Here's to Now

by Teagan Hunter

  “What do you mean?”

  The tone of her voice, the one that sounds like she’s half amused and half worried, lets me know she knows exactly what I mean. “Hales…”

  “Are you trying to have the talk with me, Gaige? Because it’s kinda cute and sexy coming from a guy.”

  “Coming from a guy? What’s that supposed to mean? Are guys not supposed to do this?”

  “Oh, no, you can,” she says, shaking her head and moving to where she’s level with me on the couch. “It’s just a little…unusual for guys to—in my experience, at least.”

  “This is my first time,” I admit quietly. “My past…relationships haven’t been very…forthcoming.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  Instead of getting bristled at her words—because honestly, it shouldn’t surprise her—I let them slide and continue to push forward. “Are we dating?”

  “Do you want to be dating?”

  I sigh. “You’re exhausting.”

  She laughs loudly and pushes my arm. “You know you love it.”

  “Sometimes,” I reluctantly agree. “And no touching.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. It’s hard to control myself around you.”

  “So I can’t even do this…” She runs a single finger up my bicep, and I about keel over.

  “No, you definitely cannot do that.” Ignoring the shiver that races through me, I scoot farther away from her, rolling my eyes at her husky chuckle. “Come on, answer me here, Hales. What is this?”

  “This is…complicated.”

  “Can we uncomplicate it? We’re adults. We should be able to talk this through and find solid ground to stand on.”

  Haley takes a moment to think about it while I sit beside her, trying not to shake an answer from her beautiful, pale pink lips. “Can I go back to my question before?” I lift a brow at her, telling her to keep going. “Do you want to be dating? Because if you’re game to label this, I am too.”

  “Are you currently sleeping with anyone else?”

  “Ass!” she yells, gnashing her teeth together.

  “What?” I shout back, surprised at her outburst.

  “Did you really ask me that?”

  “Y-yes?”

  “Dick!”

  “Dammit, woman. Tell me what’s so wrong with that question!” I glower at her from my perch on the couch, annoyed she’s not answering me.

  She stares daggers back. “Do you honestly think I’m sleeping with other people?”

  I shrug.

  Wrong move.

  She whacks me with a pillow and calls me an ass again. “I am definitely not sleeping with anyone else! And I cannot believe you think I’d keep multiple men in my pocket at a time.”

  I rub the spot where she hit me and mutter, “Sorry, I’m just trying to cover all the bases here.”

  “Well you’re the only one hitting home, Gaige.”

  “Good.”

  “Are you?” she asks.

  “Am I what?”

  Haley rolls her eyes. “Are you sleeping with other women? Or men? If that’s something you’re into, I mean.”

  “No,” I say with a chuckle. “I’m not sleeping with any other women—or men.”

  “Good.”

  Then, it’s quiet…too quiet. So quiet that I begin to retreat into my head, only this time it’s a good thing because Haley’s words created this giant hole of relief inside me that I want to burrow myself into. It’s warm and soft and perfect—like her.

  She’s been faithful to whatever it is we’re doing. I like that—no, I love that.

  “So…”

  “So…”

  We laugh nervously, and I motion for her to speak first.

  “What are we doing, Gaige? Are we dating? Do you want to date? Is that something we’re ready for? I could be ready for it, but I need to know if you are. I need to know if this is something we can do, if we can be one hundred percent open with one another.” She exhales sadly. “I’ve had enough secrets and surprises to last a lifetime, some of my own doing, some not, and I’m over it. I need something real, tangible. Can we do that?”

  An overwhelming impulse to kiss her stirs inside me until it’s too big to ignore. Leaning over, I match my lips over hers and begin coaxing kiss after kiss out of her. At first, they’re lazy and sweet. Then they’re debauched and heated as I wrap my hands around her neck and then fist her hair gently, guiding her head to just the right angle. She’s sliding into my lap before I know it and I’m palming her heavy breasts in my hands, plucking at her nipples through her thin blue tank top. Haley grinds down on my now erect dick and a zing of pleasure hits me in all the perfect places. A groan slips out—I’m not sure who from—the moment our mouths disconnect. She moves her kisses across my stubble-lined jaw, and when her teeth sink gently into my earlobe, I’m ready to burst. A current of pleasure passes through me, causing the hairs on my arms to stand up. Every small, wet kiss she places across my jaw and down my neck is making me vibrate with the need to empty myself, to bury all this built up tension inside Haley and find a sweet release. Pushing her back just the slightest, I meet her now illuminated eyes. Her lips are red and puffy. Her skin glows with a haze of sweat. Every light brown strand of hair is now in disarray from raking my hands through it.

  I slowly drag my hands down her sides, settling them on the hem of her tank top, bunching the material roughly, and pulling it up and off her. She sits in front of me with her bare breasts at eye level. I meet her stare as I grind my hips up into her and relish in the moment her eyes flutter shut and her swollen lips part in a muted sigh of pleasure.

  “I want this,” I tell her, my voice sounding like I brushed sandpaper over my vocal chords. Laying a palm against her naked, heaving chest, I continue to hold her gaze as I say, “I’m ready for tangible too.”

  In a rapid movement, her lips crush against mine again, and we lose ourselves in a fervor of lust and desire.

  “I have a past.”

  “We all have pasts.”

  “Mine isn’t pretty.”

  “Are any of them?”

  I sluggishly tilt my head her way to find her peering up at me with curiosity and patience. We’re tangled together on her small couch, a blanket covering our naked bodies. I try to ignore the fact that the face of a Disney princess is staring up at me with judgmental eyes. I shuffle the blanket around a bit until the face is obscured and I can’t see it peeking up at me.

  “I’ve been in trouble with the law.”

  “I figured that,” Haley says, her hot breath tickling its way across my uncovered stomach as she draws small circles around my faded scars.

  “Often.”

  “Gaige, it’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s fine. I can handle it.”

  “What if I killed someone?”

  She stills, and I’m certain she’s going to kick my scummy ass to the curb.

  “Did you?” she inquires quietly, her fingers resuming their lazy scrawl.

  “Sort of.”

  “How do you ‘sort of’ kill someone?”

  “Indirectly?”

  “Thank you for that clarification, jackass,” she snarks, pinching me.

  I chuckle at her response and run my hand through her hair, pushing back a stray strand that’s fallen into her face. She presses into my hand, urging me to continue my idle strokes. We fall silent and she stops drawing circles. I can only assume she’s fallen asleep. As soon as I close my eyes to join her in slumber, she speaks.

  “Gaige?”

  I swallow thickly, wishing I could somehow extract myself from this conversation I don’t want to have. But, we said we want real. This is real. Fuck, this is about as real as it gets.

  “My parents died several years ago. Their death wasn’t the first I experienced.”

  Her breath hitches, but she doesn’t move. The only noise in the room is coming from her shallow breathing. Nothing else happens. Then, I feel them—her tears. They steadily stre
ak down her cheek and dampen my stomach where she’s lying. It tickles a bit when they roll down. My instant reaction is to laugh, but nothing is funny about this moment.

  “What happened?” she asks timidly.

  Squeezing my eyes shut and gritting my teeth together, I force my head back into the armrest of the couch hard enough for the sharp edges of wood under the cushion to dig into my head, causing a well-earned ache in my skull.

  “I did.”

  Without warning, she unsteadily pushes herself up my body and presses a soft kiss to my lips. Then she scoots back down until her head is resting directly over my heart. The action screams I’m here. I so badly want to believe her, but I know if I continue with this story, she’ll end up hating me. Hell, I ended up hating me. But, I need her to know at least part of what happened that night.

  “I was involved with bad people. They partied too hard, used too many drugs, and acted like they were invincible. We all did. We were. Those are the rules when you’re young, ya know? It’s how it goes. But me… I…we fucked up. Big time.”

  I can feel her swallow against my beating heart. It’s thumping so loudly I’m surprised she can even stand to keep her ear to it.

  “I was out…let’s say, on the prowl.” Haley snickers and I nudge her. “What’s so funny?”

  “You. Prowling. I can totally see it.”

  “Oh, Hales, you would have hated me back then. I hated me back then. I was a complete fucking tool. I didn’t court women, I didn’t call women, and I certainly didn’t stick around long. I was horrible.”

  “You were young,” she counters calmly. I could pinch myself right now with how well she’s taking all this. It’s far from how I know many women would react. “I mean, you’re a right dick for what you did, but you didn’t understand…affection.” Pause. “Love, it was foreign to you.”

  That four-letter word lights a fire in my chest. The ashes and embers of a once dead and lonely heart are stoked and prodded at with each letter. L sparks against a hot coal left to fade out on its own. O catches on to what L is doing and rubs against it, leaving V to begin the smallest flicks of flames. E builds upon the gases and friction, creating a steadily burning fire. Together, they form a mass of energy from the ruins, sparking life into what used to be hollow and lifeless.

  “It’s not anymore,” I say quietly against the sudden emotions threatening to clog my throat. “Anyway, the party turned bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “Three people died.”

  Lie. Four people died if I include myself.

  “Wow.” She says it slowly, using all her effort to make her voice sound concrete and stable, not shaky.

  “I caused two deaths.”

  A hush settles over the room, the second hand on her antique-looking clock tick, tick, ticking away. It sounds like a thousand bricks being thrown against an impenetrable wall, each tick growing louder and angrier. I want to reach over and smash it, drown the room in silence because I’m afraid the ticking is going to grow so loud, I’ll miss her reaction to my confession.

  Only, it never comes.

  She doesn’t react. She simply…waits.

  And holy shit do I want to kiss her for it.

  “I came home that night after, ya know, being out, to find some guy dead in the bathroom. All I wanted to do was wash off how gross I felt and I found a dead body. Fucking traumatizing.”

  “How…” A deep breath. “How did he die?”

  “Overdose. The most screwed up part? He had been dead for over an hour when I found him and no one knew or bothered to go look for him. The coke he snorted was laced with something bad and, well, it killed him almost instantly.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I couldn’t shower for months afterward without seeing his lifeless body lying there,” I say, bulldozing over her words unintentionally, too wrapped up in my own head. “Do you know how much it sucks to take two-minute cold showers because you’re terrified you’ll find another dead body once you step out of the tub? I had to continue living there for years. Years.”

  “Is that the place you moved out of this year?”

  “Yes, fucking finally.”

  “Why were you living there in the first place? How old were you when this happened?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Gaige…” It sounds like a broken cry.

  “I told you I was a fucked up kid, Hales. I meant it. That year was the worst year of my life.”

  “That…” She shuffles until she’s sitting up and scoots to the other end of the couch until we’re opposite one another. I wish she hadn’t moved because it’s so much easier to tell her all this without having to look her in the eyes, and because I can’t feel her anymore. I don’t know if she’ll bolt or force me out of her home. I can’t read her from so far away. “That’s a blanket statement. Be specific, Gaige.”

  “I shoved my mom, got into a fistfight with my dad, and was kicked out when I was barely sixteen.”

  “They kicked you out and just…left you?”

  No, Hales. I left them. More than once. “I deserved it.”

  “Bullshit. You were a kid, Gaige. A fucking kid. You didn’t deserve that at all.”

  I look away and stare into the black screen of the turned off television. I can’t meet her gaze. I can’t look at the stares of pity she’s throwing my way. I’m not worthy of them.

  “You said three people died. That you caused two…” She trails off, leaving room for me to fill in the gaps, but right now the only gaps I feel are the ones in my breathing, the ones I’m struggling to climb over, to get ahold of.

  Breathe. Just breathe.

  “My mother,” I whisper hoarsely.

  A gasp.

  “My father.”

  A sob.

  I have no idea who it came from.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Why do you think you’re the one who killed your parents?”

  My fork drops from my hand, clinking loudly on my plate. I dart my eyes around the restaurant, ensuring no one heard her ask that question.

  “Hales…” I say, turning back toward her. “Do you really think this is appropriate dinner talk? Especially on our first date?”

  “Technically, you’ve taken me out before.”

  “Yes, but we weren’t, ya know, together then.”

  She arches her brow. “And we’re together now?”

  “Yes,” I say confidently. “What else do you think I meant last night?”

  Shrugging, she chugs half her glass of water, avoiding eye contact with me. “I didn’t know if that was a heat of the moment kind of thing or not.”

  “No, Hales. It wasn’t. We’re together.”

  “You’re my boyfriend?”

  “If that’s what you want to call me.”

  She twists her lips to the side. “Nah, boyfriend doesn’t fit you. How about…jackass? Or honeybun? Oh! I know! Hotcakes!”

  An amused smile lines my lips as I shake my head at her antics. “I love how you’re able to go from normal, to insulting, to outright weird.”

  “Hotcakes is out then?”

  “I didn’t say that…”

  She winks and takes another drink of her water. “So…”

  “So…” I mock.

  “Gaige.”

  “Can we do this later?” My words are curt and I see a flicker of hurt in her eyes.

  “Sure.”

  We continue our meal in uncomfortable silence, and I realize I may have ruined our first official date. I am a jackass.

  Haley tries to grab at the check once the waiter sets it down, but I’m faster than her. I intercept and throw her an annoyed glance. She lifts a challenging brow. Something about the simple gesture makes me uneasy.

  Throwing enough cash into the billfold to cover the bill and a tip, I stand up and put my hand out to her.

  “Come on.”

  After several agonizing seconds, she places her hand in mine and I help her up.
I glance down at the outfit she’s wearing, noting how her black leggings and heels make her legs look longer than they really are, how her dark purple silk top billows out when she walks.

  “In case I didn’t tell you before, you look gorgeous tonight.” What I don’t say is that as sexy as she looks, and as much as her outfit makes me want to strip it off her in the best way possible, I can’t help but miss her silly t-shirts and yoga pants.

  “Thank you,” she says quietly.

  I lead her from the dimly lit restaurant and steer her toward my car. She gives a surprised smile when I open her door for her, and I wonder if her other suitors have done this before.

  I hurry around to my side and slide into the driver’s seat. Sighing, I wrap a hand around the back of my neck, squeezing to relieve some of the unexpected nerves I’m feeling.

  Sensing where this is going, she says, “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have—”

  “I want to. I really do. But, shit, Hales, it hurts.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t…didn’t mean to—”

  “I was busted for possession,” I interrupt her, needing to get it out before I chicken out and don’t ever tell her shit. “It was minor, just some pot. I got mouthy with a cop while they were questioning us about the overdose so he got pissed, searched me, and found a joint. One single joint. Fuck!”

  The outburst is loud, and the inside of the small car vibrates as I begin to shake with anger. I catch my eyes in the mirror. Usually a darker brown, they now appear to be almost black. My equally dark hair his disheveled, leading me to believe I’ve been raking my hands through it unconsciously. I flash my eyes to Haley to find her gaze wild and frightened. Somewhere inside me I know that’s bad and I should reach out and reassure her, but I can’t. I’m too amped up right now. I have yet to forgive myself for being a complete fucking moron all those years ago, for letting something as stupid and trivial as a joint turn my entire world on its ass.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Selfish, immature moron!