“If this is the greeting I get, I may just go into the tent more often,” he jokes.
I laugh at his joke, but really it’s the tension of having thought he was dead just releasing from my lungs. Then I squeeze him tight with my whole body. I’m so happy to see him, that I practically suffocate him right back to death.
Before I get too excited about his return though, I’ve gotta make sure he gets through tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day he dies, and it’s up to me to stop it.
~
This time when we hike back down the hill in the morning, and he tells me that I’m quite the little ‘routard,’ I just say, “Thank you. I love backpacking.” We don’t talk about how he’s a Francophile, and his wife was French, and they got married quickly, or how next time he’ll do it right and let me plan it.
This time, he goes straight from my supposed love of backpacking, to mentioning how backpacking makes him horny. It is a natural segue, I guess.
“That’s nice,” is all I respond, still on a mission to get him home safe and alive, before today’s upcoming earthquake.
“It’s not a big deal,” John continues carefully, “but how much longer should I be expecting to wait?”
“Not long,” I reassure him, “Just until we have a commitment.”
He gasps audibly, and then tries to hide it by telling me he has the hiccups.
“So, uh, why?” he goes on, “I mean, you told me you’re not a virgin, right?”
“No. I used to do it. But lately I’ve just started to feel like it’s important to know that someone is really committed to you first.”
“You mean… marriage?”
“Ideally.”
“Marriage is a really long time to wait,” he protests.
“Not necessarily. Some people get married as early as four months into a relationship.” He doesn’t know that I know that he did, but I know, and so does he, so he can’t deny it.
“Yeah, that’s true,” he admits without actually admitting to anything.
“So we’re almost there!” I exclaim with a smile. “Our four month anniversary is around the corner!”
And that pretty much puts the kibosh on that conversation.
~
On the ride home from the trail, we have a lot of laughs, and I start to wonder if I made a mistake not sleeping with him. I mean, if this is his time and he’s gonna die today no matter what, this might have been my last chance to experience that particular form of ecstasy. And I really could’ve done it last night in the tent without risking throwing off the timing of it all. Then again, I would’ve still been risking my own peace of mind, because what if he does live through today, then decides that I slept with him too soon, and never calls me again. It really wasn’t as easy of a choice as it may seem. Anyway, saving his life is more important than any last minute, one-time pleasure I might selfishly want to indulge in.
When we pull up to my building it’s much earlier than it was last time. There is still sunlight in the sky, and the earthquake isn’t scheduled to hit for a good 29 minutes. That should be plenty of time for him to get home, but I can’t help but feel a little nervous that this could be the last time I will ever see him.
“We’re here,” he says, like last time, but the coldness in his voice has disappeared.
As he hands me my things from the trunk, I say, “Call me to let me know you got home safe, okay? It’s very, very, very important to me.”
He nods, in confused agreement. Then I kiss him intensely, like I’m never gonna see him again. It’s raw and deep, and it goes on for a little longer than it should considering we’re on a schedule, but I’m as nervous to let him out of my sight as I am that I’ll never have him in my sights again.
Ultimately, he gets so worked up and heated that he’s the one who kicks me to the curb.
“You’d better go,” he says.
If he has to die today, I hope he will at least have time to touch himself one last time, while thinking of our kiss.
I get out of the car feeling good about the fact that I did what I could, and I watch him drive off. Please let this work. Please let him live. Please, please, please!
Chapter 24
I’ve just finished rubbing the grime off of my body and slathering some smooth scented moisture back into it, when the earthquake hits. This time, I don’t run into my neighbors, my front door—which is locked from the inside—doesn’t swing open, and I don’t find myself struggling with my self-esteem, due to exposing my messy apartment. I simply hold tight, wait for the shaking to stop, and then take the wrapped towel off of my hair.
The phone rings. It’s John.
“John?” I ask, for once genuinely wanting to make sure it’s really him.
“Did you feel that?” he exclaims with a laugh, “I just walked into the house and it started shaking!”
“You’re home. You’re safe. This is amazing!”
“It was exciting, but it’s just an earthquake, Sam. How long did you say you’ve lived here?” he teases.
“That’s not the point. The point is—“ as I realize what the point is, I also realize that this is between me and myself. The point is that I have a superpower. I have the superpower of sex! This means I can have sex with John anytime I want! As often as I want! In fact I should! Because now I know that after I sleep with him, I can purposely set back time. That means I can fix anything!
“—the point is,” I continue, “we have to celebrate! And we should do it by having sex!”
“I’m not arguing, but I thought you didn’t believe in premarital sex.”
“Oh. Yeah. I don’t. But let’s just put that aside for tonight, and celebrate your safe arrival home by sleeping together! I’ll be right over! I mean, if you’re free. Are you free right now?”
“Hells, yeah, I’m free for that!”
“Good.” I hang up the phone, throw on some clothes, and run out the door. I don’t even have to put on my face because I’m just gonna wish this away as soon as it’s over, and he’s never even gonna know it happened.
~
John opens the door and I basically jump his bones. I hop up to straddle him before he even has a chance to close the front door. Then I smother him in passionate, sexually-charged kisses. It’s hot, it’s sloppy, it’s wet, and it’s loud. He stops for a moment, to look at me stupefied.
“Sorry, I just wanted to make sure I had the right girl.”
“Does this look right to you?” I rip off my shirt, exposing my bare breasts. I purposely wore a shirt I could tear off and no bra.
“Yeah,” he pants a little helplessly, “that looks very right to me.”
He seems to have lost control of his extremities, so I take over. I slide down his body like a pro on a pole. When my knees get close enough to reach the floor, I release them from their grip around his legs, and rest them on the hard wood. From there, I can get these constricting pants off of him, and make contact with the hard wood I’ve been lusting for.
He stumbles backwards a little, losing his balance. I assume from the lightheadedness caused by a girl, who hours earlier claimed a commitment to waiting for a commitment before sex, suddenly sticking his entire member into her mouth. Truth be told, I’m enjoying the control I have over him, and I know that the element of surprise is adding power to my position.
I lick him and play with him until his knees become weak, and buckle. He finds himself on the floor next to me. His hands race over my body, trying desperately to get off my pants. I planned for this, too. My pants have an elastic waistband, and a bra isn’t the only underwear I didn’t bother to put on.
I stretch his t-shirt over his head. I want him completely naked. Not a stitch of clothing to hide behind. He’s mine, today, and I’m taking him down.
I mount him and moan. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve felt anything this pleasurable. I have no restrictions, no walls, no insecurities. Everything I do with him is mine and only mine to have and to remember. I’m completely f
ree. I can have anything I want. I can try anything I want. I should try something crazy and wild that I’d normally be too embarrassed to do.
For a moment I can’t think of anything. And then it comes to me… I’ll talk dirty to him!
“You are so hot!” Okay, that’s not really dirty. That’s just a nice compliment. Let me try again.
“I want your big, throbbing weenie.” I just said “weenie” out loud during sex. That is so not hot. I’ve gotta do better.
“Oh, Johnny, you make me feel so wet and tingly from my brain to my kidneys!”
Wow, do I suck at this. I mean, I don’t even know if he goes by Johnny! And, yeah, kidneys aren’t sexy. But in my defense, he’s flipped me onto my side, and there’s something about the position we’re now in that’s causing his penis to bump into my kidneys, which kinda hurts a little.
Still, John is so focused on the act at hand that he doesn’t seem to notice the weirdness of my commentary, so I give the dirty-talk thing another go. After all, we’re on Samantha time now.
“Can you feel how bad I want you? My cooch is like that man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors. I’m eating you alive. Yum, yum, yum.” Okay, now, I’m actually starting to turn myself off. Maybe it’s time to put a moratorium on the dirty-talk.
I need to think of some way to get myself back into it. I liked when I was being the boss of him. I try that again. I flip him over, and grind myself against him, watching him writhe in pleasure. He’s still in it, which means he’s clearly been ignoring everything I’ve said in the last few minutes. Thank God! If ever there was a good time for a man to ignore what I have to say, this was it!
Watching him enjoying himself makes me feel powerful, which I’m realizing is more of a turn on than I should admit publicly.
I move my body against his slowly, feeling him inside me, up and down. Oh, yeah, that feels nice. I’m starting to come back around to his way of not-thinking. I see him getting close, so I race to the finish. Some men don’t realize that if we don’t finish first they become useless to us, and we don’t get to finish at all. In their defense, they probably realize that, but some of them don’t have the control. Still others of them just don’t care. I finish right on time to rest for a few seconds, sprawled across his body, before John’s animalistic moans remind me to push up so I can watch his face convulse and shudder from what I’ve done to him. He releases everything.
Yes, John, I did that to you. I made you lose all control. Now you know how I feel all the time around you.
We lay silently in each other’s arms. He squeezes my back, as if his hands were saying, “thank you.” We never make it out of the front entrance way.
When he finally regains his strength, he says, “I don’t know what has gotten into you, but I like it!”
“You got into me, baby.” That was kind of dirty. Why couldn’t I have said more stuff like that during sex?—not that I would ever say any of that sexy stuff if I was planning on letting him remember it.
Speaking of which, I hate to have to hump and jump but I’ve got some time-resetting to tend to.
“I wish I hadn’t had sex with him,” I say it out loud, just to be sure that it works.
“Why?” John asks, rightfully vexed.
“You’ll never know,” is all I have time to say before I close my eyes, lay back, and open them right as the earthquake hits me in my bathroom. I’m newly showered from after my hike, and before that messy sex act I partook in, not 30 seconds ago. Time travel may just be the best form of birth control I’ve discovered yet!
The phone rings. It’s John, who has no idea of the passionate love we just made. He has no idea how I took him, and turned him into a pile of helpless flesh covering his floors. Poor guy still thinks I’m waiting until marriage.
He tells me he’s home safe. I thank him for calling. And in an effort to learn from past mistakes, I make sure I’ve hung up the phone completely before squealing with joy! YES! I can have sex with him any time I want and he doesn’t have to know about it! I can have sex with him any way I want and he doesn’t have to know about it. I can turn back time, and rectify any mistakes, faux-pas, or mis-steps I might make with him, just by fucking his brains out! I can literally fix anything now! And I do.
It’s funny, you know, it’s not until you have the ability to fix your mistakes that you allow yourself to really pay attention to how many of them you make in a day. I guess it’s a defense mechanism we all have that allows us to do or say something stupid, and then immediately decide to forget about it forever, because we know we messed up, there’s nothing we can do to take it back, so why beat ourselves up over it? Doing that would only create one more miserable person—you—to add to the already pissed off person—whoever you stupidly offended with your mistake. I’ve found that the whole world runs more smoothly when more people in it are in a happy space rather than a depressed space. So I guess we’re all pretty justified in letting go of the little mistakes we make throughout our humanoid days.
For me though, that’s all changed. I’m not only noticing the mistakes I make, but I’m analyzing each one, assessing the damage that I might have caused. Is it long-term or passing? Would it be essential, in each instance, to turn back time, so that I could do it differently? These are the things I have to think about now.
For the most part, I find myself wanting to turn back time. On the surface it may seem like I tend toward that choice because I’m a natural born fixer, but underneath, it’s really because I’ll take any excuse I can get to have more sex with John.
So it comes in handy that I have this gift when I accidentally make John feel stupid in front of his co-workers, by joking that he’s acting borderline flirtatious with one of his gay patients. I know he’s just trying to have a warm and friendly bedside manner, but everyone near the nurses’ station chimes in, and next thing you know, I’m one-upping them by creating this made-up visual where they’re on a date together, trying to figure out who would be the top and who would be the bottom.
I admit that my joke was incredibly inappropriate, and I immediately wish I hadn’t said anything. But for once, I can make my wish come true. All I have to do is convince John to sleep with me, which despite his anger at me isn’t particularly hard, considering that he’s under the impression that we’ve been dating for five months with no sex whatsoever.
My gift also comes in handy the time John thinks I’m hitting on his brother, and as part of my defense I say, “I wasn’t flirting with your brother—for one thing, I find him repulsive!” I say this, of course, in front of the brother, his wife, and a checkout girl at the grocery store. I really do find his brother repulsive—mostly due to his money-obsessed, two-dimensional, entitled personality—and the fact that he totally pinched my butt in the cereal aisle. I didn’t want John to know that his married brother was trying to get physical with his girlfriend, whom he himself had yet to get past second base with, so I defended the both of us with my off-colored admission.
I end up telling John that waiting for sex had gotten me really edgy, and I offer up the idea that maybe if we just knock out a quickie in the hotel next door, I would feel more relaxed around his family. John doesn’t need too many excuses to have sex at this point.
My gift again comes in handy the time I crash his car, the time I brake his grandfather’s urn, the time I set off all the fire alarms in his house and smoke up his kitchen walls by burning our dinner, the time I delete a show he hadn’t watched on the DVR, the time I laugh so hard I throw up a little, the time I eat too many Brussels sprouts and fart in bed, the time John comes over unannounced and finds out how messy I keep my apartment, the time I beat him at backgammon, the time I’m five minutes late for our reservation, the time I have a piece of spinach in my teeth, and let’s face it, pretty much anytime I just feel too horny to wait all the way until marriage to have sex.
John and I have been together for eight long months now, but if you count all the do-overs I’ve taken, I’ve p
robably been seeing him for closer to a year’s worth of time. He thinks he’s held out all this time, which I’m frankly impressed with, because I’m not even sure I could’ve held out for much more than the amount of time I did—which was less than three months, if you don’t count the first date or the third date.
He married his last wife after four months, just to keep her in the country. I would think that at this point getting himself laid by his own girlfriend would start looking like just as good of a reason to give marriage another go.
John hasn’t said as much, but I’m starting to think that he’s just about ready to go shopping for that ring. Or at least, that’s the excuse I give to convince Henry to let me have a few days off, which I’m actually planning to use to go on a secret giant press tour with Marty.
~
“I know what this is about, Samantha,” Henry freaks me out by saying.
“You do?” On the one hand, if he knows I’ve been working with Marty on the side and he’s not firing me, that means he secretly approves of my work with Marty, and wants to see if I can pull it off. On the other hand, if he hasn’t fired me for going behind his back that probably means that he doesn’t know… Unless, he does know, and he’s just waiting to have solid proof of my illicit dealings, so he can fire me with concrete grounds for dismissal.
“Yeah, I know,” Henry tells me confidently. “You want these days off because you’re trying to weasel out of Brigman-Myers Conference, which we all know is the most boring three days of the year.” The Brigman-Myers Conference is a full three days focused on business accounting. The Brigman-Myers Group are clients, so we have to show up out of solidarity, but we don’t learn anything that applies to us there, and for the most part, we don’t even understand what they’re talking about. It is extremely boring, mostly unnecessary, and I always gain three pounds by the time I leave, because there’s a buffet in the greenroom, which is where we usually end up sneaking off to during the more tedious presentations. But honestly, I hadn’t realized that it was the same week as the press tour I scheduled for Marty.
How Long You Should Wait to Have Sex: a Novel Page 17
