by Eden Butler
I had never seen a naked man before. I’d never been naked with a man before. But there I lay on Isaac’s large bed covered by his long legs and muscular thighs, my small frame underneath him, open to him as he took control and showed me what it meant to be loved.
“You and me, Riley, there’s nothing but this. Nothing else but this, how we are right now.”
Isaac never spoke much of his feelings, the things that rocked his soul, the many worries that kept him up at night. Maybe he didn’t know how to say he loved me, but just then, with Isaac’s warm, solid body right against mine, skin to skin, touching me like no one ever had before, I decided words weren’t all that important.
“Nothing else, my love. Nothing else at all.”
And then he came to me, and took possession of me, and moved so deeply and so fully in me, that there was nothing else at all.
Later, when even the crickets had set their song to something low and tired, I lay next to Isaac feeling boneless and surreal. He felt like a mountain against me, the hard planes of muscle, the sharp twist of ligaments and bone that pressed into me, hard where I was soft, but tender and sweet. His breath had gone slow and even, and I knew he slept, the quick movement of his eyelids fluttered as he dreamed. Yet even while he slept, he held me, set me to fit just under his chin with the slick feel of his sweat moving with mine. We’d moved together like a dance, bodies gliding to fit a perfect rhythm, a perfect life that once again made me feel a loss that was not mine. Next to this man, my man, there was only peace, only the sense that we were beginning…we had only started to know what that meant.
Nash
It was the dream. The waking dream again.
There was something tied up in that dream—a memory, the life I knew but had never lived. That was the only explanation.
The dream crawled inside my skull like a centipede. It stayed there, burrowed itself so deep inside my brain that imagination got squashed. Nothing was fantasy anymore. What had been figments of my imagination had grown to something real, something I couldn’t beat away. Something I couldn’t ignore.
It had me jerking awake. None of the others had done that. Not when Sookie ran from some asshole trying to hurt her. Not when I knew the danger she headed toward was starting to take shape.
This one was different. This one was realer than anything I’d ever felt.
The woman, somehow my woman? She’d been so real. So much. And I shuddered, I called out in the idle of that dream and woke with sweat dotting my forehead and slipping down my back, and ready, so damn ready to finish what was started in that dream. It made me want something that wasn’t mine.
The dream stayed with me during the investors’ meeting, as Duncan talked about projections and media outreach. He spoke and I watched his face, focused like I understood the meaning behind the noise, the unrecognizable words his mouth made. I knew he was expecting me to weigh in with some technical spin, but it was all I could do to keep from completely drifting away.
Lucky for me, he liked the sound of his own voice. Even Duncan and his slick CEO arrogance didn’t distract me from the dream. The sound of his pitch, that salesman shine he thought might impress the investors didn’t do a damn thing to erase what I’d felt. What I’d seen. What I remembered.
The dream stayed even as his nagging turned into a whining drone that made my teeth ache.
“What the fuck was that? You just tuned out. You weren’t engaged at all.”
No. I hadn’t been. Still wasn’t as I fed him some line about a migraine.
“I’ll catch you later, man. I gotta jet.”
He didn’t buy my excuse. Duncan’s eyes narrowed and I swear I felt his stare hot on my neck as I stood waiting at the elevator. I kept my head down, wondering for the umpteenth time how I’d gotten messed up with someone like Duncan in the first place.
Ah. Right. I had a program and no cash. Duncan had deep pockets and was looking for someone’s coattails to ride. One plus one is always two.
Didn’t much care if he bought the migraine excuse. I felt something right at the base of my skull. A pressure, a dull ache, but I wasn’t sick. I was high.
My brain went into autopilot as I left Manhattan, grabbing the A train to get me to downtown Brooklyn. And the whole way home, with the rocking of the train, the funky smell of the city getting fainter with every stop, and the even worse body odor of all the compressed bodies, the ache in my head—threatening to turn into a migraine for real—grew the closer we came to my stop, that weird memory nagging at me.
That shit wouldn’t let me be.
Over and over in my head, as I huddled tight behind my jacket in the unseasonably chilly weather, the memory came clear as a raindrop.
Me and her. Me and the woman I didn’t know. Me as a man I’d never been.
The smell of roses. The hint of dust and coffee.
The feel of worn book bindings and the scrap of metal chairs on wood floors.
The taste of honey on my tongue.
The woman wrapped around me, holding tight, like I was her lifeline. Her red hair between my fingers, her nails pulling at my collar. Feeling needed. Feeling free.
A gust of wind blew off my hood, had my eyes watering as I jogged the rest of the way toward my building, barely acknowledging the people grouped around the front entrance. But then the sound of kids screeching cut into my brain, and I finally noticed that Old Man Walker was handing out Jolly Ranchers from the top step; for his grandkids and the others bouncing around, he couldn't get the wrapped candy out of his pockets fast enough.
In that small chaos, compounded by an arguing couple from 3C coming out of the elevator, brushing past the cluster of kids in their red and green puffy coats and their sniffling noses, heels clicking on the tile floor and crackling over the candy wrappers littering the hall, I forgot about the dream. If only for a second.
Until I saw Willow at the mailboxes.
Until I realized I couldn’t walk away from her.
She didn’t look much like the woman in my dream. Her hair was not red, but light brown. The redhead’s had been thick and bone straight. Willow’s was wild, all over the place, as though she could never get it under control.
The woman in my dream had been thin with barely a hint of curve to her shape. Elegant, graceful like a ballerina. Willow was all dips and bends, luscious, her legs strong with well-defined muscle, and a wide, wondrous ass.
Suddenly the rest of the world receded and there was nothing but the movement of Willow’s hair as she dug the mail from her box, the rhythm of her limbs as she swatted at that thick mass of hair, the swoop of her jacket hem against all those round, perfect curves as she turned, her attention on the envelopes in her hand.
The smell of her skin, the jasmine in her hair, seemed to billow around me as I stood motionless in the lobby. She was everywhere, familiar and yet unknown. A stranger/not stranger I had held at arm’s length, but still far more real than my dream, than the memory it was trying to evoke.
Willow stopped short as she noticed me, pausing with the mail held against her chest, a frown appearing on her face. I knew that expression from the last time I saw her, when I lied and told her I didn’t want her, when I had spoken promises that even then I knew I’d never keep.
“Nash.” There was a bite in her voice, the clip of my name, as if she was trying to sound disdainful, yet her voice still held an undertone of something that, if it had a flavor, would have tasted like honey.
And then the dream, that sweet, stinging memory crashed over me. It wasn’t the first. It wasn’t the last. There was no girl called Sookie, no boy named Dempsey who loved her. This time, I’d watched, not knowing who I was; a voyeur in someone else’s life, but someone who felt so real to me. Someone I knew better than myself.
Déjà vu and fantasy and nonsense I did not understand hit me like a fever, and I was lost. The redhead kissed my neck. The hint of her soft, liquid tongue against my skin, tugging on my ear, wanting me with a fierceness no one
ever had before, overwhelmed me, and I had to close my eyes to keep from being dragged under.
“What’s wrong with you?” Willow’s voice reeled me back in, and I opened my eyes to see her sweet, concerned expression and the curve of her mouth, the fullness of her bottom lip.
Then Willow... she took the back of her hair in one hand, twisting it into a braid—the smallest gesture that I’d seen her do a dozen times—and suddenly I realized: the woman in my dream had done the same thing. The same motion, the same movement. Just like Willow.
A sharp intake of breath—that was me. Willow had backed up a half step, her face confused, conflicted, and despite what I’d said before, I reached out and slid my fingers tentatively to touch her face, guiding her chin up so I could look into her eyes.
“What are…”
She made the smallest noise, something that sounded like a moan and a laugh at the same time. It transformed, deepened to a growl when I kissed her. Yet even as my mouth found hers, as my tongue slid along her lip, begging an invitation, one thought consumed me, something I didn’t believe was left over from my dream. One thought that made me brave, made me hungry: this woman belongs to me.
Nash
She was winter. The cold, cool stretch of emptiness that you think will consume you. The frigid bite you think won’t ever leave your bones, the one you try to pretend isn’t there, but can’t keep out of your head.
She was fall and the scent of a fire, the crackle of heat, the coming of change you try to pretend won’t come, but does anyway, that you wait for the whole year, that you wish away when it finally comes.
She was summer and the scorching warmth of sun and sin, the slick feel of lotion and the spray of ocean water, the salt of that taste on your tongue and the cool, crisp relief that comes over you when you dip inside the bottomless water.
She was spring, the fresh sweet smell of jasmine and the honeysuckle temptation of light and love and beautiful rebirth that cannot be ignored. Willow was the phantom spark of all those things I loved and hated. The things that tested me. The things that healed, all wrapped up in that tempting silhouette, in the sweet surrender of her body pressed against mine and the whisper of a tease in every syllable that formed my name from her full, thick lips.
“Nash.” It was song, sweeter than Coltrane, hurt worse too, my name, the hidden tone of promises and pleasure I stopped telling myself I didn’t want.
Four seasons laid out before me. Willow’s wild hair fanned against my pillow and her waiting body—pale skin and a trail of freckles that crossed her chest and dipped with the curves along her stomach.
“Nash,” she said again, reaching for me when I came to my knees, looking down at her, wanting her with an ache nothing had ever worked up in me.
There were two small lines along her hips, lightning on her skin and the round bends of her breast, the sweet arches along her hips, down her thighs when I touched her there. That look though, went deeper, settled closer than the scent of her skin or rise in my body when I watched her shimmy out of her clothes and crawl on my bed, waiting, ready for me to react.
Now I was and I had to breathe deep, separate the want someone else held in my dream and the urge to take what was mine and mine alone; what I wanted for myself because of the sensation only Willow moved in me.
“Take off your shirt,” she said and I did, working one shoulder at a time out of that cotton, discarding it because it kept me from her. She touched me, nails against the lines and letters over my body, her mouth, her tongue warm and soft on my neck, over my chest, traveling like a wanderer, searching, seeking.
We came together like colors, moving into a gradient of light, of motion that reminded me of the sea, waves and water, sand and shore. We were sweeter than those Coltrane chords, went deeper than each note.
“You taste like honey,” I told her, moving closer, lips and tongue on her flesh, in the dips of her body. The invitation open, ready as she pulled me close. I took another bite, moving her apart with my knee, holding her tight until there were small marks from my fingers against her pale skin and she shuddered, gripping, clawing at me like she couldn’t get close enough.
“Nash…” and that melody spurred me on, had me forgetting control and patience and all the swagger I thought made me smooth. I was nothing but feeling, touch and taste and desperate, desperate want with her under me, with me slipping inside, deep, sweet.
Free.
Later, when my body cried out, when I thought I couldn’t move enough to even leave her body, Willow cuddled next to me, fit like a puzzle piece against me. We didn’t sleep. There was only the sound of our breaths and the slowing race of my own heartbeat pulsing in my ear.
Her skin was the softest I’d ever touched, sweeter than the honey I swore I tasted from her neck when I kissed her and it reminded me of things I thought I’d figured out when I was a punk kid.
“You’re smiling. I can feel your lips stretching against my forehead.”
“I am. Sated. High as hell off you.” I moved back to catch her gaze, smiling when she looked half buzzed as me. “You remind me…” I touched her arm, let my fingers move over her elbow, to her wrist. “You remind me of what I always thought I knew about women when I was a kid.”
“What was that?”
It was probably stupid, but it was real. Everything I felt with her, right in that moment, everything I said, it was the realest I’ve ever been. Willow wouldn’t let me hide, so I decided not to try.
“The way a woman looks, the secrets she keeps, that mesmerize a punk kid with no clue what happens behind those doors, behind those pink curtains. It got me wondering, all those years, when the girls in gym class disappeared before me and my boys had finished our game on the court. Why’d they leave so soon? What did they do in that locker room that took up so much damn time?”
“Did you ever figure it out?”
She liked my smile. She’d said that a half a dozen times. I saw what Will thought of me, how she went all still, all quiet when I threw a smile her way. There was something in the press of her lips, how the smallest tip of her tongue wetted that full bottom lip in the middle, like she wanted to taste me on her mouth, like my smile reminded her how much she wanted me right there.
I didn’t answer her, just flashed that smile slow, subtle like I knew she wanted it. Just the right side twitching up, my lips protruding like they waited for her to take up what I offered. Willow’s gaze shifted, moved over my face like there was something she looked for, maybe something she wanted to find that I wouldn’t give up easily. And when that glance stayed too still, too focused on my mouth, I relaxed the muscles around my lips just enough to slip my tongue along my bottom lip. Her focused shifted, followed the change of movement and gave away what I knew she wanted.
“No.” The whisper of the word pulled her attention back to my eyes and I fought like hell not to smile again. Couldn’t give away all my cards. “Not then. Not all at once either. That came with time. High school, college, all the females around then, all the bodies and scents and senses I’d never felt before, all those mysteries I wanted like hell to figure out, it was sensory overload and, little punk I was didn’t have a damn clue.”
Willow pulled her long hair over her shoulder, let the slip of loose braid move along her bare shoulder until she held the breakaway wisps between her fingers. Like feathers, like movement and grace I’d never seen anyone manage before, that woman could blink, pass a look over her shoulder and bring any man to his knees. But I had not lied. Lessons got learned in college, when every female that came at me made it easy to uncover certain secrets. I had to learn and back then, eager as I was, those lessons got taught quick.
Willow’s hair reminded me of pebbles wet from the river, the color darkening with each press of the current. “I learned, but even then, all the stuff I figured out, never prepared me.”
“For what?” She gave me a little of that knee-bending glance and I pulled my attention to the thick tendrils of hair she
loosened from the braid to weave between her long fingers. She held her breath when I took the hair from her hand.
“For the one and many.” She wanted me to clarify. She wanted answers and I had them, but I liked the way she smelled. I liked how warm her skin felt when I brushed my arm against her back. I wanted to live in that moment just for a little while, to suspend our reality until there was only the feel of our skin together. Something that was wet and warm and somehow right all at once. “Women, to a boy, are scary, so fucking scary that we don’t know to catch hold of that fear. It burns in our guts, and it’s that sensation we run from. Every man, no matter what kind of man he turns out to be, is a scared punk at ten, at sixteen, at eighteen when it comes to women.” Will shuddered, the thin hair on my arm brushing along her spine when I slide my fingers between the wave of loose braid that fell on her shoulder. “We don’t understand why girls get us all twisted up inside, make us feel like we could either scream or get sick or explode all at the same time. And then, you get a little closer to the many things that keep a man spent over a female. Things that as a kid has you running scared. As a man, though, when they let you closer, you get a little clarity. A little realization and damn do you want to unravel those mysteries. You get a touch, a small one and if you’re really lucky, next comes the taste. That only makes you want more and maybe if you got game, if you’re cool, know to handle your business, then you get another taste, a deeper one. The touches get you closer to a taste, until you think you’ve found it all out—what a woman has, what you can do with what she has.”
“And then?”
“Hell. Then? Then she unravels another mystery and all the mess you think you knew about women is nothing. Then you realize you know nothing about them. Then you realize there is so much more to know until you know the truth.”
“What truth is that?”
