Finding June

by Caitlin Kerry

  “I want you to be a part of my story, too. Because you make my mine better, brighter.”

  “Yeah?” he said with his crooked half-smile.

  “Yeah.” I got up from the table and walked around to the other side. Sitting next to him with my legs on either side of the seat, I grabbed his face in my hands and kissed him.

  I kissed him with everything I had and everything I wanted. He responded by pulling me closer with his hands on my hips. My fears were temporarily put on hold as I felt the safety within his arms. In that safety, I also felt courage for the future. Reece pulled away from our kiss as the song changed. Grabbing my hands, he lifted me off of the seat.

  “Dance with me?” he asked. I smiled up at his green eyes as he placed one hand on the small of my back and intertwined our fingers with the other hand. He placed our joined hands to his chest and we swayed softly under the lit tree as “The Dress Looks Nice on You” by Sufjan Stevens drifted into the air.

  I sighed as I took in this perfect moment. With Reece, I kept having these special times, and even if nothing else in my life made sense, at least I had them. I cherished the moment because I knew life wasn’t perfect; it was full of joy and sadness, of confused feelings, of being lost and being found. Life handed you circumstances that defined who you were, that played into how you lived your life. I knew life was a mess of craziness, but every once in a while these moments clarified your journey, putting you back on track. This perfect moment helped me clear my mind and refocus. I lifted my head off of Reece’s shoulder and kissed him gently on the cheek. His eyes lit up as he leaned down and gave me a whisper of a kiss on my forehead, softly blowing on it to make sure it didn’t go away.

  “I want to buy your drinks, June, and I want to make sure you never forget my kisses. I want to be the one that puts that beautiful spark in your golden brown eyes. I want to be there for you, June … my Just June.”

  As the song ended, I kissed Reece and led him back into his house, the food forgotten. Reece took the lead and went into a room I only assumed was his. He sat down on his bed and dragged me on top of him. As I straddled his lap, I kissed him; a slow, passionate kiss, one that took its time to express the emotion behind it. This time it was me showing him how much he meant to me. In a short time he blew into my life, challenged how I saw things, and brought me the ray of hope I didn’t know I was missing. His touch exploded feelings inside I didn’t know I had. Our lips moved from slow passion to a heated race of mouths; we couldn’t get enough of each other. I broke from him, taking off my sweater, leaving me in a lacy black bra. He lightly traced his fingers over the top of my breasts, his soft touch making me shiver.

  “You are perfect,” he breathed as he replaced his hands with the lightest touch of his mouth. His hands glided up my back and unhooked my bra with ease. I pulled it off and threw it behind me as he took my breast into his mouth. My breathing was becoming erratic as I felt his mouth on my skin and his hands exploring my body. His touch ignited each nerve his hand passed over. At that moment, I realized he was still wearing too many clothes. I blindly unbuttoned his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders. Finally, I quickly pulled off his white undershirt and ran my hands up his toned chest, feeling like I could never get enough of Reece Day and his amazing body or his beautiful soul. His hands found the buttons of my jeans, easing them off. Somehow his pants were gone, too, but I was so consumed with his mouth on mine I must’ve missed that part.

  He stood up, with me still clinging on to him, and turned us around so my back was to the bed. I sunk in as he laid his body on top of mine and his mouth started to work its way down, each kiss a flash of heat on my skin. He trailed kisses down to my breast and moved lower as he kissed my stomach. I was aching for him to make me see stars as he pulled my legs apart and kissed the inside of my thighs. One small kiss on one thigh, and one tiny kiss on the other. I would never get sick of his tiny kisses. His hand inched up to the top of my panties as he slowly started to pull them down, and I moaned as I felt his lips on me. I felt one more tiny kiss right above my pantie line and I heard a thump thump in the other room. I was so consumed in Reece I figured I was having an out of body experience and hearing the beating of my heart. Then I noticed that while Reece’s hands were still on my hips, his mouth was not.

  My mind started to clear and I heard the thump more pronounced from the other room.

  “Do you hear that?” Reece asked.

  Fuck yeah I heard that, but Reece needed to ignore it and get back to using his mouth on me.

  “I think someone is at the door,” Reece said.

  “Ignore it,” I pleaded.

  The knocking continued and it was getting louder.

  “Who the hell is knocking at this time of night? It’s probably a crazy psycho who has the wrong door. Ignore it,” I tried again. But it was too late. Reece was already grabbing his jeans he found hanging on the doorknob. I might have pouted as he zipped up his jeans.

  “Whoever it is, they’re not going away. Stay here and I will be right back. I promise.” And he was out of the door. I flopped back on the bed wearing only my black panties. I was so close. Sigh.

  It had to have been less than a minute when I was heard a voice unfamiliar to me. I put on my clothes quickly. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was worried about why a stranger was yelling at Reece. I came into the room to see the back of Reece, his arms crossed, and a man standing at the door with his hands in his hair and a look of frustration on his face. The man was only slightly shorter than Reece and a little bit stockier. He had sandy blond hair and was quiet for only a moment when he saw me, but quickly continued, in a loud voice, saying, “You won’t talk to me, Reece. I ran into your sister and she said you were back in town, but you can’t fucking call me? I was your best friend, but I haven’t heard a fucking word from you in seven years. Seven fucking years, Reece! You have to talk to me.”

  “I know, Caleb,” Reece said softly.

  Caleb.

  Reece’s best friend who was in love with Rachel.

  “You know? You sure don’t show it. You just keep on running. You ran away from Rachel, from me, and from your family. You think time will wash everything away? Fuck that, man.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do.” The deflation in Reece’s voice broke my heart.

  “Why did you come back?”

  “My aunt died and I inherited her house. Then I guess I found a reason to stay,” Reece said as his hands fell to his sides. I walked up to him and laced my fingers through his. He glanced to the side with a frown and his eyes drawn together, guilt blatant on his face.

  “This chick?” Caleb said as he pointed to me. “You decided to stay because you found someone you loved?” No one had said anything about love, but Caleb was one loose screw away from a breakdown so we didn’t say anything.

  “Well, isn’t that fucking nice for you, Reece. You always get what you want. You know, I loved someone once. But she was taken away from me.”

  “She took herself away from it all.” Reece’s hand tightened around mine.

  “Excuse me?” You could see his anger rising with what Reece had said. “You can go fuck yourself, Reece. You weren’t there, were you? I was. I was the one who fucking found Rachel laying in the bathtub full of bloody water. You were away for a college visit, leaving her again, and I was the one who found her. Not you. I was always the one there for her, you never were. It was always me, but she was too fucking lost in your charm and your head was somewhere else. It wasn’t you, Reece, but me who has had the picture of her dead in my head for the last seven years. Not. You. You might have fucked her, but I loved her.”

  His words stung and I wasn’t even the one they were directed toward. The venom in Caleb’s voice was seven years of pent up frustration and he was firing it all at Reece.

  “I know, Caleb. I know.” He didn’t argue or yell back at him. I could only see the guilt on his face as Caleb’s words sunk in. A few silent moments passed between
the three of us, no one knowing what to say.

  “If you know, you have a shitty way of dealing with it. You left and I stayed here as the ghost of the girl I loved followed me around this whole goddamn town. You were such a fucking coward you ran away, what kind of man does that?” The anger from Caleb’s voice turned into quiet calm, but the words still held the punch his earlier louder words had delivered.

  “I never said what I did was right.”

  “That’s because you didn’t do anything! I did it all. Did you know it was me who picked out her outfit for her casket because her parent’s couldn’t, and you sure as hell couldn’t since you weren’t talking to anyone. You wouldn’t let me in and we were both hurting so much. What happened to my best friend? I lost one that day and I hated how I lost the other.”

  “I was wrong in so many ways.” Reece’s words filled every corner of the room. As they settled, the silence filled the void. No one knew what to say.

  Reece shifted as he sighed and said, “I wish I could have helped her. I wish I could go back and change so many things. But I can’t. You’re right, I did run away, but I’m here now. I want to fix things. I want to fix things as best as I can. I know nothing will be the same, but I was wrong to not talk to you for this long.” Reece let go of my hand and walked up to Caleb, putting his hand out. Caleb looked down to Reece’s hand, but instead grabbed him and hugged him. I watched as the men in front of me hugged over something that had torn their worlds apart when they were still kids on the brink of the adult world. It was a heavy burden for anyone to deal with, but for two young teenage boys, it had to tear apart the world they knew.

  I understood why Reece left. I had done the same thing when Owen had broken up with me, escaping into the mountains. When you left you could be anyone you wanted. People didn’t know your past, they hadn’t figured out how had life shaped you. They thought of only the here and now, and the present was appealing. I got it and my heart felt so heavy for Reece as seven years of pent of sadness and frustrations were coming to a head from his friends and family.

  Reece could have easily sold the house and everything, once again leaving for a new place and a new present. However, he had stayed … and in part, it had to do with me. I could have felt guilty, that his staying made him face his demons, but I also knew he cared enough for me to deal with this and I would support him any way I could.

  “I’m sorry, man, for barging in here. Looks like you were busy,” Caleb said as the men broke their embrace, his eyes darting toward me. I shyly smiled.

  “No worries, man,” Reece replied as he walked back to me. Putting his arm around my shoulder, he told Caleb, “This is June. I buy her drinks.”

  Caleb looked between us and smiled.

  “Cool, man.” His words were still wrought with sadness. “You look happy and I should stop being a dick by trying to ruin it. But stop ignoring my calls. I missed my friend, and if you’re going to be in town we should hang,” Caleb stated as he put his hands in his pockets.

  “Definitely.”

  Caleb nodded his head, but you could still see the sadness in his eyes.

  “I should go. I’m sorry for disrupting your night, guys.” He turned around and left the house without Reece or I saying anything. It was a bizarre situation, but traumatic events brought that out of people.

  What now? The mood had easily been killed and I knew Reece had, once again, been brought back to his senior year of high school with Caleb’s impromptu visit.

  “Tea?” I asked as I went into his kitchen and started to look through his cabinets.

  “The one to the left.” He sat down at his table, his eyes glaring a hole into the tabletop, and it was the look I was starting to associate with when Reece was lost in thought. I grabbed the single box of English Breakfast tea from the cabinet and a mug sitting on a silver hook off of his wall. I heated the water in the microwave and threw the tea bag in after I took the mug out. I looked back to see Reece still staring at the table. I went in search of his liquor stash and found it in a cabinet above the stove. Grabbing the bottle of whisky, I threw in a healthy amount into the warm tea.

  I placed the mug wordlessly in front of Reece and pushed it toward him. He finally looked up and took it, taking a small drink of the hot beverage.

  “I don’t think your mom put whisky in your tea when you had a bad day.”

  I smirked and said, “That would be correct, but one of the benefits of being an adult is I can make nearly anything into an alcoholic beverage, including fruit.”

  That got a small laugh out of Reece who took another drink of his whisky filled tea.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t drag you into all of this.”

  “Don’t apologize. This is your home and you have a past attached to it. It can’t help but come up after you have been gone for so long.”

  “I know, but I feel bad. I want to be with you, but Rachel seems to keep popping up and killing the mood.”

  “Well, that I agree with you about,” I said as I leaned back in my chair.

  “Stay the night?” Reece asked as he looked over to me.

  “Yeah.” I didn’t even think about it, there was nowhere else I wanted to be right now.

  Reece took the last drink of his tea, his eyes finding mine. “We should probably grab the stuff from outside.”

  I agreed and helped Reece bring in the food, wine, and his phone from outside. As night set in, the cold seeped down from the mountains and settled on the floor of the valley. It gave me chills as I watched Reece unplug the tree, with the half moon only giving away a small sliver of light. The perfect moment from earlier was gone, but I knew it would only last as long as the song. The small moment gave me fuel though to face another day. Now, with Reece by my side, I knew each day I would slowly gain back the hope I had held in the picture from my graduation. I also knew that it we needed each other. Together, we had enough strength to deal with whatever was thrown at us.

  After putting everything away, Reece threw me one of his shirts so that I could sleep in it. I gave him my keys and he ran to my house to grab Morrison so he wouldn’t be left alone. Now that I wasn’t in the Reece induced sexual haze, I took in his room with the blue plaid comforter and the white down comforter at the end of the bed. It screamed warmth and comfort as I ran and jumped into the bed.

  After the short trip to my place, Reece came back in with Morrison and settled in for the night, the three of us on Reece’s king-sized bed. While Reece was asleep within minutes, I couldn’t shut my brain off.

  I came home lost, and while I still hadn’t really figured anything out, I had Reece. For now, that was more than enough. In fact, it was starting to be everything. With his arm draped around my waist, it wasn’t such a bad place to be. I snuggled in deeper and was finally able to fall asleep.

  It was officially the end of the month long deal Reece and I had struck. We were sitting on his porch swing, a blanket thrown over our legs, warm peppermint schnapps filled hot cocoa in our hands, and a snoring dog cuddling on my side, his head laying in my lap. The sun had set, bathing us in the imminent darkness. The three of us were happily enjoying each other’s presence. In that moment, I felt loved and safe. It was almost like we were this tiny family. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I lost my breath. A family. It was scary to think about, having only met Reece just a couple of months ago, but I felt like it could happen. One day. Down the road. Very far down the road. I calmed my breathing as I became familiar with the thought. Reece, with his arm around my shoulder, squeezed me closer.

  “You okay?” I took in his clean scent; it was an intoxicating smell that reminded me of being in the forest after it rained. Everything had been washed away and there was a sense of newness after a rainfall. The air was clear and fresh, and the woods were quiet. That was what I felt with Reece, the ability to clear my head.

  “I’m more than okay.” I lifted my head and kissed him softly on the lips. As I leaned back, I asked, “All right, Reece, did you
solve the mysteries of the world in the last month?”

  “No, not even close, but I did figure out a few things.”

  “Such as?” I questioned out of curiosity.

  “You remember me telling you I had all of my generals done, and all I had to do was pick a major? Well, I still don’t know what I want to major in, but I did sign up for classes at BSU next spring.”

  “What classes are you taking?”

  “Since I don’t know what I want to do, I decided to pick four random classes.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Who says I can’t. I’m paying for it, I should be able to take what I want.”

  “Hmm. I guess you’re right, I never thought about it that way. What are you going to take?”

  “I am taking a 19th century literature class, intro to GIS, an automotive class, and a sociology class called The Changing World of Poverty.”

  “Wow, that is a pretty wide range of subjects.”

  “Yeah, but from there I can possibly figure out if one of those classes interest me enough to either pursue it for a job or get a degree in it.”

  “Which also means you will be staying here for at least a couple of years?”

  “Yeah, it does. Maybe even longer …”

  We fell into a few minutes of easy silence, the white noise of Morrison sleeping and the sounds of the neighborhood surrounding us. It was amazing how carefree I felt just sitting here, not doing or really thinking of anything.

  “So. Next week?” Reece asked as he turned his head toward me and gave me a sweet kiss on the lips. Dammit Jolene. Of course this would be brought up. I glared at him as he broke away and I thought of all the ways I was going to harm her.

  “Yeah. What about it?” I asked, feigning indifference.

  “A little birdy told me it was your birthday.”

  “Someone should have punched that bitch … I mean birdy,” I said as I gave Reece a huge, fake smile.

  Reece laughed. “June, it’s your birthday! You should celebrate it! Although, I am not sure why you were born in October but named June.”