by Jamie Knight
She was an amazing kisser.
“That was awesome,” said Natalia softly, like she had been surprised herself.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding dumbly.
“Do we need anything else, then?” she asked, looking around the store.
I just shook my head, not even trusting myself to speak. I was sure that my words would have come out unintelligible. We walked out of the store, listening to the bell chime behind us. I felt like I was walking on clouds, like I was in a dream that I didn’t want to wake up from.
I slid into the passenger’s seat, surprised that my feet had somehow worked long enough for me to make it to the car. Natalia sighed and growled, frustrated.
“Did you see how that guy was acting?” she said, as if I could have ignored him, even if I had tried. “The nerve of him to assume that you were my father. What if you were my husband?”
She paused, a faraway look crossing her face. I would have paid a million dollars for her thoughts if I could have. Then she shook her head and looked down at the steering wheel, clutching it so hard that her knuckles whitened.
She spit out, “It’s just that I hate when people make assumptions like that. It was really rude and I was truly embarrassed. I’m sorry that you had to experience that.”
I couldn’t believe that she was apologizing for someone else’s behavior, something that she could not have controlled. But, I appreciated the fact that it did make her so upset. It seemed like she cared.
“It’s okay, really,” I said, shrugging. “I guess it’s something that I just have to get used to. I mean, I am pretty old compared. And having these injuries doesn’t make it any easier for people not to think that I’m not just some crippled old man. Maybe we should go by the mall on the way back and get me some cool, young clothes to wear. And I’ll start saying words like ‘adorbs’ and ‘fleek’ and ‘bish’, maybe get a piercing or two so that people won’t mistake me for some sweater-wearing old geyser anymore.”
I smiled, hoping that my jokes might make her smile. When she laughed weakly, I knew that it had worked.
“You’re not old,” she said as her manner strengthened. “It’s just that people need to be more sensitive to what they say sometimes. And even if you were an old, bent over man with an oxygen tank and a full walker, on what planet is it okay to reference a customer’s age while ringing up a part?”
I stammered out a few words in an effort to answer her question, but the truth was, I didn’t have an answer.
“Anyway, I just want to apologize for that,” she said, turning the car on and revving up the engine.
“It’s fine. You don’t have to apologize,” I said, smiling at her sweetly.
I wanted to reach over and brush my hand against her cheek, but I stopped myself. The kiss had been more than enough for the day.
We rode in silence the rest of the way home, listening to talk radio discuss everything from the news antics of the president to the latest movie that had everyone flocking to the theaters. To me, it was just white noise. My mind was still focused on the kiss. I could still feel her soft lips on mine. I kept feeling her body pressed against mine, delicate, soft, and warm.
The more I thought about it, the more turned on I became. I felt an erection beginning to build in my pants and I started to panic. I didn’t want her to see it. That would creep her out for sure. I shifted in my seat so that my body was turned away from her and I crossed my leg at the knee.
She looked over at me, confused.
“You okay?” she asked, trying to keep her eyes on the road and not look at me. “You look very uncomfortable.”
You have no idea, I thought.
“No, I’m fine,” I said, trying to think about baseball or someone puking, anything to stop the rock hard boner that I was trying to hide from her.
It had finally calmed down by the time we got back to her house, so I hurried out of the car and to the door before she gave me another raging boner and then had a chance to see the enormous bulge that had formed on the front of my pants. It seemed this girl did very powerful things to me that made me want her so badly I could hardly stand it.
Chapter 11
Natalia
When we arrived back at the house after leaving the auto parts store, Bradley took off from the car to the house like he couldn’t wait to get away from me. I hadn’t expected that response and I didn’t know what to think, to be honest.
Was it okay? Will he tell my dad I kissed him? I had so many questions circling my mind that I couldn’t concentrate.
I went to my room and lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and holding a teddy bear, deep in thought. I smirked at the thought that I had made a move, even though it wasn’t quite at the time or place that I thought it would happen. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t really thought about how things would happen. But, it seemed like it was just right.
Seeing how Bradley reacted, though, left me on pins and needles until I knew what he thought. Maybe he was repulsed by my impulsiveness. Maybe he was in his room packing up his things to leave, and trying to figure out how he would explain things to my dad.
My dad. If he found out about this, I wasn’t quite sure how he would react. And I was ready to find out. I figured that the only thing that I could do was just wait and see how it would all play out.
At the very least, I had two weeks until my dad made it back into town. I wouldn’t imagine that, even if Bradley did plan on telling my dad something, that he would do it over the phone. I was about to get up and see where Bradley went off to when I heard a soft knock on the door.
“Who is it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Bradley,” came the muffled reply. “I was wondering if you were ready for your car repair lesson?”
I paused, trying to decide if that was a good idea. I thought that it would be a good way to pick his brain and get a feel for what might have been running through his mind after the kiss.
“I’ll be right out,” I called out.
I ran over to the dresser and stood in front of the mirror. I ran a hand over my hair, trying to get it to lay down. I pulled on a new t-shirt, then took a deep breath and headed out the door, toward the garage.
When I got to the garage, Bradley was already standing in front of the car with the hood up. He was fumbling around with the battery when I got there and didn’t look up once. So I walked up to the car and stood next to him.
“Alright, I’m ready,” I said, in my best Spongebob imitation.
I laughed at my joke. He didn’t. He shrugged his shoulders, making me realize that he probably had no idea who Spongebob even was. I cleared my throat and leaned over to get a better look of the engine.
“Okay, let’s go ahead and get started. So, this part here is where you attach the battery…”
I could hear him talking and see his lips moving, but I really wasn’t paying much attention to what he was saying. I just kept thinking about how sexy he was and how good it felt kissing him. In fact, the more that I watched his lips move, the more I kept being drawn back to that moment when our lips touched.
The way he moved his body, I honestly couldn’t tell he was injured. It was like his every move had strength, certainty and know-how woven into his muscles. That turned me on like crazy.
None of the guys my age had that kind of power and appeal. I wanted a king, a pirate captain of a man, not one of his little boy foot soldiers. The thought of putting myself in Bradley’s hands, naked, open, all his and at his mercy to work me like he worked this car engine— this was beyond distracting.
“Okay, your turn,” he said, thrusting a screwdriver in my direction, smiling at me.
I took the screwdriver reluctantly. I felt embarrassed that I had no idea what he had been talking about, so I didn’t know what he was expecting me to do.
I leaned over and looked underneath the hood, hoping that seeing it would give me some sort of clue as to what I should be doing. After staring at the engine for what
must have been an uncomfortably long time, Bradley asked me if everything was okay.
“Um…yeah, it’s fine. It’s just that… Crap, I’m sorry. I have no clue what I’m supposed to be doing here,” I admitted, hanging my head shamefully.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I know that it can be a lot to digest right now. I’ll go over it again.”
He started talking and I tried hard to listen to him, but again found myself struggling. I hoped that he would think that maybe I was having a blonde moment and that’s why I was struggling.
I also hoped that he wouldn’t suspect the real reason why I was having a hard time focusing: being so close to him was making me get turned on, all over again. I could smell his manly scent and it made me want to be closer, dangerously closer, close enough to where we could have another go at kissing.
Maybe even more.
Chapter 12
Natalia
I couldn’t help but go over the moment that Bradley and I had first kissed, over and over again in my mind. His delicious mouth, his warm, teasing tongue. I wanted to figure out exactly how he might be feeling and what he might be thinking about the kiss, especially since he was acting like it didn’t happen. I watched him talk on like nothing just went down—just talking about the car and focusing on giving me a lesson.
When I had leaned in to kiss him, I saw his eyes open wide in shock. I went in hot, and kissed him passionately, more to give the guy behind the counter a show than anything else. I didn’t expect that he would respond at all.
But, he did. Maybe not at first, but after a few moments, he started to kiss me back. A few moments after that, he was devouring my mouth, kissing me back so passionately that it made me lose all track of why the kiss even started.
I kissed him in hopes to shock the guy behind the desk. I wanted that jerk to feel really embarrassed about making that assumption, calling Bradley my dad. But, I hadn’t even seen his reaction, so I don’t even know if it served the purpose that I had started with.
Instead, it did something else. It gave me the chance to have my first kiss with Bradley. He probably knew that my kissing him was to get a reaction out of the counter guy, but I couldn’t help but thinking that his response to the kiss was a real one.
He had his eyes closed and he kissed me back so genuinely, I almost lost track of everything that was going on. I felt a little off center as I tried to navigate our way out of the store. It was a wonder that I had managed to make my way back to the car and got us home safely because my mind definitely wasn’t on the road or driving.
In fact, my mind started thinking about how I could orchestrate things so that I could be alone with Bradley again. But, as he ran out of the car when we first pulled up to the house, I wondered if I had been off-base in thinking that the kiss was something that he wanted.
I started to think about things further. He hadn’t gone out of his way to avoid me. He could have easily found some excuse not to have the car repair lesson, yet there he was, patiently showing me how to fix the car and even repeating things when my scattered brain refused to stay focused on what was going on.
Everything in me told me that he liked the kiss and might even be open for more.
“Alright, time to get this show on the road,” he said, grabbing a set of pliers and putting the new battery in the car. “Here, I’ll go ahead and do the heavy lifting here. If you can just hand me the tools as I need them, that would be a huge help.”
He went to work, fixing the wires onto the battery. Then, he lied on his back on the floor of the garage and started tinkering with something underneath the car.
Every once in a while, he would emerge or he would just stick out his hand asking for a tool. I would search for it, sweating bullets, hoping that I wouldn’t embarrass myself even further by not knowing what he was asking for, or taking too long. Things went on like this for about thirty minutes before he shimmied from underneath the car, stood up, and dusted his clothes and hands off.
“All done,” he said, smiling a smile that showed his satisfaction. “You want to turn the car on?”
I found myself distracted, very distracted by that smile. “Sure,” I managed to say. “Let me go grab the key.”
I ran into the house and grabbed it, then ran back out to the garage. I didn’t want to miss a second of time with his delicious hunk of manliness. I opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel. I put the key in the engine and she roared to life.
“Give her a little gas,” he yelled over the engine noise.
When I did, she purred like a kitten. I couldn’t remember the last time that she sounded so good. I was really impressed.
“She hasn’t purred like this since I first got her. You’re a miracle worker, Bradley! Thank you so much.” I really meant it. It was nice having such handsome, sure hands helping me.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I’m just glad that I could help.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said, trying to decide if I should make my next statement. “You know, we did do some really good, hard work today. What do you say to going for a little dip in the pool?”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, giving my suggestion real consideration.
“That might be a good idea,” he said. “But, first, I think that it might be good for us to eat something. I didn’t eat anything today and I didn’t see you eat anything, either. How about it? Are you hungry?”
It was almost as if my belly had heard his words because it seemed to growl on demand. It was so loud, we both heard it, as if on cue. We cracked up, laughing together in that way we already seemed to do so often.
“Well, I guess that’s our answer,” I said. “I can make us some salads.”
“Okay,” he said, hesitantly. “Is there any… man food that could go along with your rabbit food?”
I already loved his sense of humor.
“Sure,” I said. “I can grab some animal carcasses out of the freezer to throw on the grill. Only thing is, I’ve never used the grill, so I couldn’t be much help in that area.”
“No problem,” said Bradley assuredly, waving at me dismissively. “You can work on the salads and I’ll work the grill. I’ve been told that I’m basically… kind of… a total grill master. So I’ll be happy to whip something up for us.”
I went to the kitchen and rummaged through the refrigerator, trying to find the things that I needed for the salad. To be honest, I wasn’t even quite sure what I would find in there, since I rarely even ate many meals at home. Most of the time, I was either eating fast food somewhere or I ate when I was at one of my friends’ house.
With my dad being gone all the time, I didn’t really want to spend a lot of time at home by myself. But, I remembered that my dad had asked me to pick up a few things to eat as he prepared the house to have a guest. I figured that I couldn’t go wrong with salad. I chuckled thinking about Bradley’s comment involving rabbit food. I guess I had been off the mark.
I took some frozen meat out of the freezer and plunked it into the sink and filled the sink with warm water. The label said that it was chicken, but frozen in the pack, it just looked like a block of yellow blob.
I walked back to the garage where Bradley was still cleaning up.
“Hey, I’m going to set everything up in the back yard where the grill is. You can meet me out there when you’re ready,” I told him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, saluting in my direction.
I grabbed an armful of salad-making supplies and headed outside. The grass was freshly cut the day before and still had cut clippings strewn all across the lawn. It gave the yard a fresh, earthy smell that was warm and inviting. It was pretty much a perfect day.
I pulled the grill out from its place where it normally leaned against the house. It still had ashes in it from the last time that it was used. It had been years since I remembered barbecuing in the backyard. Could it have been sitting back there unused for all these years?
“What can I do to hel
p?” asked Bradley, stepping out into the yard and looking around. He had this focused, manly, lets-do-this expression on his face that made me hungrier in a different way than the thought of barbecue had.
“Well, there's this,” I said, motioning toward the grill. “I'm not sure how to set it up or anything. But, feel free to try figuring it out.”
He walked toward me, his body so close to mine I could feel his warmth.
“Where do you keep charcoal and lighter fluid?” he asked.
I had no clue.
“Let me go look,” I said, walking back into the house.
I looked underneath the sink in the kitchen. It wasn't there. Searching the pantry was another dead end. I finally found half a bag of charcoal and lighter fluid in my dad’s bedroom, of all places. Men, I guess.
I grabbed it and brought it back to Bradley. I sat and watched as he carefully stacked the charcoal into a pyramid, sprayed the charcoal with lighter fluid, and lit a match. He threw the match on top of the coal and a small fire started to blaze. He doused the flames with more lighter fluid until it was a roaring fire.
We sat there watching it in silence as the flames licked toward the sky. Once it died down, Bradley turned and asked me where the meat was.
“It's in the kitchen sink,” I told him.
“I'll go and get it ready to go on the grill,” he said, getting up.
“I'll help,” I said, eager to be near him.
We walked into the kitchen and he pulled the meat out of the sink. It had thawed out and now resembled chicken. He opened the package and laid the meat out on the counter. He found the seasoning in the cabinet and started shaking it over the meat.
After he had seasoned it, he put it in a large roasting pan and carried it back outside. He put a piece of chicken on the grill one at a time, making it sizzle over the hot flames.
“While you're doing that, I'll go ahead and get the salad prepared,” I said.
I went over to the outdoor table and started chopping vegetables. It felt good to be out there preparing a meal with him. It almost gave me the feeling like we were a couple, just enjoying a relaxing day at home together. I smiled happily at the thought.