The Pull of Yesterday

by Gabriella West

  Matt chuckled dryly, moving away from the table to a big easy chair that could hold us both. He patted the chair lightly and I slid in beside him, loving the closeness. He put his arm gently around me.

  “I know you loved me, Dave. There’s something I’ve never told you, and I never thought I would need to.”

  I waited, resting back against his chest.

  “I wasn’t faithful to you that year. Putting the books away today reminded me of it. There was a girl in one of my classes. And then, I slept with another girl too once. I don’t remember either of their names and I remember thinking at the time, ‘this isn’t as good as it used to feel.’ But I did it. And I never told you, because in my mind, we weren’t in a relationship. Not really.”

  Because I didn’t say anything for a long time, he added, “I wouldn’t do it now.”

  Leaning back against him with my eyes closed, I felt grungy and exhausted. I hadn’t even told him about the extra check, but that would wait.

  His hand gently caressed my face and then our lips met, and we kissed for a long time. I don’t know why his confession changed things, but the weight on my chest was lifted. I moaned against him, especially when his hand continued moving down my body, cupping me, effortlessly making me hard in a way that Aaron hadn’t been able to.

  “It’s OK,” I breathed finally. “Though I’m glad I didn’t know then. It would have hurt.”

  “You deserved better,” Matt said, capturing my lips again. “But now I want to help. I want to take care of you.”

  “Don’t say that,” I told him. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to,” he insisted. “So yeah... we’ll make a deal. You don’t go back to Elsie Street for at least a year, starting now. After that it should be safe.”

  “But I didn’t tell you about Tessa,” I blurted out. “She wants me to help her have a baby. I said no. I said I’d have to ask you.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe it!”

  “I put her off, but she’s going to ask me again in three months.” It seemed ridiculous now, a game.

  Matt stilled beside me. His face was serious and his mood had abruptly changed.

  “I don’t want you to have a kid with her. I wanted us to have a child together one day. Don’t even think about getting mixed up with her, Dave. You’d end up being way more involved than you want.”

  I nodded. I sensed it was true.

  “So don’t go back to Elsie Street,” he whispered. “I didn’t realize they both wanted to get into your pants.”

  “I can’t see why,” I said.

  “Well, I can,” Matt said, looking down at me with his green eyes darkening. He tugged on my hair gently. “Want to come shower with me and I’ll remind you of what you’ve got going for you?”

  I was smiling at him and suddenly I said, “I love you.”

  Had we said it before? In bed, maybe, yeah. It seemed like this was the first time, the first time I had said it in that way in my life, to anyone. That conversation with Matt in the big chair in the Sausalito houseboat was the way the evening in that little French bistro should have ended, years before. We should have looked at each other across the candle-lit table and said, “I love you.” And if we had, and if we had walked out of there hand in hand and gone back to the dorm and made love the way I had wanted to, so much would have changed, so much pain in the intervening years would have been prevented. I never wanted to be that masochistic guy waiting on the couch on Lake Street again, or even that guy on the black leather sofa on Elsie Street, callous to the pain of the person who loved me, feeling trapped and angry, wanting out.

  I could feel the day righting itself, but not just that, my whole life aligning with Matt’s, the way it should have long before. And we had both brought it back to this place, I thought. I had gone out on a limb for him, and he for me.

  “I love you too,” he said, pulling off his Point Bonita sweatshirt, pulling off my shirt so that our skin could rub and press against each other deliciously, our jeans soon coming off as well. Matt took me to the shower stall, his strong arms propping me up once I was there. Soaping me, cleaning me, and then kissing, touching, sucking, making huge ropy strings of come pulse out of me into his mouth and onto his chest.

  Even as I experienced it, as I shuddered and moaned, there was a part of me that watched it all in wonder. I resolved to be better now, to help his life to be better too. The boy who had given his roommate a Valentine’s Day card on that snowy February evening long ago deserved this, so maybe I deserved this.

  We fell asleep upstairs in the bed, the wind making wailing, groaning sounds that ended up being quite soothing, the house gently moving around us.

  END