by Maxi MacNair
I tried to keep a straight face and not blush too hard.
“Do I?” I asked, trying on my best flirting tone.
He took another, deep sip and placed his glass to the table. He slid closer to me and brought a hand up to my face. My glass joined his, discarded, and my eyes became trapped in his. I felt like I was being sucked into an ocean—something so vast and deep that I could never understand it all, but I still wanted to try.
Derek drew my face to his and his lips brushed mine, moving to the corner of my mouth and then jumping to the side of my neck. My breath started to punctuate, my eyes fluttering closed at the sensation of his supple lips planting slow, even kisses along my neck, reaching up, and up, until his teeth grazed my earlobe and his mouth breathed warm air over my ear. Finally his mouth found mine again.
A firm palm pressed against my chest, his other hand behind my head, and he lowered me down on the couch. My heart was thumping steady as I watched the light from the candles dance shadows along the lines of his face. They were solid lines, but not harsh. For the first time, I noticed a softness to them. I reached up and ran my hand through his espresso hair. There was a tuff that flicked out from behind his right ear that I somehow hadn’t noticed before.
He kissed me again, and I kissed him back. The taste of him made my head spin. His shirt was on the floor. Our breath became one. His hand ran up my thigh, while my fingers traced lines down his bare chest and over his firm abs. My mind no longer had room for any stray thoughts. I was fully consumed by the moment we were creating. My body ached for more. My heart longed for it. To have Derek wrap me fully in his arms and take me elsewhere. Someplace new and separate from the caution and worry I had lived for so long.
His lips tugged at mine as he pulled back. He brushed my hair with his fingers, kissed the side of my face and whispered into my ear.
I kissed the side of his face back, and a breathless nod was all I could give him.
Quickly, he swept me up into his arms and carried me to his bed with a strength that surprised me. His taste lingered with me the whole way down the hall to his bedroom. On the bed he started to kiss my neck and unbuttoning the front of my dress exposed the sexy lace bra I put on subconsciously preparing for something like this. I felt his powerful chest and moved my hands down to start on his belt and the button and zipper of his pants. Soon he started working on my underwear and I could feel him through his boxer shorts on my thigh. As he took off the bra and flung it aside I started to grind his member feeling its stone like firmness and size through the matching lace panties I wore as he cupped my breasts in his strong hands. Momentarily we stayed like that feeling as much of each other as we could. Soon though he was moving down, tugging my panties down from the hips, kissing every piece of newly exposed flesh. He planted his face between my thighs and started working his tongue between my folds, tasting my uncontrollable wetness. The sensations were instant. Shudders and flashes of light. Wanting to return the favour I pulled him up after orgasming from another’s touch for the first time in too long of a time. I turned him around so he lay down on the bed, his huge erection sticking up into the air almost surging as my breath started to caress it. He breathed deeply through his nose as the head passed my lips and I worked it with my tongue totally enraptured by the taste of him. When both of us seemed like we couldn’t take anymore I moved to straddle him slowly sliding him inside me and working my hips until I had all of him fully inside me. I couldn’t stop myself from working my body the way I did. I couldn’t stop needing to receive his solid plunging thrusts from beneath me starting to bring us both to completion. It had been too long for me and I couldn’t control what my body was doing. Moans escaped my lips that I didn’t mean to make.
~
I rolled over in the blue sheets and found Derek, hair particularly unruly, looking at me with bright eyes. I felt myself flush.
“Hey,” he said. “Morning.” Light filtered in from a gap in the curtains, highlighting the curves of his body and reminding me that I had slept with him.
I smiled at him. “Good morning.”
He leaned over and landed a brief kiss on my lips. “Come here.”
I squirmed towards him, not quite as graceful as I hoped I would be, with the bottom of the sheets tangled about my legs. He helped untangle my legs and wrapped an arm around me, pulling me close. His face nestled against mine and into my hair. He kissed me again, but this time just below my ear. I ran my hands over his shoulders and arms, my heart swelling as I thought back to the night before. The touch of his fingers, how gentle and courteous he had been.
We laid in each other's’ arms for some time, too comfortable to want to get up too quickly. The only sound was that of our breathing. It was nice. Peaceful. He played with my hair a little, and I could have stayed there in his bed all day without minding in the slightest.
Without warning, my stomach made a gurgle that evolved into a full-scale growl.
“Hungry?” Derek said, removing his arm from under my head.
“Maybe a little,” I said, embarrassed. I could always leave it to my stomach to ruin a great moment.
“I’ll make breakfast,” he said. “Waffles sound good?”
I grinned. “You bet they do.”
“Great.” He gave me a peck on the lips and then swung himself out of bed. I couldn’t complain about the view. His thighs, his calves, his arms, his rippled abs all looked like something sculpted from stone and not part of a living breathing man. I caught sight of that gorgeous piece of him and remembered the feeling of it being rock hard and steadily driving deep inside of me. I thought back on the events of last night and was relieved to recall Derek putting on a condom somewhere in between tearing each other’s clothes off and me riding him late into the night. I wanted to feel all of him but my cautious side was always pretty loud no matter how much wine I drink. Plus I felt good knowing I still regularly took the pill even though I hadn’t been with anyone for quite a while.
“You can lay in bed longer if you like.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’ll come with you.”
I sat up and looked for where I had thrown my clothes the night before—or, more accurately, where Derek had thrown them.
“Don’t distract me while I’m cooking,” he said over his shoulder as he pulled on a pair of shorts.
“I make no promises.”
Derek didn’t put on a shirt before he walked down to the hall to the kitchen. He tried to make small talk with me as he cracked eggs and measured the flour, but I was a little distracted. It was strange to think that this body that could be so tender was also that of a soldier. Someone who was trained to kill and defend his country, and here he was whisking waffle batter in his underwear for me.
Topped with a ring of whipped cream and sliced peaches, the waffles looked—and smelled—fantastic. Derek also made us coffee from freshly ground beans from Brazil. It was the most impressive breakfast I had had in a while, especially one I didn’t have in a restaurant. And one I hadn’t made myself.
“Here’s syrup, if you want,” Derek said, plopping a plastic bottle down in the center of the circular dining table.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the bottle and drizzling some over my still-steaming waffles.
We ate to the background din of the radio and the sound of passing traffic outside. It was late morning, and I was glad that I didn’t have to head into work until afternoon. The morning had a weekend feel to it, for the obvious reasons, and I groaned internally that it was, in fact, a Monday.
“Are you busy today?” I asked, feeling the need to drown out the radio host going on about a particular traffic accident downtown.
Derek shrugged, swallowed a particularly heavy mouthful of waffle and cream. “Just need to run some errands.”
“Preparation for deploying?”
He nodded.
“Can I ask how long you’re going for?”
“Until the middle of December. Possibly a week longer.”
He didn’t look at me while he said it. “Why?”
“Just wondering,” I said. “That’s almost eight months. Seems a little long, but I guess not horrible.”
“It’ll go fast. Time does that. Plus it’s not as long as most people spend overseas.”
I paused, my fork loitering halfway to my mouth. “Yeah, I guess I heard about people deployed for years and all that. Time moves pretty strangely as well, sometimes it feels so weird to think I’ve lived here for six years already.”
Derek looked up at me and grinned. “I know that feeling.”
“Somedays it feels like no time at all, and I wonder where my mind’s been the whole time.”
He nodded, seeming to consider it.
Six years. And a lot of it being the same, day in, day out. I only traveled once during those six years, and only for a single week to Mexico. Six years older and not too much to say for it—not outside my career, at any rate. I shunted the thought aside and crammed more waffle into my mouth.
“Hold on,” Derek said abruptly. He leaned forward with his napkin and dabbed at the corner of my mouth. He flashed one of his charming smiles and all residual thoughts of wasted time dissolved.
“Are you joking again?”
“No.” He showed me the blotch of whipped cream stuck to the napkin. “This time you really did make a mess.”
I smirked at his tease. “Well, maybe your cooking is so good that I just didn’t even notice.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s a good sign.”
“Yeah,” I said, realizing that right now, I was doing something different—living a little on the edge, maybe. I was with Derek, and he had just made me breakfast. “It is.”
I tried really hard not to linger too long after breakfast. It wasn’t easy. I helped him load the dishwasher and we were having a hard time keeping our hands off each other. The little domestic duty turned into a full on makeout session in his kitchen, which I had to regrettably cut short because I had to dash off to work. He seemed disappointed for a moment, but kissed me on the cheek and said he’d call me.
He saw me out of his apartment, his hand lightly on my back, and I rushed back to my place on autopilot, my mind torn between calculating how long I had to get ready for work, and replaying my time with Derek. I needed to change clothes, wash my face, and reapply my makeup—Derek feeding me dessert at the restaurant, how easily he turned his living room into a romantic setting with the addition of jazz and wine, the way his tongue pressed against mine. His taste his smell, they were with me and I couldn’t tell if they were really there or just my memory of them bringing them back, making me sense them again. They were distracting thoughts, and the cab driver had to verbally announce his arrival at my building.
When I got inside my apartment, I flopped down on my bed, grinning. Surely I could afford to just lay here in bliss for another minute or two longer.
~
A purse hitting me in the shoulder jarred me out of my reverie. I turned, but the woman it belonged to didn’t seem to notice—or care—that she had just whacked someone with her purse. I huffed to myself and looked at my phone. No new messages, but the time told me Derek should be landing soon—if he hadn’t already. That fact made me smile.
I was glad I would be seeing him again. Maybe he also remembered the good times we had together. Maybe he also thought about our first dance at the club, and our first date. Would it be asking too much if I hoped he also thought about when we first shared a bed?
At the time, I might have denied some of what I was feeling for him—purposely distancing myself because I knew that what we were having was akin to a fling, if not a fling entirely. But it wasn’t long until I became aware that my feelings for him ran a little deeper. And only a short while after he left, I realized I had fallen in love with him. Discovering I was pregnant only seemed to reinforce that.
When I first found out, I was devastated, confused, questioning the universe as to why it had happened. I always pictured myself married and making a conscious choice to be a mom. I wasn’t married, or even in a stable relationship. The father wasn’t even on the same continent. He was...well he was wherever he was. It was just myself and my apartment, and my job. But one night as I scooped ice cream into my mouth while replaying our fleeting romance in my head, I thought that maybe this child was a gift. Had we not been loving each other when we made it? My heart told me we were, and then whispered that this child was mine to keep. And, more importantly, it was a life that I was responsible for. It was not my choice to get pregnant, but it was my choice now whether I wanted to be a mom or not, and it dawned on me that that was exactly what I wanted to do.
With Megan and Jess’ help, I priced out the cost of raising a child while single, and realized that, although tough, I was financially stable enough to manage. It wasn’t like single parentage was all that uncommon these days. Plus watching Jess with her kids made me realize I could do this. My friends had helped me research support groups and other resources, and deep down, I was becoming more and more confident that this was the right choice for me. Maybe it would have my eyes and Derek’s charming smile. Or my naturally light hair and his dark eyes.
I had emailed Derek shortly after I decided to keep the baby. I kept the message short and cordial, without any mention of my pregnancy. It took some time for him to get back to me but his reply was similarly curt yet friendly with no real mention of where he was or what was going on. That he didn’t just completely ignore me must have meant something. I asked him if he had seen my bracelet— one that once belonged to my great grandmother. I realized I had misplaced it a few weeks after he left, and wondered if somehow it had fallen out at his place. But he told me he hadn’t seen it. It was probably lurking somewhere in my apartment then, or lost. I tried not to think about it. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to write the words that I needed to. For the first email, I spent hours writing long explanations only to delete them after hovering over the send button forever. I didn’t know how to say it, and part of me didn’t want to see what would happen when I did tell him.
What would he do? What would I do if he told me to never write him again. Telling him risked the memory of him. More than that though it risked the possibility that he would want to be a part of this. As long as he didn’t know I could still hang onto imagining a perfect life with him. I know it was silly, but in that first email I couldn’t risk having to let go of those thoughts. Each time he wrote back to me it got harder and harder to admit that I didn’t tell him in the first email. Soon I found myself less than a month away from him coming home, and ready to burst any day. The best I could do was tell him that I needed to see him as soon as he landed.
Once he returned, I would see if he still felt anything for me at all. I didn’t expect him to rush into my arms with a wedding ring, thrilled at the sudden prospect to raise a child together, but I hoped—truth was, I didn’t know exactly what I hoped. Perhaps just for some sort of acknowledgement that, whether intentional or not, we had created something together. Or, perhaps I hoped that a part of our relationship would rekindle and we could start over. Or a combination of those. Plus every other positive outcome I could even imagine. There were many times that I stayed up late at night, playing out scenarios in my head. But many of them were disjointed, ending abruptly when I couldn’t quite give Derek’s words or picture his expression. Those were the good scenarios. The bad scenarios were easy to imagine.
I feared too many of my imaginings were forced. All of the happy, lovey-dovey ones were built on the assumption that there was a part of our relationship left to rekindle. Even though Derek agreed to meet me the day he got back, I had my doubts. And painful memories from past relationships to accompany them.
I frowned, and noticed my tea was finished.
I took off my coat and spread it over my seat to deter anyone from stealing my table, and went back to the register to see if I could get a refill of hot water.
“Oh, how far along
are you?” A middle-aged woman asked when I lined up behind her. She beamed at me with the same excitement Jess had when she talked about her children.
“Almost eight months,” I said, forcing a smile. It still felt weird when strangers asked such things, but I supposed that came with showing as much as I did. Even my doctor commented that I had an impressive baby bump.
“Congratulations,” she said. “Children are just the greatest blessing. Is this your first?” The line moved forward.
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
“My oldest is seven. And I have two more. I loved being pregnant.”
“It’s definitely an experience.”
“It’s tough when you’re single,” she said.
My heart jumped in my chest, shocked at such a sudden judgement. Was it that obvious?
“I wasn’t with anyone until my second,” she continued, and I relaxed. “But it was rewarding, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I didn’t have to share my child with anyone. I got to keep her all to myself.” She winked at me, drawing a smile to my mouth.
“I like that,” I said.
I was about to confide in her about my singledom, but then it was her turn at the till. She ordered an eggnog latte, and just thinking about it made me tempted to treat myself. But I stuck with my decaf tea when the barista asked for my order.
The place was full so I offered a seat at my table to the woman who ordered the eggnog latte, and she accepted with a smile.
“What did you order?” She asked, setting her purse on her lap.
“Just some more hot water for my tea,” I said. “Trying my best to avoid the caffeine.”
She laughed. “That was probably the hardest part of my pregnancies.”
“It’s tough, that’s for sure.”
We made small talk and I asked her about her general plans for the holidays. She had three different family events to attend, and dishes to cook for all of them, but she seemed enthusiast about it. It was nice to focus on something other than my thoughts for a moment.
