by Helen Hoang
“I wanted to talk to you, if that’s okay,” she says. “To apologize.”
That word, apologize, makes everything come back to me, and I tighten my grip on the door handle as my need to keep looking at her wars against my need to shut the door in self-preservation. “You already apologized. You don’t need to do it again.”
“Does that mean you’ve forgiven me and you’ll take me back?” she asks in a hopeful tone. Her smile is light, but her eyes remain dark, uncertain.
“Anna . . .”
She looks over my shoulder into my apartment. “Can I come in?”
I indicate the towel around my waist and try to gently turn her away by saying, “Now’s not a great time. I was in the middle of—” Her face drops and her eyes gloss over as she backs away, and I can’t help it, I open the door wide. “Come in.”
Her expression immediately brightens, and she walks past me and enters my space. It’s the first time she’s been here, I realize. I don’t know how I feel as she considers everything. It’s decently neat because I finally had a cleaning lady here, and the place came furnished with all these contemporary-style couches and decorations and things. None of this represents me, but it’s bright and airy, especially in the daytime like this.
“It’s nice here. Thanks for letting me in,” she says, being so damn polite that this is ten times more awkward than it should be. We broke up, but it’s still us.
She falls silent then, and my gaze drops to her hands, where she’s mangling her purse’s shoulder straps. I feel like I need to comfort her somehow, to calm her down, and I clasp my hands behind my back so I don’t do something stupid like hug her. My arms get twitchy at the thought of it. They ache to hold her.
I forcefully remind myself that we’re over. No self-respecting guy would get back with her after what she did.
“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly. “I’m so sorry for what I did. It’s because I have trouble speaking up, especially in public, and especially when my family is involved. I know that’s a horrible excuse, but it’s true. I’m determined to change, though. I promise you that I’ll never do something like that again where you’re concerned—if I have the chance. I’ll draw a line around you, and I’ll protect you and stand up for you and speak up for you when it’s right. I’ll keep you safe. And I’ll do the same for me. Because I matter, too.”
Her words, the expression on her face, her body language, it all begs me to give in. Part of me wants to. But a bigger part of me remembers all too well what it felt like when she let another guy announce they were getting married and kiss her in front of her entire family, a guy she told me she was going to break up with. “I know you mean what you’re saying. At least you do right now. But, Anna, when the time comes, I don’t trust that you can actually do it. I just don’t. You’re ashamed of me. Because I’m not like fucking Julian.”
She sucks in a sharp breath. “I’m not ashamed of you,” she says forcefully as tears spill down her face. “I don’t want you to be like Julian. I want you to be just as you are. I love you. I don’t know how I would have gotten through these past months without you. Every day in that house is hell for me, watching my dad suffer, watching him hate his life, and keeping him alive anyway. It destroyed me bit by bit until there was almost nothing I wanted to live for. I’ve been swallowed up in sadness and pain and hopelessness and every different kind of self-hatred that exists. But you’ve been my bright spot. You’ve pulled me through. The only good thing this broken heart of mine can feel is love for you.”
Her words hit me so hard that I feel shell-shocked. I know she’s telling the truth. I can hear it in her voice, and it matches what I saw with my own eyes. I take several steps toward her before I realize what I’m doing and stop myself. “I didn’t know how bad it was,” I whisper, addressing the first part of what she said and not the second. I don’t know what to say about her admission of love. It’s what I’ve wanted, but I’m afraid there isn’t a path forward for us.
She looks away from me and wipes at her face with the back of her hand. “I didn’t know how to talk about it. Good people don’t feel that way about taking care of the people they love. It should make me feel . . . happy, purposeful, things like that.”
“Your dad’s case is different,” I point out. “I don’t judge you for feeling the way you do.”
“My family does,” she says, and her face wrinkles with such intense hurting that I take another step toward her. “But I’m going to learn not to care what they think, what anyone thinks. I have to. Because I can’t go on like this.”
She drops her purse to the floor then and squares her shoulders as she looks at me with intense resolve.
“I can’t make you trust me, but I can show you how much I trust you,” she says before she pulls down the side zipper to her dress.
“What are you—”
She pulls her dress over her head and carelessly drops it to the ground, and my tongue lodges in my throat. I can’t guess what she’s doing. That would require thinking. All I can do is watch as she reaches behind her back, unclasps her bra, and lets it fall away from her tits. Biting her bottom lip, she reaches for the waistband of her underwear, pushes them down to her ankles, and kicks them to the side.
I greedily drink in the sight of her naked body, her tits and dark nipples, the curve of her belly, the flare of her hips, the cloud of wild curls between her luscious thighs. I’ve never seen this much of her. Because we’ve only had sex in the dark.
Breathing rapidly and visibly shaking, she searches about my apartment until she finds what she’s looking for and heads there. To my bedroom. My legs follow her without my telling them to, and I watch, completely stunned, as she pulls open the blinds on all the windows, sits on my unmade bed, and scoots back until she can rest her head on my pillow.
She shuts her eyes and turns her cheek toward my pillow, breathing deep like she’s pulling my scent into her lungs. “You wanted me to tell you . . . or show you . . . what I like,” she says. “It’s hard for me, so please . . . be patient with me.”
“You don’t need to do this. I never—”
“I want to,” she says, and even though she’s nervous, her words are firm with certainty.
She shifts restlessly on my white sheets, bunches the blankets in her hands, and finally, like it’s taking all the bravery she possesses, she spreads her legs for me. A little at first, but then wider and wider. So I can see. Every fold, every line, every color, every secret, is bared to me, and I get drunk off of the sight.
Watching me from beneath half-lowered lashes, she pushes her hands over her belly toward her pussy, but before she touches herself, she loses her courage and squeezes her eyes shut, swallowing so hard I can hear the sound.
“There’s a certain way I need to be touched,” she says. “It has to be this way, or I can’t relax and I can’t let go.”
After a period of time that feels like eternity, her fingertips settle on her clit, and I watch, transfixed, as she touches herself. Her breathing quickens and her hips rise, and I have never seen anything more sexy.
“There’s a pattern,” I hear myself say as I sit at the foot of the bed, unable to stay away. Of course there’s a pattern. She’s Anna. But it’s not complicated. It’s extremely simple. There’s symmetry to it, with clockwise strokes and an equal number of counterclockwise strokes. I want to touch her that way so bad that it feels like a physical need.
Her face blushes a deep red color, but she nods. “I know it’s strange, but—”
“What you need could never be strange. It just is what it is,” I say. “What else do you need?”
I shouldn’t be asking. I still don’t know where we’re going with this. But I can’t help it. I have to know.
“You don’t know?” she breathes.
“No, I don’t.”
“I need you to touch me and kiss me, so I�
�m not alone in this,” she says, and it seems that she holds her breath as she waits for me to respond.
A full-on battle rages inside me. I want to do what she’s asking. There’s nothing I want more.
She’s naked.
In. My. Bed.
But that would mean I’m ready to forgive her and risk letting her hurt me again.
I hesitate too long, and she covers her mouth to stifle a sob and moves to get off the bed. She turns her face away from me, but she’s not fast enough. I see her devastation, and it’s like a knife in my solar plexus. I pull her to me before she can touch her feet to the floor.
“It’s okay,” she says in a ragged voice. “I understand. I blew it. I don’t deserve—”
I kiss her. Just once. I know I can chalk it up to a mistake, say it was done in the heat of the moment. I can still end us. But then I kiss her again, and her mouth is so unbelievably perfect that I can’t help kissing her again, deeper. As soon as I taste her, I know it’s over for me. I can’t lose this. I understand what she was going through now. She’s finally being open with me, just like I’ve been demanding from the start. It’s hard for her but she’s trying anyway, and that means everything to me. I forgive her. I’ll risk anything for her. I kiss her with everything in me. Maybe I’m too rough, but she welcomes me. She kisses me back like she’s been starving without me.
When I release her mouth and kiss my way to her neck, she shivers and asks, “Are you kissing me because you feel sorry for me?”
I bite her neck and slide my hand between her thighs. I touch her the way she showed me. “You think I do this when I feel sorry for someone?”
Her shoulders hunch forward, and her hips press sharply against my hand. Her mouth falls open on a soundless gasp.
“Do I have that right?” I ask, even though I think I know. She’s drenching my fingers as she tries to get closer. “Is that good?”
Instead of answering, she pulls me down for a long kiss. Her hips undulate against my hand as she licks at my lips, sucks on my tongue, making needy little sounds that drive me out of my mind. She touches me hungrily, my face, my scalp, my shoulders. Her nails scrape down my back, hard, but not enough to break the skin, and every muscle in my body tightens. The instinct to lower her to the bed and drive into her is almost overwhelming.
The only thing stopping me is the brightness of the room. When we were together before, the darkness wasn’t just for her. It protected me, too.
When she grips my ass over my towel, the cloth loosens precariously, and I barely manage to catch it with my free hand before it falls.
She doesn’t seem to notice the conflict going on inside me. Her movements are urgent now, urgent but frustrated. I can feel it in the way she’s touching me, like she’s looking for something, trying to say something.
“Tell me,” I say.
She kisses me harder as she trembles in my arms. I feel the press of her nails on my shoulders, feel the moisture flooding my hand, the tension in her body. She’s close. But unable to fall.
“What do you need?” I ask her. I’m down for trying any kind of kink as long as it involves her and me together. I just need to know what it is in order to give it to her.
“I need—” She hides her face against my neck without finishing.
I whisper in her ear, “Ass play?”
“No,” she says in surprise. “I need . . .” But she presses her face closer to my neck. “Why is this so hard?”
“Should we shut the blinds? So it’s like before?” It’s a little wrong, but I want her to say yes.
She looks up at me, and tears gather in her eyes as she shakes her head. “I want to do this when it’s not dark. I want to be able to tell you when I—but I—I’m still so afraid—” Her chin wobbles, but she draws in an unsteady breath as a fierce light shines in her eyes. “I need—” She draws in another breath. “I need—” She wraps her arms around my neck and hugs me tight for a long shivering moment.
“I promise I’m down with it,” I say.
She kisses my jaw and whispers in my ear, “I need you to fuck me.”
Her words send a shock wave through me—that word in particular, because I know how difficult it is for her to say. My skin flashes with heat before an odd sort of hyperawareness claims me. It feels like everything’s been leading to this moment, now.
I pull away from her, and I bring my hands to the towel around my waist. She’s let me in all the way. I need to do the same. This broken body of mine isn’t what it was, but it’s what I have. It took me into hell and back. I can’t be ashamed any longer.
Keeping my eyes on her face, I bare myself to her.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Anna
Quan’s body is ink and lean runner’s muscles and masculine lines. He’s beautiful.
His arousal juts out proudly, and it pleases me at an elemental level. That’s a response to me. I’m the one he desires. The other part of him, the part that causes him so much self-consciousness, looks more or less the same as other ones I’ve seen in real life and in pictures. Perhaps it has a more uneven appearance. But I accept it, just as I accept him. Just as I accepted my imperfect violin.
I didn’t expect this. I wasn’t trying to make him do this, though I should have realized this was the natural consequence of what I was asking.
His trust humbles me and honors me. It makes me love him more.
“Can I touch you?” I ask, reaching toward him but stopping before I get too close.
“Always,” he replies.
When he takes my hand in his, I expect him to wrap my fingers around his sex. But instead, he guides me to a small raised line on his inner pelvic area, one of the places on his body that isn’t covered with ink.
“That’s the only visible scar left from the surgery,” he says.
I run my fingertips over the two-inch mark. It’s difficult to believe something so small had such a large impact. Because of this cut, because of that surgery, he’s here with me now.
Bending down, I press my lips to his scar. I want him to know that I’m not disgusted, that I’m grateful for this scar, that I love it, that I love all of him. I brush my cheek against the firm length of his sex so he can witness my affection, then my other cheek. He’s soft as velvet but burning hot. I press a chaste kiss to the head.
“Anna, you don’t have to do that,” he says in a gravelly voice. “I know you don’t like—”
“This isn’t a blow job. I’m just kissing you,” I say, but then my lips part and I run my tongue over him. Once I’ve gone that far, it’s the most natural thing in the world to take him into my mouth.
He flinches like I’ve electrocuted him. His chest billows. His stomach muscles ripple and tense, making the waves inked into his skin roll like real waves in the sea. But when he touches my face, his fingers are unbearably gentle.
As I suck on him, teasing the tip with my tongue before taking him deeper, his gaze doesn’t waver from me. I’m pleasuring him, but we’re doing this together. Neither of us is alone. I’m not just an accessory for his masturbation.
And unlike the other times I’ve done this, I find myself enjoying it. His hoarse sounds excite me. The barely contained violence in his body excites me. His every response excites me.
He didn’t push my head down and take from me, knowing I couldn’t refuse. He let me choose. And because of that, I could choose to give. That completely changes things.
I don’t count the seconds as I caress him with my mouth. I don’t hope for him to finish quickly so that I can do something else.
Instead, I feast my senses on him, getting drunk on the feel of him, his taste, his clean scent, the sight of him, the sound of his gusting breaths. Something awakens in me. I get wetter between my legs, and a sense of emptiness expands until I ache with it. When he pulls free of my mouth and takes my lips in a hard kiss,
pushing my back to the bed as he covers my body with his, I’m almost mindless with wanting.
He strokes my sex with his fingertips. Exactly the way I need. Exactly. Because I showed him how. And I cry out as I arch into his touch. I’m right on the edge, but there’s something I need, something he taught me to crave. I pull him closer, I try to force words past my lips, that word.
But he understands. He positions himself between my legs, and we both watch as the head of his sex penetrates me, pushing in slowly while his fingers continue to touch me. The feel of my body stretching to accept him, this extraordinary fullness, leaves me breathless. I want to savor this moment, to memorize every minute detail. When he retreats and thrusts back into me, finding the perfect rhythm, stroking me in all the right places in all the right ways, I clench on him helplessly. I’m captivated by the intensity on his face and the fluid flex and play of his body as he takes me, as he fucks me.
The darkness took this from me. My fear took this from me.
The pleasure heightens, and every part of me winds tight. I kiss him frantically, needing that extra connection to him as I climb and climb, as I hang at the precipice for a moment out of time. When the convulsions rip through me, I kiss him still, crying out with every breath I take.
The look he gives me as I shudder beneath him is dark with satisfaction and lust, yet full of tenderness, full of love, and I know that I’m completely safe with him, here in the light of day.
His motions hasten, his expression borders on pain, and with a sound of surrender, he drives deep, joining us tight as our hearts pound in tandem. I hold him, and I kiss him softly, and I smile, whispering “I love you” in his ear.
* * *
—
We spend hours lazing in his bed, sharing pillow talk and smiling at each other as sunshine blankets our naked skin. He tells me the stories behind his water tattoos as I trace them with my fingertips. I tell him about my favorite pieces of classical music inspired by the sea, Wagner’s overture to The Flying Dutchman and Debussy’s La Mer, how they encapsulate moments of blissful calm and explosive violence. As usual, talking about music brings me back to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and I have to mention the incomparable intensity of his Summer and Winter pieces, how they evoke the most magnificent and beautiful storms. He laughs when I describe storms that way, but he does it fondly. He says storms are great unless you happen to be stuck in one. He also says my passion for music is one of his favorite things about me and he’s certain I’ll play again when I’m ready. I hope he’s right.