by Ace Gray
How have all the people over all the years dealt with feeling too much? I may be naive when it comes to James, but I know I’m not the first one to feel this way. How have all the others patched their hearts? How have they said no to a round two?
My mind wanders just like me as I ride. Town is so small, I’ve seen all the streets, all the houses, wondered over all the loves, losses, and questions but I’ve found no answers. With James I never do. When I return home, I’m not closer to any resolutions. I never am.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” James’ voice is an ice bucket to my insides.
“It’s always about you, isn’t it,” I spit out without thinking.
“Forget it.” He unwinds from the stairs in that way he has and makes a move to wash his hands of me as he starts to walk away.
“Fine. I knew this was coming anyway,” I call after him. He stops in his tracks, his shoulders tense the slightest bit. “Play the wounded animal, cornered by the unscrupulous hunter all over again.”
“Come the fuck on, Mina.” He turns toward me and shoots me a look as he shoves his hands in his pockets. “I get shit went wrong before, but assuming it’s going to again makes you the one rooting for us to fail. Don’t put that bullshit on me.”
“Excuse me?”
“I moved here because it captured your heart and I thought that maybe from here, I could too. I laid my feelings out. I listened when you yelled at me for before, and what have you done?”
“Nothing!”
“Exactly. You’ve done nothing except put hurdle after hurdle up, hoping that I’d fall.”
“I didn’t—”
“Newsflash, Meen, I didn’t run hurdles so I’m gonna stumble. At least I got on the track. You’re heckling from the sidelines.” He’s louder and more vicious than he’s ever been with me.
And as I sharpen my claws to respond, I know this angry, brutal version of James is right. My claws recede the smallest bit.
“The way you acted in the brewhouse…” It’s the only defense I have.
“That’s my job, Mina. Making out with you isn’t exactly what they pay me for.” His edge has softened the smallest bit.
“Jonas doesn’t care.” I roll my eyes.
“Jonas doesn’t care that his friend and largest account is dicking around, but his brewer…”
I don’t have a rebuttal.
“Even if Jonas doesn’t care, I do, and you know that about me. You know I take my career serious and this afternoon wasn’t professional. By any means. If I felt anything less than I do, I never would have done that.”
This time it’s his words that are the ice buckets to my insides.
Because he’s right. Those virtues are the same ones I sang to Jonas when he was considering passing James by.
“You know me, Mina, maybe better than anyone else.” He steps back toward me, cool and calm where before he was the tempest. “I know that the vulnerable bits are the enticing ones, but you can’t forget the rest of me. It’s all or nothing.”
I swallow the lump in my throat.
“The first few times I saw you in town you refused to speak to me. You slept with someone.”
I cringe.
“Then you yelled at me. And slapped me. You didn’t paint a pretty picture for me either, but I made my mind up a long time ago that I loved you and I was realistic about what that meant.”
His words, his structured arguments and prevailing logic were always reasons I found him so intriguing. Two of the reasons I fell. There’s a part of me that doesn’t love being the subject found wanting at the end of one, but he pairs it down and makes it seem like he’ll love me forever based on bullet points. Irrefutable bullet points.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur.
“I don’t need an apology. I didn’t say it to belittle you.” He steps closer and brushes his knuckles against mine, an unspoken request all its own. “I just need to know if you’re in it with me or in it for you. They’re two different things and I’m only interested in one of them.”
“Is that an ultimatum?”
“I guess.” He winces. “But I was thinking of it as an insurance policy.”
“Against what?”
“Getting hurt.”
I sigh. At his words. At his hope and the way his eyes have shifted from unsettled to earnest. At my heart and how it has shifted again. And even at how that makes us both fools this time around. I thread my fingers through his, holding them down low between our thighs as I lean into him.
He presses a soft, butterfly kiss to my forehead and I close my eyes.
“Oh James, we’re so far past that.”
“I like your place, it reminds me of you,” James says as he runs his fingers along the bookcase in my living room.
“I would hope so.” I chuckle as I pour some tea.
“But a pot of tea?” His face twists up.
“I started drinking it when… A while ago. It’s soothing.” I don’t tell him that it was in an effort to take the edge off the headaches I got when thinking about him.
“That’s why I switched.” He shrugs.
“You switched because you didn’t like being dependent on anything.” I don’t mean the words to have the layers that they do.
“Caffeine is an addictive and expensive mistress.”
“Do you drink coffee these days?”
He nods. “A weaker man…”
“Would have given up right away,” I snark as I pour a mug.
“Tea or coffee, I always have it out of your cup.”
“Your cup,” I correct.
“Every time I drink out of it, I think of you.” His hand pauses on the picture frame he’s tracing as he looks directly at me. I can’t help but blanche under the heat and look away, but he doesn’t waver. I can feel his gaze stay on me. “I always thought of you. I thought of so many texts, how I’d start them, what I’d say…”
“Really?” I can’t bring myself to look up. I can’t bring myself to break this spell.
“A million small things. About my day, about beer… They were such asinine things, but I knew you wouldn’t think so. You never thought so.” He abandons the shelf he’s inspecting and steps closer. His singular finger that was tracing a frame a moment ago reappears on the waistband of my shorts.
“Never.” I barely whisper. I barely breathe.
“You saw me, Mina.” His knuckle grazes the width of my hips. “Always.”
My eyes lift to meet his.
“I couldn’t help it.” I shuffle closer to him.
“I couldn’t either. I realized when you weren’t there to notice anymore that I liked being seen. That I liked mattering. Particularly to you.”
He keeps just two fingers tucked into the denim of my shorts as he pulls me in. There’s a response on the tip of my tongue, something beautiful and eloquent, something that I would write in one of my letters, but before I can say it his lips press to mine. His tongue slips against mine.
I don’t know how to describe the taste of James Larrabee. His gentle kisses have a hint of malt—and I suppose this does too—but it’s so much more. It’s so uniquely him. It’s intoxicating. His hand slips a little further beneath the edge of my pants. My tongue tangles a little more with his.
Then his hand slips lower and I freeze, mouth to his, hands tense at my sides, as one of his fingers brushes at the apex of my thighs.
“Is this okay?” he asks as he rubs over my cotton panties.
I can’t answer. I can’t do a damned thing but nod, mouth still pressed to his. Except feel. Feel everything as James puts those long fingers to the use I always imagined of them. Stroking. Slowly. As he pulls back to watch me shake.
Because that’s what I’m doing. The man I always fantasized about is doing what I always fantasized about, making me tremble like a leaf. He presses me back to the bookcase he’d been exploring a few minutes ago and continues to explore me. The cotton between my thighs is wet with want for him.
�
��I wanted to text you about things like this too.”
Fuck. I can’t even say the word, I just knock my head back against the shelf. It’s ungodly uncomfortable but I wouldn’t stop him for all the tea in China. All the beer in Belgium either.
“Tell me what you want.” James leans in and lets his lips press against my neck. I know the crooked side of his smile; I know that shape pressed against me. God, it’s the shape of my want. My need. My heart.
“What do you want?” I gasp.
“To make you come,” he says just before his lips lock back on mine.
I’m all sensation as he pushes my panties aside and slips into me. Besides the f bombs ever rolling through my mind, all I can think about is that finger and how much I like it inside of me. And his sweet tease and torment of every inch of flesh between my legs. It’s not enough to send me over the edge but then again, I don’t want to fall.
Not yet.
I want to be connected to him like this for as long as humanly possible. Then maybe a little longer.
James isn’t an idiot when it comes to touching me. He’s studied this just like everything else I’ve ever known him to be passionate about. Tender strokes, constant in their push and pull and pressure, expert in the spot they hit.
I groan.
“You close?” James asks with a wicked smirk hanging on his lips.
For a split second I think about telling him yes. Adding in an oh baby, oh baby, and telling myself that having him is enough. But he was the one that said this was real. That we had to go into it with our eyes wide open.
“James.” My voice is low and raspy, barely my own.
“Yeah.” His kisses move on my neck in time with his finger.
“I…” The words choke in my throat. Saying this to him seems impossible. What if it costs me? What if it costs me him?
The fake orgasm I’d momentarily considered is looking tempting all over again.
“What?” he asks. When he shifts back and really looks at me his hand slips from my shorts and both hands cradle my face. “What?” he repeats, this time far more earnest.
“Why did you stop?”
“Tell me what you were going to say.”
“I…” I lean into his hand, the smell of sex playing tricks on my mind. I want to say the words. I want his hands back on me.
“It’s me, Mina. Think of all the times you said something wild or witty to me before.”
That brings up a jumble of emotion—the words you’re too much come ringing back to mind—but one look into the eyes that speak so very deeply to me and that doubt fizzles out.
“I can’t like… well you know, I can’t finish… like that.” I bite my lip.
“Nothing about us is simple.” He smirks and lets his thumb skate along my cheekbone. “Tell me.”
I duck and shuffle out of his hands. With a deep breath, I step back. He leans against the bookcase and watches me. Those ice eyes—my hatred, my home, my utter everything—tell me to take the plunge.
My hands reach for the hem of my t-shirt and despite my trembling, I pull. When I reemerge, James is smiling. Wide and unrestrained.
“If you really want…you know…me to do that thing—”
“Come,” he says as he casually crosses his arms.
“I need…” I still can’t say it, so I reach behind my back and unhook my bra.
His gaze goes wide for a second before his smirk goes a little shy and a lot crooked. He looks long enough that we both have to look away. I feel when he looks back. And stares. I cross my arms across myself to cover up.
“No way.” He steps over to me and gently pushes my arms back to my sides. “This,” he reaches up and brushes the pad of his thumb across my nipple, “I can do.”
His fingers thread into mine and he leads me to my couch. He jerks his chin toward the cushions, and I sit as if commanded. He slides a knee onto the couch between my legs then leans toward me. I shift back and before I know it, he’s following me down.
When his lips seal over my nipple I’m allowed to wonder for one singular heartbeat if he can feel how hard it’s hitting against my chest, but then I’m lost. To everything I swore I wouldn’t let turn me around ever again.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
August 8th, 2020
To the man who blew my mind. Apart,
Real. I’ve been thinking about what it means. In regards to you. To love. To us.
Are we?
Is this?
Are you?
After that orgasm on the couch, I think yes. I think it came by way of hurt and forgiveness, of honesty and trust. And that makes things real right? Feeling everything, all of it, and still loving. Still trusting. Except…
Can I?
Should I?
Are you worthy?
It’s so easy to put you back on your pedestal. I remember all the reasons that I built it and why I made you climb. It seems higher these days. I want to be up there with you and rise above the years of shit. I want to be on equal footing. Can’t we be on equal footing?
Maybe I am.
Maybe we are.
Maybe that’s what tonight on the couch was. It’s just so hard to trust myself when it comes to you. But maybe that was the answer all along, that this isn’t about you. That it never was. It’s about me, and maybe it’s time I stop asking myself who’s going to fall and just do it already.
Maybe I accept that this is real.
“What were you doing in there?” James is lounging on my bed, arms crossed behind his head as he leans against the headboard.
“Nothing.” Even if we’re trying out this truth and honesty thing, telling him I’m writing letters to him in my bathroom is a tad too far. He might be driving me insane, but I think I’m finally ready for it. To surrender to the madness.
“Well, it’s not nothing but I get it.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m okay with going slow too.”
I bite my lip. That was my request and the reason that he’s still fully clothed and I’m wearing nothing but a t-shirt and the cotton thong he got me off in, but I hear the second half of his heavy sentence before he says it.
“I mean, I’ve been known to get overwhelmed before.”
My heart jolts against my chest. That’s what happened before. That’s why he said the things he did. That’s why there is the chasm I keep trying to cross. As if he can read all those things and more across my face, he reaches out for me with one hand and pulls me over. I straddle him as I slide onto the bed with him.
“I don’t want to feel that way again. You know that, right?” He reaches up and smooths the worry from my forehead.
I nod, slowly.
“What?” he asks when the lines return immediately.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
I can’t answer. I can’t look him in the eyes.
“Whether you can trust me,” he finishes with a sigh and leans back against the headboard behind him. He stares unblinking at the ceiling. “I don’t know what to do, Mina,” he finally says softly.
“I don’t either. I just know I’m all in regardless.” I lift a single finger only to let it travel back down his chest.
“You’re all in?” His head pops up, his gaze finds mine. “I’m not sure I believe you when you say things like that.”
“I honestly don’t know how not to be all in when it comes to you. I never have.”
“But the constant doubt…?”
“James.” I reach up and push my hands into his hair. I’ve kept a thin wall up until now but apparently all it took was an orgasm to destroy it. “I doubt myself more than you. Or at least as much. I can’t ever seem to get my feelings straight. Not when it comes to you.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No.” I gently comb my fingers through his wild hair. “It’s just a thing. It’s why I write the letters.”
“The letters?”
“I told
you about them. I think.”
“Tell me again.” His hands come to rest on my hips, his thumbs rub gently along my bottom rib.
“They’re all the things I couldn’t, can’t, won’t, whatever, say to you.” I think back to all the ones that were me falling, the ones that I wouldn’t show to him even now. Even if they weren’t burnt to ash.
“How does that help? Particularly if I don’t get to read them?”
“Because I do.” I point to my heart as I say it.
He bends to kiss just above my hand, then keeps pushing. Until my back is pressed to the mattress and James is hovering above me.
“Tell me what they say,” he taunts as he notches his knee behind one of my knees.
“No.”
“Come on, Meen.”
His whole body arches so that he can kiss the same sweet spot over my left breast. Then lower, pressing the cotton of my shirt to my breastbone. And again in the hollow of my stomach above my belly button.
“They were nothing.” I gasp when he pulls up my shirt and presses his lips to my skin. “They were about our moments. My feelings. Falling for you and realizing it was because I’d fallen out of love with Tanner.”
His lips hesitate for a moment. Then he pulls away, sitting back on his knees. His eyes ice over as they drift away from me. Again.
“You asked.” It’s my only feeble defense.
“It’s not that.” He’s still staring off into space. “It’s Tanner.”
Tanner’s name isn’t the sucker punch to my insides James’ was but the torment coloring his face does a great job in its place. I rest my hands on his knees, lending the only support I have by way of touch. He shoots me one cursory smile before sliding over my leg and laying down beside me.
“I need to know what happened,” he says. “I wish I didn’t, but I do.”
I blow out a deep breath.
“What if you don’t like what you hear?” I ball my hands on my stomach, hoping that will help soothe the wild horses running though me.
“I’m not going anywhere, Mina.” He reaches over, his hand finding mine, his fingers thread into mine, and we both stay resting just below my belly button.
