Stuffed: A Thanksgiving Romance

by Jessica Gadziala

  It slammed through me just a short couple moments later, making my feet slam into his chest and he let out a grunt at the impact, but kept pounding into me through it all.

  As soon as the last wave moved out of me, his tense voice said oddly, "Want to see something cool?" he asked, then his cock pulled completely out of me and two fingers thrust inside, turning, and raking over my top wall, working my G-spot with expert precision, fast, almost frantic, until just maybe a minute later, another wave crashed through my system, making my entire body writhe on the bed, my cries a muffled sound against his hand.

  He smiled when my body relaxed and he slid back inside me, this time slowly, like he had all the time in the world. "That was three," he said, giving me a small, sweet smile. "I think I owe you one more."

  And then his body pressed down over mine. His hand moved from my mouth. "I want to hear you," he said quietly near my ear as he moved gently inside me, unhurried, sweet. Making love to me again and I had to bury my face in his neck, eyes closed tight against the tears that threatened.

  And as the fourth orgasm rolled through me, slow, deep, overwhelming to my system, my voice caught on a hitch as I cried out his name, two tears slipping down my cheeks as I held onto him while he tensed, murmured my name against my shoulder, and came with me.

  His body weight came down on me after, a welcome feeling as I struggled to pull myself back together because he had pulled me apart at my seams.

  We stayed that way for a long time after, him still inside me, the sweat drying, our hearts slowing, our breathing evening out.

  A while later, but way too soon, he shifted up, kissing me slow and deep for a long minute before sliding out of me and pulling his pants back up.

  "I'll be right back," he said and I knew he had to run downstairs to deal with the condom.

  Which was good.

  I needed a minute.

  Or an hour.

  Or what was left of my lifetime to pull myself back together.

  I took a few deep breaths, swatting at the tears, knowing there was a time and a place for them and that this was most definitely not it. I sat up, fetched my clothes and threw them into my suitcase, pulling out fresh ones- yoga pants and a heavy blue sweater, and slipping into them.

  I moved back onto my bed, climbing half under the covers and waiting.

  And waiting.

  And waiting.

  Just when I was starting to think he wasn't coming back, I heard footsteps on the stairs and then across the floor. Adam moved into the doorway, a white tee on where it hadn't been when he left, and two steaming cups in his hands.

  "If I am going to deprive you of sleep and then steal all your energy stores," he started with a cocky little grin that was way too sweet when sent in my direction, especially after having had my energy stores stolen from him an impossible four times, "I better caffeinate you."

  "Solid plan," I said, taking my tea from him and holding it between my hands, letting it burn into me slightly, letting that keep me grounded as he climbed into bed with me, sitting up against the headboard, our shoulders brushing.

  It was so casually intimate, so easy, like we had been doing it every morning for years.

  We stayed oddly, tensely silent though, both of us lost in our own thoughts for an uncomfortably long time before Adam finally broke it.

  "There's so much that needs to be said here," he said and I closed my eyes tight, taking a deep breath. "But I don't think anything we could say would change this."

  He was right.

  We could talk for hours about how much we wished we had more time, how it sucked that we lost the years, that it was nice to be able to come together, that it sucked that it was all there was for us.

  But all that wouldn't alter the fact that I had to leave, that I had a life to get back to, that all we had was one blissful, perfect holiday to look back on fondly.

  "Callie, come on down and get some food before your flight," my mother called from downstairs, perfectly timed because I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep it together while alone with him.

  "So it starts," Adam said and, if I wasn't mistaken, regret was plain in his voice as he climbed out of my bed.

  I climbed out too, going over to my suitcase and shoving the half-bursting contents back in so I could zip it. When I stood back up, Adam moved in and took it from me. "Thanks," I said, feeling a bit awkward as I turned to grab my messenger bag and purse.

  I stripped my bed and put the sheets in the hamper.

  When I moved toward the doorway, I looked back at my room with a feeling of longing.

  But I locked those feelings inside along with the love for Adam and the regret of years lost and told myself to only open that box up again when I felt strong enough to deal with them.

  Which might be never.

  And, hell, that worked for me too.

  Breakfast was eaten.

  Amy left.

  Then I said goodbye to my mother and brother as my father took my bags to the car.

  My mother, the keen woman she was, made up some lame reason to need to see my brother in the living room and pulled him out of the kitchen with her, the kitchen where Adam had been trying to catch my eye for half an hour and I had been trying really hard to avoid it.

  I was still studying my feet when I felt my cup pulled from my hands and heard it click down on the counter. Adam's body moved close to mine as his hands slid across my jaw to frame my face, tilting it up.

  I took a breath and let my eyes find his.

  His lips parted as though he was about to say something, but instead, he let his face lower and kissed me slow, soft.

  He kissed me goodbye.

  Then his forehead pressed into mine for a long moment.

  "I'll see you at Christmas, Pip," he told me, releasing my face, stepping away, then leaving the room.

  Adam never showed up for Christmas.

  But he planned to be there this year.

  For what? For me?

  Was I just some holiday fling to him now? Don't see me ninety-percent of the time but expect me to fall into bed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter?

  That, well, that was unacceptable if that was what he was thinking.

  Granted, a part of me, even a pretty large part, wanted him for whatever small piece of his life he would give me. But the other part knew that I couldn't handle that. I wouldn't survive an on and off soaring high followed by a crippling low when it was over again.

  "Cal, we're going to be late," my father said, startling me out of my thoughts, standing in the open back doorway.

  "Right," I said with a nod as I followed him out.

  I had a nice drive to the airport and a flight home to think and over-think and make myself half-sick about the whole situation before I made it back to my apartment, letting Albus out of his carrier, shaking my head at the dirty cat-look he sent me, and going into my room to unpack. If there was one thing I knew that helped ease some of my chronic obsessive thinking, it was keeping busy.

  So I took all my toiletries back to the bathroom.

  I grabbed a laundry basket for all my dirty clothes from the trip.

  I put my suitcase up on the bed and unzipped it.

  And it was then that I realized Adam hadn't taken my bag out of sheer chivalry.

  He took it because he had put something inside of it.

  And what did he put?

  A family size bag of plain potato chips.

  My ass hit my bed as a small sob escaped my lips.

  Then I did exactly what any woman in my situation would do; I devoured that entire bag of chips. And when that didn't quite seem to numb the pain, I tried half a gallon of ice cream.

  I showered.

  I slept in short spells.

  Then I tried to get on with my life.

  TEN

  Adam

  "Adam, get your head in the game, man," Cory demanded, waving his hand with the racquet out, frustrated with my preoccupation.

&nbs
p; We had been at the racquetball court for almost forty minutes and I had been lost in my own thoughts pretty much the entire time, making the very competitive Cory lose his patience with me.

  "Brought you here to get out of that shit mood of yours, not watch you drown in it."

  He was right.

  I had agreed to come because I knew that activity usually worked to clear my mind.

  It had been a week since I watched Callie drive away. Only after having her for a few days.

  And the overall feeling I had as she left was: not enough.

  I always kind of figured that if we finally gave into the unresolved feelings we had toward each other, that it would finally clear my mind of her. I always figured the way she hung around in the back of my mind was because it felt like a missed opportunity, the curiosity of the unknown.

  But now that I had both literally and figuratively gotten a taste, yeah, I found I needed more. I needed it all.

  I just couldn't have it.

  I remember reading something in philosophy class in college about how it was impossible to step into the same river twice, that opportunities lost were lost for good. At the time, the wisdom fell on deaf ears. But I truly understood the phrase after Callie walked back out of my life.

  I couldn't help but feel like we missed our shot.

  Her life was in D.C.

  My life was in Massachusetts.

  And we both deserved better than to just screw on the rare occasion we saw each other, no matter how strong the urge was.

  And the urge would be strong. Because sex with Callie was nothing like the sex I had had with other women in my life. It was more. It was, in an odd way, meaningful.

  "You gonna tell me what this is about?" Cory asked, dropping the racquet and leaning against the wall.

  "You don't want to know," I said honestly, dropping my own racquet and turning away from him.

  "This is about Callie, isn't it?"

  I stopped dead mid-stride, everything inside and out getting tense as I slowly turned. "What?"

  Cory's smile was slow and knowing as his head shook. "Please, Adam. I'm not blind. I'm pretty sure you stopped breathing when she walked into that kitchen. It was some straight out of a fairy tale shit."

  "Cor..." I said, running a hand across the back of my neck, knowing that if there was one rule of guy code you didn't screw with, it was the one about not putting your hands on your buddy's little sister.

  He shrugged his shoulder, giving me a small smile. "Man, she has had a thing for you since she was little. Figured you always saw her as a little sister until I saw your face when she walked into that kitchen the other day."

  "I know I should have..."

  "What? Asked for permission?" he asked, smiling big. "Callie is a big girl. She can make her own decisions." That was typical Cory- carefree, easy-going. "So I'm right. Callie has you being a moody shit. What happened?"

  "She left," I said before I could stop the words from coming out.

  His smile slowly fell, his gaze going to the floor for a second. "So this isn't some new development? You have feelings for her? I mean, aside from caring for her because you've known her your whole life."

  "Yeah, I have feelings for her."

  "Shit," he said, shaking his head. "This puts me in a weird position. Because, as your friend, I need to tell you that if you have finally found the woman who puts you in a shit mood for a week just because she's not around, that you'd be an idiot to not try to find a way to give it a shot. On the other hand, as her big brother, I feel the need to tell you that if you so much as bruise that sweet little nerdy heart of hers, that I will make you regret it."

  "I appreciate the support and you know I'd never hurt Cal. But fact of the matter is, Cor, we have two different lives."

  He seemed to completely ignore that. "You showed her your house the day after Thanksgiving, didn't you?" he asked and I nodded. "You had to have known that that was her dream home, right? What'd she say?"

  "That I should have used wallpaper instead of paint in the bedroom."

  He snorted at that. "I am going to go ahead and ignore the fact that you showed my baby sister your bedroom. Did she have a shitfit over that library?"

  I never showed her the library, I realized with a start.

  After bringing her up to my room, a place I had started to think I would never get to see her, and being able to indulge a fantasy that had plagued me at night for years, I had completely forgotten.

  Fact of the matter was, shit changed up in that bedroom, when I got my mouth on her, when I got inside her. And, judging by the way she reacted afterward, she felt it too and was trying to keep those feelings in check.

  I was trying to do the same.

  So I had tried to get her out of there as soon as possible, forgetting in the process to show her a room that was all but useless to me, but she would melt over. It had been, after the master suite, the only other room that was completely finished. I had sanded and re-stained all the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and refinished the floors and bought an executive desk and a chaise lounge to decorate it.

  The shelves themselves, aside from my small collection of books, were all but empty.

  "Amy called. We had to head out before she could see the whole house."

  "You know, I guess I've always found that house thing weird."

  "The house thing?" I repeated.

  "You could have bought one of those new townhouses. Or something more modern, something that didn't need so much work. You work a lot. You don't have the time for that shit. But you picked her house instead. Interesting, that."

  "When did you become a sap?"

  "Oh, about ten minutes ago when I realized my baby sister and my best friend have been in love with each other since they were teens, whether they realized it or not. That's some straight-up Disney shit right there."

  "You're still forgetting the part about how we can't be together."

  "Right. The pissy mood factor. Well, way I see it, things are looking up on that front."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I talked to mom this morning. Apparently, her first day back, she walked into layoffs."

  "She lost her job?" I asked, feeling my stomach tighten, knowing how worried she was about that seeming inevitability. She was a creature of habit. She liked consistency. She got stressed out when big changes came around. Granted, everyone knew she wasn't crazy about her job.

  It wasn't her dream.

  In college, she had majored in literature. Then, to appease her worried mother, minored in graphic design, for which she had a fair amount of skill but very little passion for. But, literature being a somewhat useless degree unless you went and got your doctorate to eventually teach it at a college level, she had quickly found a job in graphic design. And that was where she had been since about a week after graduation. It was what she knew. And it was safe and steady.

  Callie liked safe and steady.

  "Hey, maybe you should start viewing her misfortune as your golden opportunity."

  "How so?"

  He rolled his eyes at me as the next set of guys moved into the room to play. Realizing our time was up, we moved out and headed back out toward the rest of the gym. "What, I have to spell it all out for you? Cal is not the kind of girl who lives in D.C. She's small town, not big city. And D.C. is expensive when you're out of work. All she needs is a little push..."

  "To move back here."

  "Exactly."

  It wasn't a bad plan.

  Cory was right; Callie was in D.C. because it was the first place she found a job. She wasn't in love with the restaurants and nightlife. She was never that kind of girl to begin with. I doubted she had even seen the inside of one of the bars there. And the only stores she likely frequented were the essentials and the book stores. The rest of the time, I imagined, she spent holed up in her apartment.

  "I can't ask her to move in with me, Cor," I said, snorting a little at the idea. "True, we've known each other since
she was born, but not that way."

  He laughed at that as we moved out into the parking lot of the gym. "What is 'that way' anyway? The shit you get to know about a partner, sex aside, is the same shit you know about your friends- favorite colors, movies, food preferences, political beliefs, how you just... click. You know all that shit about Cal and you always have. I think you're overestimating how long it is going to take you two to get serious if she is in the area."

  "So you're saying..."

  "That Ma already offered to let her crash for as long as she needs to figure shit out. She's rooting for you two."

  "She wasn't exactly subtle about my room placement or asking us to drop Pops off."

  "I think she was just waiting for you to get your head out of your ass and notice her. But then she went away and didn't come back enough. Ruined her dreams of having you join the family in a legal kind of way."

  "Yeah, she would finally have a son she could be proud of," I joked, smiling big when he threw his bottle of water at me.

  "Fuck off," he said, retrieving it then unlocking his car. I leaned against mine as he turned back. "So, now that you got that shit out of your system, you can stop being such a whiny bitch and do something about the situation."

  "Nice to know I got your blessing," I laughed, shaking my head.

  "The threat still stands. Hurt that girl and I'll burn that fixer-upper of yours to the fucking ground. Back here tomorrow, same time, and bring your A-game for a change," he said, sliding into his car, turning it over, and pulling away.

  I got into my own car and drove back to that fixer-upper of mine, going into the library and pouring myself a drink, running over the developments of that afternoon.

  First, Cory not only knew about me and Callie, but was on-board with the whole situation. So was his mother. As for their father, well, that was an unknown. It was hard to get a read on him. But I did know one thing, he thought that that girl was the sole reason the sun came up every morning. She was more him than Cory was, the two of them always close, always discussing books and philosophies. That being said, I had always been like another son to the family. And he knew me well enough to know that my intentions were genuine. I wouldn't risk my relationships with all of them for some quick tail or a silly fling. They were the closest thing I had to family left.