Guarded Dreams

by L. J. Evans

  —Written by Rimes / McGinn / Carter

  Eli swallowed hard at my words, searched in his pocket, and came up with his phone. He opened the Lyft app and ordered a car. By the time we got back out to the front of the park, his limp was more pronounced, and he was leaning on his cane heavily. But there was an energy to him that hadn’t been there when he’d arrived at Juilliard.

  When he’d shown up at the school, he’d been withdrawn. Like he was beating himself up. Like life was beating him up. I didn’t want to see that on Eli. He’d always been strong, confident, and determined. I hated that he was being asked to deal with so much at once and that it had him questioning everything in his life.

  I was glad to take him away from that, even momentarily. As we left Battery Park, the thought of being with him, melding our bodies together, completely and utterly, in the way they’d been craving since we’d first kissed, filled me with anticipation and heat.

  Once we were in the car, on the way to his apartment, my nerves started to get to me. I wasn’t some sixteen-year-old girl losing her virginity and not really understanding what that meant. I was too old for that. I was too old for naivety. Yet, I couldn’t help being a little nervous. I’d fooled around with guys. Fooled around a lot with Eli.

  My nervousness wasn’t stemming from the thought of him seeing me, or me seeing him, naked for the first time, and it wasn’t because I was having sex for the first time at twenty-three. I was just nervous that it would disappoint him in some way. It was stupid. Our time together had not been disappointing. I knew I’d never disappointed him yet. But I was, if not uneducated then at least unpracticed, in the final steps that we hadn’t danced yet.

  We got out of the car in front of his apartment. He paused to give a tip to the driver via the app and then pulled my hand back into his. We maneuvered the stairs with his cane, a bad leg, and hands that were tied together.

  He opened the door and threw his stuff on the counter, and then he pulled me back into his arms.

  “Where are you at?” Eli asked, and I realized that I’d gone into my head longer than I should have. He rubbed my palm, sending shivers of anticipation back through my body.

  “I need to tell you something,” I said.

  He heard the falter in my voice and jumped to the only conclusion he could have: that I’d changed my mind. That was the furthest thing from the truth. I wanted him. All of him. I wanted to know what it was like to have him fill my body as he already filled my soul.

  “Ava, we don’t have to do anything. You don’t—”

  “I’ve never had sex.” I cut him off before I lost my nerve and before he got too far away from the thought of going the final step with me.

  His brow furrowed as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard what I’d said. Realization dawned, and instead of a smile or a joke at what I’d told him, the smolder returned to his gaze.

  “Never?” His voice was full of emotions and longing that I couldn’t understand. I shook my head, and he asked, “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I believe I asked first, but okay. I want to know why because I don’t want to be the person you break some promise you made to yourself with just because you think that this has to be the next step for us.”

  I was shaking my head even before he finished his words. “It isn’t like that.”

  “Then explain it to me,” he said, like he had about my dreams and singing. Like he wanted to know everything, the truth inside me, and not just what he thought he saw. He wanted the honesty of it. The realness of it.

  “Truthfully, at first it was because, in high school, when all my friends were losing their virginity, I saw what it did to them. It made them all goopy, and mushy, and hardly able to do anything without the boy they’d lost it to. I didn’t want to lose my dreams to sex with some guy who would keep me in Texas and not at Juilliard.”

  He nodded. “I get that. First loves and first sex can really get tangled up in your head when you’re young.”

  “Wait. Is that what happened to you?”

  He half-smiled. “Don’t get distracted, Ava. Tell me.”

  The way he said my name always sounded like its own term of endearment. Like he didn’t need to call me “babe” or “honey” or “sweetie” because he could just say my name with that same emotion behind it. It was enough to tangle my heart and my head just like I was an inexperienced teenager.

  “Then…after you…” God it was going to sound so stupid. He frowned again as if trying to place the jump from my being a teenager to now and the us that we were becoming, when, in fact, it had nothing to do with now, but four years behind us instead. “After we kissed that day in Rockport, nothing else has felt the same. And I guess…I was waiting for someone to light me up the way you had that day before I let them have all of me.”

  “Ava.” That tone again, this time laced with something that sounded like reverence.

  Then he was kissing me, devouring my lips like he had on the beach, and in the hospital, and on so many days since then. This time, there was something new in the kisses. As if we’d added a promise to them. A promise I wasn’t even sure I understood but didn’t mind making.

  He picked me up by the waist, and my legs went around his middle, feeling every part of him that wanted every part of me. But he only took one step before he had to set me down with a frustrated groan, lifting his broken knee.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Don’t hurt yourself trying to be some stud muffin.”

  He chest rattled with a deep laugh.

  “Dog, wolf, and now stud muffin?”

  He took my hand and tugged me down the hall to his bedroom. I jumped onto the mattress, turning to look down at him.

  “Eli?”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you light me up?”

  He swallowed, eyes turning a deep color, back to smoldering. “If you’ll let me.”

  I kissed him then, full of longing to be a part of him, for him to be a part of me. And our kisses turned to frantic movements, shedding clothes and his brace. I momentarily got sidetracked by the scars on his knee, but he drew me back to his face with a kiss and a hand anchored into my hair so that I would stay where his lips could travel from my lips to my neck and back again.

  I was gasping, panting, and he was exploring with his other hand the parts of me that he was more than adept at exploring. I wasn’t embarrassed any longer that I hadn’t done this before. I just wanted him. All of him. And I pulled him with me as I went down on the bed, his body engulfing my own in warmth and heat and desire.

  He reached for a bedside table, pulling out a condom packet. I watched with wide eyes as he rolled the condom onto the length of him—the length that I’d felt but not yet experienced. Then he was back over me, his right side countering the weight he couldn’t put on his left leg, with a look in his eye that made me feel like I was the only girl he’d ever rolled a condom on for, even when I knew that I wasn’t.

  He kissed my neck, and my breasts, and down to my stomach, and then to the place that was slowly melting as it waited for him, and then he trailed kisses all the way back up, and when his lips got to my neck, he entered me. All of him joining with all of me. It did hurt, but then his caress, and kisses, and the slow rocking of our bodies had me losing myself again in the completeness I felt in his arms.

  The rhythm of him in me, our hearts beating furiously, our kisses leaving marks not unlike tattoos on each other’s skin built until I felt the pressure and pleasure gathering such that I was gasping and moving my mouth away from his in order to get air. He continued to trail kisses on my neck as I threw my head back.

  And I shattered into a million pieces.

  Then he shattered, too, as he called my name in a way that sounded like a prayer and a demand all rolled into one.

  We lay there with pieces surrounding us, hearts still pounding, bo
dies momentarily sated. I wondered if we’d ever be able to figure out which pieces belonged to whom, or if we would, somehow, find ourselves with pieces that belonged to the other tied up inside of us when we moved apart again.

  “Thank you,” he said, tenderness, and devotion, and a word I didn’t want to name yet in his voice.

  “For what?”

  “For waiting for me to be the one to fill you. Not just with…you know…my stupid penis. But for letting me be the one to fill your life.”

  God, his words. They were like his own band of lyrics that he wrote just for me. I smiled up at him. “I don’t think your penis is stupid. Not at all.”

  He grinned back at me, that shy, glorious smile that I knew was my own. The thing he hadn’t given to anyone else, just like there’d been the piece of me I hadn’t given to anyone else. We’d each given each other a first of sorts.

  “My penis thanks you very much, but you’re going to have to stop saying penis now,” he teased.

  The playfulness of it took me away from the quiet sentimentality that had built up inside me. I sort of got my friends now. The ones who’d lost themselves in a boy because of sex. If they’d felt anything close to what I’d felt with Eli, it would be near impossible to not want this again. Over and over. To spend days wrapped up in just us.

  “Shower?” he asked.

  I nodded as he pulled himself from me, and I tried to collect the unseen pieces that had fallen around us. He held my hand and drew me toward his shared bathroom, naked.

  “Wait. When does Truck get back?”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Truck is out to sea for three more days.”

  That made me very happy.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  Eli and I spent Friday night lost in each other’s skin, our souls reaching out to each other. When he got out of bed Saturday morning, it was to find me curled up in an armchair in the main room, my notebook in my hand, words running across the page.

  He hobbled over to me, picked me up, and then sat in the chair with me on his lap. “I woke, and you weren’t there,” he said quietly.

  It wasn’t said accusatorially, or demandingly, or even despondently. Just matter-of-factly, like he said most things in his life. Yet, it was still clear that he hadn’t liked it. Like the first day out of the hospital, when I’d left, and he’d texted me the same thing. That I wasn’t at his side.

  “I wouldn’t leave without telling you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” I said. His words made me think about how he probably hadn’t been able to truly say goodbye to his dad.

  I turned back to my page, more words crawling across it. He rested his chin on my shoulder, peering into the notebook at some of my words.

  “Were you inspired?”

  The tease in his voice had me looking back into his face. Eli wasn’t usually full of lighthearted humor. He ribbed Mac Truck relentlessly, and he’d even teased me, but it was usually still with some seriousness to his soul. Even more so since his accident…after finding out about his mom’s cancer. But this morning, he looked younger, happier, more at peace.

  “It was an inspiring night,” I told him with my own smile.

  “I agree.”

  He was kissing my neck and the spot behind my ear that about left me breathless whenever he did it. Then it was the back of my neck and my shoulders that showed over the top of his Henley that I’d thrown on with my panties. His hand slid under the shirt and up to my breasts waiting for him.

  I moaned.

  “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?” His voice was gruff and muffled in my skin as he continued to move over it at a tranquil pace that was turning my insides back to fire.

  “Make my body yours.”

  He stopped his kisses, looking up into my eyes that were watching him. “It’s not mine, Ava. I would never demand that. Your body is always your own. You can always tell me no. Just because we’ve had sex once, just because you’ve allowed me to touch you and kiss you, it doesn’t mean that I have the right to that whenever I want. Your body is yours. I will graciously accept it whenever you permit me to have it, and I promise to honor it each time you give it to me.”

  I threw my notebook on the floor, turning in the chair so that I was straddling him. “Eli?” He waited expectantly for me to continue. “Today…Today my body is all yours.”

  He accepted my body. He took it and cherished it until the morning turned into the afternoon, and the afternoon turned into the fall of night. We continued to find each other’s pieces, sometimes returning them and sometimes keeping them. One thing was for certain: we were never going to be the same again.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  When I woke Sunday morning, I smelled bacon and maple syrup before I realized Eli’s side of the bed was empty. I found my own clothes, showered quickly, and then joined him in the kitchen. His cane laid against the counter as he maneuvered around the small space without it.

  “I’m pretty sure you overdid it this weekend.” I wrapped my arms around him, reveling in the fact that I was hugging him, holding him. I placed a kiss near his Coast Guard tattoo. He wore a pair of sweats and nothing else. He was like the very best of Jenna’s romance novels in real life.

  After four years, I was finally able to read the words around the Coast Guard tattoo on his back. The Semper Paratus motto—Always Ready—and the whole Coast Guard emblem was surrounded by a version of a Khalil Gibran quote: “Life and death are one, even as the river and the sea.”

  It snuck into my heart that Eli had his own love of words, his own love of quotes. We were mismatched souls. Or matched souls? I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know if his quote meant he was always ready for life and death, or if he saw the way his dad’s death had been part of the cycle of life. It was enough to know that he found meaning in words like I did.

  “Nah. Pushing is the only way you get results,” he replied.

  He turned in my arms and kissed me warmly, making me continue to feel special. Adored. When I tried to deepen the kiss, he pulled back. “No way. You are not distracting me from breakfast. I’m starving. We hardly ate yesterday.”

  I pouted, he laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile back. I wanted him like this. Full of smiles and laughter. Away from the pain of his life at the moment.

  “Sit down.” He motioned to the stools at the counter. The guys didn’t have a kitchen table. I’m sure they ate in front of the TV more than anywhere else.

  Once he’d placed two very full plates on the counter, he joined me. “I’m going to drive to New London on Tuesday,” he said as we ate.

  We’d talked about this yesterday, in between moments in each other’s skin. He wanted to wait for Truck to get back so he could tell Truck in person. Truck was almost as attached to Eli’s mom as Eli was. I’d known he was going to go after that, but I couldn’t help the patter of my heart at the thought of him actually leaving the city.

  I nodded, trying not to let the bite of pancake that I’d taken get stuck in my throat. “That’s good,” I whispered out.

  He looked at me and could see the doubts filling me, even as I tried to hide them. He stopped eating, putting down his fork and turning toward me in order to take my hand into his. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Wait. Does the Coast Guard let their people think on their own?” I teased.

  He smirked. “Ha ha. You have spring break starting Friday, right?”

  I nodded. “Really, Thursday because my professor won’t be in that day.”

  “Come join me in New London once you’re out.”

  Thoughts flitted through my head. I’d be by myself in the city over break if I stayed. Brady was going home to upstate New York and his family. I could fly to Texas to see Jenna, but she was working and involved with wedding preparations. I didn’t really have anywhere else to be.

  It was just that…New London was his home. With his mom who was battling cancer and
his mom’s best friend who was like a second mom. I wasn’t sure I was ready to meet moms. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that part of his life to become part of my own.

  “Your mom’s sick. She doesn’t need a houseguest.”

  “My girlfriend isn’t a houseguest.”

  I looked into his eyes, examining his reaction to his own words. We hadn’t labeled us. Hadn’t said we were dating. Hadn’t said we were exclusive. I wasn’t obtuse. I knew that was where Eli’s head was at. I knew that was where my head was at, because I sure as hell didn’t want to see him with another woman, but we still hadn’t said we were in a relationship.

  “Your girlfriend, huh?” My lips quirked, and he leaned in and kissed the corner of my mouth.

  “You taste like syrup.” His voice was husky with longing. I didn’t know how either of us could still feel that longing after an entire weekend together, but it was still there. The same craving I’d felt before we’d taken the last step. No. It wasn’t the same; it was stronger, more demanding, if anything.

  “Ditto,” I breathed into his lips. Somehow, we both forgot breakfast, and the fact that I was fully dressed and ready to return to campus, as the desire made itself known again, requiring all of our attention.

  Reviving

  Come a Little Closer

  “Come a little closer baby

  I feel like layin’ you down

  On a bed of sweet surrender

  Where we can work it all out

  There ain't nothin' that love can't fix.”

  —Performed by Dierks Bentley

  — Written by Brett Beavers / Dierks Bentley

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Eli

  BLESS THE BROKEN ROAD

  “Every long-lost dream led me to where you are

  Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars

  Pointing me on my way into your loving arms.”

  —Performed by Rascal Flatts

  —Written by Hanna / Hummon / Boyd

  Sunday night, Ava went back to Juilliard, and I was left to toss and turn in my bed alone. My mind reeled with thoughts of my mom, thoughts of my job, and thoughts of Ava. The fact that my sheets smelled of her and the lives we’d joined together a step further only added to my unrest.