Birthday Suit

by Lauren Blakely

  I shoot him a curious stare. I’m surprised he isn’t happier. “Gee, thanks. I’d nearly forgotten he was my ex’s best friend for ten years and counting. Want to tattoo on me that you don’t think I should get involved with him?”

  He stares at me down the bridge of his nose. “That’s not what I said, and you know it.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying this is big. Ocean-size big. This is the-sea-turned-purple-and-is-floating-with-sapphires big.”

  “Take me to your ocean, please.”

  He squeezes my arm. “Are you really falling for him?”

  My heart trampolines in my chest. “Yes. Falling like night falls, like waterfalls, like rainfalls.” But something gnaws at me, pokes its concerns into my shoulder. “But what about the three-legged stool analogy? Were we better as a three-legged stool?”

  “Maybe the three of you were good as the Three Musketeers. But I think sometimes you told yourself that you were a threesome. At the end of the day, you went home with only one person. When it comes to love, most of the time a pair of aces beats three of a kind.”

  That’s what I want to be with Leo—a pair. “So the analogy no longer applies.”

  “It no longer applies for many reasons. Most of all, now there are two, and two is something of a perfect number. What do you want the two of you to be?”

  That’s what I want to explore. “We’re still figuring it out, but something more than friends, for sure. A part of me thinks I should feel guilty, but I don’t. I don’t feel an ounce of guilt.”

  He holds up a hand to high-five. “Guilt is a terrible emotion. Guilt strangles you. Guilt wraps its horrible tentacles around you and squeezes away your joy. That’s a scientifically proven fact.”

  “Like, it’s been tested and verified?”

  “Absolutely. Studies show that being stymied by guilt makes music sound tinny, spicy food taste bland, and champagne go flat. You don’t want that, do you?”

  I shudder.

  “Guilt also makes it impossible to move forward. And you’re not someone who can’t move forward. Are you?”

  I shake my head, but even so, a slab of worry slams into my stomach. “But I’m scared.”

  “What are you scared of? Being with Leo? Because it sure sounds like he might feel the same way you do.”

  “I’m scared I’m still the same girl I was before.”

  “What girl was that?”

  I let all the fears spill from my mouth in a wild heap. “The poet, the dreamer, the one who listens to her heart, not her head. I’ve always been that girl. What if I haven’t changed? What if I haven’t learned? What if I’m still her?”

  Cameron runs a hand over my arm, comforting me. “Look at you in your emerald-green dress making truffles for a company called Heavenly. Telling your best friend not to wear Birkenstocks to the opera tonight. Listening to Corinne Bailey Rae as you make something decadently sweet. You’re a big red beating heart on the sleeve. You’re probably always going to be that woman. But is she such a bad person to be?”

  The image he paints is lovely, and I want to crawl into it, curl up, and live inside it. Still, worry is a superhero tonight, with super strength. “But shouldn’t I be someone who makes decisions with her head?”

  “Some people make decisions with their head, some with their gut, and some with their heart. If I look back on the last ten years of your life, I’d still see a fierce warrior. I’d see an iron strength. And I’d say, too, that your heart’s been in the right place.” He taps my sternum. “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to lead with your heart.”

  Mine thumps loudly, bursting with gratitude for my friend. “Have I mentioned I love you?”

  He winks. “A few times. Also, I love you just the way you are. And I think love is always worth a chance, even when you’ve already been through the fire.” He tilts his head, studying me. “But promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  He levels me with his gaze, a shade of intensity I’ve never seen before blazing across his eyes. “Don’t ever settle for second best. You wound up playing that part with your ex, and it’s a part you never knew you were going to have to take on. Hell, you weren’t even the understudy, but it’s the role you were unexpectedly cast in when his mistress became his true love.”

  My throat squeezes, tightening with tears. “I know.”

  “You stood by him. You helped him. But you were never his first. This time around? You deserve to be someone’s first and someone’s only. Got that, Lu?”

  I swallow the tears whole, lifting my chin, letting his strength fuel me. “I believe that.”

  After Cameron says good night, I finish the batch of truffles, singing along to the music, imagining the night unfolding, letting the riot in my heart lead me on.

  A little later, my phone pings with a note from Leo, telling me he’s outside.

  I’m buzzed with anticipation, floating on a cloud of possibility as I wipe my chocolate-covered hands on my red polka-dot apron and answer the door.

  29

  Leo

  If I looked back and listed the moments of the last twenty-four hours on a spreadsheet, detailing the specific points that led me here, like running a hand through wet, freshly-showered hair, adjusting my collar in the mirror, and putting on aftershave, I suppose I would have to start with choices.

  The choice to tell her I couldn't stop thinking about her.

  The choice to say yes when she invited me over.

  The choice to text with her earlier.

  But, truth be told, I suppose I’ve always known, if given the chance, I would do this. I would walk right into whatever opportunity she gave me.

  I leave my apartment, reach the shop, and text her that I’m here, wild anticipation curling through me.

  Seconds later, she comes into view, all green and curly blonde and bright, a splash of color and exuberance.

  She wears a smile like it’s a tattoo, and her smile jumps through the glass and lands in my hands.

  She opens the door, lets me in, then locks it. Grabbing my hand, she tugs me behind the counter to the back of the shop, out of sight of the windows. She sits me down in a chair, spins around like a whirling dervish, then hands me a tray with chocolates.

  “Try this.” A truffle meets my lips, and I take a bite. It melts on my tongue. Pineapple, coconut, and chocolate spread into my mouth, chased by a dash of I-have-a-secret-to-share-with-you. I groan in pleasure. “It’s delicious.”

  “I made it for you, birthday boy.”

  “So I get birthday chocolate from the chocolatier?”

  “Of course. You deserve all the sweets. But there are more at my place.”

  My place.

  The invitation hovers in the air, flashing like a billboard.

  “I bet this chocolate tastes good on your hands too.” I reach for her finger, and I lick the rest of the chocolate off. Her eyes seem to float closed, and when she opens them, she sways toward me. “Leo, you can’t do that in here.”

  “Why not?” I reach for another finger and lick the chocolate from that too, slowly, enjoying every inch of Lulu and sweetness.

  “Because it’s going to drive me too crazy.”

  “Is that what you want? To be driven crazy?”

  I draw one more finger to my mouth.

  She moans. “I think you know what I want.”

  “I do know.”

  My entire body is buzzed from this heady knowledge. It’s like I’m both living and watching this moment. The me that’s watching is staring in disbelief. The me that’s living it is thinking how it’s so much better than all those years of fantasies.

  And I want to live in the moment. The absolutely real and surreal moment of licking chocolate off Lulu. I stand, gesturing to her hair. “Take your hair down.”

  She unclips her locks. They fall in wild corkscrew curls around her face.

  “Take off your apron.”

  She does as
asked, setting it down on the counter behind her. “Do you want me to take off my dress?”

  I gaze heavenward. “Happy birthday to me.”

  She laughs. “So that’s a yes?”

  “It’s a yes, but not yet.”

  “Tell me what you want for your birthday. Tell me what I can give you.”

  My heart drums against my chest. It’s too big for my body. It occupies too much space. At last, I say words that I’ve held tight inside me for years. Words that I shoved down and vanquished.

  I cup her cheeks. “Give me you.”

  She trembles. “You can have me.”

  I savor the way those words sound. How they imprint on the air. At last, the hurricane of Lulu has made landfall, and I want to be in its eye.

  But even though I want her more than the world right now, last night weighs on me. I don’t want her to enter this—whatever it is—reluctantly.

  “You’re sure you’re not worried anymore about us working together, about your focus, about anything at all?”

  She presses her hands to my chest, and I sizzle from her touch. The more she touches me, the less I’ll be able to think logically. “I’m more worried about you walking out the door when I tell you I want to climb you like a tree.”

  Laughing, I clasp her hands and squeeze. “There will be no walking out.”

  She squeezes back, sealing a new promise—one between the two of us. “So can you handle it? That I want you? After all we’ve been through together? You can handle the fact that, somehow, we’re here now and all of sudden we have these crazy feelings for each other that can’t be denied?”

  I wince privately at those words—there is nothing sudden about my feelings for her. But she doesn’t need to know that. Come to think of it, I don’t think she wants to know that. I run the backs of my fingers over her jawline. “I’m pretty sure I can handle both the tree climbing and the way we want each other.”

  I reach for her hair, threading a hand through it, amazed at the softness of her curls, astonished that after all these years, I’m touching her the way I’ve longed to. I dip my head to her neck, inhaling her coconut scent, her sugar skin, her sweetness. I pull back to look her in her gloriously mismatched eyes. “But can you handle that I want you? That I feel this way for you? That I can’t stop thinking of you?”

  There. I don’t have to unpack a trunkful of old feelings. I can share the new ones and be just as truthful, if not more.

  She laughs. “Not only can I handle it, I want it.”

  I try to capture a mental snapshot of this moment, to record it for my own personal time capsule, because it’s shocking when all your darkest, dirtiest, most powerful dreams come true. It’s too much and it’s not enough at the same time.

  I hold her face. “I’ve been thinking all day about kissing you.”

  “Kiss me all night.”

  With that, I crush my lips to hers.

  Our kiss yesterday was an exploration. It was a curiosity, a test. This kiss is a declaration. It’s a written record of what’s in my heart. I’m kissing the woman I’ve been in love with for years, and who I’m falling in love with all over again.

  Only it feels like it’s the first time, because this time around, she’s mine.

  I kiss her hard, pouring all of those feelings into the way my lips consume hers. She kisses me back as if she’s falling in love with me too, and it is the most wondrous thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.

  I lift her up, wrap her legs around my hips, and bring her to the wall, pressing my body against her.

  I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of her lips. I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of her. I’m making up for so much lost time.

  Her tongue sweeps into my mouth, and her hands grab at my back and my shirt, untucking it from my jeans. “I want to touch you.”

  I’m lit up. “That can be arranged.”

  I set her down, and she runs her hands over my shirt, making quick work of the buttons, spreading open the fabric. She presses her hands against my chest.

  I hiss from pleasure as my brain crackles like an old radio tuning in signals from space. I groan from the stark and wonderful reality of Lulu touching me.

  I unzip the back of her dress, letting the little straps fall down her shoulders, exposing her pale skin and the freckles on her shoulder. Those coppery freckles—I’ve studied them surreptitiously. Every time she wore a strapless dress to a club, a bikini on the beach, or a top that sloped down.

  So often I’ve wanted to map them with my lips. Now I have the chance, so I do, savoring every moment of my lips on her skin, tracing her collarbone, traveling to the hollow of her throat, then blazing a path of kisses up her neck.

  Lulu moans and groans, stretching like a cat as I kiss her skin. This is new data that I file away. It belongs to me, how Lulu responds as I kiss her. How she sways and murmurs. How she trembles and shudders.

  Every move she makes unlocks me more. Makes me want to say something. To say everything.

  I’m in love with you, I want to tell her.

  I’m in love with you so much it’s absurd, but let’s be absurd together and kiss and fuck and love each other like it’s finally our time.

  I’m in love with you again, the second time around, and it’s like a tsunami. It’s pulling me under. Pulling me closer to you.

  I cup her jaw, bring her lips to mine, and kiss her because kissing her makes me shut up. It helps me swallow down those dangerous words. There’s no way I can tell her I was in love with her before.

  Focus.

  Focus on the here and now.

  I do that, kissing her as our hands feverishly explore each other. I tug down the top of her dress, exposing her bra then unhooking it, letting it fall to the floor of her chocolate shop.

  Breasts.

  Glorious, fantastic breasts.

  Breasts that I can touch and squeeze and knead.

  I take them in my hands, savoring the view of Lulu stretching her neck as she seems to revel in the sensation.

  “Take my dress off now, Leo.”

  Somebody bring me some water. I’m going to burn this chocolate shop down with the fire roaring in my body.

  I slide her dress down farther, until it’s an emerald linen heap. She’s wearing zebra panties, and they are the cutest, unsexiest panties I’ve ever seen. Laughter bursts from my throat as I stare at the striped horse on her crotch.

  “Is that a zebra or are you just happy to see me?”

  “Why don’t you find out how happy I am?”

  I run my hand over the fabric. “Zebra panties are officially the best thing ever.”

  “Wait till you see my dolphin undies.”

  “I’d like to get to know the whole safari and maritime collection.”

  She laughs, and here we are laughing as we touch each other’s bodies for the first time.

  I stop laughing as I cup her between her legs, feeling the dampness that’s soaked through the cotton panel where my fingers slide. I close my eyes for a moment because this is too much.

  My bones hum. My mind buzzes.

  Lulu wants this. Lulu wants me.

  As I glide my fingers across her, she moans, and I realize she’s not far off. That knowledge thrills me.

  I whisper in her ear, “Can I taste you?”

  She opens her eyes. “I was hoping you would.”

  “Is that so?”

  Her eyes are wild beacons of desire, shining with the neon words please, please, please. “Yes. Will you?”

  “You don’t have to ask. The answer for you is always yes.”

  I kneel on the tiles, pull down her panties, and help her step out of them. Raising my face, I look up, drinking in the sight of her naked body, her soft flesh, her trembling skin, and her desire.

  She glistens.

  For me.

  Only for me.

  As I kiss her inner thigh, she trembles.

  It hits me fantastically. That, right there. That tremble. That’
s for me too.

  I switch to her other thigh, and she rewards me with a shudder. I watch her, her breasts heaving, her hands rising up to her hair. She threads them through her locks, and it’s so fucking sensual it nearly breaks my resolve to make her come first, and many times.

  But my resolve is steel, and Lulu is melting under my mouth.

  I flick my tongue up her thigh, closer and closer.

  The sounds she makes should be illegal. Moans and groans of desire, so lustful, so heady, fall on my ears, and it’s no lie to say I’ve never been this turned on.

  Then I kiss her where she wants me most, and it’s everything.

  It’s all the things.

  It’s a storm, it’s the sky, it’s the moon.

  She cries out. “Oh my God, that’s soooo good.”

  That cry of pleasure? That belongs to my ears.

  That full-body shudder? It belongs to me.

  Her hands drop to my hair, curl around my head, and yank me close. “More, more,” she pants.

  Mine, mine, I think.

  As I flick my tongue across her wetness, all these sensations, all her reactions, go into a new memory bank in my head. I can drive Lulu crazy. I can make her feel this way.

  Every noise, every murmur, everything she’s doing right now is because of me, for me, and is mine alone.

  Maybe that makes me horribly selfish. But maybe that’s what I need to accept that this is finally happening.

  And it does happen.

  It doesn’t take Lulu long at all. I kiss her and lick her and devour her like she’s better than chocolate, better than pineapple, better than coconut. Because she is. Because she’s fucking Lulu Diamond, and she’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted and the person I’ve wanted most in my entire life. And she’s right here, wanting me as much as I want her.

  As I kiss her, she pulls me closer until she’s coming on my tongue, saying my name over and over. I’m in another world. Another realm. She tastes like heaven, and she sounds like every filthy dream I’ve ever had about her.

  She sounds like sex and love and desire and every wish I’ve ever had.

  I hold her hips, keeping her steady as I rise, recording the look of rapture on her face, how her lips are parted, how her breath is still coming fast.