Ties

by Campbell, Steph

  “Are you really saying this? Are you pulling out all your best lines?” I ask, and I don’t attempt to keep my eye roll to myself. “Just say what you want to say and stop hiding behind all these cheesy metaphors.”

  “Fine.” He leans close, his voice tangles in my ears and prickles down my shoulders, tickling goosebumps on my arms. I can hear his breath and feel it on the tiny hairs at my neck. “I want to have sex with you. Out on the ocean. I want to take your clothes off and lick you and suck on you until you scream as loud as you want, out where we can just be together, without worrying about anyone else. I want to see what happens when you throw your damn plans out the window and just do what feels right.”

  I whimper, so low I know there’s no way he could have heard, and it takes longer than usual for me to harden and push away. But I manage.

  “And you reprimanded me for saying ‘hell’ in a synagogue, seriously?” I tsk my tongue and try to stare at him coolly, but there’s no chance of that, so I unwind my fingers from his and examine my fingernails. Hoping he won’t notice how violently my hand shakes. “That invitation sounds so nice, and I’m sure it worked for many...many...many other girls. But I’ll have to turn you down.”

  “It’s not like that,” he says, his voice crackling like it’s edged in ice. “I haven’t been with anyone in over a year, and I’ve never taken anyone on my boat. Never. That’s not something I ever wanted to share before.”

  “How sweet,” I say, my voice syrupy. “You want to share with me? I’m so honored.” The sarcasm is heavy in my mouth.

  For a few seconds the cacophony of chatter and music floods back and reminds me just how out in the open we are right now. Finally his voice sucks me back into the private place where only the two of us exist.

  “No matter what I do, it’s wrong, isn’t it?” He tilts his head and studies me. “I don’t know what else to do, Hattie. I tried being honest. I tried being romantic. I know you feel it with me, but I feel like you’re not going to admit it, no matter how I ask.”

  Like a coward, I take more precise inventory of my cuticles. “It’s fun when we’re together, Ryan. It is. But fun never lasts, and I don’t want...I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

  “The wrong idea?” He moves closer and I back up. His hands reach up, then fall to his sides, balled into fists. “Is this because I don’t fit some plan you have tacked on some vision board?”

  The weepy wail of a fiddle dances around the excited clap of the audience, and I wonder why I love the idea that he can’t be pinned into my life plan so much it makes my heart hammer hard. And I wonder why, at the same time, it scares me that I love it so much.

  Over his head, I see a group of people at the food table who seem familiar...and realize with a cold shock of panic it’s Deo, Whit, Marigold, Rocko, and Grandpa. I barely process before I have Ryan by his calloused hand and am dragging him into a deserted hall that leads to a series of classrooms. I peek around the corner and breathe a sigh of relief when I realize no one spotted us.

  Then I focus on the fact that my body is pressed hard against Ryan’s. He’s leaned on a wall, between paintings of Judith slicing off the head of Holofernes and Ruth gathering shocks of wheat. I press his shoulders back with my hands, flexing my fingers against the resistance of his muscles.

  I want to look into his eyes, but my gaze only makes it halfway up his face. He has this sharp jaw and thin, strong lips. You’d never expect his tongue to be so soft and manipulative based on that jaw and mouth.

  But I know.

  I know, and I want it.

  After I just mocked him and told him ‘no’ when he offered.

  What the hell is this guy doing to me?

  I run my fingers through the soft, short hair behind his ears, letting my palms rest on his neck, where I can feel his jugular hammering like a kick-drum up my wrists, into my chest, around my heart.

  My lips are on his, and it shocks me again how right this feels. No matter how complicated our arguments and intentions are, when our bodies meet, everything else melts away, and it’s just me and him.

  He moans, and I feel the vibration under my palms. His moan unleashes something wet and sweet in me, and I press hard against him, trying to harness what I feel, but not sure how. His hands move down to my ass. He squeezes, softly at first, but much harder when I wiggle against him. He kneads and presses, stopping to move his hands lower, all the way down to my upper thighs, and higher, up to my shoulders.

  I drag my hands down his neck and along the front of his shirt, pressing my mouth insistently against his. My fingers flick one button open, then two, then I slide my hand over his thudding heart.

  “Hattie,” he breathes. “I want you.”

  I don’t answer, even though being stuck where I am with him isn’t satisfying me. But I haven’t figured out what I want from him--from us. So I keep licking and sucking, running my fingers over him and pressing my hips close to his.

  After a few minutes of mutual frustration, he stops again. “Let me take you out. Later. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, but I need more than this. I need you.”

  “Maybe.” I press my fingers to his lips, wanting him truly alone, but wondering if I can duck out of the Rodriguez dinner without everyone worrying and asking questions.

  I’m still not used to having a big extended family monitoring my every move. Part of me loves all the attention, but the independent part of my personality feels incredibly stifled.

  “Maybe?” He moves his hands down to my hips and squeezes, his mouth nuzzling along my neck. “Hattie, you’re killing me, you know that? I’m starting to think that’s the point for you. Do you get off on torturing me?”

  I grab onto the sides of his shirt and wrestle my very strong desire to see him undressed. Totally undressed. Then I hear the click of heels. Ryan stands up straight, smoothes his clothes down and tries to look innocent, but even innocently talking in a hallway isn’t good enough if my family catches us together. I yank him into one of the classrooms, my hand over his mouth as I listen to some woman, clearly very confused, tottering down the hall and muttering about the bathrooms.

  I relax, pull Ryan away from the old chalkboard, and brush chalk dust off his pants. “The coast is clear. I thought it was Whit.”

  At her name, Ryan goes stiff, and I bite back the jealous words that threaten to spill out. I try to go for neutral, but I don’t think my tone quite nails it.

  “She meant a lot to you, didn’t she?” I ask. He opens his mouth and I cut in, “I get it. I mean, my brother seems like a goof, but he’s not stupid. She’s amazing. Please don’t think I’ll turn into some psycho bitch if you bring her up. We’re adults.” I focus on buttoning his shirt and breathing through my nose.

  “Whit is amazing,” Ryan says very slowly. “I told you, she met Deo and there was no one else. And what we had was purely physical.”

  I know he says that as a way of assuring me that there was no emotional entanglement, but I don’t believe that, first of all. Secondly, I don’t really get what’s so reassuring about the fact that it was only physical.

  Since Whit’s only a goddess.

  And she was probably only the best sexual partner ever.

  Add in the fact that I’m only a virgin and chronic over-analyzer, and the thought of anything “purely physical” between Ryan and Whit makes me cringe.

  “Right. I get it.” I nod like it barely interests me.

  Ryan grabs me by the wrists. “Uh, no you don’t.”

  “I do,” I insist, trying to pull away, but he leans back on the chalkboard--apparently not caring that he’s covered in chalk dust--and traps me between his thighs. I can’t help leaning into their muscled strength.

  “Look at me.”

  I look at his eyebrows and he shakes his head. I watch his forehead crinkle, knowing it’s because he’s giving me that exasperated smile that seems to be a permanent fixture on his face when I’m around.

  “
You don’t ‘get it’ because I never explained it. To you or anyone.”

  “I don’t need an explanation.” I’m practically begging. “Seriously. I really don’t. It’s clearer than you think.”

  “I had the same girlfriend from middle school right through my sophomore year in college,” Ryan begins despite my pleas, his thumbs tracing along my knuckles, down my fingers, along my palms. “I thought I’d marry her. And then, out of the clear blue, she dumped me. And when I say it broke my heart, that’s the biggest understatement of my life.”

  Even though I asked him not to explain, I regret this abbreviated version of the story. If I have to know it, I want to know it all. Who was she? Why did she date him so long and just drop him like that? Did she meet someone else? Why didn’t he just move on?

  But he fast forwards through all those questions and goes directly to the crazy.

  “I was emotionally gutted, and I dealt with it by staying perpetually wasted. Getting drunk every weekend, stalking my ex to the point where she was about to get a restraining order. I was out of my fucking mind.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I was also incredibly immature. I’d had one girlfriend. One. Our first date was our eighth grade dinner dance. I was a social moron when it came to girls. So I decided to get an education.”

  “You mean a sexual education,” I clarify. “You never finished college, so you obviously weren’t focused on an academic education. Right?”

  He leans his forehead to mine and chuckles, his breath brushing my cheek. “Jesus Christ, you’re not gonna cut me any slack, are you?”

  “Cut you slack? After the part in the story where you give up a solid college education to become a professional Don Juan? Or maybe after the part where you detail your rebound sexual exploits to try to illicit my sympathy?” I raise an eyebrow at him. “It’s not like you’re telling me the story of how you beat cancer or overcame an impoverished upbringing. People break up, Ryan. Even people who went to the eighth grade dinner dance together.” I tap a finger to the side of my lips. “Actually especially people who went to the eighth grade dinner dance together. Are you seriously standing here trying to tell me the downfall of that relationship came as a surprise to you?”

  He puts his hands on either side of my face and kisses me: just the barest brush of his lips over mine.

  “It honestly did. I guess I’m a little bit of a romantic.”

  “You don’t mean ‘romantic,’” I whisper, thinking he’s ridiculous even as I press my lips against his harder, wanting him more. “You mean ‘settler.’ As in, you settle way too easily.”

  “I settled way too easily,” Ryan says, gathering me in his arms again. “I guess it was easy to be afraid of something new when I’d only experienced one thing. But give me some credit, Hattie. I changed.”

  I blow out a long stream of breath. “You changed from settling for one girl to settling on all of them. You still weren’t challenging yourself. You were taking the easy way out.”

  He grunts with frustration, twining his fingers through mine and locking my hands behind my back, so my knuckles graze the cool blackboard. “So, if I love things easy, what the hell am I doing with you?”

  I wriggle, mostly to see if I could break his hold easily. I can’t.

  “I have no idea. More games?” I guess.

  “Except games are supposed to be fun. This feels kind of like masochism.”

  He drops his head and kisses my shoulder through the thin lace of my dress. The heat of his lips through the stiff fabric makes me shudder.

  “Masochism isn’t fun? I think, under the right circumstances, a little S&M could be really fun.” I dip my mouth to his and nip his bottom lip between my teeth.

  His eyes go wide and dark. “Leave this place. With me. Now.”

  “Can’t.” I put more pressure on my wrists and break his hold. Or, more accurately, he lets me break his hold. “My family expects me to stay. I came with them, to spend time with them.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “Hmm. Your family. Not my biggest fans. You sure this isn’t about what they think of me?”

  “No.” I shake my head like I’m trying to convince myself that I’m not lying through my teeth. “I love them, but I’ve been making my own decisions without worrying about what other people think for a long time now. I have no plans to let anyone else interfere with what I want.”

  Partial lie.

  Mom and I are both so independent she never really invaded my personal life or gave her opinion on who I should spend time with. Plus she would have loved for me to date more. She said I was wasting my youth by not balancing work and social life.

  But Deo and Grandpa? Whit? It’s not only the fact that they’re so strangely overprotective--which I chalk up to all those lost years, plus it just seems to be a family thing with them to be in each other’s business--it’s that I’m not really sure how to react to it.

  And, yes. It’s also Ryan’s twisted history with Whit.

  He’s fun. He’s sexy. He’s interesting. I’ve never been more eager to spend time with anyone, never looked forward to debating and arguing with any person more. But that’s just because this thing we have is a novelty. New. Sexy.

  Ryan is not the guy I’m going to be with for the rest of my life. He’s a great guy, but he’s not my type by any stretch of the imagination. I’m going to be very careful when I choose the person I’ll spend my life with, and it will definitely be someone with real direction, someone who agrees with my way of seeing things...someone who doesn’t have an insane history with people in my extended family.

  Contrary to my mother’s proclamations, you absolutely can choose who you love, and you can do it using logic and feelings.

  I’m not worried, even if I sometimes get a tight knot in the pit of my stomach when I wonder if I’ll ever meet someone I connect with like this again.

  Which is ridiculous.

  I will feel this spark again. I will find someone who makes me smile and turns me on again: someone who looks at me like I’m the only thing worth looking at...someone who looks at me the way Ryan does.

  But love and lust are two very different things, and I’m not quite willing to give up on the intense feelings I have for Ryan in the lust department. Plus, he’s experienced, and I could use a tutor. I’m not planning to wait until I’m married to have sex, and I’d like to feel things out with someone who knows what he’s doing, who I care about, and who I can say good-bye to cleanly, no broken hearts or restraining orders when it’s all done.

  Ryan makes sense for that. He has a long track record for being a great temporary guy, and that’s what I need.

  “Look, I don’t want to be hanging all over each other at a religious festival. It’s pathetic.” I run a thumb over his jaw, watching his eyelids flutter shut. “But I would love to meet up later. Maybe get a bite?”

  “Maybe pack one and bring it out on the boat? I swear we can keep things clean.” He holds his hands up, proclaiming his innocence. “Unless you were serious about the S&M thing, because I’m open to whatever you’re up for.”

  I give him a quick last peck. “Maybe if you’re lucky.” I brush the chalk off my dress. “Okay, I’m going. Wait five minutes so no one sees us coming out together.”

  The easy look on his face tightens, and he lowers his eyebrows. “What?”

  “Or ten. Maybe ten will look less obvious?” When he just stares at me, I shrug. “Whatever you think. You text me a time and place for later.”

  I duck out of the classroom and find my family. They ask a million questions about where I’ve been, and I do my best to remember that they’re asking because they’re worried, not because they’re prying.

  I resist the urge to snap that I’m just fine, that I’m a grown woman who’s been taking care of herself for a long time without family chaperones.

  But Deo’s smile is so lovingly goofy and Grandpa is so adorable when he pulls me onto the floor and waltzes me in quick, light circles until I’m breathless
with laughter--I don’t need to ruin it by asserting my independence right now. Being this entangled with their lives is temporary. I can go back to my real life, complete with all my freedoms, when this is all over. I’m trying to just enjoy what I have with them right now.

  Ryan makes a single attempt to come up and talk to me just before Cece’s acting troupe gets onstage, but I glare and shake my head, relieved when he strides away and I assure myself no one noticed us.

  I like being with him. I like being with my family. I just can’t let them intersect, and he needs to respect that.

  I know he will.

  I hope he will.

  I don’t run into him again for the duration of the festival, and that makes me breathe a sigh of relief. Until I find myself sitting in Marigold’s guest room later that night, my phone in my lap, and no text from Ryan.

  I refuse to text him.

  An hour passes. Two. Three. Soon it will be too late to do anything and that old saying about cutting off your nose to spite your face slaps me upside the head.

  The rules are only really about the guy I’m going to be with for good, whoever he is, I rationalize.

  I don’t like it, but I think I can bend things for Ryan. He’s going to be my one deviation from the rules, anyway, so why be such a stickler?

  Plus I want to make out with him so badly, it aches. Mmm, seriously aches.

  I pick up the phone and break one of my most stringent rules about guys: I text first. I grit my teeth doing it and hope he’s got a good reason to leave me hanging, because I refuse to break my second rule.

  Which is ‘no begging for a guy’s attention.’

  I will not break my second rule.

  Unless he doesn’t return my text in the next fifteen minutes.

  I can’t believe this is happening.

  11 RYAN

  “What’s that girl Whitney up to? Are you still seeing her?” my mom asks as she rinses a tomato, then starts chopping it for her famous pasta salad.