I don’t even let Liv get the door open all the way before I’m on her, pinning her to the wall in her foyer and kicking the door shut with my foot as I find her mouth with my own. She’s wearing nothing but a sundress right now, barefoot and flushed from playing with herself, and when I reach for her hand, I find that her fingers are wet. I suck on them, licking them clean, fluttering my tongue against the pads of her fingers until she’s moaning and rocking her hips against me.
“I’m so full and ready for you, kitten,” I murmur as I pull her fingers from my mouth. I move her hands down to my belt, which she fumbles excitedly with. Once my fly is open, she tugs my cock free and gently palms my balls.
I buck in her hand, moaning. It almost hurts, being this full. I haven’t gone this long without ejaculating in...well, since I started having sex, actually. I am going to die if I’m not inside this woman’s pussy within the next heartbeat.
“I’m sorry,” I say, grabbing her ass and carrying her over to her little dining table with her legs wrapped around my waist. My bare cock rubs against her wet pussy as we walk, and I nearly have a stroke. “I can’t wait another second.”
“Me neither,” she whispers as I set her on the edge of the table.
“I’ve been waiting for this all day,” I grunt, jamming my hips between her thighs and grabbing myself by the root to line up with her entrance. Her narrow slit is glistening and opened, like the petals of a flower.
My hands are shaking, and we both inhale the moment my blunt tip presses against her pussy. “God, I fucking need it.”
“It’s yours,” she breathes. “Take it.”
I do as the good woman says, sliding my hand over her thigh to cup her ass as I shove my cock inside her. She cries out, but I don’t give her time to adjust, time to stretch to my girth, I just shove in deeper, all the way to the hilt. And then I groan. She’s so fucking wet that I can hear our bodies move together and apart as I begin pumping inside of her, and she’s so hot and tight that my shaft is being squeezed from root to crown.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, grabbing her hips and changing the pace so that I’m pounding into her. The table shakes; her tits bounce under her dress.
“Don’t be,” she gasps in between thrusts. “Feels—so—good.”
I grunt in response, my eyes as hungry and Livia-starved as my cock, taking in every detail of this. Her wild tits, her parted mouth, the slick and easy slide of my dick in and out of her pussy. I try and try to take my fill of her, the sight and sound and feel of her, but I can’t, I can’t get enough.
And it’s now, embarrassingly soon, that I feel the twisting heat at the base of my spine and the tug of my heavy balls as they draw up, and with the table pounding against the wall, I unleash a series of brutal, fast, deep thrusts that leave me bottomed out in her cunt and leave her gasping and clutching desperately at my shirt.
“Gonna come,” I mumble. “Gonna come so hard.”
“Give it to me,” she demands breathlessly. “Give it all to me.”
“Shit yes. I’m gonna. I’m gonna.”
And I do, the first wave of release like getting my guts torn out, it’s so sharp and so strong. I practically roar, and then I sink my teeth into her shoulder as my shaft pulses and pumps cum into the deepest parts of her. Pulse and pump, pulse and pump, over and over again, and I’ve never come like this, so much and so fast and so hard, and it takes forever to unload inside her pussy. It feels like minutes and hours, keeping her pinned with my teeth and speared with my cock as I empty myself. Until finally, finally my body tenses one last time—one final spurt of my seed—and then stills.
The hurricane of need is finally sated.
Balls drained, mind slowly clearing, I can finally think, finally feel something other than the soul-deep need to fuck. I stop biting Liv’s shoulder, giving the shallow teeth marks a soothing lick and kiss, and then straighten up and look down.
“Look, baby,” I say. “Look how much I gave you.”
She follows my gaze down to where we are joined, her eyes going dark at the sight of my seed spilling out around us, and I swipe a little with my thumb and use it to start rubbing her clit. She hasn’t come yet, something I’m acutely aware of and little embarrassed about, to be totally honest. Another first for me—I’ve never been so desperate to come that I haven’t made sure my partner comes first.
I rectify that sin now, rubbing her in the firm circles she likes while I’m still hard inside her. And it’s while she’s staring down at the messy, dirty biology of us that she tenses and climaxes with a low, sweet moan, her head falling back as she grabs at my shoulders. I can see the fluttering muscles in her thighs and feel the gentle squeezes around my sensitive cock as she orgasms, but it’s her face I really watch, open and vulnerable and happy.
She’s happy with me inside her. She trusts me and opens to me, and that means more to me than I can even really explain to myself. I remember the stupid contract, I remember her words—so unintentionally cutting coming from her mouth, even though I’ve thought them myself a thousand times: Of course there’s no one like me. Because I’m the only woman you’ve ever been contracted to impregnate.
But I can’t think about this. Not now, not ever. Liv has made her wishes known, and anyway, I’m not that guy. I’m not the hearts and flowers guy, I’m not the guy who’s made for couples book clubs and wine of the month clubs and other mundane couple shit. Even though I know with Livia it would never feel mundane. Ever.
Stop it, Kelly. Think of something else.
Liv is still breathing hard when I ease out of her, relishing the spill of my seed as I do. I could stare at that for ages, but instead, I do the polite thing and go get her a warm washcloth from her bathroom. It’s as she’s cleaning up and I’m trying to push back thoughts of trust and happiness and contracted pregnancies that I remember what day it is.
“Hey, you’re due for your period soon, right?”
She looks up and a small smile spreads across her face. “You remembered.”
“I downloaded some kind of period tracker app on my phone,” I admit.
She laughs at that and stands up, tossing the used washcloth in the sink. “I bet now your targeted internet ads are all messed up.”
“You’re telling me. Every time I log into Facebook, I get ads for those period panties on the side. I used to get ads for bullets and beard grooming supplies. What are you doing to me?”
She adjusts her dress with a smirk. “Maybe it will be good for you to live outside your masculine bubble for a while.”
“So have you taken a test yet?” I clean myself off with a paper towel from the kitchen and button up my jeans. “I know it’s early, but how can you stand the wait?”
“I’m not actually due until tomorrow,” she says, the smirk sliding off her face. It’s replaced by a look I can’t quite parse.
“They have those tests where you can test up to five days before your period. I saw that on the box. You could totally take a test now!” I’m starting to feel a little excited—for her, of course, all for her.
“Mm.” Liv makes a noncommittal noise and goes into her bedroom, returning with a fresh pair of panties.
I follow and hover, like a bearded shadow. “Don’t mmm about this! Let’s go to the drugstore and get a test now! You could take it tonight!”
Okay, maybe I’m feeling a lot excited. Which is stupid, because if she is pregnant, then it’s that much sooner that she dumps me—if dumping is even the right word. And that possibility fills me with dread, but even with that dread, I can’t help but want to know. I can’t help but feel a spark of excitement at the potential spark of life inside my librarian’s belly.
Liv puts on the underwear slowly, as if buying time for a response, and even though she’s not trying to be sexy, I start to thicken and swell again at the sight of the thin lace moving up her legs, at the flash of her perfect ass as she lifts her dress. Finally she straightens, smoothing her dress down, and says one word. “No
.”
“Come on,” I beg playfully. “Let’s go get one.”
She shakes her head firmly. “There’s no point in taking one at night, it needs to be the morning because—”
“—hCG levels are highest in the morning, I know.”
She narrows her eyes. “You know about hCG?”
“The pregnancy hormone? Megan’s been pregnant twice, Liv. You know how unafraid she is of body talk. I picked up a thing or two.” I don’t mention to Livia that I’ve been steadily reading my way through every pregnancy book the library owns, since maybe that seems a little over-committed to the whole process.
Or creepy. You know, one or the other.
“But just because the levels are highest in the morning doesn’t mean you can’t test any other time, especially this close to your period.”
“Fine.” She gives a little huff, as if irritated that she can’t smack me down with her superior knowledge of human pregnancy. “Maybe I could. But I told myself I wasn’t going to test until tomorrow and I don’t like changing plans when I’ve already attached emotional processes to them.”
I blink at her.
A sigh. “What I mean is, I don’t want to get my hopes up and then be disappointed, like what happened last month. But if I do it the way I planned, it’s like I can protect myself a little. Because I’ve emotionally rehearsed what it will feel like doing it on the day I’m supposed to get my period.”
“Look, kitten. I don’t emotionally rehearse shit, and I’m still okay. Look at us—
at this—” I gesture between our bodies. “I’m so glad I didn’t emotionally rehearse our first date. I’m glad you blindsided me with this whole baby madness.”
She bites her lip. “You are?”
“Yeah,” I say, almost as surprised as she is to hear the genuine truth of it in my voice. “And it was spontaneous and crazy and I didn’t know how to feel about it at first, but that’s part of the fun, doll. That’s part of being alive. If you plan to avoid every bad feeling, eventually there’s not going to be room for the good feelings either.”
She stares at me, still chewing her lip. I see my words turn over in her mind, sinking down and attaching to something deep inside her. She gives a little nod, more to herself than me, but her forehead is still slightly creased with defensive worry.
She protests in the faint tone of someone who’s already given up, “But the tests I ordered from Amazon haven’t come in yet and I don’t want any local people seeing me at the pharmacy.”
I grin, fishing my keys out of my pocket. “Now that is a problem I can fix.”
Bisceglia Pharmacy is a tiny, dusty relic tucked into a dying strip mall on the other side of the Kansas-Missouri state line. I see Liv’s doubt as we pull up to the pharmacy and there’s a dog chained up out front gnawing industriously on an old shoe.
“Uh,” she says, stepping over the dog, who doesn’t stop his chewing to look up, “is this like...a licensed pharmacy?”
“We’re in Missouri now, princess. This is what shit looks like here.”
Liv shoots me a look as we walk through the door—which is propped open with a rabbit-eared television set—and into the dimly lit pharmacy. “You know, it’s not nice to be geographically snobby.”
“I lived on the Missouri side of Kansas City until Mom died,” I tell her. “So I feel a little entitled to some trash talk. Also this place was my first job. So I’m double entitled.”
Liv glances around the store, paneled in fake wood, and lined with shelves of probably-expired food and packages of medicine with hand-written labels. There’s also no other living being in sight, other than the German Shepherd outside. “This place had employees?”
I laugh a little as I lead her over to the corner where the condoms are kept discreetly behind a display of Dr. Scholl’s shoe inserts. It’s a corner I visited a lot as a younger man when I lived in the area. And I always noticed the pregnancy tests were right next to the condoms, as if in warning of a teenage boy’s fate if he wasn’t careful enough. Cover your stump before you hump and all that.
“I was a cashier and delivery boy,” I explain as we get to the shelf of pregnancy tests. I’m relieved to see they look fairly fresh, although I make a note to check the expiration date just to be sure. “A lot of Bud’s customers were getting too old to pick up their prescriptions, so he started a delivery service for them.”
“Bud?”
“The pharmacist. He opened this place and still runs it, even though he’s over ninety now. And see, I told you the boxes had the thing on them!” I point to one of the newer looking boxes, which has purple letters proclaiming Five Days Sooner! I check the date on the edge of the box to make sure the test is still good, and then I hand it to Liv. “Let’s get the bathroom key, and then I’ll go pay while you take the test.”
Her eyes widen and she looks around the store. “Take it here?”
“Yeah,” I say and I know I’m smiling like a kid but I can’t help it. “I don’t want to wait another minute to find out. Do you?”
“It’s just—” She glances around and I know she’s trying to find a concrete reason to say no. Trying to manifest a real obstacle out of what is an abstract feeling of fear and uncertainty.
I’m not going to let her. Not only because I’m itching to find out if she’s pregnant or not, but because she hasn’t had anyone to push her out of her comfort zone in so long that I think she’s become stuck there. Inventing reasons not to trust excitement or happiness, inventing reasons to believe that good things can’t belong to her. That she doesn’t deserve them.
And while I call her my girl, my Liv, my librarian, I do know she’s not actually mine, as much as I’m wishing she was. But maybe this is something I can give her, that I can do for her. Show her that it’s okay to hope. It’s okay to be excited. That it’s more than okay, it’s necessary and good, and the best part of being alive.
So I don’t let her cut in with any excuses. I take her hand and lead her over to the small unisex bathroom by the register. Then I step behind the counter, into the pharmacy area. “Hello?”
Bud himself comes pottering around the corner, followed by another German Shepherd. A smile spreads under his bristly white mustache. “Chase Kelly!” he rumbles in happy surprise, pulling me into a hug. His bald head only comes up to my collarbone. “You rascal. What are you doing here?”
I hug him back and then pull away to throw a mock-rueful glance back at Livia, who is clutching the pregnancy test box and looking mortified. “Well, Bud, I think I got a girl pregnant.”
Bud sighs. “I knew you would eventually. And you’re so young!”
He’s giving me a very disappointed look, so I remind him, “I’m thirty-three now.”
“Oh. I guess that’s not so young.” He scratches his mustache. “Thirty is when you stop producing human growth hormone, you know. And your DNA telomeres start degrading. It’s when the body starts dying.”
“Exactly!” Livia says from behind me.
“I’m not dying!” I protest for the millionth time in the last two months. “And neither are you, Liv.”
“We’re kind of dying, though,” she says.
In front of me, Bud nods in agreement.
“Take your vitamins,” he adds, with a touch of sternness, “and then you won’t die so fast.”
I have something like a Vietnam flashback to all the vitamins Bud’s fed me over the years. And they weren’t the fun Flintstones ones either. “I’ll be sure to do that. Anyway, is there any chance we can get the bathroom key so she can take the test now?”
“Oh, that lock has been broken since the Bush Administration,” the old pharmacist says. “Just go on in.”
“Oh no—” Liv objects. “We can just buy the test here and then take it at home, and—”
“Young lady,” Bud says, all sorts of sternness back in his voice. “If you are pregnant, you need to know as soon as possible. And you are not leaving my store without all the vitamins a
nd folic acid I can give you.”
Livia opens her mouth to argue more, but Bud bustles toward her with flapping hands and semi-grouchy rumbles about young people who don’t listen and does she think he has all day to convince her about the importance of early folic acid intake and to just be a dear and listen, and then before she can muster a defense, she’s in the bathroom with the test and the door closed behind her.
“Nice work,” I tell Bud, pulling out my wallet.
He waves my money away. “It’s on the house. I’m happy to see you settling down and starting a family. When you were younger, I was worried you’d be one of those young men who never built a life because they were too busy chasing skirts.”
“Quail hunting,” I say, thinking of Pop.
“Now that’s a term I haven’t heard since I was young,” Bud says. He pats my shoulder. “She’s a good girl. I can tell these things. Now, are you going to give that baby your name? Marry the girl?”
I open my mouth to tell him no, that I’m not actually settling down, that I’m not done chasing skirts. That this is just a skirt that wanted me for my sperm and nothing else. Except I don’t want to tell him that. Because I don’t want it to be true. For just a moment, I want to pretend that Liv really is my girlfriend, that I’m really on the precipice of fatherhood, that I’ve got a ring stashed away in my house somewhere, just waiting for the right moment.
“Yes,” I pretend. “I’m going to make her mine. We’re going to be a family.”
The words sound so good, they feel so good to say. A weird heat prickles in my eyes, balls into a huge knot in my throat.
That earns me another pat on the shoulder. “Good boy.” And then with a second pat, Bud trundles back off into the back to fill more orders, his dog following obediently after him.
As soon as he’s out of sight, I squeeze my eyes shut to stop the burning there. I clear my throat. I remind myself of why I chose not to have a family, why I can’t have one. I can’t drag a perfect woman and an innocent child into a life of late night callouts and emotional baggage from rough calls, and the daily stress and tragedy I live. And the irony is not lost on me that while I’m trying to convince Livia that she deserves good things, I’m also reminding myself of why I can’t have them.
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