by Faye, Amy
Then I pushed her away.
“No more,” I said. My breaths were coming hard and fast and my head needed to clear. But even then I had trouble controlling myself. Even knowing what was still to come. “Stand up.”
She did, taking my offered hand and pulling herself to her feet. I let out a long breath and closed my eyes. “Where?”
She blinked for a moment and then seemed to realize what I was asking. Where do we go for the next part? She mouthed to follow her, and started moving through the house. I pulled myself back into my pants, the fabric now a hundred times rougher against the over-sensitive head of my cock after coming so close to going over the edge.
She led me to another bedroom. It was sitting open and looked practical. Very much like her, in a way. There was more to do, though, and none of it involved reading into her choice of furnishing. I stepped inside and turned in time to see her close the door and lock it by pressing the button on the knob.
I took her around the waist and picked her up. We still had to be quiet, I reminded myself, in spite of the fact that I’d like nothing more than to go to down on her. In fact, we needed to be quieter than ever. I dropped her on the bed gently, her momentum carrying her backward so that she was laying on the bed.
The dress wasn’t designed to be laid back in, and with her proportions it barely managed to contain her breasts. I took a breath through my teeth and ducked to my knees, pushed the hem of her dress up and over her hips.
“No panties?” I kept my voice low and soft.
She shrugged, then smiled. Then she winked.
“Is that a problem?”
I didn’t bother to answer. I was too busy taking her thighs up onto my shoulders and digging in. There was too much to be done for me to want to bother with talking any more than was absolutely necessary. She didn’t complain either.
“You don’t have to…”
I cut her off by digging my face into her. She tasted strong and sexy, like a woman ought to. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this. I might be able to do it more, but I don’t usually want to. Laura’s the exception to the rule.
I fought her squirming as I played with her on my tongue, exploring her folds and used the flat of my tongue to pleasure her.
I felt her entire body stiffen at once, and then as it relaxed I rose and freed myself once again from the confines of my underwear, pressing my weight down on her and entering her in a swift movement. Her shuddering gasp was encouragement enough. I gave her a moment to adjust before I started moving, but only a moment. Then I pulled my hips back and drove them home again. Her body tightened up in the middle and she reached out for my neck. Her hands wrapped around the back and pulled me in for a kiss.
Our lips pressed together as I thrust into her. My lips found her throat again, and I left her another mark. Her voice was low, but I could hear it with her mouth right beside my ear. I let out a groan as I felt myself approaching my end, and then I let out a long breath and shuddered as I finished.
Eight
Laura
I needed to sleep. Work in the morning meant that I didn’t exactly have a lot of time on my hands. My schedule has been tight for a long time, and I’d just wasted the better part of three hours, between the date and the after party.
But the truth was that I had that kind of time. There was no reason that I needed to worry about wasting it, because it was my night off. But now it’s time that I’d usually be getting home in a few hours, and I count on Thursdays to get me caught up on my beauty sleep when possible.
I laid there in the dark and tried hard to think about nothing at all. I took a breath in, let a breath out. The lights were off, the bed was soft, the pillow was cool against my hair, where it was still a little warm and sticky from the exertion that we’d gone through a little while ago.
But through my eyelids I could see red as if I were in a brightly-lit room. I opened them. Nothing. But my mind was too focused on everything. Thoughts flicked through my head so fast that I couldn’t ignore them all.
What was I doing here? Why was I letting myself get involved with this situation again? Why was I thinking about so much? I opened up my phone and started flipping through news headlines. There was nothing good. There was never anything good, and things were only getting worse.
I told myself to ignore it, the same way that I did every time that I went through the news. A notification at the top of my screen drew my eyes to it. An email. I frowned. I wasn’t supposed to have any emails. I thought I’d checked earlier.
Then again, it made sense that I might forget. I’ve been plenty busy all day. Ever since I got out of school, it’s been one thing after another. Go to Diana’s place. See Dave. Tell him I want him to babysit, even though I know it’s a bad idea.
Come home. Shower, shave my legs. Go out, get Charlie. Take him home, make sure that he’s settled. Get dressed up, go through his homework, and make sure that he’s doing alright in class.
Go over anything that seems like he’s struggling with it, help with homework, make sure that all gets finished and put back into his backpack, and then it’s time to get dressed for the date.
Ultimately, the reality is that I didn’t have a whole lot of time to be thinking about other things I should have been doing with my time. I didn’t have time to think that maybe I’d missed an email. In fact, I don’t think that I’ve had five minutes to myself all day, and I don’t know if I’ve touched my phone one tiny little bit.
I let out a breath and opened the email up. I didn’t immediately recognize the name—Elizabeth Valentin. Maybe it was spam. Maybe they were going to ask me about holding on to their five million dollars, and I’d get five thousand if I transferred it faithfully.
But it wasn’t spam. Once I started to read, I recognized the name. I’d met her once before. Charlie’s teacher. I didn’t realize that he used a short version of her name: Mrs. Val, is what he calls her. I should have noticed, but nobody’s perfect. At least, I don’t think anyone is.
It’s a short message. “Hello Mrs. Graham, I’m Charlie’s teacher at school. I think we should have a brief meeting at your next available convenience to talk about him.”
I let out a long, low breath. That could be fine. There could be nothing going wrong with it at all. In fact, she could be telling me that she thinks that Charlie’s a genius, and she wants to advance him a year.
But the truth is that I didn’t suspect that was what she’s going to want to talk about. I thought there was something wrong. I didn’t have a reason. Charlie was a good boy. He did his homework, he didn’t get into fights, and he understood his schoolwork. Certainly understood it better than I ever had.
So I didn’t really understand what the problem could possibly be. None of that helped me to kick away the idea that something was going wrong. Not just wrong, actually. Horribly wrong.
Then again, I could lay that squarely at the feet of the man who just left. There was definitely something wrong; it just might not have anything to do with Charlie or his schoolwork.
I forced my eyes to shut and held them shut. Eventually they’re going to get used to it, I told myself. I didn’t really believe it myself, but if I was lucky then I’d be able to convince myself to sleep before I had to get through class the next day on two hours.
The answer to my problems wasn’t on my phone screen, though. It wasn’t even at the Collins house, thinking whatever his private thoughts were. I plugged the phone into the wall charger and put it face-down on the side table. I needed to accept what the real answer was. What my real answer was.
I pushed myself up from the bed and padded across the room in the dark. The door didn’t creak when its opened. I was thankful for that, at least. The light from the bathroom was still on. Charlie couldn’t stand to have it off, though he insisted that he wasn’t afraid of the dark. He ‘just can’t see that well.’ I smiled at that and closed the door until it was just a sliver of light going down the hall.
Then
I pushed the bedroom door across the hall from my own open quietly. It eased open silently, and came to a stop when it was only three-quarters of the way open. But it was enough.
My eyes took their time adjusting, but I didn’t mind that one bit. I had a lot to worry about, but none of it was going to get to me right then, at least. I just wished that I knew better what I was supposed to be doing.
Finally my eyes did adjust. Charlie had twisted himself up in his blanket, one of his legs jutting out at an awkward angle, and one of his shoulders pulled hard under his side. Hey, if that’s comfortable for him, I thought. More power to him. I watched him sleep for a long time.
Whatever was going on at school, whatever was the reason that his teacher was writing me emails, I would worry about it in the morning. I didn’t have to think about any of that. I had to make sure that I was up in time to make sure that Charlie was in school in the morning, and I had to make sure that I was in class half an hour later.
Everything else, other than those two facts, was relative. I closed my eyes. My head was starting to hurt from tiredness, and I was finally starting to feel the energy ebbing from my body. Maybe I could finally sleep.
I laid down, and closed my eyes, and within only a few moments I could feel my breath coming shallower, and my mind stopped drifting. I didn’t have anything to worry about. Not really. Not with Charlie being safe and sound.
The world went black around me, and I faded off into sleep. A sleep that would have ended five hours later, when my alarm went off, if it weren’t for the sound of music pumping out of it a moment later.
I reached for it to turn the music off, however it had started. When I turned it over, though, I realized that it wasn’t music. That was my ringtone, and it was my ring-tone for only one person. I flicked the button to answer.
“Diana?”
“Is this Laura?” It wasn’t her voice, and then I was completely awake and alert again. It was going to be a long night.
Nine
Dave
The rental car had a nice feature where it told me the radio station that it had been tuned to at all times, rather than ever telling me the time. It was convenient, because it allowed me to go home without knowing what time it was, except that it was certainly not eight forty-five.
I got back to Mom’s house without too much trouble. It was only a few miles, and I could have easily walked it. I could have probably run it without breaking out in a proper sweat. But I drove because one of these days, it was going to be getting real cold, and I wasn’t going to get caught out at nine at night with no real coat on and no car.
The lights were still on inside when I got there, and I let out a long breath. Mom was either waiting up for me when I got home, which was a mistake, or she hadn’t bothered to turn off the lights, which was startlingly like her.
I took a deep breath and hoped I didn’t smell too much like sex. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to discuss it, particularly when I wasn’t even sure what I was supposed to think, never mind what I was going to do in the long run.
“I guess that’s that,” I said softly. Then I pushed the door open, rose tiredly to my feet, and tried to prepare myself for the fact that I was going to be spending another night on the couch. That bed had been good for more than just fucking, I tell you.
I fished the borrowed ring of keys out of my pocket, and then check the door. It wasn’t locked. It rarely was when I lived here, and I guess it rarely was after I left.
The TV is still running. I pick up the remote to shut it off and step further into the house. With the television off, it’s silent. Stepping further in worries me. There’s something that feels wrong as I move through.
It wasn’t until I hit the kitchen that I find out what was giving me the bad feeling. It was because I should worry. My mind started racing and I stared doing three things all at once. As a result I ended up on my knees, my phone clutched in one hand uselessly, as I shook my mother’s shoulder.
“Mom?”
She doesn’t move. I start feeling for a pulse as I pull her up into my lap. There is one. It’s worryingly faint, but it is there, and sometimes that’s what you have to hope for, I guess. I pull the phone to my ear and dial the emergency number. It rings once before going through.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
I told her what I could about Mom’s condition, give her the address from memory and my name. They’re dispatching an ambulance, she said, and it’ll be ten minutes. Could I stay on the line? I told her that I could.
But the truth was that I wasn’t listening. Some part of my mind was processing the questions and answering automatically, but mostly I was thinking about whether or not she was breathing, whether or not she was going to be alright.
I could see her chest rising and falling gently. My next step was to look and make sure that she wasn’t hurt badly. Any visible injuries? No blood on the floor, which meant that there wasn’t likely to be any blood anywhere else.
There was a bruise, though, dark and ugly, on her face. I didn’t dare to touch it. A foot back was a doorknob and I had a sneaking suspicion that she’d become closer-acquainted with it than I would have liked.
I sucked in a breath and tried to stay calm. The ambulance would be here any second. When they did arrive it was anything but subtle. Anyone on the street would have known that something happened. They brought in a stretcher and lifted her up onto it. I watched the whole thing from a strangely detached perspective, like the whole thing was a movie playing out in front of me.
I played through the other parts in my mind, too. Walking in, thinking that I was in for an awkward conversation. That was stupid of me. Even selfish. I never really understood Mom or Dad. They were a mystery to me, except that I knew that I wasn’t a terribly good son and that wasn’t something I could change easily.
I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes and for the first time in almost twenty years, I prayed to God. And then, as I drove down the street, I saw a vision pass before my eyes of a car slamming into my side as I followed behind the ambulance a ways.
It didn’t hurt, but the rental car spun in the street and slammed the other side hard into a light pole, and my vision went dim as the only thought that I could feel clearly in my mind repeated softly:
I should have gotten the rental insurance.
Then the world went quiet, and I stopped having any awareness of what was happening at all.
Ten
Laura
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Whatever it was, it wasn’t nice. It wasn’t anything, if I’m being really honest. I looked through the door into the hospital room as I passed, and I saw nothing but the foot of a bed. There was nothing to see, not without going inside. That’s how it’s designed. For privacy.
One day after I’d slept with Dave for the second time in my life, this happened. More than that, one hour after. And some time during the night, Diana, too? I twisted up my stomach and thought about trying to go in. They said at the nurse’s station that they thought he was awake.
It was a long time ago, when we’d done it the first time. A long time, and a lot of things had been going through my head. From the way that he’d been acting, not much was going through his. At least, not much that I could tell. Not much related to me, that was for sure.
Presumably that had been intentional, given the smell on his breath, but I didn’t want to stop myself. So I did what I could, and took what I could get, and I didn’t talk to him about it afterward.
Now here we were, almost a decade later, and I have to wonder. Do I talk to him about it this time, either? It’s a tempting idea, not talking. I could just walk away from the whole thing again. And then he would walk away, too, and we’d both be whatever we were before he came back.
I took a deep breath, and then I walked away. There was always going to be another chance to figure this stuff out. And besides, I had to check on Diana at some point. She was the one in worse condition, either way.
She was propped up on the bed when I came in. She eyed me sidelong as I came in, as if I’d done something to her. Or as if she were thinking about what I might have done to her, at least. But I hadn’t done anything.
When I came in, though, I realized that it wasn’t sidelong. Her eyes just followed me as I moved, but her head didn’t. My lips pressed together to hide whatever pain was showing on my face, because I didn’t have any right to be taking things personally. It wasn’t as if she were my mother, and it wasn’t as if it were me who was the one injured.
“You okay?”
Her head inclined slightly, and then straightened. If I weren’t in a hospital, worrying about whether or not she’s going to be alright at all, I might not have noticed the movement. But I did.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t be here. I should be with Dave, talking about what we’d done. But instead I was in here, and I had already made my decision. I just hadn’t realized when I did it that I was choosing between two situations that would hurt, and I wouldn’t be able to bear either of them.
“Um…” I screwed up my eyebrows in thought, hoping I could find something to talk about. Something to think about, even, other than the constant questions of whether or not she was going to recover from something like this. “Charlie, uh… He’s got a test today. Math, I think. I was never that good at math. But he’s smart, you know? I go through the homework with him, and it’s not like I can’t, uh, manage, but when I was his age? Doing that kind of stuff?”
I managed a shaky smile, but I can tell that I wouldn’t convince anyone. Her expression moves slowly, and worse than that, it only moves on one side. A halfway smile. She manages to make it almost, on the right side of her face, to being a neutral expression. Then she holds it there.
