as though I clung to a cliff with one or two broken nails. I wished he’d leave.
“Very well. Two days from now, I’ll come and see you, and we’ll move forward.” He was gone, leaving his glitter trail behind him.
Well. I stared at the place where he’d been. Felt the tears sliding down my face so fast that there was just a steady trail. Oh, Rick. Were you remembering a proposal too? I sat for a bit crying. This wasn’t helping.
First order of business. Clean up the pee. I attacked the chore with gusto. Not just because the smell was getting to me, either. It kept me from thinking about all that had just happened. Once my room smelled ten times better, I got on the phone and called Xavier. Not only did I need to check in with him as my boss, spending the last year with him in high school like I had made me miss him.
“How are you feeling, Tib? Feel better?” How could he sound exactly the same?
“Actually, X, no. I’m worse. I went to the doctor. I have strep throat. It wasn’t the flu, although I get some of the fun with
that also.”
“You don’t sound so good. Strep hurts. Take the day off.”
“Can I take the rest of the week off? I am really run down. I know it’s a pain, but I won’t be much good like this. I can barely get my ass out of bed.”
“A week? I can’t ever remember you asking for that much time off! What’s going on? You must be sicker than you’re ‘fessing up to! What aren’t you telling me? And how the hell is my empire supposed to survive without you?”
“No, really, it’s just strep. You want my doctor’s note?”
“Nah, I’m just teasing. Go ahead, have a week. It’s better than me making you take time off to use your vacation time. Don’t call me, just lay around and get well, and I’ll talk to you next week.”
“Thanks, X.”
“Yeah, yeah. Rest up. I’ll have a literal mountain waiting for your return.”
“I have no doubt of that,” I said, laughing and tossing a cough in for good measure. “I’ll talk to you next week.”
That was amazingly easy. Now I had a week to deal with whatever else came my way. I hated lying to my best—only—friend. I needed to ask Dhameer if I could have X in my life no matter what. He was part of my past, and I wanted him in my future. I didn’t want to lose my oldest, truest friend.
First things first. I crawled back into my bed, pulled the comforter up to my face, and cried until the room was dark again.
Chapter ten
Rick
Rick woke up in his bed, with the sun streaming into the room. He looked over for his wife and remembered she wasn’t there. What was it he was dreaming of? He relaxed back into the pillow, thinking about what had been going on right before he woke up. It was nice, whatever it was. What was it? It was just out of reach. He thought over the details he could remember, trying to ferret out what it was that woke him with a pounding heart.
Tibby. That’s what he had been dreaming about. Tibby. He hadn’t thought of her in years. Why now? He crossed his arms behind his head. Tibby. What would have happened if she’d actually accepted his invitation? He wasn’t sure that he could have let her get away. It had taken a long time to find someone else he liked as well as Tibby. He wondered what was she doing now?
Three Wishes: Time Traveler Romance (Heart Of The Djinn Book 1) Page 5