Paper Dolls

by Emma Chamberlain

When I was naked I stepped to her and stood so close our fronts touched but I didn't wrap my arms around her like I’d done so many times before. I pulled the shower curtain back and then took her hands, pulling her toward the opening. She stepped in and I reached up to aim the shower-stream onto her.

  She leaned her head back and the hot water rushed over her body, flushing it red after a few seconds. Her eyes were closed as she enjoyed the spray. So, I reached for the loofa and the shower gel and squeezed some onto the sponge, taking time to lather it up before I placed it on her stomach and rubbed in circular motions, the circle widening with each rotation.

  I could tell she was enjoying what I was doing but her eyes stayed closed so I couldn’t see what she was thinking like I wanted to. I kept rubbing the sponge over her body. Down her leg and around to the back of it, over her butt, then down her other leg and back up to her back.

  I had to move her a little to get to that side but once I was behind her I finished by putting my arms around her body and pushing the sponge up over her breasts and across her neck to get her shoulders and arms.

  I finished with her hands, taking care to clean each one with gentle strokes until I put her back under the spray to wash it all off. The suds disappeared to reveal her body. I still held her by the wrists and then I brought her hands up to rest on my neck and i left them there.

  “I like this,” I told her, running a finger through her cleavage. “We should do it all the time.”

  “Which part?” She asked, watching me with a soft smile on her lips.

  “Me cleaning you up,” I said, returning the smile.

  I felt her tighten her arms and pull me in as she kissed me slowly and kept me, trying to keep on kissing me until she had to gasp and then break to breathe.

  “You always clean me up,” she said softly.

  “But sometimes I like you dirty,” I teased.

  Her kiss felt the same but different. I could feel her devotion like always but there was a new element to it, or maybe I just saw the never-ending nature of the emotion attached to her. We were so very human but we’d seen things and felt things together that could bend the mind.

  The insecurities we held were the same but dressed in different cloaks. Secret or open, I was unwilling to hide them anymore.

  She smiled and bit her lip to think about that. Eventually she let out a sigh and laid into me quietly, resting against me so gentle but certain.

  “Aww,” I crooned.

  She made me tender. I rubbed her back with my hands, giving her a mini massage as we stood.

  “I should wash your hair but this is comfortable.”

  I set my cheek on her shoulder and let the pressure smoosh my cheek so that the words sounded silly.

  She took the opportunity to move her hands up my back and touch. Eventually she rest her hand at the back of my neck and held me.

  “I think I started missing you even before you left,” she said. “I want too much of you. You’re right about that...”

  “Thing is, I want to give it all to you. Everything else seems arbitrary sometimes.”

  I turned us so that my back was up against the shower wall.

  “I’m just greedy,” she whispered. “I want you all to myself all the time. It’s like I’m mad at the world.”

  “I’m always mad at the world until I remember the parts that aren’t so bad. I don’t want to live in a different world but it would be nice if we never had to deal with people.”

  “It’s bad… I get jealous of other people now, just for little stupid things. Like if someone else can make you smile. I love your smile. I want your smile. Your smile makes me happy. When someone else causes it and not me… I dunno… That’s silly right?”

  “I dunno if it’s silly but sometimes I notice it. I feel the same but I don’t like to show it because of the same reason. I feel like it’s probably bad.”

  “I just get mad at myself and sad,” Olivia said. “I love you happy.”

  “I’m happy with you.”

  “I don’t know if our happy is the way happy is supposed to be,” she said.

  “That’s occurred to me too but I don’t care. It would be a million times worse if you weren’t with me.”

  “I just know I’m too heavy,” she expressed.

  “We’re equally heavy. I just hide it better sometimes. Even before Ben. I wasn’t happy, Olivia. I didn’t remember what that felt like till I felt you loving me.”

  We were heavy but even if we sank we’d do it together. All of my love for her filled me up but there were mental things that pushed back at it. It was like oil and water. I needed them to mesh or I needed the mental bull to go away.

  “Yeah but… I’ve seen the way you can laugh… The ways you can be with other people. I’m not saying you’re not happy with me. I’m just saying I think I make it needlessly hard without meaning to. Because of the way I am.”

  She turned her lips to my shoulder and kissed it. “Na, it would be really boring without you and a lot empty. We just have complicated emotional baggage. People don’t get what that’s like unless they have it. I’ve always felt you on a different level from anyone else.”

  Like our minds met in a different plane where we existed when not focusing on the other people in our lives. We’d both been wandering there until we ran right into one another.

  “All I can do is feel how much I love you…” Olivia said. “To me that's heavy but it’s like I somehow crave that weight… Without it I’m not real or something.”

  “Baby, I live at the bottom of the ocean so you’re just meeting me here when you sink.”

  I pushed her hair away from her ear and took the lobe into my mouth, flicking it with my tongue and biting down lightly.

  “I had a lot of moments where I would just sink down to the bottom of the pool or float right under the water and look up at the sky. I felt more at home.” The water was starting to run cold. “Guess it’s time to get out. I didn’t even wash my hair, which meant I’d have to do it in the morning.

  I turned the water off and grabbed a towel off the rack, wrapping her up and drying her off until she was ready to get out. Then I dried myself with a second towel.

  “Come on,” I said, tugging her along back into the bedroom where we rushed to get out of the cold and under the covers.

  She curled up into me, covering me with one of her arms and legs. Most of her body pressed up into mine and I felt her right limbs lightly rub against my skin as she snuggled up into me and sighed.

  “You sure you’re not hungry? I could get you something from the kitchen.”

  “I couldn’t eat today,” she said, kissing my skin and breathing a little heavy. “I would’ve thrown up too earlier if I hadn’t that tiny bit more time.”

  “So, that’s no?”

  “If you want to force me to eat I’ll try it,” she shrugged.

  She leaned back off of me and propped her head up on her hand to stare.

  “Do you want me to eat?” She asked honestly.

  “Not if you don’t want to eat. I just want to make sure you don’t feel bad from not eating.”

  Her smile stretched a little and she got a little cocky.

  “What?” I smiled a little. What could make her look at me like that?

  She leaned in and pulled my face close to hers. I felt her tongue on my neck, licking me. “Fine,” she said, taking my earlobe into her mouth and sucking on it. “Feed me,” she said.

  I couldn’t help giggling and turning into her touch.

  “Consider me your feast.”

  I rubbed our bodies together and wrapped a hand around her neck, pulling her head even closer.

  “Can I taste you?” She asked in a careful whisper. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about since you came home.”

  “Please,” I whispered back.

  I wanted her to just do it, to take me like she did sometimes.

  “I’ve been thinking about it since then too. I’m already ready for
you.”

  She sucked harder on my earlobe and licked behind it with her tongue, knowing it did things to me. Her breath got all shallow and she made a noise preempting the fact that she was about to talk again. “So why aren’t you on me?” She asked.

  “Because you’re killing my brain with your tongue already.”

  I gathered myself and got up on my knees, moving over to her, and gathering the top sheet to wrap around my shoulders so most of her body would be covered and warmer.

  My center had thrummed with energy the second I realized what she was saying. My mouth was watering and I knew that this was going to be intense. We hadn’t done this in a bit.

  I waited till she scooted down in the bed a little and then I positioned myself over her neck and made sure that the sheet was covering her behind me. Just looking at her like this from above made my insides clench again.

  “Is this what you want?” I raised an eyebrow and licked my lips.

  She nodded her head, still waiting. I felt her hands on the backs of my thighs, gently rubbing and asking for me.

  I settled forward meeting her lips and trying to keep myself together. I was already fractured and she hadn’t done anything to me. I reached one hand out to brace myself on the headboard. “Okay.”

  I was ready… sort of.

  It always took me by surprise how much I felt from the first touch to the last.

  I felt her hands tighten around my inner thighs before I felt anything else. She pulled me down into her bravely. When she tasted though it was soft and careful. She went slow and almost instantly I heard her begin to hum with pleasure at my taste.

  Behind me I could hear her legs move just a bit.

  She was humming through slow gentle strokes of tasting me.

  I started moving on her. Not through any conscious decision but just because I wanted more. I always wanted more. My body felt warm and my heart was beating so fast. I was consumed.

  She was finding all the spots that made me crazy, darting into my opening and then back up, lavishing attention everywhere. I was already building up to a release. It was that easy for her to take me all the way there.

  I pressed into her face and tried to get more but it was better when there was a little space so I backed off. She could move her tongue so much better and I bent at the waist a little when she sucked my clit between her lips.

  “Fuck,” I groaned.

  This was perfect. No one else could ever make me feel quite like this. All the frustration, fear, and anger were still there in me and I needed to let them go. I needed her to get me to a place where I could release it.

  She gripped my legs tighter and moved me a little so she could sink her tongue all the way into me as deep as it would go. And then she fucked me like that while I went mad on top of her.

  “More.”

  I grunted as she sped it up and then pulled me back so she could put me over the edge. She was so good. It wasn’t fair that I couldn’t hold out longer and enjoy it more, but with a few perfectly placed flicks she made me orgasm.

  I was holding the bed with two hands now and trying to ride it out but she kept going and within thirty seconds of the first I came again… and again.

  And then it was too much and I scooted back, taking myself out of her reach.

  “Fuck, baby. I can’t… You’re too good.”

  I caught my breath and just hovered there, trying to come down. My heart slowed a little and I was able to roll off of her and climb back up to pull her in for a long kiss.

  She was smiling into my lips as I tasted myself on her again and again. It was good. She got so much joy from making me feel good. That made it even better and when I broke the last kiss I was floating, happier than I’d been since the disaster at mini golf night.

  “Mmmm, you made me all warm and sleepy.”

  I settled into her and sighed, not caring that we were a little sweaty and hot. It was the best feeling in the world, a physical manifestation of our love.

  I felt light and airy, not heavy right now. Even though I knew it was the endorphins I still loved the high and even more so because of the source.

  Olivia nuzzled my neck and kissed my skin. I took that as my permission as my eyes drooped and I slid into a hazy after-sex coma where no bad dreams could touch me.

  “Love you,” I murmured into the night.

  Chapter 7

  Olivia

  As Avery found her way into slumber-land, the cool night air coated my body and I let myself be still and just feel.

  I was in such a mood that falling asleep in this moment seemed more than wrong. It’d be a total waste. I wanted to keep this time and live every second of it. I wanted to feel her beneath me and listen to her breathe and know that right now everything was perfect.

  The day had been off balance from the start. I woke in a mood, wanting to feel happy right away after so much heavy nonsense. I actually got her to be in the now.

  For a brief wondrous moment it definitely worked. Sometimes though, when we’re actually in the moment together, our real problems come out. On this day, it was my ugly problems being seen.

  When she left for her parents I was so unsettled. Only moments before I’d been so happy and safe and fulfilled.

  I brought her down and I hated that.

  I spent a lot of time on that couch with my mom just thinking of how I could possibly apologize or make it up to Avery.

  And now we were here.

  I wondered if she really knew how badly I wanted to do what we’d just done. Not just because she tasted good and I craved her. Not just because it always felt good to touch her like that. Not just because she touched me last and it’d be messed up not to return the intimate favor.

  There were apparently a lot of reasons for me to want to have done what I did.

  It made me laugh to think about.

  But then I remembered the real reason.

  I’d hurt her feelings. I’d made her sad.

  I may have been truthful but what I was asking of her just wasn’t fair.

  She couldn’t see any more of me. And that wasn’t because she wasn’t trying. We were just different. We read people differently. We saw each other differently.

  And then there was the whole barrel of monkeys that was her PTSD. We had gone through these periods together where I was just so unaware of why she wasn’t seeing me and now I knew I needed to stop her when she wasn’t seeing me but it couldn’t be fair for either of us and talking about what we went through would always feel imbalanced and unjust.

  I couldn’t know how she tried.

  I couldn’t put myself in her position and feel what she felt during those months.

  And she couldn’t go back and be me either.

  She couldn’t go back and be the one trying so hard for one person and one person only, only to come up short at the end of almost every day and then lead on anyway into that fairytale of Napa and then come here and live this.

  We couldn’t walk in each other’s shoes as much as we tried and wanted to.

  It just feels so unfair sometimes. I want her to know why I act the way I do but she just thinks I’m being overly intense and overly worried and overly careful.

  She misses the connection. She always does.

  But we’re here now in this moment. And in this moment we’ve put it all out on the table and we’re in this place where we can both see everything. We can keep coming back to study up and remind ourselves and remember. It actually reminds me a lot of those cop dramas or things like Dexter where they’re hunting a serial killer and they have this special room with all this vital yet confidential information but they’re missing the most important things and just looking and trying to imagine what’s missing just here and just there.

  Avery and I are chasing each other and we always have been in a way.

  It’s obviously not as sinister as my thoughts make it sound but we’ve been compiling data to try and get to these breakthroughs with one another. We’re
both acting all business like every now and then, hiding things to be respectful, giving important information, but only the most important, and holding the rest back. And then we both have our off days where we slip and act all unruly and crazy.

  I guess today was one of my days...

  Beneath me now, she’s so fabulous.

  I can still faintly taste her from several minutes ago. I guess it’s probably been longer than that now that I think of it.