But to be honest, it always made me kind of depressed. Not because there was anything wrong with the women I slept with. Not because there’s anything wrong with anyone who decides that’s what they really wanna do—have sex with near-strangers.
It’s just not for me. I like getting to know a girl. I like taking it slow. Whatever Chase finds so enjoyable about having loads of different women just once, it’s never been that great for me. It’s always a less-good version of the sex you could have if you really took the time to get to know each other. No one ever says, “The best sex I’ve had with my wife? The first time, after we shared a taxi back from the local dive bar.”
“Serial monogamist.” I guess it’s a good term. It’s not that I’m not interested in sleeping with women. I’m just way more interested in sleeping with the same woman—the one I’m in love with, the one I’m committed to.
Everything else just seems kind of—hollow. Sure, I could be like Chase and have one-night stands from Stockholm to Siberia. But I’d way rather have a girl—my girl—to go on dates with, and cuddle with, and—
“You’re an athlete,” Raquel says skeptically as we get out of the car.
—and yeah, I guess it’s not much like most athletes.
Raquel doesn’t stop me from walking her up the street to her place. She falls into step beside me with the neat click-click of her heels, and I slide my hands into the pockets of my chinos as we walk. Only when we’re reaching the stairs does she stop to look at me, climbing up two stairs more so we’re eye to eye. She hesitates with her hand on the railing, her eyes bright with streetlights, her cheeks flushed with the two glasses of wine she’s had. It doesn’t make her any less astute. Intelligence has always radiated off Raquel, at work and tonight.
She’s looking for it in me, I can see. The lie.
“You’re really not going to push it, are you?” she says finally.
“I mean, I don’t think my self-control is strong enough to say ‘no’ if you offer.” I grin. “But I’m not interested in pressuring anyone into anything. I want you invite me upstairs because you can’t bear the idea of me going home.”
“What if it’s a long time? Before you’re invited upstairs.”
I shrug. “I like you. I can wait.”
She can’t hide that little smile. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I agree.
She leans forward for a kiss, and I lick my lips… before dipping to the side and pressing them chastely to her cheek.
I’m already stepping back and away by the time she can open her eyes and harrumph.
“Goodnight, Raquel.”
“What was that?” she protests.
“A bit of anticipation does you good,” I say back.
She stares at me, indignant, before a smile breaks out over her lips. Then she tips back her head and she laughs, the sound deep and throaty and so bewitching I’ll still be thinking about it the next day in HPHQ.
Obviously I really, really want to kiss Raquel. Teasing her lasts all of one week, until the next Friday I take her out to the ballet, which is just about the classiest thing I might ever have done. The ballet is not my natural habitat—Hanne choked on her smoothie when I told her; I almost had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her—but it seemed exactly Raquel’s thing. Or at least that was the opinion I got from my trusted advisors: my casual-only friend Chase (not useful) and my sister, who before she met her wife was famous for her dates (very useful.)
“She’s a vegetarian with a master’s degree from an Ivy,” Chase said dryly. “You’ve spent too long away from the big city. I mean, I don’t think she’s gonna appreciate NASCAR.”
“You really like her, huh?” Nina said over the phone, before I could hear her wife shouting in the background. “The ballet,” Nina said finally after some muffled words away from the speaker. “Angelique says an old college friend of hers can get you some great seats.”
My sister-in-law has saved my ass on numerous occasions, but none of them compare to getting me my first kiss with Raquel. Especially since it’s approximately the best kiss of all time: after the show, when Raquel comes back from the restroom and I’m handing over her coat, and she continues launching herself forward and up so instead of taking the fabric she rests her hand on my chest and her lips on mine. The rest of the world disappears as I wrap my arms around her and hold her, her heart beating so fast against my chest, the skin of her back warm through her thin silk shirt. People talk about kisses tasting of things, but it just tastes of Raquel: hot, damp, wanting. The smell of her perfume leaves me punch drunk, swaying on my feet.
“Sorry,” she says afterwards, flustered. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while.”
And that’s how it begins: kissing Raquel basically anywhere I can. Not work: that’s one of her only hard lines. As far as work is concerned, we don’t know each other: we file notice that we’re dating—her insistence, not mine—and then we treat each other with a faultless decorum. Colleagues only—Raquel is clear about that.
But we kiss in basically every well-reviewed vegetarian restaurant in the city. We kiss in the park and on the beach and in every elevator we’re alone in. We kiss in her car, a Prius with precisely zero room for my legs, and we recline the seats in mine to kiss better there, my fingers sliding up the edge of her skirt.
She laughs as she catches my hand. “Slow, remember.” But she curls her fingers around mine and doesn’t remove them at all—just prevents me from going any further, holding them against the soft warmth of her skin, the sweet feminine curve of her leg making me hard in my pants like a teenager.
In the half-dark of my car we laugh together between kisses. Because it’s fun—to delay the inevitable, the thing that we both know will happen. We’re enjoying the dance while it lasts, the stage you only get to have once—the waiting, the anticipating, the imagining.
I know she’s not waiting for religious reasons, and she doesn’t seem to be the kind of girl who’d think she was “easy” or some other judgmental bullshit for going with me sooner. She seems like if she wanted to, she would have already.
By now she must know that she doesn’t have to “hold out” to keep me: I’m hooked, line and sinker. I’m not that guy. I’m not hanging around for sex. I’m hanging around because I’m hopelessly, relentlessly hung up on her.
Every time we steal kisses I can tell how much she wants me, and still she holds herself back—despite having me on a string, whenever she wants me—and I find that as hot as hell.
Both of us wanting.
Both of us knowing it’s going to happen.
Both of us building up that anticipation for as long as humanly possible.
I’ve always enjoyed some edging. Turns out Raquel is my perfect match.
I think even in the beginning I know there’s more to it than that for Raquel. That stuff like this is never as easy for women, because of all the bullshit expectations laid on them just about from both. But getting to know her—being trusted with her vulnerabilities, her insecurities—only makes me love her even more.
One time, after we’ve made out against the porch wall in front of her place, she finally says it out of the blue.
“I want to know you’ll take care of me.”
I tilt my head. “I’m never going to hurt you.”
“No—that you’ll take care of me. It’s easy for guys. Casual sex is great for you. For women?” She shakes her head. “Not always. I want to know that you’re serious.”
“I’m extremely serious.”
There’s never been a woman I’ve wanted to give pleasure to more than Raquel. That’s always been my thing, seeing a woman come undone; with her, though, it’s become an obsession.
I think about Raquel when I’m in the sessions at High Performance HQ, shifting to hide my erection from the other guys settled around listening to the lecture on nutrition.
I think about her when I’m driving back to my rented apartment.
I think about her when I�
�m alone in bed, my hand drifting down to find myself, because I can’t deal with all these thoughts of her.
I tighten my grip around my cock, and I imagine it’s her hand, and she’s looking at me with those dark, dark eyes, and her lips smile with all that perfect lipstick that I’m going to kiss right off.
I imagine undressing her. I imagine spreading her thighs. I imagine licking every inch of her until she’s shaking, broken, entirely undone.
I don’t think I’ve jerked off this much since I was about twenty-one.
But that’s not the only thing I’m serious about.
Because I already know:
This is it.
Raquel
It’s strange how easy it is to get used to living together again.
It’s not like it was before. It can never be like that again now that JJ and I haven’t worked out. But we find as the weeks of April pass that we can work well together as housemates. As something like friends.
We know each other’s tastes and preferences. We know each other’s routines. He knows that I work long weeks, locked away in the office, and I know the rhythm of his life: physiotherapy, exercise, hanging out with Chase.
Which is why when I come home from the salon in the third week of April, I’m surprised to find the house is quiet.
I don’t quite let my keys fall into the dish. Instead I hold them, hangbreath for a moment, feeling the metal sway gently against my fingers with the ghost of my movement.
“JJ?”
It’s a big house, but somehow I’m sure I’d know if JJ were nearby. I’ve always known. You can feel someone in a place, in your home in particular. The way they move, the way they breathe. And if he wasn’t visible through the window in the pool…
I walk to the kitchen, titling my head through the doorway. He isn’t there making a protein shake or scavenging from the fridge. There isn’t even a box, so he hasn’t called for a delivery, either.
He isn’t in the den watching TV.
He isn’t in the gym.
Worry twists in my gut. Fear of what? It’s all ridiculous. Of JJ lying somewhere, hurt. Of him—what—being out with another woman? As if he would do that to me, while I live here, even as his ex. JJ isn’t perfect, but he’s always behaved so much better than—
I hear the creak of the banister at the same time as JJ’s voice shouting around it.
“Hey, Kel—did you move that navy button-down shirt your mom gave me? I can’t find it anywhere.”
He’s there, halfway down the staircase.
There was a time in my life when JJ looking at me from the steps wouldn’t have meant anything. We spoke like that so many times in a week. Anticipated so many more times in our lives together. Just the usual humdrum facts of two interwoven lives. Wondering where laundry was, or trying to find keys, or enquiring after a social engagement or a flight time.
Now he hasn’t taken a flight of stairs in weeks upon weeks, and it means everything.
JJ wasn’t succeeding at his pretense of nonchalance at the beginning. He’s failing even harder now. The grin that I fell in love with spreads over his face, tugging his lips wider and wider. Inexorable, effervescent: joy, as pure and sun-kissed as the summer outside.
“Surprise.” He can’t hide how excited he is. He could never have hidden that. We have been in this house together for almost two months, and I know how much it means that he has climbed up to the second story.
The man who used to throw himself off cliffs—and now it’s an achievement to be able to reach his own closet.
JJ is radiant with the knowledge. He raises his hands, palm up at his hips, at first as if to do a partial twirl, but he won’t be able to. His hands are going to be busy. They’re going to have to touch me, because I’m already running to him.
I don’t think about it. I don’t question it. I only know that my feet are carrying me over the hall and up those stairs and nothing and nobody in the world could ever hold me back.
Maybe it’s not a thing I’ve done in a while, but this feels natural, and inside of me something fizzes, pure and happy and light as air.
He climbed the stairs. All on his own. After all of these weeks he’s here, and—
Chest to chest, I stop, and between us someone’s breath is heavy. Mine. His. Both of our chests press together as they rise harder than they should.
The space between us narrows to nothing, even though we haven’t moved again at all.
JJ’s lips part, but the words never come. Instead his hands find the curve of my hips, one hesitant touch before their hold firms. Those long fingers, curling about my skin, cupping me gently as a bird.
We look at each other, and it’s between us. All of it. The years together. The months apart. The accident, and what came after.
The healing.
The long, long path back to this moment, when he can take the stairs.
I know the smell of his aftershave, and the taste of his mouth. The slick press of his tongue. The exact way that he tilts his head. The way his hand would feel as he slides it up to cup my neck, pulling me closer for the burning honesty of his kiss.
I can’t stop myself. Or I have to—to stop him. To stop JJ doing the thing I can see in his eyes: leaning forward and kissing me with all the love he’s never left behind.
I push to my tiptoes, careful not to brace against his once-strong chest, and press a kiss to his cheek.
“I’m so happy for you.”
It was only a kiss that I pressed to him, but it might as well have been a shove away. JJ knows it.
After so long being so close, we can erect walls between ourselves with only the faintest of touches.
A look would be enough to end it all.
JJ keeps his smile, but I know that it’s lost its effervescence.
“Pretty good, huh?”
I nod, smoothing my palms over my thighs for no reason before tucking my long cardigan closer about myself. “Yeah.”
How are we both here, being so fake?
If you didn’t know what was here before, you’d think that this was how it had always been. Us smiling, kind. And yet this space between us is wider than the sea.
“We should celebrate. Get you some pizza.”
JJ forces a smile. “Yeah. I guess that’s the good side of being like this.” He shrugs. “Endless pizza.”
What else might have been good hovers in the air between us.
Raquel
“Do you want to go see some shooting stars?”
It takes me a moment to process that. I’m surprised enough that JJ has burst into the kitchen so late, finding me making a last cup of chamomile tea for bed.
I look from his ruffled hair to his bright eyes and flushed cheeks. “… It’s midnight.”
JJ moves past me to fill up his water bottle at the fridge. “That’s when stars usually come out. I guess that means you’re not coming?”
I can’t answer that yet. I put down the kettle and turn to rest my hips at the kitchen counter, watching him as he bustles about grabbing bananas and trail mix.
“How do you know that there are shooting stars tonight?”
“Chase told me about it. You remember his star thing.”
I do. Chase has always been a stargazer. “So you’re going to go watch it with him?”
“Nope.” Something in JJ’s face shifts. “He’s out of town.”
I remember suddenly, and hope my wince is only internal. The trip. Of course. The one JJ should have been on, to Alaska, if he hadn’t…
“He’s gone to run through the airport,” JJ says, instead, and I stop, confused. That doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with snowboarding.
“Run through an airport?”
“You know. Like they do in romantic movies.” JJ grins. “It’s not really an airport. I don’t think you can run in airports anymore without getting held up by police with automatics. He’s going to see the Illuminations awards show in Miami.”
That doesn’t mak
e any sense to me, but okay. I’m aware Chase has been hung up on this girl Brooke, so I figure it’s to do with that. I try to work out what to say as JJ moves toward that drawer every house has for stuff that hasn’t been put away in its real home. He begins to pull out head torches.
When I finally find my voice it’s to be practical.
“JJ—you can’t go on your own.”
I shouldn’t have said it. I don’t want to imply he can’t do things. Remind him of his limitations. The guilt that pokes at my abdomen doesn’t have time to settle. JJ laughs, his good mood unstoppable. When he turns to grin at me I see a joy he used to have all the time. An unquenchable thirst for adventure.
“So you’d better come with me, hadn’t you?”
He’s impossible. He always has been. A laugh bubbles out of me. “You’re serious.”
This time JJ pauses at the door to the foyer, turning so that I can see the dimple of his grin. He admits the hit with a spread of his hands in admission. “You got me.”
It’s true. He always has been. Totally serious, or not serious at all—however you see it. Living life as if it’s for fun.
My feet are carrying me after him, though I don’t remember telling them to. “Where are you going to watch it?”
“The Elk Reserve,” JJ answers smoothly as he heads toward the wall. He’s already given this some thought. “I know the perfect spot. You’ll need to grab some sleeping bags.”
“I haven’t said I’m coming,” I correct, despite the fact that I seem to be following him to the hooks where I’ve hung up the car keys he would have forgotten in the fold of the sectional couch. “And why do we need sleeping bags?”
“Because it’s gonna be real cold in the back of a truck at three a.m. in early May.”
“These asteroids are at three?”
“They’re at now,” JJ corrects, swinging the keys around his finger. “But they finish at dawn. So we’d better get moving.” There’s one single beat, and his smile flickers for a second. “If you’re coming.”
It hangs, this moment between us, twisting in the air. Something as fragile as a snowflake and as inexorable as an avalanche.
Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2) Page 14