Forever Autumn

by Christopher Scott Wagoner

  “Oh, god…” she said as a shudder went through her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, stopping for a moment, concern in his eyes.

  “Nothing. Don’t stop! Lick me…lick me all over.”

  Her eyes were tightly shut, her cheeks flush. When his fingers, shaking with nerves, fumbled with the buttons to her sweater, she reached down to her waist and yanked it off over her shoulders. He gently took down the spaghetti strap of the camisole, trailing kisses down her smooth brown shoulder. The sounds she kept making were confusing him, as they sounded halfway between pleasure and pain, but the soft smile on her face encouraged him to proceed.

  He hooked his hands in the narrow space between her toned belly and the jeans. With difficulty, he undid the snap and tugged them off. A rush went through his body as her shapely legs were revealed, and he tossed the pants behind him on the floor inside out.

  “Wait,” she said as he gently fingered the waistband of her tiny pink panties. “Rip them off.”

  “What?”

  “Rip them off!” she said with a moan.

  He got a firm grip on the translucent satin material, gathering it up in his fist. She shuddered again as the fabric slipped up inside her. With a sudden jerk of his elbow, the panties tore off easily. Crawley gasped as her labia were exposed. Phil was shocked by the intense aroma emanating from her body. There was a tuft of black hair in a neat line above her smoothly shaven lips.

  “Hurry,” she said, prompting him from his reverie. Not knowing what else to do, he buried his face in her crotch, working his tongue inside her. She gasped as he went about the ministrations, hands stroking his hair.

  “Here,” she said, moving his head up for a moment. She used her own fingers to manipulate her slippery flesh. “Right there. Lick right—”

  He complied, and her grip on his head suddenly became tight and fierce.

  “Oh, god!” she screamed, pounding one hand against her headboard. “Don’t stop! Don’t—”

  Phil felt her legs quivering, the soft flesh his face was buried in shudder. Suddenly his face, moist with her passion, was drenched as she climaxed. He blinked in confusion, wiping the sticky fluid from his eyes.

  “Sorry,” she said, though a wide smile was on her face.

  “It’s okay.” Phil didn’t even like for his fingers to be sticky, would go to great lengths to keep them clean, but for some reason he did not feel soiled by her ejaculation. Rather, he felt as if he had been anointed somehow.

  “Looks like you’re ready…” She was eying his crotch.

  He was amazed to find that he was fully erect, straining against his pants. Moving quickly in case his body decided to betray him again, he slipped off the garment, taking his boxers down at the same time.

  “I don’t,” he said as he crawled atop her half-dressed form. “I don’t have any—”

  “I’m on the pill,” she said, pulling him down with a hand on the back of his head. Their mouths met once more, and Phil awkwardly tried to insert himself.

  “Here.” She reached her hand between them and provided him with assistance. Suddenly she gasped as he slid inside her, the grip on his hair growing painful. He struggled to last, to grind against her hips until she climaxed, but within three minutes he could no longer hold back. He grunted as he filled up her belly with his seed, lost in ecstasy. She hooked one of her legs over his calf, pulled his head back into her chest when he tried to rise.

  “You’re not done already, are you tiger?” she asked, practically purring.

  Phil swallowed hard. His back and calves were screaming in pain, unused to the strange positions he was contorting them into. Worse, his body, long used to quick browses of the web to facilitate satisfaction, had betrayed him by going flaccid.

  “Oh, Phil,” she said with a smile, “this was your first time, wasn’t it?”

  He raised his head off of her chest, but was unable to meet her eyes. Phil’s head nodded slightly, eliciting a sympathetic aawh from Crawley.

  “Don’t worry about it, you did fine. Cuddling is almost as good as sex anyway.”

  Then they were lying next to each other on her bed, hands clasped as they stared in exhaustion at the ceiling. Crawley raised her sweaty head off the mattress and laid it over her arm, smiling at him.

  “Oh, Phil,” she said with a giggle. “I haven’t been with anyone in over a year.”

  Phil smiled sheepishly, squeezing her hand.

  “I don’t mean that I’ve done it with a lot of people,” she said, face falling as she misinterpreted his silence.

  “It’s all right,” said Phil, “that really doesn’t bother me.”

  Yeah right, he thought to himself, and cuddling’s just as good as sex.

  A twinge beneath his abdomen gave him hope that his body was about to rise to the occasion again. He rubbed his hand over her smooth thigh, caressing it gently. She took his hand and put it below her waist, rubbing his fingers.

  “See what you’ve done?” she said softly. “I’m all wet again…”

  Phil raised his torso up and kissed her, hoping the rest of his body would do the same.

  Steam billowed out of a manhole cover, creating a curtain of fog that was dashed apart as Steve and Autumn ran through it. They were still partially in the intersection when the light changed, causing angry motorists to blare their horns.

  “Eat shit and die, asshole!” said Autumn, turning toward a green Pontiac and flipping twin birds.

  “Autumn, c’mon,” said Steve, trying to pull her onto the curb.

  “Fuck these dickweeds! The fucking light just changed, how impatient can you be?”

  “C’mon, killer,” he said, as he finally pulled her up on the curb. Her booted heel stomped down hard, as if she were imagining it was the motorist’s face and not concrete she were stepping on.

  They walked, hand in hand, up a sidewalk jam packed with pedestrians despite the cold. Loud music poured out of doorways, occasionally growing in volume as a patron would swing the door open. All about them the New York nightlife was in full swing. Autumn was wearing her long black coat, concealing her leather bodice and mini skirt.

  He had gone with a black polo shirt and dark jeans which were slightly baggy. His hair had been brushed back and gathered in a ponytail, and his shave was impeccably close. Autumn ran a gloved hand over his cheek as they circled a gaggle of black teenagers.

  “What? Did I miss a spot?”

  “No. I just like touching you.”

  He didn’t know how to respond to that, so he just grinned and put an arm around her shoulder. They stopped in front of a particularly raucous establishment, its sign proclaiming it to be Manhattan Knights. After showing their IDs to the bouncer, who was a head shorter than Steve and visibly upset by it, they entered the crowded bar.

  Steve whistled in appreciation because the bar was bigger than the outside would suggest. A large dance floor was arranged in front of a full-sized stage, on which an amateur rock band was performing. Eight or so tables sat in a crude U-shape flanking the dance floor, while a balcony area featured a dozen more above them. Autumn, apparently having been there before, led him up a flight of stairs behind the bar to the balcony, choosing an open table with a decent view. They sat down and were almost immediately beset by a busty waitress in a short skirt. Steve ordered his favorite imported beer, while Autumn had an amaretto sour. They sipped at their drinks and watched the band play in silence for a while.

  “Christmas is in two days,” said Steve at length, his blue eyes peering across the table at her.

  “Yeah, so what?” said Autumn with a sneer.

  “Not a fan of Christmas, I take it?”

  “Why should I be? I’m not a Christian, and I’m way too old for Santa Claus.”

  “Christmas is fun. It doesn’t have to be about religion.”

  “Originally, Christmas was a big gay orgy held at the end of December. The Christians couldn’t stop the partying, so they just changed the name of the holi
day.”

  Steve laughed, taking a long pull on his beer. “I’ve heard something like that before, but Christmas is about friends, family.”

  “Ha! Christmas is about retailers and manufacturers getting people to go into debt buying presents for relatives they can’t stand.”

  Steve shook his head sadly. “Sometimes, you’re really negative. You don’t talk about your family much, I mean, I know your mom passed away.”

  “At Christmas,” said Autumn, staring down into her glass.

  “What?”

  “At Christmas. My mom died around Christmas, all right?”

  Steve’s mouth turned into a thin line. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  She stirred her drink idly with the tiny red plastic straw in her fingers. When she spoke, she did not look up at him. “Mom was depressed. My Dad ran out on us not six months before, and it broke her heart. I found her face down in the bathroom, a needle sticking from her arm.”

  Steve blinked back tears, his voice breaking when he tried to speak.

  “That’s awful,” he said, putting a hand atop hers. “How…how old were you?”

  “Sixteen,” she said, looking up at last. A joyless smile was on her face, her brown eyes more profoundly sad than he had ever seen.

  “Sixteen…and there was no one to take care of you?”

  “My grandma. But she was eighty at the time, and it wasn’t long before I was burying her too.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “That son of a bitch knew better than to talk to me, or I’d have ripped his fucking head off.”

  “But he’s your dad,” said Steve, brows coming low over his blue eyes. “As much of a pain in the ass that Pop can be, I still—”

  “You don’t know what my dad did. You wouldn’t be so quick to defend him otherwise.”

  Steve squeezed her hand. “I’m not defending him.”

  She yanked her hand out of his grasp. “It sure sounds like it.”

  “Look, forget I mentioned Christmas. Let’s just relax and have a good time, okay?”

  She sighed, peered out over the bar below them. “Okay,” she said, a ghost of a smile playing across her lips. She looked back to him, almost apologetic in her behavior. “Told you I was a pain in the ass.”

  “You’re not a pain in the ass.”

  Autumn did not speak, just arched her pierced eyebrow.

  “Okay,” he said, laughing helplessly. “You can be a bit…persnickety.”

  “Persnickety? Is that just another synonym for bitchy?”

  “I think I should shut up now while I’m ahead,” he said, holding up his palms.

  “Who says you’re ahead? You’re way behind, sugar.”

  They laughed, gradually winding down to stare into each other’s eyes. The waitress came by, took Steve’s empty bottle and replaced it with a new one. Despite the server’s flirty nature and the brevity of her garments, Steve kept his focus almost entirely on Autumn.

  “You know,” she said as the waitress walked away from them, her brown eyes on the woman’s shapely rear, “I think that waitress wants to bang you.”

  “I think that waitress wants a tip.”

  “We could bring her back with us,” said Autumn wistfully. “She looks like she knows things.”

  “Uh,” said Steve, his jaw going slack.

  Autumn’s face broke into a wicked smile, and she pounded the table in mirth. “If you could see your face,” she said between giggles.

  “Not funny.”

  “I beg to differ.” She glanced at him, a calculating gleam in her eyes. “Why did you throw your invitation to that Christmas party in the trash?”

  “Oh,” said Steve, his face scrunching up, “I didn’t think that you’d want to go to that.”

  “Why not?” Autumn straightened up and crossed her arms over her chest. Steve took a long swallow of beer, not quite able to meet her eyes.

  “Because…I just, you know, it’s a bunch of stuffed shirts, people that Phil works with at the office. It’s not really your scene, I guess is what I’m getting at.”

  “I see,” said Autumn, her face growing cold. “You don’t want your uneducated, tattooed and pierced girlfriend embarrassing you.”

  Steve looked down at the table, chewing on his lower lip. “It’s not that you embarrass me. Not at all. I…used to date a woman Phil works with, and now she’s the big, successful exec and I’m still teaching. I guess I don’t want her to gloat.”

  “Bull. You just don’t want this girl to see you with me because you obviously still have feelings for her.”

  “If you want to go, we’ll go. You don’t have to be nasty about it.”

  “Now you just want to go because I’m mad,” she said after draining her glass.

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I want you to want to take me.”

  “I do want to take you,” he said in exasperation.

  “Then why did you throw the invitation in the trash?”

  “To avoid this conversation,” said Steve through his teeth.

  “What?” Autumn asked, a dangerous note creeping into her voice.

  Steve glared at her angrily. “You know what? We’re going, period.”

  “Just because you say so?” she said incredulously. “And I don’t have anything to wear to something formal like that.”

  “I’ll buy you a dress,” said Steve, pounding his fist on the table so hard their glassware jumped.

  “A nice one?”

  “As long as I don’t dip into rent money, fine, if that’s what you want.”

  “I guess I could go and hide in the corner so I don’t make you look bad.”

  “You don’t have to hide in the corner.”

  “Are you sure? After all, we wouldn’t want to tarnish your reputation.”

  “I’ll show you off! I happen to not give a fuck what Cathy thinks about any of it.”

  Autumn smiled, trying to sip at her glass but finding it empty. “You’re very passionate,” she said, a small smile on her painted lips. “But you’re afraid to show it. You don’t have to be afraid when you’re with me.”

  She clasped his large hand in her smaller ones, rubbing the tiny hairs on its surface with her gloved fingers.

  “All right,” he said, giving her hands a squeeze. “First thing when we get up, we’ll go shopping.”

  “Don’t you have your stupid Lord of the Rings crap going on tomorrow?”

  “Dungeons and Dragons, and I don’t need fantasy when mine has already come true.”

  She smiled again, almost shyly, and her tone belied the harshness of her words when she spoke. “You’re such a pussy.”

  Chapter 11

  STEVE SHUFFLED into his bathroom, yawning cavernously. His bare-chested reflection stared back at him briefly before he swung open the attached door, revealing his medicine cabinet. He rolled his eyes at the proliferation of products that Autumn had crammed into it. In just a short week she had taken over most of the space that had once been exclusively his own. Now, his deodorant and razor were packed in next to bundles of cotton swabs, nail polish, tampons, Q-tips, and hair bands. That wasn’t even taking into account the lipstick, eye shadow, compacts, and waxes laid out around the circumference of the sink. Gingerly, he tried to ease his deodorant out of the cabinet but wound up dislodging a miniature avalanche of feminine accoutrements.

  Hastily, he gathered them up from where they had fallen in the sink, hoping that Autumn had not heard the spill. She was banging about in his kitchen, under the pretense of making him breakfast. So far he had seen her prepare Jiffy Pop and toaster pastries, so he was a bit dubious about her promise of pancakes and sausage.

  He lifted a spongy mass of hair curlers restrained by a rubber band out of the sink. He cursed as he spotted another item he had missed. Picking up the small brown bottle, he saw it was a prescription of some sort. It bore Autumn’s name and old address, and was nearly empty, containing only two pills. He read the la
bel, seeing a name that he did not recognize. As Steve had to administer medicine to his young charges at times, he thought he was pretty familiar with pharmaceuticals.

  Hearing Autumn curse, he headed quickly for the kitchen, the bottle largely forgotten in his hands. He came around the corner to find her lifting a huge griddle cake out of a sea of foamy hot grease. She plopped it on a plate, crying out as a bit of hot grease flew from the skillet to land on her bare foot.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, smirking at her ineptitude.

  “Shut up or I’ll mix arsenic with your syrup.” She poured more of the thick batter into the skillet. As soon as the batter was sizzling in the grease, she glanced up at him. Her playful smile faded when she saw the bottle in his hand.

  “You can throw that away.” She waved her hand dismissively.

  “What was it for?” Steve asked, again staring at the label. “I’ve never heard of this stuff.”

  “It’s for female problems, all right?” She reached out and snatched the bottle from his hand and tossed it into the trash can near the stove. “Do you like butter, or are you one of those weirdos who likes to put grape jelly on their pancakes?”

  “Actually, I’m one of those weirdos who like to eat peanut butter on my pancakes.”

  “Instead of syrup?” she asked, aghast.

  “No, with syrup.”

  “You are such a giant toddler,” she said, laughing at him. “You like your sugar, sugar! My grandma was from Germany, and they eat jelly on everything, and I do mean everything. She even ate it on bologna!”

  “Eww,” said Steve, wrinkling his nose. Autumn bade him sit at the kitchen table, and shoved the mass of pancakes across the table at him. He raised an eyebrow at their unusual appearance; Autumn had difficulty getting them out of the skillet, and they were shredded badly. Also, the color was dark caramel, and strange bubbles appeared in the finished product.

  Nevertheless, he swathed it in peanut butter and added a dollop of syrup, determined to reserve judgment. However, when his knife and fork made a crunching noise as he attempted to slice the haphazard stack into more manageable bites, he had to grin.