In This Moment

by Autumn Doughton

  “Let’s go out,” she tells me and I think I’ve misheard her.

  I hold my phone a little tighter. “Are you saying you want to go out out—like to a club or dancing or something, or are you trying to coerce me into giving you a ride to the grocery store?”

  Aimee laughs on the other end of the phone and my stomach does this crazy flip. It’s Monday afternoon and this is the first time that we’ve talked on the phone and I’m trying not to make too much of the fact that she actually called me instead of sending me a text.

  “Hmmm. Maybe somewhere in between? How do you feel about the arcade and gyros on the beach?”

  “I’m a fan.” I pause. “There’s also a hamburger guy that parks his cart over by the pier if you feel like living dangerously.”

  She laughs again. I want the conversation to end on a high note and I don’t want to give her a chance to change her mind so I quickly tell her that I’ll be at her place by seven. We say goodbye and I that’s when I start to count because I’ve got four hours to go until I see her, but somehow it feels like ten.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Cole

  “Lord of the Lies.”

  “I’m going with Ride and Prejudice,” she says. “It’s about a modern-day Lizzie Bennet falling for the President of an MC against her better judgment.”

  “What’s an MC?”

  “Mother Chapter. You know, like for a motorcycle club.”

  I chuckle. “How the hell do you know anything about motorcycle clubs?”

  “You know, Cole, there’s a lot about me that might surprise you.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “So…” She pushes her toes down into the sand. “When is your next race?”

  “There’s an informal invitational in a few weeks I think.”

  “Is it here?”

  “Well, it’s not here.” I give a half-shrug with my shoulders indicating the beach that’s spread out in front of us. “But, yeah, it’s here in town if that’s what you mean.”

  Aimee adjusts her position and dusts sand from the backs of her thighs. Today she’s wearing a painfully short white dress that shows off her body in too many ways. When she walked out of her place in it, I was torn between pushing her up against my truck to taste her mouth and asking her to go change into something else.

  “Yes, that’s what I meant, smart-ass.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the way that she’s looking at me right now qualifies as almost flirty. Her blue eyes are dancing and if they keep landing on my mouth like that, stupid move or not, she’s going to get herself kissed.

  “So…” I wash down the last of my burger with a gulp of beer and I crinkle up the paper wrapper into a tight ball.

  “I think I want to go.” She’s staring out at the water.

  “You want to go home?” I ask, hating the disappointment in my voice. We haven’t even made it to the arcade yet. And considering that I haven’t seen this girl for more than four days, one hour of her company isn’t enough.

  “No,” she says, turning back to me. The warm breeze is whipping her dark hair around her face and the sun is streaming soft yellow and orange over her skin. I reach over with my left hand and tuck her hair behind her ears. It’s so silky. Even though I know I’m not allowed, I can’t stop my fingers from drifting farther into the wavy coils that spill over her shoulder and down her back.

  Aimee doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t tell me to stop touching her. She doesn’t say anything at all.

  Silence.

  I’m so afraid to break the moment that I’m not even blinking my eyes. My fingers whisper along the skin of her jaw and my thumb grazes that one freckle on her cheek. She’s warm and soft and I want to touch all of her so badly that it’s like a physical ache clawing at my body.

  Aimee’s chest begins to rise and fall heavily. She bites her bottom lip and turns her face out toward the water. Something is different between us tonight. It feels like the rules have all been changed and I don’t know what they are anymore. There’s this voice inside my head chanting for me to go for it, but I have to be sure that I’m reading this situation right. I need to be sure.

  Reluctantly, I pull my hand away and let it fall to the sand between us. This is fucking torture. I cough and lean back.

  I’ve been with enough girls to know the signals, but this is the one girl that has me questioning anything and everything. She’s had me confusing up and down and left and right and who knows what else since the day that she fell into my lap.

  Her eyes cut back to mine and they are darker than I’ve ever seen them—two swirling seas blinking at me from her pale face.

  “I want to go to the meet. To see you race,” she says in a whisper and I realize that I’ve almost forgotten what we were talking about.

  Running track. The invitational in a few weeks.

  “Do you miss it? Racing?” I’m able to keep my voice flat even though my insides are rioting.

  “I miss a lot of things,” she says, bowing her head as she works through her thoughts. I love the gentle way her neck curves into her shoulders. I want to touch her there. I want to taste her skin and kiss her eyelashes and drink up everything about her. “I haven’t been in the water in more than a year.”

  I don’t think either one of us has moved but somehow our bodies have managed to get closer than they were five seconds ago. Her hip is pressed against my hip and her leg is flush against my leg, and our fingers are brushing the sand between us—almost touching. Almost.

  “We could go in now,” I say gruffly, nodding my chin toward the water.

  Her lips curl. She looks from my face to where the waves are breaking over the sand. “I don’t have a bathing suit with me.”

  I think about saying something fucktastically clichéd about not needing a bathing suit, but I can’t do that. Not with her. Not tonight. “Ah, well… we’ll come again soon, yeah?”

  She nods and leans back on her elbows like me so that her hair is dangling in the sand. Each time the air moves around us, I can smell her shampoo and it’s sweet, like having a plate of pastries just under my nose.

  “Aimee…”

  She absently runs the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip and that one small movement stops the earth in place. Just stops it.

  I can hear my heartbeat.

  I can hear the sound of my brain churning out thoughts and the blood flowing through my body and the air displacing around our bodies and my nerve endings firing off.

  I’m aware of every single thing about this moment—the way that the white dress she’s wearing clings to her body in all the right places, her toes buried deep in the soft sand, her clear blue eyes reaching far into mine, and the low sound that her body makes each time she exhales.

  Right now I really don’t want to think about the girl that I had sex with two nights ago, but I do, and I fucking hate myself for it. Technically, it wasn’t cheating. But still. I wish that I could take her back. I wish that I could redo most of my shitty life and—

  “Cole,” she says with her eyes on my lips. My eyes. My lips. My eyes. My lips.

  “Be careful,” I warn in a voice so scratchy and hoarse that I’m not sure that she can understand me. Fuck. I don’t mean that I don’t want this to happen with her. I do. But she needs to be sure, because once we go to that place there will be no turning back. Not for me.

  Aimee hesitates. Uncertainty is smeared across her face and I think that I’ve officially blown everything to shit, but then the tips of her fingers breeze up my arm and she seesaws her body, closing the gap between us. I see her eyelids fall shut and mine do the same. How many seconds does it take? One? Only half a second? As soon as her warm, moist breath touches my lips, I’m a goner. Any argument that I may have had with myself leaves my head and the only thing that exists is now. This breath. This touch. This moment.

  The first kiss is tentative, painfully brief, the same way you take a small bite of food that you’re afraid
might be too hot. I pull back and look into her blue eyes. Her entire body is bundled tight, held taut and stiff like she’s unsure of my next move. Carefully, conscious not to break the moment, I touch her slightly parted mouth with my finger. She gasps and opens her mouth farther and I feel the wetness of her tongue against my skin as she moistens her lips. Man, I already love those pink lips. I already love the way that they feel rubbing up against mine.

  “Are you going to kiss me for real or what?”

  I laugh and after that, everything happens in a rush. We come together hard and this time my hungry mouth presses firmly into hers and my tongue glides between the crease of her lips and I discover a new taste. Aimee Spencer. It’s a mixture of salt and fresh air and something that is so her that I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to get enough of it.

  Pulse throbbing, cock hardening in record time, I skate my hands down her neck and over her shoulders. When I reach her breasts, Aimee makes a little sound that’s partway between a sigh and a moan and one of her bare legs wraps around the bend of my knee, drawing me deep into the contours of her body.

  “Damn.”

  She giggles and rains tiny kisses along my jaw, pushing her small hands down my spine until her nails scratch the exposed skin of my lower back, where they linger, digging under the waistband of my boxers.

  I am fucking destroyed.

  Flayed wide open.

  If I’ve ever kissed another girl in my life like this, I can’t think of it. I can’t think of anything at all.

  My mouth still pressed into hers, I lift both of my hands from her body to clasp her face and graze my thumb over that freckle on her cheek. Aimee whispers incoherently against my lips and her delicious fingers grip my back so tightly that I can feel the sting of her nails.

  My mouth dips down to her collarbone—to the pulse that beats steadily against the hollow at the base of her neck—and back up to her soft, welcoming lips. She sucks me inside and teases me with her tongue until it seems like there is so much to feel that I might be drowning. Fuck it. Let the tide take me under. I don’t need to breathe oxygen as long as I’ve got this girl’s mouth.

  I know that I’m putting everything I am—everything that I have—out there, but I don’t think I could pull myself back now even if I wanted to. Aimee has me wrapped up inside this one moment. And if she wanted to, she could reach into my chest and rip my heart out of my body because it already belongs to her.

  Aimee

  Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss. Other times, a kiss is a revelation.

  Part of me wants to attribute this feeling—the one turning me inside out—to the fact that I haven’t been touched in more than a year, but deep down I know that’s a lie. It’s a total cop out. This isn’t a rain shower after a dry spell. This is a hurricane. It’s both beautiful and devastating.

  Cole drops his hands and rests his forehead against mine, his breath drifting into my open mouth in warm puffs. I’m mesmerized by the roughness of his cheek rasping under my palm and how cool he feels against my flushed skin. My lips are sore and tingly from the pressure of his kiss and I wonder if they’re bruised or maybe even bleeding. Honestly? I don’t think I would mind at all.

  “Are you okay?” He asks and I note the slightly nervous edge to his voice.

  I look into his eyes, fragmented green and gold under a ledge of dark blond lashes. I slide my hand down the flat lines of his chest until I can feel his heartbeat. It storms up my arm and seems to echo inside my chest.

  I force myself to swallow hard. Okay, breathe. Seriously, Aimee.

  I haven’t spoken for about a full minute and Cole must get the wrong idea because he begins to shift his body away from mine.

  “No,” I hiss, gripping his arm tightly and waiting for him to meet my gaze. I want him to know that I mean what I’m saying even if I’m not sure what exactly it is that I’m going to say. I’ve spent so much time struggling for control, trying to hold things together that want to fall apart and I’m sick of it. I just want to let it all go. “I’m better than okay. I’m just—I can’t…” My fingers drift over the rigid planes of his lean body to the side of his face. His cheeks are rough with the scrape of two-day old stubble and it’s just so… sexy. Giving myself a little shake, I trace the sharp ridge of his nose and move my thumb pads along his straight eyebrows. “This is…”

  Wow. I’m not making any sense, am I? But maybe that’s all right because Cole is nodding his head like he understands what I’m trying to say. He smiles.

  I don’t know how long we stay like this—the two of us grinning and wound up in each other on the beach. The sun falls to the earth. Stars are drawn on the chalkboard of sky. At some point he kisses me again and from down the beach, a low-pitched whistle floats over us. A little while later, a gravelly voice comments that we should get a room.

  Cole drops his head and laughs, soft and low against my neck. “You’re going to kill me.”

  I press my head into the cool sand so that I can see his face. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  For a long moment he just looks at me. Then he bursts out laughing.

  With the sand at my back and the water at my feet, I relax and let the weight of Cole’s strong body pin me to the here and now.

  ***

  “The truth is that we barely know each other.”

  Cole looks over at me from the driver’s seat. His face is hidden by shadows, but his eyeballs catch the shine of another car’s headlights. “Are you being serious? Is this the part where you let me down gently?”

  I laugh and slouch into the seat. “No, I’m not letting you down, but I am being at least quasi-serious.”

  Cole leans over the console and trails his finger across my bottom lip. I have to fight back a shiver that starts at the top of my head and works its way down my body. How I physically respond to him is both ridiculous and slightly embarrassing.

  “I get what you’re saying, but maybe that doesn’t matter so much,” he says quietly, dropping his hand and gripping the steering wheel. He expertly parks his truck in front of my townhouse. “We’ve been spending all this time together and I know what kind of face cream you put on before bed and what you look like in the morning. It’s true that I don’t know everything about you, but there’s time and…” He shrugs his powerful shoulders. “I know enough about you to realize that I want to know more.”

  We sit in the dark for a while with the air conditioning running on high and Cole’s music playing in the background. On the other side of the tinted windows, the stars fan out limitlessly across the blue-black night sky.

  “Does that mean that we’ll go on a few dates and see what happens?” God. What an awkward thing to ask. Maybe that’s not what he was getting at. I pull my hair over my shoulder and twist the ends around my index finger.

  “I hope that we’ll do more than go on a few dates, Aimee.” Cole furrows his forehead and pushes back his thick hair with a hand. He looks over at me and his entire face seems to narrow a bit. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m totally in this if you are.”

  I drop my eyes and drum my fingers against the door latch. I know that there are so many things that I should say right now but I don’t know how to get the words out. I followed my impulses earlier when I kissed him. I’d been thinking about Cole in so many different ways and when we were sitting on the sand, listening to the rhythmic sound of the water moving over the shore, everything changed. All of my excuses flew away and the only thing that made any sense to me was this idea of wanting him. “I feel like I just walked off a cliff not expecting to land on my feet…” My voice peters out.

  “But you did.”

  I look up and take a deep breath. “I guess I did.” He’s smiling and I can’t help but smile back. “I’m not good at this.” I point back and forth between us. “And I want to do everything right but I’ve been avoiding this kind of thing for over a year and now…” I shake my head. “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “I�
�ve been avoiding this,” he points the way that I did, “for a lot longer than you have so if you’re confused then we’re completely fucked.”

  I laugh and give a jerky shrug. “So what does that mean for us?”

  He lifts one arm and tugs on my hair tenderly. His look is level. “It means that we start at the beginning.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Neither do I, but I think we can figure it out together.”

  I’m all right with that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Aimee

  Sometime during my first class on Tuesday, I begin to freak out and it’s like I can’t stop freaking out.

  “I don’t see what the problem is,” Jodi says. We’re sitting on a bench in front of the tattoo shop where Kyle works and we’re sharing a bag of Skittles that Jodi dredged up from one of the interior pockets of her backpack. She got me here after class by threatening to serenade me with the first verse of Teenage Dream in the middle of the Union. I’ve learned that Jodi’s big into using intimidation to get her way.

  My previous doubts are back with a vengeance. “I told you already. I just worry that dating Cole is going to mess everything up.”

  The sun is hiding behind a wall of smoky grey clouds and the air is thick with the smell of an impending afternoon rainstorm. It’s slightly cooler than it’s been for the past few weeks which means that I’m not sweating. If Florida has a fall, this is it.

  “You’re overthinking things again. Cole likes you. You like him. You’re going on a date with him tonight because that’s what two people do when they like each other. End of story.” She shakes out the colored sugar from the bottom of the bag into her upturned palm.

  “I’ll admit that kissing Cole was nice,” I say slowly. Jodi gives me this are-you-kidding-me look and I amend my statement. “Okay… kissing Cole was sort of mind-blowing. But dating him is a completely different story.” I sigh. “I think I should probably just cancel. I don’t have anything to wear anyway.”