by Hart, Lane
When Evelyn told me Kyle had asked if he could put his hand down her panties, I tried to talk her out of it.
“I dunno, Ev. Are you sure you want his orange, Cheeto-stained fingers inside of you? How do you know it won’t hurt?” I had asked her.
“Because I’ve already tried it myself, and it felt…good.”
I can’t imagine what my best friend saw on my face after she admitted to me that she too masturbated. I was stunned, bewildered, suddenly thinking of her in bed or in the shower naked with her hand between her legs. My dick was so hard I thought it might be permanently bent to the left thanks to how badly it was swollen and contorted down the leg of my jeans.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that? Everyone does it; right? Don’t you?” she had asked me as her flawless, ivory cheeks turned a rosy pink color, my favorite color in the world. Not that I would ever admit that to anyone.
“Ah, yeah. I guess, like, once or twice maybe,” I lied.
Once or twice a day I would’ve clarified if I was being completely honest with her. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t. It was too late for me to tell her that I thought she was beautiful and that my hands should be the only ones other than hers to ever touch her body. She obviously didn’t feel the same way about me if I was the one she talked to about all the boys she dated. I remember the first time Evelyn encouraged me to ask out one of the girls we went to school with.
Wait. There are other girls in the world?
That had been my first thought, because the only girl I saw, the only one I dreamed about and wanted to make mine was Evelyn.
While Ev and I remained best friends through the rest of high school, she eventually stopped telling me the details about what she did with the boys she dated, of which there were a lot. She was beautiful and sexy and irresistible with her long, raven hair and porcelain skin, like a living, breathing Disney princess.
She did, unfortunately, tell me after she lost her virginity when we were juniors to Dallas Dickson, a macho dickhead who lettered in every sport, so I lied and told her that I had lost mine to some girl I met at the pier who was just here on vacation. I gave my fake sexual partner a fake name to make her seem more real – Jane. Even my fake lovers are apparently lame as fuck.
Evelyn was devastated when dickhead Dallas dumped her a few weeks later for a cheerleader. And guess who was the one who comforted her? Me. That night after she left my house, I took a baseball bat to Dallas’ precious Mustang because I was smart enough to know that standing up to him face to face would mean an ass kicking. Thankfully, he never found out it was me who damaged his property, or I would probably be dead.
So, for over four years, I’ve carried a massive crush and boner for my best friend, who is completely clueless.
Or so I thought…
Two small hands slap over my first-floor window frame, one jingling softly thanks to the seashell bracelet on her left wrist, the one that I made her when we were ten. I rush over to help her in, but like usual, she doesn’t need it as the rest of her lithe frame heaves over and down onto my carpeted bedroom floor like she’s done at least a hundred times before. Our parents may not have approved of us hanging out alone, but they had no clue she would sneak into my room almost every night during the summer. Well, except for the nights when she went out with whoever was her current fling.
I don’t think Ev’s actually ever cared about any of the guys she dates. Instead, she uses them as a distraction from her home life, where her mother Rita fights a daily struggle with worsening kidney failure.
When Evelyn straightens, smoothing her hands down her short, white sundress, my eyes can’t help but rake over every inch of her from head to toe, starting at the toes of her strappy, white sandals, trailing up her slender legs, over her tiny waist that my hands can wrap around before ending at her far too tempting tits that are busting out the top of her dress. My inappropriate perusal means it takes several seconds before my gaze finally reaches her face where I notice the black streaks of eye-makeup running down her pale cheeks.
Fuck. She’s been crying. Again.
“Ev? Are you okay?” I ask in concern, wrapping my arms around her to comfort her but also being selfish and taking any chance I can get to touch her. “Is your mom getting worse?”
“No. M-mom’s fine, at least for now,” she says. “Sorry it’s so late,” she whispers with her face buried in my neck, the warmth of her breath on my skin sending a jolt of longing all the way down to my soul. “I shouldn’t be here, but I wanted to see you, to tell you…”
“To tell me what?” I ask when she pulls away from me with her lips pursed.
“I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry,” she replies, eyes downcast to the floor while her chin trembles.
“Sorry for what? You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” I assure her.
“You’re a nice guy, Cedric, and-and I don’t know what I would’ve done without you over the last few years,” Evelyn says in a rush while her fingers swipe away the tears and mascara from underneath each of her eyes. “I’m going to…I’m going to miss you so much.”
“Miss me?” I repeat in confusion. “What are you talking about, Ev? We live five minutes away from each other and will both be going to the same community college in a few weeks. You may be studying nursing or whatever while I take the general education classes, but we’ll still see each other all the time!”
“No, we won’t,” she says with an adamant shake of her head.
“We won’t?” I snap at her, hurt and angry that she’s all of a sudden changed her mind. We made these plans together more than a year ago, both of us agreeing to stay here with each other. I could’ve gone to Appalachian or USC, but I stayed for her.
“I’m not going to school,” she tells me.
“Why not?” I ask. “If it’s about money, I told you we can get part-time jobs to help cover the books and tuition. It’s only a few thousand.”
“I don’t…I don’t want to talk about it,” she says, combing her fingers through the front of her long hair, her dark eyes red-rimmed and frantic.
“Well, too bad because I do want to talk about it!” I argue. “You owe me an explanation, Ev.”
“You-you have no idea what it’s like to watch the life drain out of your mama a little more each day!” she exclaims.
“You’re right. I don’t. And if there was anything I could do to help you or Rita, you know I would,” I say as I pull her to me for a crushing hug. I feel like she’s slipping through my fingers like sand and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop it. “Tell me what I can do, and I’ll do it,” I breathe into her hair. I would do anything in the world for her.
“Please, Cedric,” Ev says as her face presses into my scrawny chest and her body shakes from her sobs. “I-I have to leave. Don’t make this any harder than it already is!”
“I don’t even know what this is!” I say in frustration as I continue to hold her. “But you’re not leaving yet. Not until we figure this out. Together. I hate seeing you hurting, just like you hate to see your mom in pain, because…because I love you.”
There.
Fuck!
I can’t believe I finally said it, the three words that I’ve wanted to tell her since we were fourteen. Maybe ever since the day we met on the beach when we were ten – the sad girl who looked lost and alone and needed a friend. I couldn’t stop thinking about her that night while I made the bracelet for her. I gave it to her the first day of school, and years later she still wears it. In fact, I’ve never seen her take it off.
“I love you too,” she replies through her sniffles, and yet still way too fast and much too easily for her to actually mean the words the same way I do. “Always have. That’s why I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“No, Evelyn,” I say on a heavy exhale as I grow a pair and cup the sides of her face, so she’ll look at me when I say it again. “I. Love. You. I’m in love with you, and I have been forever. I know you probably don’t feel th
e same about me, but I can’t keep pretending that I don’t want to kiss you whenever I see you.”
I pause to try and read her face after my confession, and I’m stunned that she doesn’t even blink in surprise.
“I know,” she says simply, covering my hands that are still clutching her face and giving them a squeeze.
“You…know?”
“Cedric, you are the nicest person I’ve ever met. You’re honest and kind and loyal to a fault. You couldn’t even put that black snake out of its misery after it got run over by a car, but you’ve always looked at every guy I’ve ever gone out with like you want to murder them with your bare hands.”
“That’s because I did,” I mutter.
“I know.”
There’s that goddamn word again. I’m about to ask for clarification when Evelyn asks, “Why do you think I kept dating them, each one worse than the last?”
“I don’t…I’m not following you.”
“Because I was tired of waiting around for you to tell me how you felt! I wanted you to say something or do something about it!” she explains.
Wait. Is she saying what I think she is? That she feels the exact same way about me, and she only dated a bunch of jerks to make me jealous? Why didn’t she just tell me she wanted me too?
Maybe for the same reason that I kept my mouth shut for more than four years, because I’m just a pussy who was scared of her rejecting me and ruining our friendship.
Well, fuck that.
Right here, right now, I’m finally going to do something about it, what I’ve wanted to do for years! I crush my lips to Ev’s and savor the taste of her soft ones that are even sweeter than I dreamed.
And despite all of my fears, Evelyn doesn’t push me away. Her mouth moves against mine, kissing me right back.
“I-I shouldn’t,” she breathes against my lips before fisting her hands in the front of my t-shirt to pull me closer and dive right back in. Even if she has doubts, there’s no fucking way I’ll try to talk her out of this. Until she tells me to stop, I’m going to kiss the hell out of her.
Chapter Two
Evelyn
I’ve kissed…well, quite a few boys, but none of them have ever devoured me like Cedric is doing right now.
And even though I know it’s stupid and that it’s not fair to him, I don’t stop kissing him back. I open my mouth eagerly to feel his tongue on mine again and again, yet it’s not enough. I want more. More of Cedric. Endless days with him to do this a million times, because I know I would never get tired of his kisses.
He loves me and he wants me, and I need him. I need to be able to have something good to take with me.
It’s selfish of me to ask this of him, because I know he’ll do it. He would do anything for me.
“Cedric?”
“Yeah?”
“I want…I want you to make love to me.”
“What?” he asks when he pulls back to look at my face.
“Will you?” I ask him.
“You want me to-to make love to you? Right now?” he asks, looking both excited and a little disappointed. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I mean, if you want to?”
“Of course I want to. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you,” he says before his mouth finds mine again.
I think I have a pretty good idea. He’s probably wanted me for as long as I’ve wanted him – years. I just wasn’t willing to risk our friendship without a guarantee that the two of us would be forever. And since Cedric has never once even tried to tell me how he feels, I was worried that a romantic relationship would be doomed. How could we be a couple if he couldn’t speak up and talk to me about how he feels? It seemed like a recipe for disaster.
But now?
Well, now, everything has changed. My time with Cedric is running out, and this may very well be the last time I ever see him.
Imagining such a thing makes me want to scream and cry and yell all at the same time.
Life isn’t fair.
That was one of the first things Cedric and I talked about the day that we met. And he was right. So very right.
My mother is getting worse, and now we have to flip a coin to decide whether to pay the rent or buy her prescriptions. Without all of the medications she needs, she would only survive a few short weeks. I can’t let that happen to her.
Her doctor said it could take years before she gets to the top of the transplant list. Just as Cedric would do anything for me, I’ll do anything for her. My mother is an amazing woman who doesn’t deserve to suffer. If there’s any way I can minimize that and help her make it to a transplant, I have to do it.
Which is why I’ve stupidly agreed to do something so insane I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around it. In a way, I guess I’ve agreed to trade my life for my mother’s. I have to set aside my own dreams, college, my future…as well as give up Cedric.
I hate it, but I don’t have any choice. Lowell is possessive and jealous; and for some reason, he’s obsessed with me. When he said he was going to enjoy “breaking me”, I don’t think he was joking. He’s Satan, and I’ve agreed to give him my life, signing it away in blood, damning me to an eternity in hell.
But right now, being in Cedric’s bedroom where I’ve spent most of my teenage years with him, it feels like I’m in heaven.
I just wish he wasn’t so sweet and polite all the time. If I were to wait for him to take off my clothes or push me down on the bed to take me, we may never actually get there, so I know I’ll have to make the first move.
Pulling away from our kiss, I reach down and grab the hem of my dress to lift it up and over my head, leaving me in just my white cotton bra and matching panties.
“Wow…” Cedric says as he stands there unmoving and stares at me. “You’re serious.”
“I’m serious,” I agree as I undo the clasp on my bra and let the fabric fall from my arms and to the floor. I hook my thumbs in the waistband of my panties, getting ready to jerk them down, but I abruptly stop short. “If you want me and want to do this, then you’re going to have to get naked and take my panties off.”
There’s a several second delay before my words must sink in. Cedric grabs the back of his shirt and yanks it off in the blink of an eye, and then his fingers are busy shoving his shorts and boxer briefs down his legs.
Seeing him standing in front of me completely naked for the first time is an image I know I’ll never forget in a million years.
His body is tall and lean, which means his sculpted muscles are on prominent display. My favorite part may be the indented V that points down to his long, thick cock. I stare at it for so long that his fingers wrap around the girth to give it a self-conscious tug as if he thinks it needs to be longer. It doesn’t. He’s a perfect size.
Finally, I lift my face to his. And immediately, I know by the nervous way he licks his lips that this is going to be his first time. He lied to me when he said he had slept with some girl he met at the pier years ago. I know he never went out with anyone we went to school with either, and I always wanted to believe that he ignored them because he wanted me.
“Cedric?” I ask him softly as I take a seat on the edge of his bed.
“Yeah?”
“You haven’t ever done this before, have you?”
“No,” he answers honestly.
“Don’t be nervous…” I start.
“I’m not.” His denial is too quick to be honest. Of course he’s nervous. Who isn’t their first time? I remember mine, unfortunately. Now I really wish I would’ve waited until right this moment so that it would be both of our first times.
“Then why are you still standing over there?” I ask him.
He steps out of the pool of clothes at his feet and comes over to sit beside me on the bed.
“I’m not sure what you want me to do, and I don’t want to do something you don’t like.”
“Cedric?”
“Yeah?” he responds.
“There’s n
othing you could do that I wouldn’t like,” I tell him.
“But I’ve never…”
“Done anything with a girl?” I finish for him.
He swallows hard and then nods. “Yeah.”
“Then let’s do everything,” I suggest as I reach over to take his cock in my hand and give it a firm stroke.
“Oh god,” he groans as his eyes slam shut and his lips part on a gasp.
He may not be my first, but I want to be Cedric’s first everything. Without removing my hand from him, I sink down to my knees in front of him and run my tongue over the head of his shaft.
“Fuck, Ev,” he exclaims as I swipe my tongue over his crown a few more times. “You don’t have to…oh, fuck that feels…that feels so damn good.”
Parting my lips, I take him into my mouth to the back of my throat and apply suction as I pull back. The move has Cedric’s hips lifting off the mattress as he braces his weight on his palms flattened on either side of him on the bed.
It’s selfish of me, but I want him to think of me and remember this moment when I’m gone. That’s why I keep going, sucking him harder until I taste his salty flavor on my tongue.
His fingers comb through my hair gently before he pushes me away. “I can’t take anymore,” he says, meaning he needs me to stop before he comes in my mouth when he would rather finish somewhere else. And when I look up at his face, I barely recognize my best friend of eight years. His jaw is tight, and his eyes are starved for me.
I get to my feet in front of him and Cedric doesn’t waste any time peeling my panties down my legs and leaning forward to place his lips on my bare stomach, making me gasp. It may be a muggy ninety degrees outside, but in Cedric’s bedroom with his mouth on my skin, cold chills break out on my arms and legs from that small gesture.
No longer hesitant, his palms circle my waist and move up to cup both of my breasts while his lips keep trailing slow kisses from one hip all the way across to the other. The pad of his thumb swirls around my hardening nipple. Between his hands and his mouth, my knees turn weak so that I have to reach for Cedric’s shoulders to keep myself upright.
