by Sunniva Dee
“Zoe hasn’t told you?” It’s hard to believe. She’s a loyal friend, but she wants my relationship with Bo to develop and I could see her break rules for it.
“About what, Nadia?” he asks, and when my eyes for a fleeting second graze his, those winter-grey irises penetrate me. “Zoe reveals nothing about you. The last time I tried, she said flat out, and I quote, ‘Take a fucking hike.’”
As a bottle of beer and a glass of red wine land on the table, Bo leans closer and nudges my chin up with the crook of his index finger. I have no choice but to meet his gaze. “Why? What should she have told me?”
The question is too direct. What would he do if I dodged it? I’m a coward, and I don’t want to cry in public.
“Jude is heartless for leaving me,” I burst out.
Bo’s eyebrows shoot up. “He left you?”
“Yes. No! Ah crap. I don’t know, Bo. I don’t know how to explain this.”
“It shouldn’t be difficult. He either left you or he didn’t. Is he divorcing you?”
“No, he’s not divorcing me. What’s with all the questions?” I say, not myself and with that damn lump bobbing in my throat again. I hate lumps. I need to talk about something else. Steer his attention away, but I’m blank, blank—because all that’s left in my mind is the truth, and to let those three words hang in the air, expressed once and for all, I cannot do.
A calzone arrives, sliding in between us and staining the tablecloth with rust-colored grease. The steam wafting from it is cheese and ham and tomato sauce, an aroma that should comfort me, but I’m in a showdown, a face-off, that’s too much to handle. “Careful, it’s so hot it’s dangerous!” the waitress chirps.
“Thanks,” we both mumble. I’m the first to start cutting off pieces and eating absentmindedly. I need to find a harmless way to ease into my explanation to Bo.
“He... I only learned about Jude’s problem after we fled Payne Point.”
“What problem?” Bo’s gaze can be so powerful. I feel it on me even when I’m not looking.
“Diabetes.”
“Is that debilitating? Hampering?”
I shrug, wanting to cry again with the realization that’s been setting in full force over the last few days. “Depends on the person. Jude and I had been secretly dating since we were thirteen. After the first few months, we met almost every day. We were only apart when his filthy rich Silicon Valley guru father took his family on lavish vacations. And even with all the time we spent together, Jude didn’t tell me about his problem.”
“Problem.” Bo chews on my wording with his first bite of calzone. “It’s considered a disease, right?”
“Yeah, but a manageable one. It becomes a problem when… the person isn’t on the ball.”
I risk a glance at him and find his eyes narrowed. I can tell his brain is going a hundred miles per hour trying to read past my words. So many half-told stories. Bo is used to me not explaining myself. To me dodging questions. Avoiding. Deflecting. I feel bad.
I crush my eyes closed for courage to continue. “Basically, his mom had been administering everything for him—the insulin and his meals. When he needed glucose tablets, she’d make sure he took them. If he needed injections instead of pills. Mrs. Bancroft literally kept him free of symptoms for years straight.
“I got my first scary glimpse into an insulin shock when he almost crashed the car on the way to Vegas.”
“Jesus. When you eloped?”
“Yeah. He didn’t admit to anything. Said he was just tired. It took him way too long to confess that he had diabetes and tell me where to find the shots he needed. He could have lost consciousness.”
“I’m sorry. That sucks, Nadia.” Bo strokes my hair with one hand, smoothens a lock and lets go. “Did he get better after the shot?”
“Yeah. That’s the crazy part. The time it took for him to return to himself again, even joke about what happened, was just—nothing. I still think about that. So fast.”
And then I can’t stop the tears from dripping along my nose. I suck in a noisy breath and lift my napkin to wipe them off.
“I don’t understand why anyone would want to neglect something like that.”
“Yeah. I begged him to be mindful from then on, and he did well. Even so, over the next months, he still had a tendency of taking his insulin shot without eating right after. It’s why he’d get sick.”
A strange chuckle escapes me, because Jude. Impossible Jude. “I found him in different states of shaky, sleepy, bleary-eyed three or four times afterward. I don’t get mad easily, but once I even yelled at him while we waited for the glucagon injection to work.
“His mother would drive up from Payne Point often too. She’d stay nearby in a hotel a few days at a time.”
“Why? To nurse him?” Bo lifts the beer to his mouth and takes a sip.
“Yeah. One night, he got tired of it and told her off. I wish she hadn’t used the opportunity to nag at him about college every time she came up too. If she hadn’t—”
I can’t finish that sentence. “He wasn’t supposed to work at a gas station, see? In his mother’s mind, he was destined for bigger things than some blue-collar job.”
“And he wanted to stay there?”
“Only until I’d finished my education. I was supposed to support him afterward.”
Bo twists his mouth, pondering, and I recall telling him that I started working at Scott’s Diner a few months after we moved to the Alhambra Apartments. “Jude’s salary was low, which is why I took the waitressing job at Scott’s. Jude hated it but got my point. He was on the lookout for a better-paying job when…”
“When what?”
“Um. When… his mother stopped ‘bugging’ him.” I jerk my head up, meeting Bo’s gaze for the first time since we sat down. “Are you full? I’m done. I think I’m ready to leave.”
Bo moves into his seat, spine hitting the backrest while he studies me. I can’t fool him. Heck, there’s nothing to fool anyone with. It’s just too much to keep talking. Thing is, I can only recall this an ice-cream scoop at a time. I hope he understands.
“So that’s it? These are the morsels you’re handing me tonight?” Bo asks, voice measured. The controlled anger that simmers beneath is palpable.
I’m not used to sharing. My only friends in this city, besides Zoe, are my colleagues at Scott’s. Zoe shut them up right away by telling them the only thing I’m not telling Bo. They know no details thanks to her, who always has my back.
“I don’t know how to do this, Bo,” I whisper, suppressing the urge to cry.
“Do what? Be honest? Give me enough of an insight to understand what’s going on in your head? In your fucking heart?” He shakes his head slowly. Frustrated. Disappointed. Hurt—again.
He longs for me, there, on the other side of the booth, and I can’t give what he needs. It hits me harder than ever; I’m an impostor, here to ruin Bo’s life like mine already is. Bo is an innocent, a bystander and a casualty. He shouldn’t be in this situation.
The signs were there from the moment I met him. I shouldn’t have allowed as much as a kiss between us. If you love something you don’t deserve, let it go. If it comes back, it’s still not yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.
And so I stand. Lean over the table. I give him a small kiss on the lips, and say, “You’re right. I don’t have it in me to make you happy. I hope I haven’t messed with your life too much.” Then I walk out of the restaurant. Alone.
BO
I let her walk toward the exit. I watch her shoulders sag, and she’s small, beautiful, and I love every detail about her. Her sadness, her joy, the thoughts she doesn’t share, her skin against mine, her heat and her light snores when she sleeps tangled with me.
I’ve only known her for five weeks. In those weeks, I’ve learned everything and nothing, and for each se
ed of new knowledge, each nugget of information about her life, even her marriage, I need more.
She thinks I’ll let her leave. I drop a stack of my per diems on the table and get up just as she reaches the front door. The restaurant is quiet. Quiet enough for her to discern my voice when I say, “I’ll be knocking on your door.”
She twists quickly, long, dark locks swinging over her shoulder, and stares at me. Well-deep doe eyes storm with feelings, and my balls tighten on instinct; how hot is it to find a whirlwind of desire, anger, hope, and exasperation in the stare of a woman? It makes me want to break her. Turn her into lust, bring her to where the only one she wants is me.
“You can’t be serious,” she hisses as I approach her calmly.
“Oh I’m serious. You think you can run away? You’re not going anywhere until we’ve finished our talk, and we’ve barely even started. This. Is going to take a while. We’re going home.”
“Home where?” she squeaks, and a part of me wants to say, “Your house because this involves your damn husband too.”
I don’t say it. I’m holding it together for one reason and one reason only:
The other day, a fleeting moment of love for her rocked in over me. That fleeting moment must be frozen in time. Because it’s still happening.
I reach her. Crowd her against the mess of small bells jingling in the front-door window. I slide a hand up her hip until I grip the firm dip of her waist and say, “My place.”
BO
“Just pull it to the side. It’s crazy sexy that way.” Emil’s muffled voice seeps out from his bedroom, and I groan inwardly.
“Not very handy though, is it?” Zoe replies.
“That’s not ‘to the side.’ Past the lips, Zoe. Like a curtain so I can still get in. Hold on.”
“Geez! You owe me thirty dollars.”
“You kiddin’ me? That super-tiny scrap of fabric is…?”
“Yeah. Was thirty dollars. Now, thanks to you, it’s zero dollars. No one would buy it now.”
“You’d sell used underwear?”
“No! I’m just sayin’. And it’s lingerie. And I still hate you.”
I should have predicted this. To talk things out with Nadia here while Emil and Zoe bicker over makeup sex is the antithesis of a plan.
“You want to go somewhere else?” I whisper, securing her hand in mine so she doesn’t run away. I don’t have a good alternative at the ready. We could go to some romantic place, a park, the planetarium. But to be honest, I want her close to a bed. I can’t just make her cry over what she has to tell me without easing her pain afterward.
“I’ll get us a hotel room,” I decide and grab for my phone.
“No! No… it’s okay. This is good,” Nadia says, eyes wary and not backing her up. I don’t wait for her to reconsider. Instead I tow her with me past Emil’s room and into mine. His bed already convulses against my wall, but this time I’m not having it. I barge my fist into the wall and yell, “Fix the bed situation or I’m coming in there myself!”
All goes dead silent. Then Emil mutters, “Yeah, yeah,” before an eerie sort of screeching ensues.
I meet Nadia’s quizzical glance and answer, “He’s pulling the bed out to stop their touchy-feelies from interrupting us. Anyway”—I hook an arm around her waist and pull her down on the mattress with me—“what do you want to do first?”
She blinks slowly, eyes glassy. I’m not sure if she’s sad or turned on, but right now, with her scent tickling my nose and her chest heaving beneath me, all I want is to feel her. Nadia’s mouth offers pillowy, parted lips that accept my kisses and suck me into a moist welcome. Her tongue dances with mine, like she wasn’t just storming out of a restaurant in an attempt to escape.
“You ran,” I whisper between our kisses. “Don’t ever run.”
“I had to,” she stutters, but her body’s already pliable, a warm wave against mine. I ease a hand under the hem of her shirt and bring it upward. With a quick shove, I’ve wedged it under her bra and we’re stuck together this way for a moment before I roll it upward and release her breasts under her T-shirt.
I get up on an elbow just to look. There’s something magical about this—lush tits free and utterly touchable beneath a thin top. Nadia’s breath moves in rapid sighs. I cup one breast, squeezing lightly, and shut my eyes at the sensation of her hardening nipple. “Have I told you that you’re beautiful? That everything you do is beautiful?” I rasp out.
To please a woman—drive her insane with need for me—is the ultimate pleasure. She shakes her head at my question, and I find myself staring deep into her eyes in a way that’s new to me.
Nadia doesn’t scream or moan loudly. Doesn’t tell me how I turn her on. This girl doesn’t make a show of things. But her pupils dilate until they leave only the smallest trace of brown irises, and her chest doesn’t stop shuddering out small breaths. When I pull her cleavage down with a finger, revealing smooth skin over bone that thickens into soft flesh below, I imagine the quick, quick heartbeats beneath.
“You are, you know. So beautiful. And all I want, all the time, is to be with you.” As I help her remove her shirt, I continue talking, my tongue delivering what my soul has known for a while. “You were my quiet in the storm on tour. My rock. You believed in me.”
“Bo, everyone does.”
“Yes, but it’s different. They want something from me. You watch me when I play, when I mock up a melody. I see it in your eyes—you trust my crazies to become a song.
“Even when I doubt, Nadia, you believe. You keep me company, and it’s not for what I can do for you, for the favors I’ll extend later. Not for a private interview or an autograph.” I grimace. “Not for a scrapbook photo of when we have sex.”
“Photos?” she repeats, chest bowing toward me as I kiss my way down to her navel. I sink my teeth into the small ridge circling it, licking, sucking, and the scent of her skin makes my blood boil. God, I have missed her.
Again, jealousy knifes me at the thought of this woman sleeping night after night in another man’s bed. It’s excruciating, intolerable because—she. Was made. For me. He makes her suffer, while I want to give her the world.
My desire for Nadia stirs up a haze, and it’s difficult to remain coherent. “Did you keep your promise? Have you been only mine since you left the tour?”
“Yes… Yes, I keep my promises,” she says, skyrocketing my energy, pouring gasoline on it, and I don’t know how to slow down, how to be what she probably needs. I’m back on tour in our last hotel room, snarling my hunger out against her skin, pressing my fingers into her muscles and making her whimper.
“God, I love you,” I moan, like it hurts, like I hurt, because I do.
Is this love? Is this how people walk around feeling? Because if it’s this much, this big—how do they not burn up?
I eat my way down her stomach, draw a new kind of cry from her. She helps me with her pants—we’re fast, and there she is, bare and beautiful, unafraid and… unashamed.
For an instant, I’m on my knees between her legs. She’s glorious, eyes open and balmy, and it’s how I must look staring back at her. The tiniest curve of her lips tells me she’s happy. I skim her stomach with my thumb again before I dive down, tearing my shirt off on the way.
“I can’t wait to feel all of you,” I whisper. “Everything. Your heat, the slickness. Ah it’s been a whole week.” I croak the last part out as I kick my jeans to the floor. “I can’t be away from you a whole week again.”
My dick jerks as if it’s her touching me when I grab it, and I probe her core with its head. Soft and killing me, she parts and takes me deep, every inch of me until I’m as warm, as enveloped as I can be.
I force myself to lie still, chest meeting chest and hearts racing. For her I can freeze the moment.
“Move,” she pleads, but I press my mouth to hers, b
reathing slowly, my control fortified by her impatience.
“So eager,” I whisper against her mouth and she moans, she moans, and it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever heard. Then I do move, small rolling efforts on top of her, pushing her into the mattress and forcing myself in far between her legs.
“So good,” she stutters, pelvis high and begging for more. I let my arms circle her ribs. Tighten my hold so I can move her on top of me without losing our connection.
Carefully, I push against her shoulders, a test—does she trust me enough to ride me like this? My nuts draw up high in expectation. She’s timid, but she’s turned on now, very turned on.
She opens her eyes again, meeting my gaze and understanding without words. Unhurriedly, she obeys. Draws back up like a beautiful little jockey ready to sprint the last yards to her goal. She arches over me, nipples hard and pointy.
My hands go up, kneading her as she rides me. She’s slow, like I knew she’d be if she controlled the pace. Her head falls back, throat curved, and if I’d been there—if I could reach her, I’d eat her there too.
She’s a dancer, torso swaying on me in slow motion, owning the feel of me inside of her and pushing down against my crotch.
“So gorgeous,” I pant. “So delicious. I love you. Still. Still I love you.”
When she approaches her climax, I catch it from the quiver in a thigh. From the sudden strength in her grip as she bends into our kiss. I lock my arms around her. I want her trembling against all of me so I know it’s me who gives her this.
When she does, she muffles a scream into my neck. I wish she hadn’t. It is the sweetest sound when this woman comes.
I’m a selfish man. While she trusts me with her climax, I mark her with my kiss, a blue rose waiting to bloom on the delicate skin beneath her ear.
A flash of satisfaction runs through me.
What will the competition think now?
BO
She’s upset. So upset. Why is she upset? I don’t understand. She’s hot as a forge and sad as the ocean, interweaved in mysterious waves. Her face over me on the bed. I brought her to the moon, but here she is now, crashed.
