He grabs me by the back of the neck with one hand, and he kisses me again. His other hand dips into the front of my pants. I lift my legs to wrap around his waist, moaning into his mouth as his fingers find me.
“I want you,” I argue.
“You have me,” he teases.
“You know what I mean,” I pant as his lips move downward, tracing my jaw before he latches onto one of my nipples.
“Fuck,” I groan, leaning back against the mirror, one hand flying out and knocking over the toothpaste holder as I try to hold myself upright.
The nozzle of the sink digs into my back, but I ignore how uncomfortable I am when his fingers enter me. My other hand holds his head to my chest as he moves from one breast to the next. Two fingers rock in and out of me as his thumb rubs my clit. I am so fucking turned on it doesn’t take long for that pressure to start building inside of me. I start begging for his cock, wanting to feel him explode inside of me. He laughs, promising I’ll get it before he bites down on my nipple.
My eyes roll back as I tighten around him, my whole body pulsing with pleasure.
He pulls his hands out of my pants and moves to lift me, freezing when he sees my back in the mirror. “Shit, Sawyer.”
I turn my head and watch his fingers dust the angry red grooves the faucet left from biting into my skin.
His eyes move to meet mine in the mirror. “Did I hurt you?”
I shake my head, reaching around to touch my back. I regret it when I wince. That’s going to leave a mark.
It serves as a definite mood killer for him, though. He gently lifts me, his hands are under me, my arms are around his neck, and he carries me to my room.
“I’m fine,” I insist as he softly sets me down.
He gives me a stern look. “I’m getting some ice.”
I ease myself onto my side and watch a still very naked Jared leave the room. Not fair, damn faucet. I could be having sex right now. I reach around to touch it again. It feels like a giant bruise brewing.
Jared comes back with some ice in a sandwich bag wrapped in a couple paper towels.
He lies down in front of me, facing me, and holds the bag to my back. He only stops, to grab a blanket to cover us both.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asks, giving me a chaste kiss.
I grin. “I can think of a couple things.”
He frowns, not amused. “Why didn’t you tell me I was hurting you?”
I put my hand on his chin, making sure he’s looking me in the eyes. “I didn’t feel a thing during, I swear.”
It’s his turn to grin. “Didn’t feel a thing?”
I push at his chest. “You know what I meant.”
The chill from the ice has numbed my back, but the blanket Jared grabbed isn’t keeping the chill from spreading. I shiver, and he shifts closer to me, the warmth from his naked body heating me. I rub my nose up and down on his neck and laugh when he starts shaking and goes almost rigid. I stop.
“Are you ticklish?” I gasp.
“Don’t,” he warns, failing to deny it.
My momentary excitement over learning this is paused by another violent shiver. “Can we take the ice off?” I plead.
He lifts the blanket and moves the ice from my back to look at it before nodding and setting the bag on the floor behind him. When he straightens back up, he pulls the blanket back over us and tugs me into his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers against my forehead.
“Stop that,” I snap. “It wasn’t like you did it on purpose. Plus, I know what’ll take my mind off my back being sore.” I halfheartedly attempt, knowing my odds of getting laid in my current perceived injured state is unlikely.
He takes the bait, though. “And what’s that?”
I grin up at him, hopeful. “You.”
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “You got me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I groan, knowing that probably came out wrong.
I know by the hurt expression he quickly masks.
I move my lips to his neck and slip one hand between us to stroke his cock. I hope that my actions will speak for me and smile as I feel him harden under my attention.
I wiggle out of my pants, and he doesn’t fight me when I push him until he lays flat on his back. The now unnecessary blanket slips from my shoulders and pools behind me as I straddle him.
“Are you sure?” he says, unable to disguise the want in his voice.
I wrap my fingers around him and slide them up and down his length, loving the way he hardens even more under my touch. I shift my weight onto my knees and position him under me before slowly easing down until he fills me. We groan together. I’ve missed this the last two days.
I lean down to kiss him as his hands coast up my legs to grip my ass. He grinds his hips against mine, and I feel every delicious inch of him inside me. I start to pull back to start my ride but still when he bites my lip. My eyes open and lock on to his as he releases my lip and slides his tongue over the place his teeth bit into me.
“Stay right there,” he orders, his hands circling around my waist.
He slowly lifts me, holding me up for a moment before pulling me down hard as he thrusts his hips up to meet me. I grip his biceps as he repeats this move over and over again, throwing my head back every time he slams into me. He sits up suddenly, my body moving with him. We’re both sitting now, face to face, our mouths only a breath apart. He still lifts and lowers me, only slower now. My hands slide up to rest on his shoulders.
I watch his eyes as he makes love to me. They tell me so much more than I already know. His eyes are like one of those trick pictures at the mall that you stare and stare at, trying to see the hidden picture. When you tilt your head just so and relax your eyes, when you just stop trying so hard, the image is revealed. In his unguarded eyes, I see how scared he is, but hopeful at the same time.
For me, it’s a responsibility I’m not ready for. The power he wields over my body is not as stubborn as that of my heart.
I come hard, vibrations echo throughout my limbs as my eyes close. Jared follows me, unable to withstand the pleasure of my body pulsing around him. Our first time without a condom adds an unexpected thrill when I feel him release inside me.
I open my eyes to his and open my mouth knowing I’ll probably say something stupid and somehow ruin this moment. He must know it too because his lips silence any words that might come out of mine. He leans me back down on my side and leaves me, his warmth quickly replaced by the chill in the room as I watch him walk out of the room.
He returns after just a moment, a washcloth in his hand. I watch, as he wipes off the inside of my thighs. I have never dated a guy who has done that. It’s so strangely intimate.
“You don’t have—” I move to get up, but he stops me.
“Let me.” He pauses, his hand hovering over me.
I relax back onto the pillow and let him take care of me. It feels foreign, letting someone take care of me. The caregiver is a role I have always sought out myself. I took care of Sarah when she was getting over Will. I took care of Will’s mom so he and Sarah could have a shot at being together again. This is new for me. He must sense my tension and shifts up to kiss my forehead before taking the washcloth back to the bathroom.
He comes back into the room, shifting me over so there is room to lie beside me. “I could live inside you,” he murmurs against the top of my head, “all day and all night for the rest of my life.”
I don’t say anything, but for the first time in my life, I imagine spending it with someone.
After a comfortable snuggle, we convince ourselves to get up and out of bed before we end up spending the day there. If we didn’t need to finish going through the house, I would consider it. Plus, I’m hungry.
After getting dressed, Jared heads straight to the kitchen to make us sandwiches while I go to my grandmother’s room. When I had stayed here, all those years ago, her room had been on the second floor. S
he must have moved it to the first floor so she wouldn’t have to deal with the stairs anymore.
It’s overcast outside, and even though it’s barely lunchtime, opening the curtains is not enough to dispel the gloom. I turn on the lamps on either side of her bed and the lamp across the room sitting atop her dresser. Her lamps surprise me. They seem almost whimsical and don’t fit the image of her that resides in my memories.
She had been cold, formal, and distant during those days. I was so young and had just lost both of my parents. I don’t remember her even attempting to comfort me. I remember more compassion from the social worker that drove me to the airport than from her.
I start with her wardrobe. Since this room is a converted den, there wasn’t a traditional closet in it, just a tall, oversized wooden wardrobe in one corner. It’s brimming with your standard New England fashions: L.L. Bean cardigans in fall colors, turtlenecks, and long woolen skirts.
Jared clears his throat when he walks in the room. I turn and watch as he crosses the room and sets a tray of food on a table in front of one of the windows.
“Ham or turkey?” he asks as I sink into a chair next to the table.
“Turkey sounds good, unless you wanted that,” I reply.
He turns the tray so the plate with the turkey sandwich is closer to me. I’m too hungry to wait for him and start while he pulls the bench at the end of her bed over to use as his seat.
I like watching him eat, always have. He always takes two bites and then a gulp of whatever he’s drinking, without fail. He looks around the room as he eats, and my eyes follow his eyes’ path. Other than the first day we were here, this is the first time we’ve been in this room, and even then, that first day all we did was open the door and peek inside. Both of Jared’s grandmothers are still living. I wonder if this room reminds him of them.
“Is it weird?” he asks after one bite and taking his second while he waits for me to answer.
My eyes sweep the room before settling on his. “I feel like I shouldn’t be here, like someone who knew her and cared about her should be going through her things.”
“You should have asked that lawyer dude to do it.”
I shake my head. “I thought,” I gulp down the disappointment that threatens before going on, “maybe I’d find more stuff that belonged to my parents.”
He reaches across the table to squeeze my shoulder.
I nod glumly. “Silver lining: Sarah and Will got a free dining room set.”
“And,” he smiles, “gotta admit that widow’s walk is pretty sweet.”
“It is a cool house,” I agree. “I just wish I felt—” I shake my hands, trying to figure out want I want to say. “I wish I felt like I belonged here somehow, like there’s something tying me here. It just feels like some stranger’s house.”
His eyes are soft pools of concern. I hurry to finish my sandwich and brush the crumbs off my pants to avoid his worried looks. Once I’m done, I go to her dresser because that part of the room is where my back will be toward him. I hear him quietly finish his lunch behind me.
There’s a small TV off to one side of her bed. I consider turning it on to discourage any more talking, but I don’t because I’d have to walk past him, and I’m pretty sure he’d try and hug me. I open and shut the first drawer loudly when I see it’s full of old-lady underwear. It didn’t cross my mind that I would be sorting hers.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
I wave at the wall in front of me. “Just old-lady panties.”
His chuckle makes my cheeks redden, and I’m relieved he can’t see my reaction. I ease the drawer open again. My plan is to take anything that isn’t clothes out and set on top of the dresser. Any clothes can be boxed and donated. My fingers brush across the velvet top of a small jewelry box. I pull it out, snapping it open to inspect its contents. A small emerald ring winks back at me. It's simple, pretty. I cave to the impulse to try it on.
“Hey, Sawyer.”
My head turns from admiring the ring on my finger to Jared as he holds up some papers.
“I think you should take a look at these,” he continues.
I start to take the ring off but stop when it refuses to breach my knuckle. “What is it?” I ask, crossing the room.
He had made three piles on her bed from items that must have come from the deep drawer of her bedside table.
“Did you live on a farm?” He holds up a picture of me with my parents.
I gasp, reaching for it. The same day they died, I was picked up by a social worker and didn’t have a chance to take anything with me, not that we had much. I hold the picture inches from my face in an effort to zoom in on the facial features of the two people who had brought me into this world. It had been so long that I had forgotten what they looked like. The sudden warmth and weight of Jared’s hand on my shoulder forces my eyes up to his.
“Are those—?”
I finish his question for him, my eyes racing back to their smiles, “My parents.”
I sink down to the floor, turning as my body nears it so my back rests against the side of her bed. The multicolored, braided rug beneath me offers little cushion.
The focus of the photo is us, my parents and I. We’re standing in front of a small red tractor. My blonde braids brush my shoulders. My mom and dad crouch down on either side of me, my mom’s hands gripping my waist. We smile in what looks like a happy, carefree way. I flip the photo over, my mouth drying at the revelation of script on the back.
Me and my girls, it read in what must be my father’s hand.
The date stamping imbedded is the year I turned nine. “Are there more?” I ask, flipping the picture back over, my eyes not leaving their faces.
The bed is pushed back a breath under Jared’s weight when he sits next to me. His hands are full of paper memories. We separate them into three piles: photos, letters and other paper documents, and the third pile is a leather bound journal. The smallest pile is of the photos. I decide to save that pile for last, wanting to dwell at length over each picture.
The largest pile is of all of the miscellaneous papers and letters she had saved. It overwhelms me so I start with the leather bound journal. Any expectation for flowery script or insight into who she is dies on the first page. Each entry reads like a checklist. Her first entry is dated 5.12.1984.
Each page is a laundry list-type step into the past. There are brief mentions of my mother early on. One entry, dated 12.16.1985, reads that she’s coming with my father to her house for Christmas. Another one, just after Christmas, reads what my parents had given her as a present: a sweater and an engagement announcement.
Each entry is devoid of emotion. There’s no reaction or personal investment from her in these entries. There are births, including my own, and deaths. These entries could have been a grocery list. An entry, dated 4.27.1992 documents our move to the farm.
I watch as her fingers trace over each entry in the journal. It’s as if a switch flips inside her. She’s subdued, pensive, sitting right in front of me but somehow miles away. Sawyer’s vulnerable.
All I want to do is to help her, be there for her. Instead, all I can do is quietly watch her deal with this on her own. This is Sawyer 101, and I hate it. This is when I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. One wrong word or move, and she’ll pull away.
I’m here, but she’s inside her head. I wish she would open up, vent, scream, or something. I know it bothers her that she never lived with her grandmother. I just don’t understand why it bothers her so much. Her grandmother was one person, and if she didn’t want Sawyer, she was an asshole. Plus, doesn’t Sawyer get that if she had grown up here; there might have been a chance we never would have met?
Does that even matter to her? Sure, her grandmother sucked. Sure, having to live with strangers wasn’t ideal, but it’s not as if she had to go to a foster home or something. It’s not like her grandmother completely relinquished custody of her. Who knows what might have happened to her if that had hap
pened.
We not only may have never met, but she could have ended up some place a whole lot more fucked up than that school in Canada. I know a kid from work who grew up in foster care. He didn’t get adopted until he was almost seventeen. He won’t talk about it, but I know he saw some fucked up shit growing up.
Can’t she just be happy that nothing like that ever happened to her? You can’t dwell. You can’t let this stuff make your life decisions for you. Bad stuff happens to everyone. There isn’t much we can do to control it. All you can do is live with the bad and try to relish the good.
I want her to admit what she has is good. That she deserves more good in life. We both do. Someday, maybe just our being together will be the start of good things for the both of us. In the end that’s all you can hope for, more good than bad. She just seems so far away. I don’t know how to reach her without pushing her even further away from me.
My earliest memories are of working on a farm. My parents had been free spirits. Our work on the farm hadn’t been manual labor in the sense of it being forced. It had been my parents’ choice.
The farm’s address is listed. I had known the farm was somewhere in Tennessee. Time had erased any other memories I had of its location. I can still remember the fields and orchard. We had apple, pear, and peach trees, not many, maybe ten of each. There were also fruit and vegetable gardens. We had some livestock, chickens for eggs, cows for milk, sheep for wool.
I used to joke that I had a free-range childhood, but in truth, I had. I was expected to help but still had plenty of free time to climb trees and play in the fields.
Hearing Jared clear his throat brings me back. I close her journal with a snap and lean my head back against the side of her bed, its wooden frame digging into my back.
“You okay?” His hand feels heavy on my knee.
I tilt my head to look at him. “You remember I lived on a farm. Before my parents died?”
I go on, “I was just thinking about it, the farm. I couldn’t remember the name of the town it was in.” I lift her journal. “It’s in here, the address. I wonder if it’s still even there.”
Sawyer Says Page 7
