“Do you like that?” She whispered, looking up at him again. Ben grabbed the back of her head and gripped her firmly by her hair.
“Yeah,” he replied, breathless, before urging her face forward until her lips met his penis.
“But you know what I really want,” he said, more forcefully. Juliana smiled mischievously and wrapped her hands around his hips.
“I know,” she said, pausing another moment to make him want it even more, “ask for it.”
“Suck my dick,” he demanded. It was incredible to be back with him like this as if she had never left. For the first time in a long, long time she had Ben’s full attention. They were finally intimate, and not only in a literal way. They were physically close, of course, but more than that their connection was alive. They connection was thriving in a way she had not experienced since his departure.
“Beg for it,” Juliana said, pushing away, resisting him as he tried to pull her forward.
“Please,” he yelled. It wasn’t the begging that she had asked for, but a command. She smiled again. She opened her mouth and slowly licked the bottom of his dick from base to tip. She pulled away again and looked up at him. He met her gaze. He looked hungry, wild, and completely focused on her, just as she had wanted him to be for so long now.
She pulled him closer and gave him what he wanted. He thrust his hips and pushed his dick into her mouth, harder and harder with each pulse. Sucking as much as she could, she tried to take all of him in. It was impossible. She used her hands on the rest.
Juliana worked him for a few minutes. She swirled her tongue around the tip of his penis between strokes. She sucked him fast, slow, and then hard. She took him right to the brink, as she always knew how to do, and stopped. She pulled away and looked him in the eyes. He stared back at her with an animalistic longing that she loved.
“My turn,” she said, pushing him back and climbing onto the bed.
He jumped in after her. He flipped her over onto her back and kissed her neck, then worked his way down to her breasts. He gently, playfully bit at her nipples. She moaned and arched her back. She pushed his head downward, gently at first, then with a little more authority. He laughed.
“I’m getting there, babe, I’m getting there,” he grabbed her hips and pulled her close to him. He reached around and squeezed her ass. He teased her by kissing and nibbling the skin around her. She moaned in pleasure and frustration.
“Come on, please, I can’t take it,” she begged him. She dug her nails into his back.
He stopped short and climbed on top of her. He pushed into her hard, and she was ready for it. She was already close to orgasm, and the hard thickness of his dick put her over the edge. She shook with pleasure and kissed him hard.
Ben rode her passionately for a while longer. Juliana blissfully moved her hips in time with his. They were completely in sync. She worked him up, and he grabbed hold of the sheets as he came with a few hard strokes.
Juliana laid her head onto his chest and closed her eyes. Ben put a warm arm around her. He rubbed her back slowly. She did her best to freeze this moment. This was perfection. This was exactly what she was working for and waiting for all this time.
“I love you, Ben,” she said quietly, closing her eyes gently and relaxing into him.
“I love you too, Larissa,” he responded. His eyes closed.
Juliana sat up, startled. She must have heard him wrong. She stroked the side of his face in an attempt to wake him. He stirred a bit but didn’t wake up. Surely she was paranoid. There was no way he would mistake her name for someone else’s. She just had to be sure.
She tried to shake his shoulders, but her hands kept slipping off of him. She screamed his name, but he started to fade.
“He can’t hear you,” Juliana whipped in the direction of the voice. She recognized the woman immediately. She was wearing a light blue cardigan set and had her gray hair wrapped in her signature updo. She let out a scream and pulled the duvet up in front of her naked body.
“Grandma?” She asked in disbelief.
“Oh honey don’t worry, I waited until you were done,” the old woman said with a smile. She walked toward the bed and tossed Juliana her nightgown from the floor.
“Get dressed, we’re supposed to talk. I’ll be in the kitchen. Do you want some tea?”
“Grandma, it’s 2:00 am,” that was the best Juliana could come up with. She thought it would be rude to mention that her grandmother had been dead for six years.
“You can sleep when you’re dead,” her grandmother replied, cutting herself off with a fit of laughter.
“Get it? Because… No? Well then, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it,” her face immediately softened.
“Well, I’ll be downstairs. We’ll need that tea.”
She disappeared from the doorway. Juliana was bewildered. She looked down at Ben. She was surprised he was able to sleep through all of this. She stood up and pulled her tattered nightgown over her head. She bent to kiss Ben just before she left, but he seemed to evaporate from under her as she leaned over. She sighed. At least they were able to connect for as long as they had.
She walked downstairs and saw her grandmother boiling water for tea. She paused at the bottom of the stairs for a moment and looked at her. She was the matriarch of their family and Juliana’s role model. Whenever she didn’t know what to do, instead of calling her mother for advice like most women would, she’d call her grandmother. When she passed, she and the rest of her family were all lost without her.
She walked over to her and threw her arms around her.
“Grandma,” she whispered. She wanted a moment in her arms before she broke the news to her.
“Hi darling,” her grandmother responded, turning her attention from the tea for a moment and returning her hug.
“Grandma I don’t know how to say this,” she began, a little awkwardly, “but you’re not really here. You’re dead. You passed away years ago.”
Her grandmother broke their hug and held Juliana at arm's length. She looked at her for a moment with pity in her eyes.
“Juliana, darling, I know. It’s ok. It’s not that bad. Heaven’s great, actually. And you get to hang around doing whatever you want. Actually, it’s a lot like retirement was in Boca,” Grandma smiled and turned back to the tea.
“So what are you doing here?” Grandma ignored Juliana’s question and went on.
“Some of us have jobs, though, so I guess not completely like retirement, but you know I’ve always needed something to keep me going. Death, just like life, gets boring with no purpose.”
She was silent for a moment as she looked at her granddaughter.
“My job is pretty important. It’s transition.”
“Transition? What does that mean?”
“It means helping people I was close to in life transition into death.”
Juliana started to put it all together.
“You can’t take him, Grandma, he’s trying to break through to me, you can’t break our connection, please,” her eyes started to well up, and hands started to shake. Her grandmother handed her a mug of tea.
“I know your connection is strong, that’s why I left you two alone for so long. And my darling I… I shouldn’t have. I thought you knew.”
“Thought I knew what?”
“Juliana, my sweet, I’m not taking Ben anywhere,” she took Juliana’s hand in hers, “I’m here for you.”
Juliana stared at her grandmother in silence. She looked into her gentle eyes. She never thought her grandmother would lie to her, but none of this made sense. Her mind started to race with the possibility of it all, but she cut it off. There was no way that what her grandmother said was true. She saw Ben jump into that fire, she saw him die. She watched people come to the house to mourn him. She saw his ghost.
Could it be possible that she was the one who perished in that fire? She dismissed the question. She must be dreaming, or for some reason, her grandmother’s ghost was play
ing a cruel trick on her.
She took her hand away from underneath her grandmother’s and looked at her with distrust.
“No, I don’t think so,” Juliana said, “I have been here for a year, very much alive, thank you, waiting for my husband. He passed away in a fire. He is trying to contact me from the other side and I—”
“Juliana, listen to me for a moment,” her grandmother implored sweetly, “just a for a moment.”
She reached up and tucked Juliana’s hair behind her ear.
“Have you left the house in the past year?” her grandmother asked, sipping her tea.
“No, because Ben was trying to reach me. I had to stay and wait for him,” she was getting frustrated.
“Okay, fair enough,” her grandmother continued as she glanced around the kitchen, “what did you have for dinner tonight? Or lunch this afternoon? Or breakfast this morning?”
Juliana paused. She hadn’t eaten anything. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember the last time she ate anything at all.
“I haven’t been hungry, Grandma, because I’ve been so focused on Ben.”
“Right, so you’re not eating, not leaving the house, and you’re wearing the same clothes…” she trailed off, hoping Juliana would put together the pieces herself. Juliana remained silent.
“What do you remember of the accident?”
Juliana thought carefully. She remembered the fire clearly. And seeing Ben at the door. She remembered trying to go to him and him rushing towards her… and that was it. After that, it was as if her life fast-forwarded to the next day and she was back in the house, alone.
“I remember seeing Ben jump towards me into the fire. And me trying to go to him, and that’s it, really, I…” she realized she didn’t have an explanation for what had happened. Maybe her grandmother was right.
“I know it’s hard, I do. If I hadn’t been so old when I kicked the bucket I never would have believed it, and look at you, my dear, you were in the prime of your life,” she said, with sadness in her eyes.
“Grandma, I…”
“I know, honey. I know, and I’m sorry.”
Juliana’s confusion and disbelief turned to grief. She saw down on the couch in her living room and ran her hands over the fabric. It all felt so real. How could she have been departed from this world for so long, and feel so little difference?
Her grandmother joined her on the couch.
“Are you alright?” her grandmother asked, placing an arm on her shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Juliana started, “I feel… lost. I feel confused. I’ve spent so much time,” she looked up at her grandmother and knew that she wouldn’t be judgmental.
“I’ve spent so much time trying to contact Ben, thinking he was trying to reach me from… you know, beyond… when really…” she trailed off, knowing the answer now. She was the one who had been trying to reach him.
“I know, I’ve been watching,” her grandmother cut in with sadness in her voice, “I thought you knew this whole time. But what difference does that really make? One of you is on the other side, and you’ve been trying to connect with each other, and you have, Juliana, more than I’ve ever seen happen before. That’s really something.” Her grandmother paused and gave her an encouraging smile.
“But this is the limit. Juliana, these passing encounters, the whispers from down the hall, this is as good as it gets.”
“Really? You’re saying that, no matter how hard we keep trying, this is all our relationship is ever going to be?”
“Yes, my darling, I’m so sorry.”
Juliana shook her head in disbelief. There was no way that could be true. She was making progress. What had started as small brushes with Ben had turned to last night—that was an amazing development, and that definitely meant there could be more.
She looked at her grandmother. For the first time, her grandmother looked sad. Juliana tilted her head. Suddenly, she realized something. Her grandmother had died before her grandfather. Maybe a year or two, she couldn’t remember exactly, but they were definitely separated by death in the same way she and Ben were, at least for a time. She must have had experience with this.
“How do you know?” she asked, “Did you try to contact Grandfather?”
“Yes, of course,” she said quietly, “most of us do. It’s hard to move on. It’s especially hard for those of us who are asked to do it so abruptly. I stayed for a few weeks. I tidied up the house for him and tried to talk to him, just one more time. But then one quick moment of contact wasn’t enough; I wanted another. I wanted more. So I tried for more.”
“A few weeks? How close could you have possibly gotten to him in a few weeks? You must have known that if you stayed for longer, you would have gotten closer.”
Juliana thought back to the first few weeks she had. Aside from fleeting sightings, she barely saw Ben at all.
“Yes, just a few weeks. And they were horrible. Horribly painful. At the end of those weeks, I understood that I was hurting both of us.”
“You mean you thought you were hurting Grandfather? How?”
“I knew I was. They try to move on, you know. They can’t live in the past. They can’t live the same isolated lives we can, focusing every day on them. They have to exist in the real world. The only way to do that is to move forward. Try doing that with your dead wife haunting you. I knew that if I chose to stay, it would make that impossible. I couldn’t torture him like that.”
Juliana considered this for a moment. Before this conversation with her grandmother, she thought there was a way she and Ben could be together again. That made everything she was doing well worth the effort and isolation. Now that she knew these heartbreaking close encounters were all they would ever have… was it worth it? And even more important, was it worth torturing Ben? She understood now that it was selfish of her to attempt to heal herself at his expense. This was something she hadn’t considered. She thought he was as committed to this quest as she was, and now… now she was forced to consider the idea that this wasn’t the case.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked her grandmother, “If I’m not supposed to be reaching Ben and I can’t… I can’t go back to real life, can I?”
“I’m afraid not, darling,” her grandmother replied.
With the introduction of this new information came something else to consider as well. She was dead. Before, she thought she had the option of inserting herself back into society. She thought the only thing stopping her from visiting her mother were her own choices. Now, if what her grandmother was saying were true, that wasn’t the case at all. She was stuck here, in this house. If she wanted Ben to heal, she had to leave him alone. If she didn’t spend her days trying to contact him, she would just be stuck in the house. Stuck here with no chance to move on.
“Well, what are my options then?”
Her grandmother took a slow breath.
“You can come with me, sweetie,” she said.
“Go with you? Where? Do you mean…” Juliana trailed off. She wasn’t sure she was ready to say aloud what she knew her grandmother meant. She wasn’t yet familiar enough with the idea of being dead to discuss afterlife.
“Heaven,” her grandmother said, “congrats! You made the cut!” She waved her hands a little bit above her head and smiled. Juliana forced out a laugh. It wasn’t much, but it was nice to know that there was a silver lining to all of this.
“Well that’s good to know,” she said smiling, “as they say... I’m sure it’s much better than the alternative.”
“That’s what I hear,” her grandmother said.
They sat in silence for about a minute, sipping their tea. Juliana looked around her house and at everything that reminded her of Ben and their life together. Now it held a new meaning. Now it reminded her of her own life. That was a hard pill to swallow. She wasn’t going to be able to create any more memories. She wouldn’t have any more great dinners, or even any more bad ones. She would never go to
another movie theater or museum. It was a very odd thing to consider. Sure, heaven is supposed to be great, but she wouldn’t have Ben; not even in the way she had him now. How could anywhere be perfect without him? How could she go on with her existence unsure if she would ever see him again?
Juliana’s grandmother politely looked around and kept to herself for a bit while Juliana mulled everything over. Just when Juliana had become so lost in her thoughts that she forgot she wasn’t alone, her grandmother broke the silence.
“Okay, my child, I’m afraid we have to get moving. I’m sorry I can’t give you more time to adjust but my time here with you is limited. I’m due back soon.”
“I have to decide now? I have to leave all of this right now? What about Ben? What if I just stay here, and—”
“Well, I didn’t want to be too pushy earlier considering the circumstances, but it’s really the only choice you have in this situation, I don’t think that I can let you stay.”
“Wait,” Juliana looked at her grandmother in a new light, “what do you mean let me stay? You can’t force me to go anywhere. Can you?”
Juliana started to panic. She couldn’t process everything this quickly. She needed time to let it sink in. She needed to clear her head and think all this through. Maybe going with her grandmother would be best, but she couldn’t go with her right now. She needed some time to process, and she couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Ben.
“I need more time, Grandma, I need…” she knew she had to see Ben one more time, but she didn’t know when that would happen next. She didn’t know exactly how much time she would need.
“I don’t know how long I need, but I need more time.”
“Juliana, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t give you time.” Her grandmother reached for her shoulder, and Juliana swatted her hand away.
She stood up from the couch and looked into the tea mug. She had been drinking from it unquestioningly. She spilled the rest on the ground, just in case, it was drugged.
“You think I spiked your tea? Honey, no,” Juliana’s grandmother stood up and took a step towards her, and Juliana scrambled backward, knocking a book off the coffee table.
The Campus Jock: A College Bad Boy Romance Page 56
