by Piper Lennox
She pauses. I watch the shadows jump across her face with the candlelight.
“And the worst part is,” she says, “you never know when that point will happen.”
I reach across the table and put my hand on hers. “I don’t think our best times were when we were eighteen, Easton. To wonder if everything that comes after is downhill...that’s discounting all the things we’ve gone through since then. All the ways we’ve changed.”
She stares at me. I think I see tears, but it might just be the light.
“Do you think,” she says softly, turning her hand in mine, “our worst times were when we were eighteen?”
“Of course. Because back then, I was a stupid asshole.”
Easton laughs. Whatever I thought I saw in her eyes is gone by the time I get up, cross the little bit of distance left, and kiss her.
Nineteen
For once, I’ve found a silence I can live with.
It’s the pause when Ford undresses me, as carefully as our first time, and stares at me on his bed like he simultaneously can’t believe it, and planned it all along.
This time, when he puts his tongue inside me, the angle is perfect. I let out a cry I didn’t even feel building in my chest as it delves inside with all the hunger I felt in our kiss, all the desperation of a man who, whether he wanted to or not, waited six years for this.
For you.
“Ford,” I moan, and have to force myself to force him to stop, “let me do you.”
He rises to his knees and smirks as he wipes his mouth. It takes everything I have not to beg him to keep going.
My only motivation is knowing, if I’m patient, I can have him inside me the way I’ve been fantasizing about since I saw him in that terminal. And, if I’m honest, since long before that.
I’ve always wanted him. Starting that night he fell asleep in the truck bed and I almost kissed him, I’ve wanted to know Ford in every way imaginable. I wanted to have him for my own: the boy who belonged to no one and pretended to like it that way.
I undo his belt and steel myself with a breath before pulling down his jeans. The outline of his erection in his boxers awakens every last nerve I have and reminds me exactly why I left my curtains open last night.
He pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it behind him, then hooks his fingers under my chin and guides me into another kiss. He holds my face like he did at the festival, this gentle move of power I don’t remember him doing before—this ownership I don’t remember him taking, until now.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he sighs, shutting his eyes and bringing his forehead to mine.
“I missed you, too.” Confessing it to him is so much easier than admitting it to myself ever felt.
I kiss my way down his jaw and neck to his chest, pushing his boxers down the lower I get. I want every inch of him, every piece, every drop.
He sighs my name as I tease my lips around the tip of his erection. The pre-ejaculate glistening there sets my brain on fire as soon as it touches my tongue.
Ford switches places with me on the bed, his back against his pillows as I straddle his legs and take the first few inches into my mouth. I feel ravenous, as hungry for him as I was to keep his tongue inside me.
As I take him deeper and let him fill my throat, chasing down all the sighs and moans he’s making for the both of us, I remember that Ford is loud. That was one of my favorite things about him. The way he filled the silence.
“Fuck, Easton.” I feel his fingers comb into my hair, but he doesn’t push me down. He simply holds onto me, like that’s all he can stand to do as I work my throat, tongue, and lips around him as deftly as he always worked his tongue and fingers inside of me.
My leg slips off the bed at one point, my foot hitting the floor with a thud that echoes through the garage. “No matter how big we get,” he pants, “our beds stay the same stupid size.”
I’d laugh with him, if I could. We used to lament our twin beds, warm but cramped, and vowed that one of these days, we’d have sex in a proper bed. Evidently, that day’s not this one.
“Yes,” he sighs, gritting his teeth when I cup his testicles in my hand and bring them close to his body, the slightest pressure in my touch. “Oh, God, baby, you’ve got to stop before I finish in your mouth.”
I sit up and wipe my mouth as arrogantly as he did. “Where would you rather finish?”
Ford chuckles at me and slips one hand behind his head, still panting. The other grabs my hip and steers me to him, until my slit, still soaked from his tongue, is pressed to his erection.
“I’d like,” he manages, swallowing hard as I rock back and forth, “to finish inside you.” He quiets as I slow down. “But I guess we shouldn’t tempt fate.”
“Yeah.” I stop and lift my leg over, sliding off his lap.
“Hey, wait a minute—I didn’t mean it like that, don’t go.”
I turn and laugh at him, holding up my purse from beside the door. When I fish out the condom I keep in the side pocket, he relaxes.
“Condoms,” he nods, as I climb back into bed. “That’s very...prepared.”
We’re silent as I tear open the foil, thinking, I’m sure, the exact same thing: I am prepared, but not for this. These were purchased and kept with entirely different men in mind. Men with full-sized beds, and no history to tiptoe around like landmines.
But for every landmine in my story with Ford, there are plenty of unexpected, stunning finds buried along the path, too. If we hadn’t spent so long apart, we might not be here now. If he’d never left, he might not have become the man he is: one who holds my hand without thinking, who kisses me in daylight, who fights for me. Even the ugly things can be beautiful, sometimes.
I slide the condom onto him. His hands find their place on my hips.
I know this moment, not that kiss at the festival, is the real beginning of our new story: deciding the old one is really over. Maybe it didn’t get the ending it deserved. Maybe all those blank pages at the end never will be put to use. But it will have to be enough, if I want what’s unfolding in front of me now.
So as he fills me and sighs my name again, the moonlight illuminating his lips like a sign from the universe that I just have to kiss him, I promise myself to close that part of our story. Everything beautiful and everything ugly, filed in the past where it belongs.
Easton trembles all over as she lowers herself onto me. I feel myself stretching her, the resistance almost as addictive as the exact moment when that resistance ends, and her body accepts mine.
I rock my hips into the mattress and then up, filling her again. She mimics my movement, pulling away when I do and sinking when I rise, so that every thrust is that much more powerful, that much deeper.
Her thighs shake after a while, so I pull her against me and turn us over. We laugh when the bottle of water on my windowsill crashes to the floor.
“One of these days,” she sighs, and I say the rest: “…we’ll have sex in a proper bed.”
Honestly, I couldn’t care less where we are. It was always like that, with her: I never minded if we were in her bed or mine, the floor or grass or the truck bed. I didn’t care if I was cold or my back ached, if I was thirsty or tired. If I was with her, everything was fine.
How did I ever give her up?
“I love the noises you make,” she pants, legs tightening around my midsection.
“I wasn’t making any noises.”
“Yes, you were,” she smiles. “You do this little...groan thing, in your throat, every so often.”
I hadn’t noticed, but I’ll have to take her word for it. My brain is not at full-power, right now.
“Right there,” she whispers, a moment later. She closes her eyes, the sign that she’s at the edge, so I don’t dare change my angle; I must be hitting exactly the right spot. All I do is go deeper, increasing the speed of my thrusts as her ankles lock behind my back.
Her sex shudders tighter and tighter around mine. The thrill of knowing
she’s so close sends a bottle rocket through my veins.
I definitely hear the groan I give, this time. “Easton, I’m gonna come, I can’t—”
She arches her back; I thrust as deeply as possible, the animal in me taking over as my orgasm weaves with hers. Her nails sink into my shoulders.
Through the high, I have only one coherent thought: Kiss her, you dumbass.
Her mouth meets mine hard, a breathless blur that leaves me so dizzy and happy I have to laugh. I don’t know what else to do, what other sound to make to express how I feel.
I touch the sunburn on her arms from the festival. She touches the scar above my eyebrow.
“Still hate me?” I whisper.
Slowly, eyes riveted on mine, Easton shakes her head.
“Be honest: did you ever really hate me?”
“Yeah.” Her hand spreads across the side of my face. She used to do this to the worst of my bruises: place her hand on them as though she could draw the pain out like poison. Sometimes, I found myself believing she could.
“But the only thing I hated more,” she says, “was not being with you.”
I almost apologize again. It’s automatic, and it’s genuine: I am sorry. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being sorry, for everything I did to her.
She’s heard it enough, though. She’s sick of sorry. And we’re both sick of the past. We need to start over.
So instead, I just kiss her—again and again and gentler each time, until she falls asleep.
It isn’t the same as a hand on a bruise. But maybe it’s close enough.
Twenty
“Mama, it’s fine. Dr. Park said you might feel a little vertigo—”
“A little? I nearly cracked my head when I stood up this morning, don’t you go telling me it’s vertigo. I about passed right out, is what I did.” Grandma stabs her finger through the air, pointing to me when I step through the screen door. “Easton’s here, she’ll settle this.”
“Oh, no, I won’t. I just came in for some coffee.” I hold up both palms and take the checklist Mom hands me. First on the list is laundry, then sorting Grandma’s pills for the week.
“You’re in charge of my pills,” she pipes. “I saw your mama write it on the list, so I’m telling you exactly what I told her: the blue ones make me dizzy. I’m not taking them anymore, and that’s just the way it is.”
“Just the way it is” has been my grandmother’s catchphrase for as long as I can remember (and as long as Mom can remember, for that matter), but even her stubbornness can’t bring me down this morning.
Waking up in Ford’s bed a few minutes ago, I felt a smile rise to my face from deep down inside, some place that hadn’t felt happy in so long, I’d forgotten it existed. Maybe it was that scarred part of my heart, where the anger used to sit—because I definitely couldn’t feel that, anymore.
“Hey, you.” He rubbed his face and grinned when I crawled on top of him. I knew we didn’t have time to do anything; I was due at the house soon. But for a few minutes, at least, I could put my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat, the rumble of his voice while he spoke, the same way I usually woke up to a playlist as my alarm.
“Last night was.... God, I just missed you, Easy.” He put his arm over his eyes and shook his head. “I’m not even fully awake yet, and I already can’t stop smiling.”
I laughed and slipped my arms around him. I liked the weight of his body pinning them to the mattress, like he was anchoring me exactly where I belonged. “Same.”
“What are you doing today?” Ford’s other hand migrated down to my butt. “Because I vote we stay in bed all morning, go get lunch, stay in bed all afternoon—”
“I’m helping my mom,” I sighed, glancing out his window. I could barely see my parents’ bedroom window from here, but in the early blue light, Mom’s lamp burned: she was awake.
“All day?”
“Don’t pout.” I held his chin while I kissed his nose, then got up despite his loud, mumbling protests. “It’s just until lunch. Honestly, I don’t think she needed me for as much as she thought.” I corrected myself. “Well, she does—but she won’t let me help.”
“My dad and Caroline have been the same way. Still, your mom seems a lot less stressed, so you must be helping somehow. Like…emotional support.”
I considered this. “Yeah, maybe. If she knows the laundry’s done and Dad’s contraband is out of the house, she’s calm enough to handle anything Grandma throws at her. So I guess I am helping, even if it’s only a few chores.”
“I think just knowing you’re nearby helps her.”
“Maybe that’s how you’re helping your family, too,” I pointed out, but Ford shook his head, doubtful.
He sat up and stretched while I got into my bra and panties. To say I was tempted to dive back into bed with him, especially after watching him stretch and flex with stupidly adorable bedhead, was an understatement.
“Lunchtime, then?” He dressed and followed me downstairs. “Bram’s having a barbecue today, actually, if you wanted to go.”
I fixed my bra strap and finger-combed my hair in the reflection from a hubcap on the pegboard. “Bram and the guys are inviting you places?”
“Don’t sound so shocked. If I can get you to talk to me again, I can certainly charm those guys.” Ford lifted the garage door with a rattle and turned back to me, both of us breathing deep as the scent of dew and grass filled the space. “What do you say? Just like old times.”
The phrase struck me wrong, like a two-by-four to the gut. I managed to shake it off, though, and smile. “Old times” didn’t have to mean “the bad times.” We’d had plenty of good ones, too, most of which happened at—or right after—parties and hangouts with our friends.
So I agreed, kissing him goodbye longer than planned. When I finally broke it, pushing him back and panting, “Okay, now I really have to leave,” he leaned against the siding, thumbs in his belt loops, and licked his lips with a smile. I didn’t turn to check, but I was positive he watched me all the way through the gate.
Now, with Grandma rattling her pill box at me like a maraca, I grit my teeth and promise myself I’ll be with Ford as soon as possible. Just a few hours of this, and I’m free.
“Let’s call Dr. Park and see what he thinks,” I tell her, in the taffy-pull voice Mom and I have adopted since she came home. Too sweet and too slow.
“I’m not taking them.” She shoves the box at me across the table. It hits my coffee mug with a clink and slosh.
I look at Mom. “They did say she could switch to something else, if she didn’t like these.”
Mom drags her hand down her face and then shrugs, like she doesn’t care what we do. Like she won’t research whatever new drug the doctor prescribes Grandma until the computer overheats.
Twenty minutes and copious notes later, my coffee is cold, Grandma’s got an appointment to switch her meds, and the offending little blue pills are back in their bottle on the countertop. I kiss her on the forehead, then let Mom kiss mine, before trekking through the house to gather laundry.
Around eleven, Ford texts me a photo of himself with Bentley, who’s blowing a huge spit bubble while half-asleep. “Impressive, right?”
“Very,” I type back.
“What’s got you blushing?” Mom bumps my hip with hers as she passes, getting my neck with the feather duster. I show her the photo.
“Caroline’s baby, right?” She takes the phone and squints at it, then smiles. “Oh, my goodness, what a sweetheart. You can tell that boy’s going to break some hearts.”
I suppress my scoff. This is the unofficial christening chant over every male baby in Hillford, and I secretly despise it. What a thing to wish on a kid, brand-new and filled with potential: that he’ll hurt someone.
“Poor girl,” she goes on, skimming the duster over the photo frames in the hall. “I’ve been trying to get her to come to church with me on Thursdays—there’s a support group there for teen mothers. I t
hink it’d do her a world of good, especially after losing that Hawthorne boy how she did.”
My phone gets slick in my hand. I put it back in my bra. “You know how Bennett died?”
“Honey, don’t you remember? He was in that accident down at Lucerne. God-awful. Seventeen cars, and not one passenger walked out of there without something. Ford got those stitches, Grace Michaels’s daughter broke her leg—Caroline came close to losing the baby.”
“I didn’t know that.” My voice barely reaches her; she’s already dusting the rest of the photos. She’ll probably cluck her tongue about how awful it all was, maybe mumble a prayer while her mind is on it—but otherwise, she’s forgotten.
At the opposite end of that spectrum is me, who can hardly breathe, the air gets so hot. My brain assembles facts like a puzzle I should have figured out a long time ago.
Bennett and Caroline were in the accident with Ford; he walked away basically unscathed. Caroline and the baby, by the grace of God, came out of it okay, too. Bennett didn’t.
Why didn’t he just tell me?
I go to Grandma’s room and grab her radio. It doesn’t get loud enough for me to hear over the vacuum; I can’t even say it’s music, because for once, I’m not listening to the lyrics or losing my thoughts in the melody. It’s just white noise under more white noise. But it helps.
Close it, I think. This is part of the old story.
If Ford and I are going to make things work this time, I have to snuff the anger and questions, the hurt that he wasn’t up-front with me from the start. I have to let this information—new as it might feel to me—rest where it belongs: with old facts and former lives. Firmly in Before, and miles from After.
Twenty-One
