by A. L. Wood
Of course, it is, I don’t say that out loud because I don’t want him to hear how much I need him, how desperate I’ve been for his touch or how much I am in love with him.
I mumble my approval.
His fingers rub over me leisurely while he kisses me, he’s taking his time when I want him to rush.
Anson
She’s warm and wet down there, I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve read about it, even watched movies, but I hadn’t had the chance to touch a woman down there before so I didn’t know what to do. I just hope she likes the way I move my fingers against her, hope she likes the way I kiss her lips and neck.
I don’t want this to end quickly, but I know that we could be caught and she feels like she might be ready.
“Are you ready?” I ask because I need her permission. I want to know that she’s in this with me, that the need fills her too.
That she wants me back.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?
“Anson Blake, I am sure. More than sure,” she pauses to moan breathily, “Please,” she asks.
I kneel on the bed and help her slide her panties down her hips, she unhooks her bra which I am immensely grateful for because I don’t think I would’ve gotten it off her easily. I start to pull my briefs down but her hand over mine causes me to pause.
“Can I?” Lyrik asks me as she kneels on the bed too.
Our faces meet and instead of answering her, I kiss her. I plunge my hand into her hair and my tongue into her mouth. I throw every ounce of hesitation away in the kiss.
My self-doubt drowns between her lips.
My love escapes with each breath she pushes out.
Need consumes me with every swipe of her tongue.
Her hand slides into my briefs and she touches me, her hand envelops me gently and it’s more than enough to end this all right now. “I don’t think this will go on too much longer, I won’t be able to hold back. I wanted your first time to be the best so I’ll apologize now. I’m sorry Lyrik that this won’t be the best first time in the history of losing virginities, but I promise if you end up wanting to do it again, you will have the best second time in history.”
“It’s already the best first time, nothing can ruin that.”
“Thank you, for tonight, for giving yourself to me, for everything,” I tell her. Wanting her to know how much this moment means to me, how much I love her without actually saying the words.
“Thank you, too, for it all,” she replies right before pulling my briefs to my knees. I push myself off the bed, out of her grasp and let them fall to the floor. She tosses a condom my way and I manage to catch it, she falls onto the bed on her back completely naked and she’s simply breathtaking.
I slide the rubber over myself, place one hand on the bed near her shoulder while directing myself inside of her. “I think it might hurt you at first, but it should be okay after that. I’ll pause once I’m in. Let me know when you’re fine. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
I move slowly, sliding myself in. It feels tight, so tight and warm. She envelops me, I push forward breaking her barrier, then stop. I don’t move. I freeze in place breathing heavily. Forcing myself to not pull out and push back in, the feeling of her wrapped around me is all consuming.
It’s heaven.
My own kind of heaven.
I trace her jaw with my fingers, “Are you okay? I’ll stop if you want.”
“No. No, I’m fine. It’s fine, keep going.”
I kiss her.
I kiss her with all of me.
All of my love. With everything I’ve got I meet her lips, swirl my tongue inside of her mouth.
I pull out, then thrust back in.
My mouth doesn’t leave hers. My hands hold her neck, my fingers run through her hair.
I touch all of her and she touches all of me.
This would be the time that I tell her I love her.
But I don’t. I can’t.
It would change everything.
It would change us more than sex would.
We can both walk away from this knowing that it doesn’t go anywhere. That this stays right here, in this moment of time.
We know that sex is all it is. Emotions are out the window. This won’t change us.
Won’t change our friendship. We won’t let it.
But confessing my love for her, telling her that she’s the only person in the world that I care about, it would change us irrevocably.
I wouldn’t chase music because I’d want her love more than songs, more than our melody.
She wouldn’t chase nursing school because she’d want my love more than helping people.
Telling her that I love her would change our entire world, our present and our future would suffer.
Right now, isn’t our time.
Maybe one day we will have a time that I can confess that I want to spend the rest of my life loving her, but tonight isn’t that time.
Tonight, is about loving her with my body, about caring for her in a way that I might not ever be able to do.
Lyrik
Anson stares into my eyes as he moves in and out of me, it’s like he’s speaking to my soul. Words that I don’t understand yet, but I can feel all of them. I’m drowning in everything Anson. He takes my breath away and gives my life back with his.
I want to tell him how much I love him.
That when I told him years ago, I wasn’t lying, that I really felt that way and still do but tonight isn’t the right time.
He’s not ready to love me yet.
I’m not sure if he’ll ever be.
As much as it breaks my heart to admit that there’s a chance that day will never come, it’s what’s right.
I can’t force him to love me, to be with me.
I know there are things that he wants. He sees me as a hindrance to getting those things and maybe loving me would be.
I don’t want him to lose himself in me.
So, I choose to do what’s best.
I love him without saying the words.
I give him all of me with my body.
I meet his thrusts, I pull at his body and kiss the hell out of him.
Every word I don’t speak, I say with my tongue.
I say with my fingers tracing his spine, I say it with my eyes as I stare at him while he stares back.
I say it silently as I come.
I say it silently as he comes.
“That was…there are no words,” I say to Anson as he pulls his briefs back on while I find my clothing too.
“Yeah,” he sighs.
This is that awkward moment I was hoping to avoid. Do I stay or do I go?
Should I ask or just say goodnight?
As I stand at the end of his bed dressed in my usual bed garb he breaks the silence.
“Stay the night?”
“What if–”
“It’s not like we haven’t slept in the same bed before. My parents won’t say anything and yours won’t even notice.”
He didn’t mean for those words to sting, but they do all the same. My parents may be sober now, but they’re still so lost within themselves that I’m just background noise to them.
“True.” I comment while climbing back in his bed under the covers. I decide to lay facing away from him.
He shuts the light off and stills. I can hear him breathing, it’s all I can hear.
“Get over here,” he whispers in my ear.
I don’t want him to think that I expected anything more because truthfully, I didn’t. I knew what this was and what it would never be, but I turn into him all the same. He lifts his arm and I place my head in the shallow nook of his chest and shoulder. He wraps his arm around me and I fall asleep listening to his heart beat within his chest.
A heart that I want to be mine.
December 18th 2010
Anson
I’m awake, my eyes are still closed, but I pretend that I’m still un
conscious. Once my eyes are wide open, there’s no going back to this moment. It is what it is. It’ll be done. Lyrik sharing my bed in an intimate way won’t happen another time, she won’t be as close to me again as she is now. Our friendship will probably be weird for a few days, after that it’ll be like nothing happened and we’ll continue on as if we never shared a bed together naked.
It’s what I want, well, what I should want.
So, until then I’m going to keep my eyes closed, my breathing even and just feel.
Feel the way her head fits in such a perfect way on my chest, how it feels that she just belongs here. Feel how her heart beats against her chest near my ribs. How her breath doesn’t even smell and her hair does, nicely though.
Feel how her hand clenches my side, as if she never wants to let me go. Or how her legs fall neatly in between mine.
She belongs here with me.
But as soon as her beautiful eyes open I know that she’s going to slide out of my bed, out my window and into hers.
She won’t look back a second time.
This was just a means to an end.
Lyrik
I hope he’s not awake staring at me. Because that would just be weird.
But what if he is? Maybe he feels the same way I do…Shit. I can’t let myself go there. He’s not awake, he would’ve moved away from me or snuck out of the bed and downstairs to avoid me. After all, it is the morning after he fucked his best friend.
It has an embarrassing factor because now we’ve done it all. We’ve seen each other in the most intimate way and now we have to go back to being friends. Non-involved type of friends.
I keep my eyes closed so that I can enjoy the feel of him for one more minute. I know I have to leave and I will, but I want to listen to his heart beat, I want to smell him, feel him.
Feel how his arm cups my back and holds my body to his, how his chin meets the top of my head in the most perfect of ways and how he smells so damn good. Like cinnamon and spice and yes, everything nice with a hint of bad.
He’s my guy.
The one.
Just not right now.
With that I pull away from him slowly so as not to make a peep. I let his arm fall on the spot I was just in. I slide myself off his bed, find my shoes and hop out his window onto the thick tree branch.
I pause, to stare back at him.
To stare back at the man that I love with everything I’ve got.
The same man who I dream one day loves me with everything that he’s got.
December 19th 2010
Dear Anson,
You’re being weird.
Shit. That won’t work. He’ll think I’m being clingy or something.
Dear Anson,
Please talk to me. I want us to go back to normal.
I crumple the letter in my hands yet again. This isn’t going to work.
June 12th 2011
Age: Nineteen
Anson
“I’m going to leave.”
“What? You can’t.”
“I have to Lyk. You know that I need to do this. I don’t care if anyone else supports me, but I have to have you on my side.”
Her lips form into a frown, I know she supports me, but I also know that with me leaving she’ll be left all alone.
Sure, she has family, but they’re not really there.
I can tell by her stance that she doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want to speak because as always for her, actually speaking means it’s done. There’s no room for negotiation.
Talking equals finality.
And while this is final, it’s what I’ve been dreaming about for years, I’ll give in this instance and write.
That’s where her words are spoken best.
I fall back onto her bed and grab at the notebook that I know is always tucked in between her bed and nightstand with a pen inserted in the spiral bounding.
Dear Lyrik,
You know I love you, right? You’re my best friend and you’ve known this is it for me.
I don’t want to leave you for such a long time, but you’re in nursing school. I’m barely floating by in college, going after a degree that my father wants. I need music as much as I need you and oxygen.
I need those three things to thrive.
So please, pretty fucking please be happy for me.
I can’t go without you’re support.
I’d stay if it meant that leaving would be saying goodbye to you.
Don’t be mad. Hug me.
A
I rip the letter out of the notebook and hand it to her. She stands beside the window, almost as if she’s preparing for an escape from her own bedroom. Her eyes meet mine, her knuckles white gripping the letter. The letter she doesn’t want to read.
If she doesn’t, I’m fully prepared to recite every word that I wrote out loud whether she wants to hear it or not. Maybe then she’d know how much she means to me, if she heard the emotion in my voice.
“Lyrik, read the damn letter, please,” my voice quivers.
She can’t say no.
She would try, maybe, but I know that she’s only ever wanted what’s best for me and she’s known that I love three things most in the world, she’s always number one.
My girl. But I would never want to choose.
Never want to give this opportunity up.
Lyrik
He’s got those eyes. The ones that you’re lucky enough to see once in your life. They stop you in your tracks and steal your breath. Those are Anson’s eyes. Rich navy blue with sprinkles of grey, an unbelievable shade. Maybe that’s why they stop you or maybe it’s because those eyes see right through you. He has some superhuman power that allows him to see what’s underneath the skin.
The kind of eyes that you’d miss if you never got the chance to stare into them again.
Or...if you wouldn’t be able to meet those eyes for an unspecified amount of time.
I’d feel that sense of loss.
I will feel it.
Once he leaves to go on tour.
He’s not headlining or anything, but it’s a beginning for him. An opportunity that I know he can’t pass up, not for me, not for anyone.
I can’t ask him to decline their invitation. He was lucky enough to be noticed on YouTube, where he has a channel that he uploads his covers and original songs on. Somehow, he was noticed by a big time band and they want him to join them on tour. He’d only get fifteen minute slots to warm the audience, but somewhere in one of those crowds could be the person who’d help him make it happen.
He needs more than local bar room shows to an audience of ten, he needs more than what our home can give him.
Anson sits on my bed and grabs my notebook, he writes a letter quickly and hands it to me. I accept the lined paper, I grip it tightly. Knowing that he knows words aren’t okay right now.
I have to process everything.
I have to process this.
What he’s asking of me, even knowing that I will always say yes, I have to let it linger in my mind before I can say it out loud.
Acceptance takes time.
I can’t accept change immediately, I’ve had enough unexpected change in my lifetime so if I can control what’s going to happen I will.
He knows this and doesn’t make fun of me. If that isn’t one more reason to love him I don’t know what is.
We have a standoff with our eyes.
The eyes that I’ll miss dearly.
Eyes who see me for me, always.
I read his letter.
It hurts my heart to know that when he wrote, “You know I love you, right?” He only means it in a platonic way. He loves me as much as he can as a friend.
He’s not in love with me.
But I’m in love with him.
All the way.
He hasn’t even told his parents. He still lives with them, opting to crash in his room versus a dorm where he’d have to ask his parents to pay for it and they’d tr
y to do some kind of bargaining to get him to do what they want. That’s the way with them. They use money to hold over his head, everything they do is with motive.
I get upset for him, but I would take that any day over being ignored.
Being a cast off, never having a sense of belonging.
He only cares about how I feel when it comes to making his own decisions. Fuck, I love him and I really don’t want to.
“Say something,” Anson blurts out.
I don’t want to say something, I want to tell him. I also don’t want to make him wait anxiously over what I’ll say. So, I take a deep breath.
“When do you leave?’
He smiles. One of those huge grand grins of happiness that not only lights his eyes but his entire being. From his short brown hair, all the way down his six foot two frame until it reaches his sneakered feet.
Happiness radiates off him, I can feel it.
Although all I feel inside is longing and future loneliness.
I smile back, merely a facade so that I don’t ruin this moment. His moment.
Anson
“Tomorrow. I have to leave tomorrow.”
Her smile falters for only a second so that I almost miss it. She should know by now how well I can read her. I’m aware of how her eyes avoid mine when she lies, not that she does it often, but it’s happened a time or two. I know how when she’s worrying over something she won’t talk. She gets lost inside of her head, mulling over whatever it is that’s bothering her.
She’ll go on like that for days, maybe even take a steaming hot shower hoping to wash that worry away. What she doesn’t know is that while she thinks talking about it will only add to her stress, it always calms her. I eventually pry her thoughts open. I guess at what she’s upset about and force her to talk it through. It always works, my first step and her last.
She doesn’t know that I watch her watch others and because of that I know she feels the pain and joy of others. She’ll see someone fall and cringe sadly or see someone jumping up and down in excitement and she’ll genuinely smile in happiness for them.
I also know that she’s had one of the hardest lives, but no one else would ever guess because she’s tough and she’s brave and everything that I’m not. She’s had everything taken from her, shelter, food, love, all of it and it has never deterred her path of helping others caring for others and loving. She’s one of the most loving humans and she doesn’t even know it. She has no idea how worthy she is of a better life. She doesn’t act like she’s owed anything, doesn’t expect others to do for her and hates pity. Which is why no one else knows of the life she has been dealt.
