Unveiling The Sky

by Jeannine Allison

  She let out a few steady breaths before speaking. “I can’t,” she whispered. She rolled onto her back at the same time I went to move over her, aligning us perfectly. Our mouths were like magnets as they fused together while our hands wandered over each other with greed.

  I slowly brought her tank top up as I slid my hands along her bare stomach. Alara quickly sat up and ripped it off before grabbing me by the neck and kissing me hard. I lost and found myself in her kisses as we leisurely made love with our mouths. Dizziness took over as we continued, refusing to break apart even for air.

  Finally, she tore her mouth away when she needed to catch her breath, but I wasted no time as I quickly made my way down her body, dropping soft kisses over her abdomen before reaching her warm center. I felt starved as I pulled off her pants, shoved her panties aside and sucked her clit into my mouth. As I drove two fingers inside her, her back bowed off the bed and her head rolled on the pillow. Pants and groans filled the room along with a string of profanities as I continued to drive her higher.

  “P-please.”

  I removed my mouth and slowed my fingers before lifting my head. “Please what?”

  “God, don’t stop,” she cried as she tugged my head back down. My chuckle quickly turned into a moan as she lifted her hips toward my mouth. I continued eating her out and she sighed as she tightly wrapped her legs around my shoulders. Within seconds my name filled the room and Alara was fisting the sheets as she came.

  Putting her underwear back in place, I settled over her once more and took my time kissing her down from her high, slowly rubbing her through the damp material. Alara started shoving my shoulders and mumbling. Panic clawed at my chest as I thought about her regretting this or wanting to stop.

  “Stop,” she mumbled, pushing my chest harder. I froze for a moment before quickly pulling back, preparing myself for her anger and guilt. But when I looked down into her eyes they were still filled with lust, and she was licking her lips as she stared at my bare chest. “Top,” she said more clearly. “I want to be on top.”

  Relief swamped me as I eagerly rolled over onto my back and Alara climbed on top, thrusting her tongue into my mouth. I gripped her hips and continued to rub my cotton-clad dick against her until she was moaning and gripping my shoulders. “Off. Everything off.” She quickly got up and shimmied out of her panties. By the time my boxers were kicked to the floor she was eagerly waiting at the end of the bed.

  “Condom.” My voice was hoarse as every soft, warm part of her pressed up against me. She smirked before reaching under her pillow and coming back with one.

  “Confident, were we?” I laughed but it quickly turned into a moan as she opened it with her teeth and rolled it on with just the right amount of pressure.

  “No,” she replied slowly as she positioned herself above me. “Hopeful.” Our gazes turned serious as we stared at each other and she lowered herself down on me.

  “You’re beautiful,” I whispered when I had filled her completely. She gave me a small smile as she leaned forward and kissed me slowly. And we were still except for our mouths for several minutes as we took our time exploring each other’s mouths. Slowly she started to move, and our lips broke apart as she sped up.

  “Shit. Alara, you feel good.”

  “Oh God…” she moaned as her eyes drifted shut.

  I gripped her hips, holding her still until she opened her eyes. “Keep them open,” I answered her unspoken question. With a nod, her hands gripped my shoulders as her eyes locked with mine and we started moving. Slowly at first, like we had all the time in the world. I reached up and linked her fingers with mine before resting them next to my head. Her eyes flared at the dominating position, and before I knew it something snapped and we were moving so fast it seemed the world would end any second. Alara’s breasts bounced wildly in my face as she rode me, and it took everything in me to hold out. Not trusting my control, I ripped one of my hands away and brought it to her center, allowing two fingers to furiously rub her clit.

  “G-Gabe…” Her hand squeezed mine as her inner muscles started strangling my cock. “Oh, God.” She met my thrusts with more vigor until she tumbled over, screaming her release and collapsing against me. Long moans tore through her throat and landed on my neck as she slowly descended from her orgasm. Frantic to follow, I flipped her over and caged her in with my forearms resting on either side of her head. Her body melted around mine, clearly sated and exhausted. My thrusts were careful and measured before she grabbed my face and brought our lips together in a fiery kiss despite her depleted breath.

  “Harder,” she panted. I slowed and glanced down at her, knowing she was truly spent and not wanting to be too rough. She smiled softly, letting me know that it was solely for me. God, I love her. Knowing it wouldn’t take me long anyways, I pounded into her hard and fast and sure enough, within a minute I was coming apart and panting into her neck as my heart rate steadied and my breathing quieted.

  After I cleaned up in the bathroom, I stood in front of the mirror for a few minutes trying to collect my thoughts. Shame clogged my throat. I didn’t feel drunk anymore, but I had been drinking, and some of the last things I’d said to her were lies spoken on drunken breath. And still she gave herself to me again. I didn’t deserve her, and the saddest fucking thing was she was always the one who thought she didn’t deserve me.

  Coming here tonight, staying here, sleeping with her… hell everything about tonight was a mistake. She deserved so much better; she deserved to know how much I loved her before I ever went there again. She deserved an apology and an explanation, even if deep down she already knew I hadn’t meant any of it. Shaking my head, I quietly opened the door and made my way back to bed to find Alara already passed out. I quickly pulled on my discarded boxers before leaning over to push the hair from her face and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. “I love you,” I whispered, knowing the words would fall on deaf ears, before slowly backing out of the room.

  I woke up gradually as memories from my dream last night played through my mind. Smiling, I opened my eyes and stretched as my back bowed off the bed. Only when my arm hit the cold sheets next to me did I remember last night was most definitely not a dream. Heart pounding, I jerked upright and frantically looked around while clutching the sheet to my still naked body.

  Waking up to an empty bed was surprisingly painful, but I tried to stay calm. Maybe he had something important to do and didn’t want to wake me. Maybe he’s in the bathroom. Maybe he’s in the kitchen. Maybe he left a note. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe…

  Or maybe that was breakup sex…

  Maybe you ignored him for too long…

  Maybe everything he said was closer to the truth than you know…

  I tried to quiet the cynical thoughts as I lay back down and closed my eyes, pulling deep breaths into my lungs. As if on cue my phone vibrated from my nightstand. I quickly grabbed it only to stare at it for a few minutes before daring to open it.

  Gabe: hey, I’m sorry I didn’t stay last night. I didn’t want to wake you up but I couldn’t stay

  Me: It’s okay.

  I shook my head, frustrated and confused. Before he could respond I started typing again.

  Me: Actually, it’s not okay. It was shitty. Why couldn’t you stay?

  Gabe: I know it was, I’m sorry. but I just…I couldn’t stay

  Gabe: this is a conversation we need to have in person, can I come over later?

  I hesitated; my thumb hovered above the keys and my eyes screwed shut. But we couldn’t avoid this any longer; we both deserved answers even if they sucked.

  Me: Sure.

  Gabe: I get off work at 3?

  Me: I’m home all day so come over whenever you want.

  Gabe: I’ll see you at 3:15

  I didn’t respond. I was glad he was anxious to see me, but that didn’t take away my nerves. I wanted to pretend I was unfazed. I wanted to pretend these past few months weren’t the best of my life and his words hadn’t destr
oyed me. I wanted all these things so that if he left me it wouldn’t hurt so much. I wanted… I wanted… I wanted. Those two words had been at the forefront of my brain for as long as I could remember. But I couldn’t just do what I wanted anymore. I had to do what I needed. And what I needed to do was tell him.

  I needed to tell him I loved him. I loved him more than I thought possible. Before Gabe I wasn’t sure I even knew what love was; honestly a part of me felt like I never would. But even now that I knew what love was, I still had no idea how to put it into words.

  I spent all afternoon going over and over all the things I wanted to say, but nothing quite seemed right. Nothing I came up with explained everything I felt for him, and I wanted to tell him everything. He deserved to know how much he did for me and how amazing he was. But I just didn’t know how.

  There are only twenty-six letters in the alphabet… twenty-six… and somehow I was supposed to figure out a way to arrange them in the perfect order and explain something I didn’t think words could possibly explain. And maybe that was the problem. I was expecting words to fix everything. I was expecting words to make everything better, when maybe I just needed to do more.

  Maybe I needed to say what I was feeling with no regards to how he might feel back. I might never be able to explain the true extent of my feelings, but surely doing something as out of my comfort zone as that, something as scary as admitting how I was feeling, would be proof enough?

  Because sometimes there were just no words for how you were feeling. Sometimes there was just a look or a touch and you knew everything. I sat there anxiously waiting for him as I continued to run down what I wanted to tell him, finally accepting that there was no perfect combination of twenty-six letters that could come close to describing how much I loved him. But hoping he’d understand, because he felt the same way.

  Looking at the clock, I saw it was five past three. I stood up from the couch I had been sitting on for the last thirty minutes and went to the kitchen for some water. After downing half the bottle, only two minutes had passed and I was still nervously twitching and staring at the clock.

  A few minutes later a knock echoed throughout the apartment. Slowly moving from the kitchen toward the door, I shook out my arms and bounced on my feet a couple of times. Don’t ask me why I was warming up like I was about to enter a boxing ring. It just seemed right, and surprisingly, it helped. I stopped in front of the door, taking a deep breath and counting to five as I held it in.

  Yes, he had broke my heart. But he wouldn’t have been able to do that if I didn’t love him as much as I did, if I hadn’t given him so much of me in the first place. And this past week without him was worse than anything he said to me that night. I guess that was how I decided to forgive him, because the pain of not being with him was worse than the pain of what he said. If I walked away now it would be out of nothing but my own fear.

  My sister always used to tell me that cowards don’t deserve to be in love, that loving someone meant opening yourself up in every way possible, even if it hurt you.

  And I deserved to be in love. I deserved it as much as anyone else and if I didn’t get it, at least I would know my cowardice wasn’t the thing that took it from me. I would know I gave it everything I could.

  I slowly let out the breath, along with all the fears I had been holding, and opened the door.

  She greeted me with a soft smile and an open door, two things I sure as hell didn’t deserve.

  “Hi.”

  “Hey.” She looked a little terrified as she gestured for me to come in. I made it only a couple of feet before I abruptly stopped and turned to face her. She jumped back a little.

  “Sorry.” I laughed nervously as I moved back as well.

  A furious blush overtook her face as she asked, “How are you?”

  I couldn’t respond; all I could do was stare at her and try to gather enough courage to tell her everything. After what felt like hours, but was probably only several minutes of agonizing silence, her eyes began to water as she looked at the ground. When she looked back up her eyes were closed and there were wet track marks on her cheeks.

  “Alara.” My voice broke.

  With a deep breath she opened her eyes, and in them I found a range of emotion so intense and varied it scared and thrilled me in equal measure.

  “I don’t… I don’t do this well. I h-hate being this v-v-vulnerable and unsure,” she choked out between sniffles and fought for breath, slowly losing her battle for composure.

  “I know. Let me—”

  “No.” She held up her hand and shook her head. “No, I need to do this without knowing what you’re thinking.” I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded, even though I had thousands of things to say and hundreds of apologies to issue. She wrung her hands in front of her and nervously paced back and forth.

  “You know, when I was a kid I always loved magic. Fairies, dragons, witches… really just about anything and everything to do with magic.”

  I smiled. “Yeah I could see that. You probably tried to sneak a peek at the tooth fairy or catch Santa coming down the chimney.”

  She laughed and started wiping tears from her face. “Oh my God, I totally did. I was relentless.” Our laughter settled and even though there was so much to say, the silence felt less strained than it did minutes ago.

  “I used to pretend magic was real and even after I found out otherwise, I still always hoped it was. And when I would watch a movie or TV show with magic in it, I could never understand why they freaked out when they discovered it. I mean it was so wonderful and could do these amazing things, I just… I didn’t get it.

  “So I promised myself that if I ever found out magic really did exist, I’d be curious, understanding, and excited—like I was when I thought magic was real. I wouldn’t run away like everyone else, it wouldn’t scare me.” She paused and looked at her bookshelf before returning her eyes to mine. “And as I’ve been thinking about… well, everything, I realized something. I realized that the closest thing I’ve ever felt to that was what I felt for you. Here was this beautiful and wondrous thing right in front of me, and I just kept running. Loving you is as close to magic as I’ll ever get, and I don’t want to be afraid of it.” My eyes widened at the unintentional delivery, but I kept my mouth shut. She kept her eyes on me as she slowly unwound her hands and wiped them on her pants. “I love you.” She shuffled forward, just a foot out of reach, and the rest flowed as freely as the tears streaming down her face.

  “I love the way you can’t seem to keep from touching me whenever I’m near you. I love how you tell me I’m beautiful whenever we’re… intimate.” I smiled as she blushed and coughed over the word. “I love that you won a dragon for Megan and that you lie to Naomi whenever she asks you if she’s good at singing.”

  She smiled shyly as she stepped a little closer. “It’s no secret that I don’t like going out or being around people very much, mainly just because they confuse me. But you help me make sense of this completely senseless world and the wonderful, but confusing people in it.” Swallowing hard, she put her hands on my cheeks as her lips trembled into a smile, and her next words came out in a whisper. “I love you because you help me love everything else.”

  My heart sped up and slowed down at her confession. All I wanted to do was grab her face and kiss her until we were both breathless, but the fear in her eyes kept me grounded.

  “My turn?”

  She looked even more nervous as she dropped her hands and took several steps away from me. “Yeah.”

  I took a deep breath and let out one of my greatest sins with it. “I’m sorry, Alara. You’ll never know how sorry I am for saying all those things. I know how it sounded—”

  “It’s—”

  I cut her off with a growl. “Do not fucking say okay or fine or any other variation of that. It absolutely is not okay. You deserve an apology and an explanation.”

  “You have every right to feel the way you do, Gabe. And the truth
is… you weren’t a hundred percent wrong. Honestly, you don’t need to explain—”

  “Yes, I sure the fuck do. Because even if I was right, any kind of right, I shouldn’t have been yelling or drunk.”

  She blew out a frustrated breath as some of her tears receded. “You’re right, it’s not okay. You shouldn’t have pretended if you never believed it. But I think I also just need to be more realistic about what to expect. I mean…” She trailed off as she walked over to sit down on the couch. “No one is going to understand this. No one is really going to believe me unless they’ve been through it.”

  “I believe you,” I said desperately, pleading with my eyes as much as my words for her to believe me. “I just… I don’t know how to help.” I gave her a sad smile and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear after I sat on the couch beside her.

  “I don’t know how to help,” I repeated and took a deep breath. “Because the truth is I don’t understand how you can be so sad, when seemingly you have everything you need to be happy.” I watched Alara’s face closely as I said each word, and I saw the second the words registered because her face crumbled and her shoulders sagged. Whoever said, sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me, clearly had no clue what they were talking about.

  She wasn’t hiding; she was just sitting there, taking all of this like it was something she deserved. Her head was tilted down as tears rolled off her cheeks and onto her hands. I rushed on because I couldn’t take the defeat in her expression, as if she knew what was coming when I knew she had no idea.

  “But that doesn’t matter because that’s not what you need.” My words forced her head back up with a snap; her eyebrows were puckered and her trembling lower lip was caught in her teeth. “You don’t need me to understand it. All you need is for me to be there and just love you. Maybe someday we’ll understand or maybe we’ll forever be in the dark, but either way it doesn’t matter. I wish I could say that if I could change anything, I would change the fact that you have depression. But I don’t think I can because the truth is, it has made you who you are and I love who you are. I love every part of you, even the part I hate.” I paused as her eyes widened and her mouth dropped at my confession.