The Thrill of It

by Lauren Blakely

  * * *

  Her cheeks are stained with tears. Her lower lip is quivering. She’s swiping at her cheeks, trying to wipe the evidence of her sadness away. But it’s futile.

  She blinks several times, swallows, and says in a broken, choppy voice, “I am so sorry.”

  But her words don’t stick. They bounce off me, like I’m made of rubber. It’s not her though. It’s me. To tell that story I had to disengage. Disconnect. That’s the only way I could get it out without choking on a river of tears. I barely feel rooted to the steps right now. It’s as if my vision went blurry, and I’m seeing fuzzy, silver streaks before my eyes. I’m a ghost, floating above, watching this scene transpire from another plane of reality, from one where I can’t be hurt.

  She brings her hand to her chest, and her shoulders are shaking. The tears fall like a fucking rainstorm now, unleashed, and it’s so strange to watch someone else’s reaction. I’ve been living my own reaction for years, inside of me and locked up in my head, and now this story that’s only been told in hieroglyphics on my body is someone else’s to own, to process, to feel. It’s as if I’ve given her a piece of my heart, and said there, do with it what you will. I’m frozen in time, waiting, to see if she’ll kick my heart away.

  “I can’t believe you kept that all inside, Trey,” she says in between sobs. “I can’t believe that’s your history, and your family, and you never said a word.”

  I shrug. Or the me I’m watching shrugs. He’s not sure what happens next. “I got used to not talking about it. It’s like this black hole in life.”

  She grasps my hand, slides her fingers through mine. “You. Are. Brave.”

  I scoff, then sneer for good measure. “How does that make me brave?”

  She grips harder. “You are brave to tell me. You are brave to let me in. You are brave and crazy and you are stupid to think you can handle that all yourself,” she says, laying a gentle hand on my cheek, her smooth skin on my rough stubbled jaw.

  “So I’m stupid. Like that’s news.”

  “You are stupid brave. And stupid courageous. And stupid amazing. And I won’t let you go through any more of this alone,” she says fiercely, eyes blazing with an intensity I’ve never seen before. She grabs the neck of my shirt, pulls hard on it, tugs me closer. “I’m sorry about your brothers. And I’m sorry your parents never talked about it. And I’m sorry you had to carry all that around by yourself. But I want to know whatever you want to tell me, Trey. I want you to show me all your tattoos and tell me what they mean. I want to see the tree you planted for them,” she says and she twists harder on my shirt. “I want you to know they’re not ever going to be forgotten because I will remember them for you.”

  In an instant, I’m back on earth. I’m no longer floating, removed. I’m here, next to her, and my chest is cracked open, and I’ve given her my bleeding, beating heart, and she’s holding it in her hands, and she’s not crushing it, she’s not destroying it. She’s doing the opposite. She’s getting me. She’s understanding, she’s burrowing her way so far under my skin, into my head, and around my heart that I am dangerously close to joining her in the tears department. I’m still a guy; I don’t know that I can go there in front of her. But I don’t have to because I’m going someplace else it turns out. She ropes her arms around my neck, and I bury my face in her hair, and I don’t ever want to let go of her. She clings to me, tugs and pulls and brings me closer, like she doesn’t ever want to let go either. And I don’t know how we’re here, how we’re back on a stoop in New York, and we always seem to wind up on a stoop in New York, but more than that, we always seem to wind up in each other’s arms. We are magnets and I can’t resist the pull.

  There is no distance between us and I don’t want any more distance. I want closeness, I want connection, I want it with her. Then she loosens her grip. Not by much, but enough to bring her sweet lips to my ear. She grazes me with a whisper, her voice soft. “I want you to take off your shirt and I want you to tell me everything. I want to see your new ink. I want to understand you.”

  I am an electrical line, buzzing. “Do you want to come to my place?”

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Trey

  The subway takes too long. But if I were in a cab with her, I’d probably jump her, and whatever is going to happen between us tonight needs to happen behind closed doors. I want to be alone with her. I want to have her to myself. I don’t want anyone around, anyone to walk in, anyone to find us. I want to hole up with her and kiss and touch her all night long, until morning comes and our lips are red and raw, and we still can’t get enough of each other.

  But the practical matter of transportation downtown comes first.

  “I have big news,” she tells me as the train rattles underground.

  “Yeah?”

  I trace the vein on her forearm, from the heel of her hand to her elbow. Goosebumps rise on her skin, and she shivers. I will never grow tired of the way she responds to me.

  “You make it hard to focus,” she chides. “And I want to tell you something. I finished. I’m done with Miranda!”

  “Shit! Are you serious?”

  She nods several times. “One hundred percent. Sent it off tonight.”

  “That’s amazing. I’m seriously proud of you. Which I know sounds like a weird thing to say, but I am.”

  She pats her back, pretends to look over her shoulder to see what’s there. “See that? Oh wait. You can’t. Because the monkey’s off my back.”

  “Good riddance, monkey.”

  There are other chains that bind her though. My chest constricts as I ask the next question. “But what about Cam? Did you tell him you’re done? Are you done?” I ask, hoping, praying, needing her no more than air right now.

  She lowers her eyes. “I haven’t told him, but I will now.”

  She takes her phone from her pocket, taps open a new message. I look away as a thick plume of jealousy snakes through me. I don’t want to know what she’s saying to him. I have to trust that it’s exactly what needs to be said.

  She stuffs it back into her pocket. “Done. I’m free of these burdens. I want to start over. Start my new life from this day forward. Start everything like it’s the first time.”

  “So this is it? No more Miranda, no more Cam, you’re done with the past?”

  She nods.

  “I don’t want you with him, Harley. He’s no good for you, and you don’t need that anymore. Okay?”

  “I know. I know,” she says, and she seems resolute.

  “Promise me you’re done? Promise me he’s the past?”

  “I promise. I told him I won’t do the job he asked me to do. Some stupid dinner event. I said it’s over.”

  I shake my head in disgust. I hate every single guy who’s hired her. I hate every dude everywhere who’s hired a girl. Because I’d be willing to bet most of those girls didn’t really want to be hired. Fine, Harley made her own choices, but she also didn’t. Her mom boxed her into a corner, gave her no choice, no options. So Harley did what I did. She tunneled her way out through sex.

  “Good. Because I don’t want you with anyone else,” I tell her as the train winds around a curve, and I’m struck with how easy that was to say. I used to think speaking honestly was impossible, but now I’m two-for-two tonight.

  “But what about rules? And trying to stay away? And being in recovery and all?”

  “Fuck the rules,” I say, squeezing her fingers. “I want to be with you.”

  “I want to be with you so badly it’s killing me,” she says in a breathy, desperate voice that makes me want to stop time and never forget this moment. Because this is perfect. Us. Here. Now. On the graffiti-filled subway, chugging into my stop, after I’ve told her the ugly truth of me, and she wants everything I’ve ever wanted too. Each other.

  “I’m dying, Harley,” I say, bending my head to her neck. “I’m fucking dying without you. I need you. I want you. I want to teleport to my a
partment right now because I can’t stand being on this train a second longer. I want to touch you all over. I want to be with you.”

  “I want that too but we can’t go all the way. We can’t have sex. I’m just not ready.”

  “We can do whatever you want. I have waited six months for you. I can wait longer if I have to. I can wait as long as you need. If all you want to do is kiss, I will happily spend the night doing that. Hell, if you want to play bridge we can do that too. Even though I have no clue how that game works.”

  “I bet you know how to play strip poker though,” she teases.

  “That I do.”

  “Or just strip.”

  When the train stops, we practically leap out of the car and bolt up the steps. After several blocks of near race-walking, we make it inside my building and up two flights of stairs. I unlock the door to my tiny studio, open it, and before the door closes, my hands are on her face.

  “Kiss me,” I tell her. “Kiss me, Harley. And don’t stop.”

  “Never,” she says, and then her mouth is on mine. She kisses me hard and ruthlessly, attacking my mouth, sucking on my tongue, nibbling and then biting my lips, and it’s like she’s devouring me and I want it. I desperately want her to feast on me, to leave bite marks all over my neck, to pin me down if she wants to, I don’t care, I just want her. I want to know what it feels like when the girl I am mad about is consumed with this kind of wildfire, this kind of intensity that she digs her nails into my wrists and slams her body into me, like we’re being crushed by some unseeable force that’s pushing us together, and if there’s any air or space left we’re dead. She wriggles that sexy, beautiful, insane body of hers against mine, her breasts smashed against my chest, her hips jammed into me, and her lips insisting on exploring every inch of mine.

  This girl can take me, have me, tie me up, blindfold me if she wants, even though that’s honestly not my thing. But how I feel for her threatens to overpower everything else because this is a sweet unraveling as she obliterates my hold on the world, on time, on space, on anything but the ferocity of her kiss.

  Then, in an instant, she breaks the kiss. She’s panting, and her brown eyes are wild, so wild, and her lips are parted and bruised already, and I feel like I’m a cartoon character seeing stars swirling around my head. Like I’m one step away from a dizzying collapse brought on by all these sensations that don’t just race – they tear like crazy fucking race cars taking curves at high speeds – through my veins.

  “Hi,” she says, breathing out hard.

  “Hi.”

  “Are you going to show me your tattoos now?”

  “Um, yeah,” I say, managing a few syllables though I doubt I’ve recovered the power of speech, considering how she kissed me raw and senseless. I am standing here stupid with lust, hard as a rock, and unable to form coherent thoughts.

  Fortunately, I don’t have to.

  She takes my hand, guides me over to my futon a few feet away. My apartment is crazy ass small, like most in New York, but it’s mine, and it’s stuffed with my notebooks and drawings and paperbacks and music. I hit the on button on my iPod in its base next to the futon that doubles as a bed, and turn Arcade Fire on low.

  “Best. Band. Ever,” she says as we fall down onto the futon.

  “No. Questions. Asked,” I say, with a smile, repeating the words we both said the night we met. I curve a hand around her neck. Bring my mouth to her ear. Hear her sigh. Whisper. “You said that the first time I saw you at my shop.”

  “I know.”

  “And we talked about everything that night. We talked about the beach and how much you want to go there again, and how you felt when you were there as a kid visiting your grandparents. And we talked about the music we love, and what we wanted out of life. And now here we are again.”

  “Full circle or something like that,” she says with a smirk. “If I were a poet I’d make that sound all artful. But I’m just a wannabe. And now I want your shirt off.”

  “Be my guest.”

  She’s up on her knees now, grabbing the waistband. I raise my arms over my head and she tugs off my shirt. There’s no striptease, no slow, lingering removal of clothes. It is frenzied and necessary. She closes her eyes briefly, then opens them and inhales sharply. Seconds later, her hands are on my chest, her palms spread wide on my pecs, and I don’t ever want her to stop touching me.

  She moves her index finger to my throat, then trails down my chest, softly, painting a line, drawing on me. I feel like I’m being marked by her, like she’s claiming my body. Down my ribs, along my side, across my waist.

  I hitch in a breath as she touches my abs, her fingers turning me ragged with want.

  I’m fighting every instinct to yank her down on top of me, to rip off all her clothes, then flip her over, open her legs and thrust into her. To look into her eyes as I enter her for the first time. I won’t do that though until she’s ready. But I won’t do anything tonight either until she explores me like she wants. Her hands leave my chest, reach my arms, her fingertips traveling from my shoulders down to my wrists, each second of contact winding me higher. I swear I’ll have to grip the edge of the futon soon to stay still.

  She stops at my wrists, then bends her head, and her lips are on my skin, mapping an agonizingly slow trail of kisses up my arm until she reaches my right shoulder with the trio of sunbursts.

  “What are these for?”

  “Life,” I tell her. Her hair is draped over my arm, silky soft sheets, as she layers quiet kisses on my ink. First one sun. “Energy. Heat. Strength,” I add.

  “To remind you to be strong?”

  “Yeah,” I say with a forced laugh. “Didn’t work.”

  She looks up, her eyes fierce again. Powerful. Passionate. “You are strong, Trey. You are so strong. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

  Her belief in me is the strangest thing I’ve ever known. I’ve felt lust, I’ve felt rage, I’ve felt pain. I’ve felt sadness. I’ve felt power. But now this – faith in myself from another person. It’s foreign, and it’s heady, and it’s addictive in its own way.

  She returns to my arm, kisses the other sun.

  “And, I know this may seem obvious, but the sun means a lot of things to different cultures. Some believed it had the power to heal,” I tell her.

  “And you wished the sun could have healed the hearts of your brothers?”

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding, choking back the emotions that threaten to overtake me again. “But it’s also a symbol of light. And light in hard times. So I kinda wanted the sun to represent that. That the sun would shine through the past, and the darkness, and the death. That the day would start over, and maybe…” I say then trail off, because this is too much, too much closeness, too much admission.

  The shadows from the moonlight stream in through the window, playing across her beautiful face.

  “It’s okay, Trey. I believe that too. That maybe the sun can shine through the darkness. That’s what you were going to say, right?”

  I nod.

  “You wanted all of that,” she says, and it’s like she can see inside me, like she understands on such an instinctual level. “You marked your body because these were your hopes and your wishes for a new life. For a new future. For a life without so much pain. So much death.”

  She moves to my chest now, kisses the three small silhouetted birds on my right pec. “And this bird? Is that for freedom? Flying away or something?”

  “It’s a phoenix,” I whisper.

  She tilts her head to the side. “I didn’t realize it was a phoenix.”

  “It’s small. It’s hard to tell. It’s supposed to just be a representation anyway.”

  “And does it mean resurrection? Rebirth?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I did it. But then I was researching the phoenix when a client wanted one, and I learned something kind of cool. The Chinese believe the phoenix represented grace and femininity.”

  “Really?”

 
I nod. “Yeah. It’s like a yin and yang thing. Dragons and phoenix together are a yin and yang. They are each other’s other halves.”

  “They’d make quite a couple.”

  “Maybe I need a dragon now. You know, so I can be whole again,” I say, reverting to mocking myself, because sometimes that’s easier.

  She flashes a quick smile, but then continues her travels, the tip of her fingernail outlining one of the birds. I draw a deep breath. The feel of her is almost too much. “Or you could put a dragon on me,” she says in a low and husky voice.

  I swallow. “I can?”

  “Yeah. I liked it when you inked me. I want more.”

  “I would love to give you another tattoo,” I tell her, and I can’t resist. I thread my hands through her hair, grab hard on the back of her head, and pull her in for another kiss. This time, I lead. I inhale her, savor her, run my tongue along her sexy lips, then crush my mouth to hers, hearing her whimper as I kiss her deeply. I want to kiss her so hard and so fiercely that it erases every other kiss she’s had, every memory, every client, every moment with another man. I want to brand her with my kisses, mark her as mine, make her lips all red and swollen, so everyone knows I’m the only one allowed to touch her, the only one with permission, the only one she’s ever wanted.

  We kiss like that for hours, or maybe minutes, and she’s wiggling against me, and sighing into my mouth, but then her hands are back on my chest, and she pushes me away. A firm clear push.

  Her nimble little fingers sneak their way down to my ribcage, to the new fresh art on my body. Three trees, twined together.

  “Your trees,” she says, ginger with her touch, even though it doesn’t hurt. “You had them done today.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “They’re beautiful. And they’re perfect, because a tree can be many, many things. But it is always, forever and ever, the symbol of life,” she says with a kind of reverence as she stares, mesmerized, tracing the outlines on my flesh.

  Life. It’s what’s happening now. It’s the real, scary, dangerous, amazing possibility in front of me. There are no guarantees. I don’t know what happens next or tomorrow or in a week or a month. With all my other women, I knew what they were. They were temporary. They were pills, they were bottles, they were long, slow hits on a pipe. Some left you high for hours, some for days, the rare few for a week or more. But you always came down. You always found another. I kept painting over all the vacant corners in my heart, a new coat, then another, then I’d try for one more.