Ripple Effects

by Greene, L. J.

  He’s right about this. I have been called Barbie from time to time in my life, and I always hated it. Mattel can make Barbie a veterinarian or an astronaut or a brain surgeon for that matter, but when people think of Barbie, they only think of one thing: a blonde with big boobs.

  Period.

  But something about what he’s just said makes me oddly happy. I hate being thought of as a Barbie, but the idea of being Barbie to his Ken is something I strangely don’t seem to mind. And the thought that this …whatever this is…could extend beyond this night, beyond this bed, and out into the bigger circle of our friends and acquaintances, makes my heart skip a beat. I have to shut the thought down. It’s feels too dangerous.

  I look away from his face, needing distance, needing space to rein in my wayward thoughts.

  “What’s your favorite food?” I quietly change the subject, as I watch my fingertips skip over the taught muscles of his abdomen.

  “Your breasts,” he replies, smiling warmly at me.

  I look up at his face. “Breasts are not food.”

  “I’m pretty sure I could live on your breasts alone,” he insists appreciatively. “Put a little key lime pie on there and fuuuuck…”

  His eyes roll back in mock ecstasy.

  I can’t help myself–I sniff out a laugh, shaking my head. But when I meet his eyes again, the joke is gone, and there is real heat there. I feel it acutely between my legs and my smile fades, replaced with renewed desire for this beautiful man.

  He reaches out and runs his thumb across my bottom lip, and down my throat to the sensitive peak of my nipple, his hand cupping and palming my breast.

  Then he moves closer, and I can feel him hard as stone between us, his erection pressing into my thigh as he nips at my earlobe, licking and sucking at my neck.

  “Hungry?” I whisper, breathless.

  “Famished.”

  And just like that, I’m lost.

  §

  After two rounds of the most phenomenal sex, I must have drifted off to sleep for I don’t know how long. I awaken when I feel the bed shift, and have the immediate thought that perhaps Danny is ready for me to leave. I’m not sure exactly what the protocol is here–it’s been a while since I dated anyone.

  But as though answering my thoughts, he wraps his arm around me from behind, kissing my shoulder gently. “I have a surprise for you, if you can stay longer. But you have to get up for it.”

  I turn to face him, and, in the dimly lit room, his warm eyes look almost golden. He strokes a thumb down my cheek, and looks at each of my features as though he’s cataloguing them.

  Then he rises from the bed, giving me my first full view of his athletic body. It’s a stunning achievement in fitness and beauty. His broad torso is cut within an ounce of his life, right down to the sexy V at his groin. There is not one bit of excess flesh anywhere to be found–probably the result of a lifetime of healthy eating. His abs are perfectly defined (the man must do millions of sit-ups), and his arms and legs are long and muscular. The ache between my legs can attest to both his ample package, and his prowess in using it. Even his ass is perfect. I still can’t believe I just slept with this man.

  Twice.

  He pulls on a pair of grey sweats, and removes a green and navy plaid flannel shirt from the closet, laying it on the bed beside me.

  With an impish grin he says, “If you have any trouble with the buttons, let me know.”

  “You know, it’s not very gentlemanly to point out a woman’s misadventures,” I respond tartly.

  “You thought I was a gentleman?”

  He approaches the bed, leaning over to brace a hand on either side of my hips. His green eyes hold mine in an outrageously sexual way, while his tongue peeks out to stroke his lower lip.

  “If I haven’t divested you of that notion yet, we are clearly not done here.”

  The role of ‘Sarah’ is now being played by a barn owl, wide-eyed and blinking. For the record, I am very much okay with not being done here.

  He laughs at my expression, and then sits on the edge of the bed, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Use anything you need in the bathroom, and meet me in the living room in five minutes.”

  He smiles a big boyish smile, kisses my forehead, and walks out of the room.

  I just watch him go, snuggling deeper into the soft white jersey sheets, and pillow-y grey comforter. I could get used to being here, and that scares me. What I feel for him so quickly scares me that much more. This whole night feels dreamlike, and I’m not ready for it to be over just yet.

  I can hear him in the kitchen, so I put his shirt on, and breathe in the now-familiar scent of his laundry detergent. The flannel is warm and comfy and I’m swimming in it, which feels sexy. I head into the bathroom and gasp at the sight in the mirror. My hair is rioting all over my head, and my lips are swollen–clearly not my best look. But I root around in his cabinets, finding a hairbrush, some toothpaste and some ChapStick, and decide that’s about as good as it’s going to get.

  When I enter the living room, Danny is kneeling in front of the fireplace, lighting a fire. The soft light casts alluring shadows across his muscular back.

  He turns when he hears me, standing, with a book of matches lightly in his grasp.

  “You look stunning right now.”

  Again, it’s all in his eyes. I don’t even need to question his sincerity.

  A good-sized cardboard box is sitting upside down on the coffee table, and on it, drawn in a black marker, is a picture of two stick figures holding hands. The girl, presumably me by the long hair, is sporting a triangle dress and giant bow on her head. The boy, I’m guessing that’s Danny, is naked, and sporting a giant erect penis.

  Of course, he is.

  “You’re an artist as well, I can see.”

  “Yes. Photo realism is my specialty.”

  I smile. “Is this my surprise?”

  He nods. “Lift it up. Carefully.”

  I lift the box to find what must be a three-layer cake on a clear glass plate. The cake is covered in swirls of chocolate frosting, and decorated with those hard sugar letters that spell out my name. I honestly don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t this.

  Something about the gesture is so sweet and thoughtful that, embarrassingly, my eyes well up with tears for no apparent reason.

  His face falls instantly, and he quickly strides over, pulling me into his arms.

  “I didn’t mean to make you cry, sweetness.” He fits my head just under his chin, and kisses my hair.

  “The letters are lavender. Did you know that’s my favorite color?”

  “You told me at The Cliffs, remember?” I don’t remember. But it would be just like him to make a note of something like that.

  “It’s amazing.”

  “Wait until you taste it–it’s a family recipe.”

  He brings me another glass of red wine, and slices us a large piece of the decadent chocolate cake to share, as we sit on the floor in front of the fire. I’m good for a few bites but, just as much, I enjoy watching his boyish pleasure in efficiently polishing off the rest single-handedly, then neatly scraping up the remaining frosting with the side of his fork.

  We’re sitting side by side against the couch, the sleeve of my shirt just touching his bare, sculpted arm. And the way the firelight illuminates every curve of his upper body makes him look like a work of art.

  “Did you ever want to be anything else, before you became a teacher?”

  “Well,” he pauses for a moment, looking up in thought. “I considered astrophysics for a while. That would have been a great job. The universe is mind-blowing, don’t you think?”

  He turns to me more directly, leaning his head against his fist with an elbow on the couch. The wonder in his face makes me smile.

  “I do.” Though I imagine if I saw the world through his eyes, it would be that much more astonishing; I’ve never met anyone so taken by the miracle of
it all.

  “If I could meet anyone today, it would be Neil DeGrasse Tyson,” he tells me. “Can you imagine the conversations you could have with that guy? It might be embarrassing, though. I might go all fan-girl on him.” He laughs to himself, and then leans forward to toss another small log on our fire.

  “So why didn’t you become an astrophysicist?”

  I lose him for a second to a memory.

  “I had a teacher once,” he says simply. “A Spanish teacher in high school. He made me want to teach.”

  “A Spanish teacher made you want to teach biology?”

  He laughs. “In a round about way, yes. I was a sophomore, and it was just after mid-semester finals. We’d gotten our AP chem tests back, and I actually failed mine. A legitimate F, mind you. I freaked. I was a straight-A student, Sarah, so this was end-of-world stuff for me. Plus, I knew my dad would have my ass on a platter if he found out,” he says, remembering. “And, you know, that was around the time when we were all starting to think about colleges and where we wanted to go, and I worked myself up into thinking that I’d just blown any chances of getting in somewhere good.”

  “With one test?” I ask, disbelieving.

  “You were a teenager once,” he chides, with a glint in his eye that suggests he does remember the sullen, college-obsessed teen that I once was.

  He picks up my hand, and holds it in his lap, running his fingertips over the lines of my palm.

  “Anyway, I walked around campus for a while, just reeling from the shock of it, and feeling like I was going to puke. But finally, I showed up to Spanish–really late, and still pretty distressed. And Señor Lindo, that was his name; he was this older guy–towards the end of his career, I think. He called me up to his desk, and asked me what was going on. I was embarrassed to tell him, but he insisted. And when I finished, he just looked at me for a moment, and then said, in the most authoritative way, that I had no reason to worry. He said that he had a strong sense about me–a premonition, he called it–that I would go on in my life to do an amazing thing.”

  “What was the amazing thing?”

  “Point being–he wouldn’t tell me. He said that he didn’t want to influence my path by saying, and he knew that I’d find it on my own. But he asked me to keep in touch after I graduated because he couldn’t wait to see how my life turned out.”

  Danny looks down, pausing from the story to wipe a few stray ashes off of his sweatpants. When he glances back up, the significance of the memory glows in his face.

  “Looking back on it, it sounds corny, right? But at sixteen, I thought it was true. And it made me feel so much better. All of the sudden, the world wasn’t ending, and I could imagine getting beyond this and going on to achieve something great. He gave me that. He could have been a dick about my being late. Or he could have ignored the state I was in, and just went back to his lesson. But instead, he offered me exactly what I needed to hear–he helped me find some perspective on my failure. So, it didn’t really matter if it was true or it wasn’t–it was one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me. And it made me want to have a career where I could have such an impact, too.”

  Danny brushes the last thought off in his very modest way, but, to me, it speaks volumes about him as a person.

  “What a beautiful story.” My voice is steady, but a little thick. “Thank you for telling me that.”

  He smiles. “Every so often I get to have those kinds of moments with a student. I imagine you have them, too, in your line of work.”

  He looks at me in a way that tells me he knows exactly why we both chose low-paying careers of little prestige. And it’s one of the most intimate looks I have ever experienced. One of complete understanding.

  “Kind of priceless, actually.”

  Danny smiles, and nods in agreement.

  Then he sets the plate on the table, and pulls me with him onto the couch, lifting me to sit sideways across his lap. He settles me comfortably against his chest.

  Taking my head in his hands, he very gently kisses my lips, whispering how happy I make him, and how good it feels to have me here. Those words, spoken in his raspy, soothing voice, fill me with unexpected pleasure. I snuggle into him, leaning my head against his fire-warmed shoulder, and breathing in his masculine scent.

  It’s as if we’ve done this a thousand times–like something about him is so familiar that I instinctively feel at home in his arms. I bend to kiss his nipple, circling my tongue around the flat, sensitive disk. He takes a sharp breath in, and I feel him harden beneath me.

  I wasn’t expecting us to have sex again tonight after two satisfying rounds, but suddenly I ache to be closer to him, to show him in every way how being with him makes me feel.

  When I lift my gaze to his face, his eyes are focused on mine. In the firelight, they look golden again. He’s so beautiful like this, so flesh and blood. He turns me to straddle him, lifting the flannel up and over my head. Then he runs his hands reverently from the curve of my waist up to my eager breasts, watching their slow progression.

  “Your body is perfection,” he murmurs, before leaning forward to pull one nipple into his mouth. And before long, I come apart again in his firm, capable hands.

  We sit together, our limbs tangled skin to skin for a long time, neither of us wanting to break the magic of the moment.

  “Stay with me tonight.”

  I’m so spent that I just revel in the deep timbre of his voice, and the odd feeling of belonging in his arms. The best I can do in response is nod.

  §

  I awaken the next morning alone.

  Danny’s bed is warm and comfortable, and the pillows smell like him. Stretching muscles that are sore from the previous nights’ exertions, I find myself smiling as I replay the evening in my head. It was an awesome night. But now what? I have no idea if this is just a rebound thing, or maybe he’s dating lots of other women right now. We haven’t exactly had that talk, but I’m sure a guy like him is not hard up for dates. The thought makes me feel a little self-conscious, and I have to remind myself that I am a modern woman, as capable of dating as the next person.

  I smell breakfast cooking and hear dishes being done, so I decide to take a quick shower, and freshen up before joining him. By the time I wander into the kitchen, wearing another of his shirts I pulled from the drawer, he’s sitting at the breakfast bar drinking coffee.

  “There you are. You were snoring so loudly, I thought you might sleep until next week.”

  He grins widely, standing to take me into his arms, and kisses me soundly before I can protest his rather ungallant observation. He’s in his sweats again, with just a white t-shirt, and he looks sleep rumpled and yummy.

  “Something smells great,” I tell him, very hungry all of the sudden, and eager to leave the topic of my snoring.

  “I’ll fix you a plate.” He returns to the bar with cheesy eggs, toast, fresh strawberries and turkey bacon. I raise an eyebrow at that one.

  “Turkey bacon?”

  “It could be worse,” he answers begrudgingly. That gets a laugh out of me.

  Sitting down at the bar, I realize just how sore I am. I’m not complaining; it’s the best kind of sore. Still, Danny takes notice, and his expression shifts in an instant.

  “Was what we did…too much?”

  “No, last night was really nice.”

  “It was really nice for me, too.” He reaches his hand out, as he seems to like to do, to push a strand of hair from my face, and run his finger down my cheek. “When can I see you again?”

  His tone erases any fears I have that this is just a one-night stand. I don’t know what to call it, but I’m pretty sure that neither of us is ready to move on just yet.

  “Wednesday? Do you want to come to my place for dinner?”

  He nods eagerly, eyes looking intently into mine. “Love to.”

  Chapter 8

  Danny

  I’M EARLY.

  I debate whether to go to the door fift
een minutes ahead of schedule, or sit in my car like a douche, and wait.

  Most women I know hate when a guy shows up early for a date, as much as they hate it when he’s late. Zero margin of error here. So, weighing my options, I decide to respond to a few emails on my cell, and then check Facebook to kill a little more time.

  Ten minutes early now. Screw it. I’m going in.

  Sarah’s apartment building is exactly what you’d think off-campus housing would look like. The complex is better than most but, clearly, no one lives here for too long, or puts too much effort into making the outside nice.

  I’m so far beyond that point in my life that I have a moment of weirdness about dating a college student. When she was at my house, everything felt natural. But, now, I wonder if being around framed posters and beat-up furniture will make me feel like a relic.

  I don’t want to think about it; instead, I grab the flowers and the wine, and head up.

  At the sound of the doorbell, Sarah answers, beautiful as always, but looking a little flustered. Yeah, women hate it when a guy is early.

  “Sorry,” I wince. “I kind of have a thing about punctuality. Sometimes I overachieve it.”

  She laughs. “Why does that not surprise me?”

  Inside, her place is small with standard finishes, but everything is clean and neat. And surprisingly, it doesn’t have a typical college-apartment feel.

  “I’ll have to give you the full tour later,” she says over her shoulder as she heads off to find a vase while I open the wine to breathe.

  “When is the sex god getting here?” Selene calls from a back room. I like her already.

  Sarah emerges with a vase, looking suspiciously pink in the cheeks, and a bit defiant.

  I smile at her, ready to give her shit, but before I can get a word out, she raises her eyebrows up halting me in my tracks.

  “She’s not talking about you. I have another sex god coming over later.”

  I laugh. “Another being the operative word.”

  I decide to keep her company while she starts the barbecue. She’s prepared a feast of marinated steak and vegetables to grill. And I’m great on the barbecue so this appears to be a win/win for everyone.