A boy on the train. Waiting for me.
Sixteen
Boy on a Train
Audrey
I finished with the table, asking them to tell me their choices three times because I couldn’t concentrate, then skipped the next table to talk to Tate.
When I stood in front of him, I choked out a sob. “You’re here.” All I wanted to do was fall into him and let him catch me. I wanted to talk to him and tell him what my parents had said, but I had a job to do.
He smiled at me with his perfect pouty lips and kind eyes. Those eyes so full of love and compassion.
“Tate. I’m sorry—”
“Shh, no,” he said, patting my hip comfortingly. “Go do your job. We have plenty of time to talk when you’re done.”
I wiped my face and gathered myself, nodding repeatedly. “Okay. I can do that.”
Carly sidled past me and did a double take. “Wait, is this Tate?”
“Yes.”
She looked between us. “Go to the staff car. No one’s in there right now. I’ll cover for you.”
I gave her a grateful smile. “Thank you.” Turning to Tate, I said, “Let’s go.”
He stood and followed me. We made our way through one car to the next, going through the space between cars and opening the vintage doors. When we finally got to the staff car, I turned to him and looked up. “I’m so sorry—”
He grabbed me and hugged me, and I’d never felt anything better than his arms. “Shh, babe. No. Don’t be sorry. Next time be up front with me. I can handle your truths. And you wanted to take care of your mom. That’s good. It’s noble and selfless.”
“But I didn’t want to give you up,” I said. “I wanted to be with you, and I couldn’t, so I panicked. Because I couldn’t hurt you. I wanted you to have the full life you deserved and not to be stuck with someone from this dinky little town.”
“We can have a full life together,” he said, and tucked my hair over my shoulder.
“My parents said I can go to school.”
“Really?” His face shone with happiness.
I nodded and explained what my parents had said. “I have to see if I can rescind my deferment.”
“If that doesn’t work, I might have something better. Bert and Perry came up with an idea. And I ran it by my parents.”
“What’s your idea?” I asked, my heart racing.
“A gap year.”
“What?”
“In Europe, lots of people take a year after they graduate from high school to travel and figure out what they want to do before they go to college. I’ll defer Columbia, and you and I can travel the world.”
My heart soared and took a nosedive. “I don’t have the money for that.”
“Don’t say no, Audrey. Figuring out how to do this is half the fun. I’ll sell my truck, and we’re both working. You’ve saved your money, right?”
I nodded.
“I think we can do this.”
Hope began to blossom in my chest. “Are you serious? You’d do that for me? Hold off on school?”
“I’d do that for us, yeah. And we can stay in town and help your mom as much as you want, then go travel and return as she needs. We can schedule around your dad. Although if he’s retiring—”
“Then we can do our list.”
And with that, he bent down and kissed me. And even though there was no view, no sunset, no setting. It was wonderful. Game changing, again.
“I have to tell you something,” I said, once we broke apart, breathless. “I’m completely and totally in love with you. I don’t know when it started, but it’s been a very long time. I was just too scared to act on it or to say anything. I was stupid.”
“Don’t you dare call yourself stupid,” he said. “We just took our own time. We were on our own schedule.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe we were. Maybe we have been.”
“Maybe we’ll continue to do that.” He grinned. “And I love you, too.”
I grinned at him. “Hungry for some dinner?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Seventeen
Finally
Tate
I leaned in to kiss Audrey.
I had to. I had to touch those strawberry lips with mine. To feel their softness and to taste her sweetness.
It’d been weeks since I met her on the train. I knew she’d never been to Disneyland. Well, we couldn’t have that. So after a full day of rides and a lovely dinner, we entered our suite at the Grand Californian Hotel.
Her lips parted, and she inhaled sharply. “I want you.”
Hell.
I trembled.
Our lips crashed together like it was inevitable.
Because it was. We belonged together.
Tate Lemieux and Audrey Staunton were supposed to be together. It had been written in the stars. No, more like we wrote it in our high school yearbooks, in all those photos of us with each other, smiling. Even when we were just friends.
Although I don’t think we were “just” friends. Too small a term for how big I felt about her.
We’d spent weeks exploring that big feeling. Instead of rushing into sex, we’d held back. Learning each other’s bodies as well as we knew our own.
But now it was time. We were both ready.
My tongue touched hers, and we got tangled together. Her breasts smashed against my chest, and she grabbed my ass, squeezing it with some serious fondling, and it made me hard.
Harder.
God, I wanted this girl.
“Please,” she whispered against my lips. “Please make love to me.”
I nodded into her neck. “My pleasure.” My heart beat a fast tattoo.
Slowly, I reached down to the hem of her shirt and tugged it up over her body.
She stood before me in a lavender lace bra, not hiding from me anymore.
“Match me,” she said.
I did. I shucked off my T-shirt, pulling it from the back of my neck over my head, and stood before her barefoot in my jeans. I slid my belt out, and my jeans dropped low on my waist so you could see the tendons wrapping around my hips.
“Ungh,” she said, sliding her hands up my torso. “I like this. So, so much.”
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and scrolled for a David Bowie song. When I pressed play on “Lazarus,” I put it back and gestured toward her. “C’mere.”
Gathering her in my arms, I began to dance with her, kissing her deeply while our bodies moved.
And as we danced, I slid my hand down the back of her ass, feeling the roundness of her ass. Feeling how small and curvy she was. How lovely and sleek and mine.
Then she reached in front and unbuttoned her tweed pants. She unzipped them and danced them off.
She wore matching lavender lace cheeky panties that framed her pale hips, and I murmured my appreciation when my hands gripped her velvet skin.
I unzipped, shoving my jeans down, and we were dancing in our underwear—her in lace, me in new Tom Ford boxer briefs.
My hard dick pressed against her smooth belly, and I hoisted her up. She wrapped her legs around me, and I continued to move. I walked over to the bed, laying her down. Wiggling and giggling and singing along, she clung to me while I danced in a horizontal position, which incidentally made my dick dig into her.
She gasped, and I loved it.
She loved it, too.
The song stopped, and a new one started—“Heart of a Dog” by the Kills—and she sighed into my neck. “I love this song.”
We rolled over and she straddled me. “I love this view.”
I reached up and moved her panties to the side. I could rip them off, but I thought it was sexy to keep them on.
My fingers found her center, and she was aroused and wet. I dove in, keeping up the rhythm. She ground on my fingers, losing herself.
Exactly what I wanted her to do.
Then she moved to my cock, rubbing against it.
God, yes.
>
She tugged my hair and pulled me up to kiss her, which I did very deeply. Then I flipped her to her back.
Her bra unhooked in the front—love this kind—and I flicked it open. I let her boobs loose, and I was mesmerized.
“Oh, god,” I groaned as I kissed her bare skin. “You’re so sexy.”
She grinned. I hung my thumbs on the panties, and she let me slide them off. Then she was bare. Naked. On the bed. Waiting for me.
I wanted to keep my underwear on, because I’d be tempted to just shove inside her if I didn’t have anything on. But I wanted to make sure she came before I made love to her.
And it would be making love, because I was so in love with her I couldn’t bear it.
With my fingers between her legs, I kissed her neck, then looked up and watched her eyes flutter shut and her body sink into the sensation.
I massaged her with more intent, kissing her collarbone, sucking on her tits. Wanting to make sure she came.
My movements weren’t necessarily what the books and articles said to do.
They were what I’d learned drove my Audrey wild.
I could feel how her clit changed. How she was soaked with arousal.
And I kept it up. I could tell she was getting close. If I just hung in here, I knew she’d let go. I wasn’t letting up until she came. I wanted her happy and boneless before I entered her for the first time.
In a delicious minute, she exhaled a moan, then her body clenched all around my fingers, and she began to quake.
She was exceedingly lovely when she orgasmed. Her brown eyes fluttered open, and her hair flew all over the place. Her slim pale legs splayed across the bed.
Soon, I could tell she got overly-sensitive, and I slowed.
“Hey,” I whispered, and kissed her.
“That felt soooo—” She didn’t finish her sentence. Her smile was sated.
But not sated enough.
“You ready for more?”
She nodded vigorously.
I got off the bed and grabbed a condom out of my bag. My hands shook as I ripped it open and sheathed myself. Prowling back to the bed, I hovered over her as she separated her legs, and I settled in between them. Ready to connect with her this way for the first time ever.
“C’mon,” she said. “I love you, Tate. I want to do this with you.”
“I love you, too,” I said.
She pulled me down and helped me line up to enter her. And then oh so slowly, I pushed in.
Then I looked up at her and gasped.
We were joined together, and I was overwhelmed with love and devotion and the feeling because oh, fuck. This was unnnngggghhh so good.
I stayed still, although all I wanted to do was move.
Her warmth surrounded me, and she squeezed me tightly, and my eyes rolled back into the back of my head. Then I came to. “You okay, honey?”
She nodded. “Fine. I’m totally fine.” Then she gave me a broad smile. “Actually, it feels special.”
“It does,” I whispered.
I tried going slowly, but with her heels on my ass, she urged me faster and faster. “You can go faster.”
“Not without you coming.”
“You already took care of me, Tate. Now it’s your turn. Let me take care of you.”
I nodded and started thrusting for real. I did my best to focus on her, on her pleasure, but she was goading me on to focus on mine, and it was hard not to when it felt this way.
“God,” I grunted. “Why didn’t we do this before?”
But that wasn’t a real complaint.
I could feel that tingling feeling—the tensing in my body, and I pulled out.
“What?” she whined. “You were going to come.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t. We can’t have that.”
I helped her up and then turned her over to her hands and knees, then reached around and started fingering her clit again as I entered her.
She moaned. “That’s more like it,” I growled.
The change of position had given me a chance to calm, and I focused on my task. Letting her wring as much pleasure out of me as she could. I had one hand on her pussy and the other on a breast, kneading it, and we were molded together, the angle of my dick hitting somewhere deep inside her.
I’d never felt anything that combined the physical and the emotional, the base and the sublime, and so much love and trust between us.
Then I felt it. She started quaking, and her walls started spasming, and it triggered my orgasm, and I came with a roar like a freight train.
Holy fuck.
Aftershocks throbbed through me. My brain was nothing but white noise.
I collapsed onto her back, panting, then rolled over, careful with the condom. At least I remembered to do that.
“We need to do that again,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said. “We do. You’re incredible.”
“It felt right.”
I kissed her. “Just because we’re young doesn’t mean we don’t know what we’re doing. I know I love you and will love you for the rest of my life.”
And I held her in my arms the whole night.
Epilogue
TAP THAT
Audrey
A disembodied voice announced, “Next stop. Fifty-Ninth Street-Lexington Avenue.”
“C’mon,” Tate said, pulling me to my feet from where I sat on the moving subway train. “This is our stop.”
With my hand in his, I got to my feet and went willingly, making my way around the various people sitting and standing in the car. Once I stood in front of the doors, he wrapped his arms around my waist, nuzzling his nose against my neck. Our bodies swayed, waiting for the cars to stop. He planted a kiss on the top of my head, inhaling deeply.
“Did you just smell my hair?” I asked, my tone playful rather than accusatory.
“Yep.”
I laughed at how cool he was, and I loved our easy affection. I loved him.
With a squeal, the train stopped and the doors parted in front of us.
“Will you tell me where we’re going?” I asked, as we stepped onto the platform, looking around for the entrance. I pulled my cream-colored beanie out of my pocket and put it on my head.
He grinned. “Nope. But you’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Hand in hand, we followed the subway hordes of New York City to the street above.
While I’d spent plenty of time in San Francisco, New York City was nothing like that familiar foggy city. Older, bigger, with more going on, I’d been walking around Manhattan like a kid in a candy shop for the past few days.
This was just the beginning of our gap year world tour. But Tate wouldn’t tell me where we were going next. Only that we were going to do as many things on his list as possible.
Tate had asked if I wanted to go here for the first stop on our Anti-Bucket List, and I easily said yes. Yesterday, he took me to F.A.O. Schwartz, and I bought an auburn-haired Barbie that looked kind of like me.
I cried. I cry a lot these days, but it feels like a relief rather than something to suppress. I’m letting him see all of me, not just the easy things.
Now we headed past Bloomingdale’s. Although apparently it wasn’t our destination, Tate didn’t hurry me. The stores in Manhattan were bigger and just plain old more than the ones back home, and we spent time soaking in the atmosphere and inspecting the window displays. On his mom’s suggestion, I’d packed an empty bag, and Tate and I’d had more fun buying me the tweedy clothes I loved.
Yesterday, we’d spent the day at Columbia and FIT, checking in with the registrar about our deferred admissions. No problem whatsoever. Walking around the campuses, I just got more and more excited. I knew we had something to look forward to after our gap year. We also scoped out neighborhoods to live in.
It was a late fall day, the perfect kind where you needed a jacket and hat, because those were the best looking. Tate looked particularly handsome in a dark blue stocking cap and a bla
ck pea coat.
We crossed the street away from Bloomingdale’s, and I got a glimpse of where he was taking me.
“Dylan’s Candy Bar?”
He pulled me into his arms. “For my girl who has had all the candy in the world, I thought you might have added this to the list if you’d known about it.”
This boy knew me well. I leaned up on my tippy toes and kissed him, because he was the most thoughtful person on the planet.
Except when he liked to squeeze my boobs.
But that was apparently a guy thing, Wren told me.
After kissing him, I dragged him down the street as he laughed, headed straight into the biggest, brightest, most joyful candy shop I’d ever seen.
When I stepped inside the rainbow world of color and sugar, I inhaled deeply. “This place is my heaven.”
Instead of answering, Tate just watched me, amused, as I took my time inspecting and cooing over every single display and type of candy. The happier I was, the happier he got.
He was such a keeper.
“I think you should pick out anything that strikes your fancy,” he said.
That phrase stopped me from my inspection of imported European chocolate. “Strikes my fancy? Who are you, William Randolph Hearst? You gonna build me a castle as a flight of fancy?”
“If you put it down on the list—”
I held up my hand. “No. No castles. I will visit ones with you, but I don’t want to live in one.”
“You sure?”
The thing with Tate was I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. Knowing him, he’d do his best to make anything happen. So I had to make this clear. “Yes. Because the more time and money we spend on castles, the less time we have to spend on trains.”
He pulled out his phone and the Google doc. “I’m gonna add ‘castle’ to the ABL, just in case.”
“ABL?”
“Anti-Bucket List.”
“You’re impossible,” I said, rolling my eyes, which made him smile.
“I believe you mean, ‘handsome.’” Tate’s grin went wicked.
Boy on a Train: The All American Boy Series Page 12