by Vivian Wood
Poppy
She stood by the river bank and clutched one of the extra tubes Mason had brought. Even this early in the morning, beneath the vanilla sky, the river was swamped with people. All of them, the motley crew she was with included, laughed and splashed as they sailed onto the dark blue waters in their tubes and cheap rafts. A few yards downriver, she watched a gaggle of teenage girls as they launched inflatable unicorns and pizza slices onto the waters.
Murder, she thought. They should call groups of teenage girls a murder, like crows.
The morning drive had been tense to say the least. Mason had reserved nearby cabins. It was clear he expected a weekend-long party. Will had complained when the WhatsApp group text decided on busing it from a rural town instead of taking cars up the winding roads. You’d need a 4WD in some spots, Mason had messaged.
Still, she had expected Will to complain more than he did. Instead, the lot of them were dropped off at the Shady Pines cabins, walkable to the river’s edge.
At the cabins, they shuffled around and dragged their bags full of river gear from room to room. Finally, it was decided—Will and her would share a cabin with Penny and another couple Mason knew from college. With just two bedrooms, one featured a bunkbed and the other a queen-size bed. The couple they bunked up with claimed the private room. Will, Penny and her would share the bunk.
“I should at least get to be on top,” Penny said. Neither her nor Will argued.
Poppy changed in the cramped cabin bathroom. As she pulled on her monokini, she listened to Will and Penny as they chatted away. Throughout the morning drive, she’d kept an eye on Ryan and Sarah, too. They seemed like a natural couple as they joked and teased one another. But Poppy had barely said a word to anyone.
“Poppy! Come on!” Will called to her from the river, his tube attached to the floating raft that carried coolers of beer. Slowly she lowered herself, flanked in striped rubber tubing, into the cold water.
She was behind everyone by a few feet. Why do I feel like the fifth wheel in all this?
As she brought up the rear, she watched the couples unfold before her. They seemed comfortable alongside the hodgepodge group of bachelors, led by Mason. Will said something to Penny that made her shriek with laughter. Poppy was surprised to find she didn’t feel a smidge of jealousy. Why aren’t they together?
That was a strange thought, but it made sense. They liked each other's company, Penny was quick to dote on Will and feed his ego, and as for Will he seemed to actually like Penny. And Will didn’t like anyone. They looked in sync, and made Poppy feel like the intruder. Had it always felt like this?
She floated lazily behind the group. The morning sun started to heat up, warming her skin. Maybe she wasn’t the only one stuck at a fork in the road. Down one path might be Will and Penny, and the other was Ryan and Sarah. But what about me? She couldn’t sit at this impasse forever. She felt stuck, unable to move. The paralysis made her uncomfortable.
The water lulled her into a light sleep, the kind where she was half awake but her body felt too heavy to move. With the sun streamed across her face and the contrast of the cool water on half her body, she let nature have its way with her.
Behind her trailed soft murmurs and giggles. Poppy forced her eyes open and saw that Ryan and Sarah were somehow behind her now. Their fingers were lightly intertwined to keep their tubes together. A bolt of jealousy shot through her. What do you have to be jealous about?
“Poppy! Hey,” Ryan called. He saw that she had looked back at them. “Come this way.”
Sarah smiled at her and released Ryan’s hand. Poppy dutifully started paddling toward Ryan as Sarah made her way to Mason’s group with the coolers. “Beer?” she called to Poppy, but Poppy shook her head.
“Hi,” Ryan said as her tube bumped into his.
She smiled, but didn’t say anything.
“Seriously?” he asked.
“What? I’m here.”
“Yeah. Here and being a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, well. You don’t need me to have a good time. You have Sarah.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, and tied the strings of his tube to hers.
Why wouldn’t he just take her hand like he did Sarah’s? She knew how melodramatic she acted, but she couldn’t help it. It’s like everyone’s ganging up on me these days—even you.
“Ry!” Sarah called from the floating bar. “Come here a sec.” Ryan gave Poppy an annoyed look, untied their rafts and started toward Sarah.
Fine. Let him go. Poppy melted into her pout the rest of the way down the river. By noon, the water started to get fiercer with traces of baby rapids. Poppy knew how to navigate choppy waters thanks to an entire childhood of escaping to the river. However, Sarah started to panic.
“Sarah, stop!” Ryan yelled at her. “You need to stay calm.” When Sarah started to get dangerously shaky, Ryan slid out of his tube to steady her. In seconds, his tube was lost down the river and he latched onto Sarah’s tube.
“Ryan! You’re going to flip us both—”
He let go and was instantly pulled under the water. She couldn’t bring herself to move.
En masse, a group of the guys dove into the water after him. Just Penny, Will, Sarah and Poppy remained on their tubes. They locked eyes with one another and continued to float.
Around the bend in the river was a tiny rocky beach. There was no need to speak. The four of them started to paddle like mad toward the shore. By the time they’d all dragged their tubes behind a piece of driftwood on the beach, the guys had followed with Ryan in their arms.
He was limp. Poppy could tell he wasn’t breathing.
In the distance, she could hear Sarah’s screams, but Poppy was on autopilot. She pushed through the guys and heard someone say, “I’m a doctor, I’m a doctor,” over and over. It didn’t register that it was her.
“Step back,” she said and knelt into the pebbles and rocks. She checked Ryan for any obvious signs of a blocked airway and saw nothing. Like she’d done so many times before, albeit usually with dummies, she tipped his head back and squeezed his nose shut.
Her mouth sealed on his, she forced air into his lungs. “Shouldn’t you be pumping his chest?” someone asked. She just shook her head. “I think you’re supposed to pump his—”
“His heart’s fine,” she said, annoyed, as she took her own breath.
It felt like hours, but she knew by her counts it was less than ninety seconds. Ryan started to make choking sounds, and she rolled him onto his side so he could cough the water out of his lungs. I did it. The kiss of life. I gave him the kiss of life. She hadn’t called it that colloquial term since her pre-med days.
“Hey,” Ryan said through ragged breaths. Poppy burst into tears, only somewhat aware that everybody was watching them. He coughed weakly, but wrapped an arm around her in a semi-hug.
“Oh my God! Ryan! Ryan!” Sarah screamed uncontrollably, but Mason held her back. “Are you okay? Are you okay? P, you saved him…”
Everyone else, everything else, faded away for Poppy. When she saw Ryan like that, limp and helpless, all the nonsense she’d mulled over in her head for the past few weeks disappeared.
“Does someone have a phone?” Poppy asked. Tears still streamed down her face.
Wordlessly, one of the guys pulled a phone out of the cooler, wrapped in a waterproof case.
“Do you have service?” she asked. “He doesn’t need an ambulance. He’s fine. But call us an Uber.”
She had no idea where they were, but surely somebody would be on patrol to make some extra scratch off all the kids getting stranded by the riverbank. “It says it’s ten minutes away,” the guy said. “Anyone else want one?”
Before anybody could say anything, Ryan interrupted. “You all keep on down the river. I’m fine, seriously.”
“Ryan—” Sarah started.
“Really, Sarah, I’m fine,” he said with a weak smile. “Enjoy yourself, I’m just going to rest it out at
the cabin. It’s my ego that’s hurt more than anything else.” He started to act more like himself, which visibly put Sarah at ease.
“Well. If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure. I don’t think Poppy was having a blast on the river anyway, so she’s probably happy for the excuse to duck out early,” he said.
She laughed, even through the last of her tears. “You good to walk?” she asked.
Ryan lifted himself up and brushed the pebbles from his back and legs. Poppy linked her arm through his. She couldn’t bear to leave his side.
“The driver says mile post twenty-two, just right there,” the guy with the phone said, and pointed to the green marker sign up a small hill.
At the marker, Poppy and Ryan watched their group glide back onto the river. “What a day, huh?” Ryan said.
Poppy couldn’t wait any longer. As soon as she saw the last of the group fade into the distance, she rose up on her toes and kissed him. He responded like it was natural, expected.
They stood at the roadside, making out like they were sixteen. Ryan squeezed her ass and she pressed into him. His erection was tucked between her thighs, even through his trunks. He rubbed her nipples through her swimsuit and made her whimper.
When he slid his hand down, moving beneath her suit with ease, and started playing with her clit, she wanted it so badly. This isn’t right, she thought. She couldn’t hear any cars coming, but what if someone saw? She couldn’t let Ryan get her off in the middle of the street.
Could she?
“What if someone sees?” she whispered to him, but he didn’t respond. He just slid her suit to the side and started to flick her clit with his finger. She moaned and opened her legs a little wider.
Ryan slid a finger into her and a Bronco full of teenagers whipped around the corner. She heard them wolf-whistle, followed by a scream to “Get a room!” but they didn’t stop.
She made a reach under his shorts, but he stopped her. “Just you,” he said. “I want to feel you come on my hand.”
As he got her closer, he grabbed the back of her suit and gathered it up tight between her ass. The pressure as it raked across her most sensitive parts brought her closer to coming.
She heard a car approaching from the other side. “Ryan, stop,” she said. “I think… that’s gotta be the Uber.”
Thank God he listened and stepped aside. She barely had time to readjust her suit.
Frustrated, she leaned against his chest as the car pulled over, grateful for the shelter of his body. Nothing else mattered. Not the fact that she was standing roadside in a skimpy suit, what should have been the uncomfortable squish of wetness in her river shoes, or the obnoxious cars that honked and hollered as they drove by.
Ryan’s hands rubbed small circles on her back. He didn’t let her go until the driver came to a complete stop.
23
Ryan
“How long?” Ryan asked the driver, a young girl who handled the curves of the road with ease in her little Kia.
“ETA is ten minutes,” she said. “You guys get stranded? Tube pop?”
“Something like that,” Ryan said.
“There’s a towel there if you need to dry off,” the driver said. “I always keep a stack when tubing season starts.”
She didn’t have to tell him twice. He and Poppy both reached for the towel and draped it over their laps. Instantly, his hand was under the towel and between her thighs. “You said ten minutes?” he asked the driver.
“Yeah. You guys want music?”
“Whatever you like,” Ryan said. “As long as it’s loud.”
As the driver cranked up The Chainsmokers, Ryan wrapped a knot of Poppy’s swimsuit around his fist—right at her mound. Her eyes got big as he started to slightly jerk the suit up and down. He knew it rubbed every part of her just right, and her eyes started to roll back.
When her breathing got fast, he slowed down and released the suit.
A part of him wanted so much to make her come, right then and there in that stranger’s car. Normally the idea would be such a turn-on, but with Poppy it was different. This is wrong, he thought to himself. He didn’t know if it was this particular moment, or the whole thing. But something was off.
“Your friend already paid,” the girl said when she parked outside the cabin. She held up her phone and waved it at them.
“Thanks,” Ryan said. He pulled Poppy close to him in the back seat.
He looked up and saw the driver as she stared at him in the rearview. Did she know what I was doing the whole time?
“You kids be good,” she said as they exited, though she was years younger than them.
This was getting out of control.
The cabin was dark inside. Just a few slivers of daylight poked through. He sat down on the couch and tried not to think about the erection that ached in his trunks. “Poppy, we need to talk—”
But she was already on him. “You can’t turn me on like that and leave me hanging,” she said as she kissed him. Poppy pulled the upper half of the suit down and exposed her breasts. She played with them as they kissed.
She straddled him. With just thin swimsuit fabric between them, it felt like they were naked. He was fully hard instantly, and by instinct grasped her hips and pulled her firmly against his erection.
Her mouth was on his, and it was just like the first time—like the last time. But now, he knew her body a little better. He could nip and bite at her lips, her neck, and knew exactly how she’d respond.
Poppy let her feet touch the floor, her hands on his thighs, and in one movement she stripped the rest of the bathing suit off her body. Traces of wetness lingered all over her skin. She smelled like the river, like something wild.
He didn’t even realize when she leaned over, gripped his trunks and pulled them to the floor. All he could focus on was the complete nakedness of her beautiful body.
It was even better than he’d imagined. Her breasts were like perfect teardrops, accentuated by tight little pink knots of nipples. The shock of the air on her bare skin had made them harden instantly, and he wanted nothing more than to lick and suck on them.
From her breasts to the slight suggestion of a ribcage that topped her incredibly small waist, his eyes roamed farther down. The flare of her hips were perfect for holding onto. And the trimmed small triangle of hair that her bathing suit had barely covered hid what he knew was the sweetest, most addictive treasure he’d ever encounter.
He felt his cock as it began to ache, as it moved from desire and want to sheer need.
Ryan pushed himself to sit on the edge of the couch, grabbed her hips like they were made for him, and brought her center to his mouth. With one arm, he lifted her thigh and placed her foot on the cushion beside him. He had the perfect view of Poppy and her pink, flawless folds.
He flicked his tongue lightly across her clit, coaxed it out of her hood. He heard her moan lightly and felt her fingers as they wove into his hair. That dark blonde hair brushed against his nose. As he worked her clit, his tongue faster and harder, it became impossible to tell where her own juices began and where the remnants of the river ended.
She ground herself into him in rhythmic movements. He was dimly aware of the window right behind him, the window that Poppy faced completely naked. If anyone were to arrive, they’d have a full view of her as she stood, half spread-eagle as she fucked his mouth.
It was like she couldn’t get enough of him, and had no inhibitions. She pressed his mouth firmly against her clit, pushed herself up and down, encouraged his tongue to explore her entry. There, the wetness was so intense he had to swallow a mouthful of her to keep his breath. How can she be this wet? He opened his eyes, but all he could see was the pink sea of her. “You’re amazing,” he told her, and looked up. All he could see were her breasts as they shook above his face.
His hands roamed as they wished, sliding up her stomach to cup her breasts. When he went to pinch her nipples, he felt that she already had a hand th
ere. He smiled. She was wild, completely entrenched in pleasure. She played with herself with one hand and controlled the ebb and flow of his head with the other.
Ryan let his thumb take over for his tongue to gaze up at her and take it all in. Her eyes were closed, and she bit her lip. Her hand was on his and she guided his palm from one breast to the other. She sensed his eyes on her, looked down and smiled—the same gapped smile he’d known all his life.
“I want you to come in my mouth,” he told her, and went back to licking and sucking her clit.
She groaned louder. He felt her legs, her thighs, as they shook on either side of his head.
When he moved to slide a finger inside her, she shifted away from him. He thought nothing of it. Ryan reached both hands behind her, clutched her round ass cheeks and pulled her closer.
“Ryan,” she whispered. “I want you to do it.”
In an instant, he pulled her down on top of him. She straddled him like before, but this time there was nothing between them. He gripped his cock, ready to guide himself into her.
“I want you to be my first,” she said as she kissed his neck. His tip was pressed against the heat of her clit.
“Your first?” he asked, confused.
“You know…” she said.
“Wait,” he froze and she lifted her head to look at him. “You’ve had sex before, right?”
“No…” she said. “I thought—I mean, I figured you knew that.”
Her innocence killed him. Could that be true? How could that even be possible? He ran over all their history together, and realized she’d never actually talked about sex. He’d told her all about his first time, but couldn’t recall a thing about hers.
“I can’t—we can’t do this,” he said. “We shouldn’t do this. It’s not right. I can’t be your first—especially since you’re with someone else… it can’t be all sneaky like this. On the sly.” He closed his eyes and listened to the words, the excuses, as they spilled out of him. In his head, he knew they sounded right. But in his heart and in every other feral part of him, it sounded weak.
