by Devin Sawyer
Torren: Yeah… sorry. I had to get the nerve to tell Dad I wanted to bring someone by.
Me: Pick me up tomorrow.
Me: Ass.
I get a winky emoji back and I grin down at my phone. This feeling is equally terrifying and overwhelmingly joyful and yet I’m not holding back. My body and brain and soul and heart are full-fledged Torren Holdridge followers. They’re all traitors. Googly-eyed, love-struck, traitors. I can’t blame them though. My eyes can see what the soul and brain and heart can’t and I would have to be blind to not accept a pass to meet his family. I consider the fact that maybe Torren is just as nervous as I am in this path we are on.
~
I don’t typically see Torren on Fridays because he usually has family dinner. Tonight’s an exception since I’m invited. He offers to pick me up an hour or so after I get out of work. I have to rush home to shower and change. Em is already at the house waiting for me. This bitch does not fuck around when it comes to being an awesome wingman. Mom and Dad are out at a fundraiser and I managed to convince them I didn’t need to attend another boring event. They spare me, but I don’t bother telling them my ulterior motive for not wanting to go. I’m not ready yet to explain my relationship with Torren. It’s new and untainted and I would like to keep it that way for just a little bit longer.
When Torren arrives, I run out to meet him, but it’s not his truck I see in the circle drive, however, it is definitely Torren driving it. I slowly walk up and questioningly assess the truck. He’s holding the door open for me.
“Hop in already. “
“Okay, okay, no need to be so bossy.” I roll my eyes at him and grab the oh-shit handles up top and pull myself in. Torren smacks my ass as I climb in and a girlish scream escapes me.
“You’re gonna pay for that!” I yell back at him as he walks back around the truck. When he climbs in, I pepper him with questions.
“What’s with the truck?”
“It’s Gavin’s. Mine’s at the shop, going to do some work on it so I’m driving his truck to pick you up. Now, you ready to roll?”
Before I can answer he peels out of the driveway and I squeal with excitement, knowing my dad would have a heart attack if he were here to see it.
I practice what I think is Lamaze on my way to his house, my palms are sweating profusely and my heart feels like it will beat out of my chest, although that part always happens when I’m with Torren.
His dad greets us at the door and waves as Torren parks the truck. I’ve seen photos of him around the house with Torren or Gavin, but he looks older than the most recent photo, which I believe was Torren’s graduation a year ago. Moving out here probably took a toll on the whole family. Despite not being that far from each other, Glennville and Layton are totally different worlds.
“Supper’s on kids. Hope y’all are hungry.”
We gather in closer to his dad and as I stick my hand out to shake his, he uses it to pull me in closer for a hug.
“Hi, Ari. It is Ari, right? I just pried your name from Torren a few hours ago. You can call me Jake or Mr. Holdridge. Either is fine with me!” His smile reaches his eyes as he releases me and he has this way of making me feel welcome and comfortable almost immediately. He still has a full head of grey hair, and his southern drawl is calming.
“Yes sir, it is Ari.”
“Well, I hope you like steak. You do eat meat, don’t you? I can’t afford for the first girl that Torren brings home to be a vegetarian. You would starve out here.” I smile at his easy-going way and the fact that he just revealed to me things I haven’t been able to pry from Torren himself. I am the first girl over here… well at least for dinner. As far as Mr. Holdridge knows I haven’t ever been over here before. I wave at Gavin as we enter and my cheeks redden as I remember the last time I met him. He graciously pretends to not have ever met me before in front of his dad though.
Over the course of the evening, Mr. Holdridge does his best to embarrass Torren. He even pulls out old photo albums and tells stories of both him and Gavin when they were younger. Torren smiles throughout the dinner and it’s a side of him I don’t get to see often enough. Usually, he comes off as the sexy smart alec when he’s not all broody, but tonight the smile hasn’t left his face since he picked me up. I haven’t laughed this hard, well, ever. It feels nice to be surrounded by people that love each other even if they don’t always get to spend time together. This one meal a week keeps them together and in the loop. I find it all endearing and honestly, I’m a bit jealous of it all.
Once we finish, Mr. Holdridge announces there is cake as well that he didn’t make himself but picked it up at one of the bakeries on his way home. He moves to stand to gather items, but wanting to be accommodating I tell him not to worry and that I can get it. I pick up the cake off the counter and move it to the table and then I make my way over to the silverware drawer and then grab a few more plates. When I set down the items, Mr. Holdridge is giving me and Torren an assessing look. Torren is attempting to avoid all eye contact with anyone and as the silverware clatters to the table I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on here.
“So, Ms. Mason, do you always know where table settings are in homes or just this one?” Mr. Holdridge asks with a knowing smile on his face. Oh. Shit. I just totally blew my cover.
“Um,” is all I can manage to get out.
“Never mind, Ari. I’m not so dense I don’t know what these boys are up to at least half the time. I was young once too.” Gavin laughs as silently as he can manage at our blown cover and the rest of us preoccupy ourselves with eating cake.
When we finish, Torren breaks the awkward silence.
“Thanks for dinner, Pops. I’ll clean up the dishes. Ari and I were just going to watch TV before I take her back home.”
“Sounds good. Not too late. I don’t want to hear any suspicious…noises from your room. I’m sure Ms. Mason’s parents have a curfew set.” He redirects his attention to me now. “Ms. Mason, it was wonderful to meet you. I hope this won’t be the last we see you. It’s nice to have company in the house.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you for the meal. It was wonderful.”
I AM MORTIFIED. Never mind that I haven’t even had sex yet, but the fact that Mr. Holdridge knows Torren and I have been sneaking around. He has a lot of sass for a middle-aged man.
“It’s not even like that, Dad!” Torren yells after him as he walks off into the living room.
“Good to know, son. She deserves a little respect.”
I attempt to distract myself with cleaning up, but I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry over what just happened. The fact that Mr. Holdridge doesn’t seem that distraught over it is helping me to decide.
“Well, at least it’s out in the open now,” Torren offers and I smack him in the ribs.
“That was awful.” I laugh out. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
“I just thought you were grabbing the cake, not making your way around my kitchen. Come on, let’s finish the dishes and go watch a movie or something. He kisses me on the cheek and my anxiety lightens.
Torren rubs the same spot on my leg, near my knee over and over. I’ve essentially lost sensation in that area he’s gone over it so many times. The Simpsons drone on in the background mostly because it’s one of the few channels he gets and we both pretend to keep our eyes trained on the television, but I know that my mind is nowhere near processing Homer’s endless shenanigans. I’m not watching. I’m falling. Life has been so unfair to Torren and yet, tonight, I see that he has fared better than most of his friends. It’s something so beautifully profound about him and the few encounters with his friends and now family this summer have shown me how perfect this part of him is. His strength and support for them is something I’ve never experienced in my own life. I’ve never had to support my friends or family the way he does. Tough times in our area are slim and unheard of. We live in a wasteland of ease and simplicity.
“Do I need to snap you out of that daze
you’re in over there?” His voice oozes with sex, I think. If I knew more about sex, I could confirm that, but in the meantime, my mind runs rampant.
“Huh?” My head snaps to him. I heard him but hadn’t realized he was watching me.
“You look upset. Like you were in a funk. Is there something I can do to help with that?” he asks again, and his hands slowly graze the outside of my thigh upward. I’m lost in him as I feel the light brush of his fingertips up over my hip and dip into the cleft of my abdomen. I close my eyes to enjoy the sensation when his motions quickly turn from soft and sensual into…a fucking tickle. I kick and try to get far enough away from him that his hands can’t reach me anymore.
“Stop it. I hate to be tickled,” I gasp out, barely able to breathe as the deep pleasant ache in my side continues.
“You don’t look like you hate it, you look like you’re enjoying it. You’re laughing, aren’t you?”
He persists. I’m laughing so hard that I can’t get away from him, the stitch in my side from his hand so overwhelming.
“I. May. Be. Laughing. But. I. Don’t. Think. It’s. Funny.” I inhale following each word trying desperately to take in air.
“Kiss me and I’ll stop,” he taunts.
“Anything,” I breathe out. His fingers stop almost immediately.
The laugh dies on my lips and the twinkle in Torren’s eyes is still there. He’s really beautiful. He continues to smile at me and it makes me feel powerful, I own this smile. Torren begins moving closer to where I’m lying on the floor in front of his bed, slowly, like snail speed. I wish he would move faster, it’s giving me too long to process his movements and his intentions. Is he going to love me or eat me? I’m not even sure which I prefer. His body nears mine and my skin prickles with goose bumps. I never want this feeling to fade. Ecstatic anticipation. He is nose-to-nose with me, his fingers come up and graze my jaw, he takes my cheek into his palm and pulls my mouth to his. His lips are soft and gentle, as always, but I feel him push into me harder before pulling away.
“You have the sexiest little dimple I’ve ever seen.” He goes in and mock bites at my cheek where my dimple lies. It tickles, and I can’t stifle my laughter.
“Rule Number sixty-nine. You don’t bite faces. Leave it to Mike Tyson!!!” I say it mockingly through a girlish giggle but the second it rolls off my tongue I realize what I’ve done, and I go from mock giggle to stark horror.
“Sixty-nine, huh? That’s an interesting rule. I’d like to see what other areas are off limits.” My face heats even more. I have to be the color of a beet right now.
“I could watch the color of your skin pinken with color for the rest of my life.”
An audible gulp escapes me. “That’s a bold statement considering you’ve only lived a very short time of your life,” I say timidly.
“The last weeks with you have made me wish you were there the last nineteen years, but I think I’m planning to have more than that with you.”
My skin fires again at his declaration. He can’t possibly know or feel these things. He begins kissing along my jawline and I’m grateful for the distraction and the fact that he’s no longer staring at my face. I try to breathe deeply and regain composure, but that sure is hard to do when he’s making my body heat with desire.
“Relax, Ace. I just want to kiss you.” His words warm me. I let him. The tension and embarrassment leave my body and I dissolve into the pillow on the floor. I hear him mumble something into the crevice of my neck and chest and I swear it sounded like “and never stop.” This is far too deep for me right now and I’m far too fearful to ask what he meant by it. The weight of his body presses into mine further and I try to memorize this feeling. The pressure of him, his chest, and abdomen, his arms and hands that rest along my chin. Something this intimate feels magical, feels like something I have never had before.
He takes and takes and takes, and I give and give. My adrenaline seems to always be ramped up around him and I feel myself growing very, very wet between my legs. I want him to make the ache go away, to make love to me. My conscience finds this an appropriate time to butt in and alert me to the fact that I am still a virgin and losing my V card while his father sits outside his room is not really in the cards for me. I shove my conscience to the side because while we still haven’t determined what the hell we are doing, I know everything about this feels right and, I have this innate trust in Torren that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.
His kiss goes from sweet to needy, the tepidness leaving him as I consent to his body pressing on mine, his weight bearing into me. Things have never made it this far before with any other guy. I have never felt even a morsel of this affection before. His lips trail from mine to my neck and I feel like my eyes have rolled back into my head and I only pray that’s not what’s really happened because nothing about that is sexy, that’s an exorcism. His fingers are lightly pressing into my waist. I’m too scared to touch him, I have no earthly clue what I’m doing, but I know my body is ringing with desire to be touched more by him. As if he is reading my mind, his hands begin to roam up toward my breasts, but before his greatly anticipated arrival, he pauses. Do nipples scream? I’m pretty sure mine just did and they said, “What in the ever-loving fuck are you stopping for?” Although, I am pretty sure this only comes out as a slight whimper that I bite my lip to silence.
“Tell me if you want to stop, okay?”
I shake my head, eyeing him with pleading arousal.
“I’m trying to read you, but if I get something wrong stop me, okay?”
My sexual fog is distracting me, along with the hand resting just under my right breast that his thumb is rubbing small circles under.
“Okay?” he repeats. I snap back and nod my head emphatically. I begin to bargain with myself. Attempting to discuss my own limitations in my head. I’m not sure where the boundary falls at this point, but I try to keep some form of guidelines aglow in my mind, knowing that despite my feeling, at the moment, I need to stop us somewhere tonight.
I feel his hand as it grazes my nipple and he then holds the weight in his hand and I arch up into him, begging to be tended to. Sexual desire is a cruel thing, I almost feel lucky that I have gone all these years without really craving it, not knowing what I was missing. Torren has made me crave so many new sensations that it is beginning to feel painful to pull away each day. He pulls back from my neck and looks at me. I open my eyes trying to figure out what’s next, but my eyes seem to fall to half-mast as I am lost in lust. He chuckles, and it sounds so sexy. Who sounds sexy when they chuckle? Torren Holdridge does. Ugh.
He leans into me again, this time moving his hand up under my shirt, as he reaches the underwire of my bra he pauses and waits a half second, and lifts it. He toys with my nipple and relief grasps me. He takes his time with me, allowing my body to take in each new sensation. His spare hand slides down my back feeling the skin from beneath my lifted shirt until he runs into leggings and continues on until he grips my backside firmly pulling me flush to his body. I don’t pull away, I adore this closeness and I am acutely aware of all the arousal in the room. A slight smell of sweat mixing with Torren’s cologne, goose bumps forming on both of our skin, the sound of heavy breathing and an occasional moan or groan. I want him to show me this side of my body. His gentle side always seems to surround me and suddenly socioeconomic status and location doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I wonder if this is what they mean when they say this is where the magic happens. I mean, I know they mean sex, but it’s miraculous how intimate relationships can completely ignore real life stereotypes and prejudices within the confines of a bedroom.
Torren climbs on top of me, situating himself between my legs, and he continues to support my chin in a kiss that is growing more powerful by the second. His body is throwing small hints at me that this is just as powerful for him. A nudge here, a groan there, I want everything this man will give me. Well, maybe not everything, because that terrifies me, but everything I’m m
entally and emotionally able to take today. I don’t know what that is. My bargaining has done nothing for me, but Torren is going slow with me, checking in before he tries something new, a slight pause upon each movement to allow for me to reject it. His weight bears down on me and a small thrust of his hips has him digging into my thigh. Ever so slightly his thrusts move over the sensitive area between my thighs.
“I can’t wait to have you.” His voice is deep and filled with a rasp.
I can feel all of his affection warm me and fill me. I don’t doubt for a second that he will care for me with the best of intentions and I am seconds away from consenting, but all that comes from my lips is an “Oh my God.” A voice that doesn’t even sound like mine. Torren Holdridge wants to take my virginity and all I can come up with is an “oh my God.” I can feel his erection on my stomach and I am dying.
Dying.
Dead.
He lifts up to his knees and unbuckles his jeans. Is this it? The zipper rolls down slowly and I can’t even manage to look at his face, I stare straight-on needing to know more than what a high school health science class has provided me with, but I also become fearful as he begins to disrobe.
“I don’t know if I can—”
“It’s okay, we don’t have to, not tonight,” he cuts me off and leans in to kiss my temple. I see his boxer briefs clinging to his skin and they are barely containing his length. The material is clinging to the hard shaft I can see outlined. His jeans are pulled just below his ass and he nuzzles into me again, pushing his hardness into my leggings.
“Do you feel what you do to me, Arianne? See how badly I want you?” His voice cracks at the end. “Do you trust me?” he whispers into my neck.
I do. I trust him more intimately than I’ve ever trusted anyone before, but letting him know that would be showing my cards...
“Not as far as I could throw you,” I smirk back to him.
His playful smile reappears through his lust and my heart can’t take all the different sexy sides of Torren Holdridge.