by Sunniva Dee
“Darling,” I say, pulling her in under my arm. “It was time.”
“I know, but still…” She covers her mouth with the hand that doesn’t rest around my waist. I kiss the top of her head, nudging her closer, the need to protect her enveloping me in now-familiar ways. “I’ve lived here for so long.” She pauses, swallowing her emotion. “So much history.”
“We’re making new history.” I turn her enough to kiss her temple. “New memories.” I kiss her again. “Our memories. He’d approve.”
She laughs softly at that, a relieved laugh that tells me I am right. “Yeah, he would. He wouldn’t want me to live the way I did.”
“No, because apparently he wasn’t a bad guy,” I add. We’ve played this game for a while now. Me bumping up against the comfort zone of her grief, and Nadia tolerating it a little better with each jolt.
“You’re so weird,” she says. She tilts her head back and gazes at me, irises moist. “No one says the stuff you do. You’re supposed to, like, not talk about it that much. Definitely not almost make me cry all the time.” She smiles though, knowing my head-on approach is working.
“Right, because shutting up about it worked for you before.” I fake a stern expression to keep Nadia’s attention; I want to keep her from registering the huge cardboard box noting Jude’s photo gear + clothes being half carried, half dragged out of the apartment.
“Anyway,” I continue, “you’re not burning any bridges. If you get sick of me, you can make up rules your new tenants have broken, evict them, and move back in.”
The giggle she emits is as beautiful as water lapping over stones in Swedish mountain brooks.
“Meanie,” she says. “I’d never do that. And you can’t throw me out either. Have you thought about that? We’re moving in together, Bo. It’s a lot different than just staying at each other’s house,” she warns me, her voice boasting belief in our future.
“All the time,” I say.
I release her. Link our pinkies and start walking toward my car. As we pull out of the parking lot, I ask, “You know what your name means, right?”
“Yeah. Hope,” she says and smiles, guessing where I’m going with this.
“Hope.” I stroke a stray lock of hair away from her face. “Hope wasn’t there when we first met. Now, it’s written all over my darling. Every day, it peeks out at me, and I think—”
“Let me guess. You think you’ve got something to do with it?”
The last traffic light before our new apartment flashes red. I stop, drop my head back against the seat, and put on a show of being indifferent, aloof, and “rock-star cool” as she calls me.
“You’re silly, Bo. I see right through you, you know,” she hums before she leans in and plants a kiss on my lips. “Unfortunately, you showed your true colors that very first night in the dressing room. Since then none of your stone faces trick me.”
“Really now?” I feel myself smirk. Her confidence is sexy as hell. “So little Nadia thinks she’s got me all figured out?”
“I do,” she murmurs, suddenly close to my ear. Faintly, I register the traffic light sliding from red to green, but I remain under her spell until cars start honking behind me.
I jack the Saab into gear so fast, she lets out a squeal. “That’s the sound I plan to elicit from you in about, hmm—thirty minutes,” I say.
“Yeah? Because you’ll be speeding? Watch out for the L.A.P.D. First night in our new home and my boyfriend is locked up for being a traffic criminal,” she jokes.
“Not exactly what I had in mind.” I husk the words out and let my stare smolder at her. And from the pink marks appearing on her cheeks, I’d say she gets what I have in mind.
BO
I want her abandon. I crave her abandon. Sweet and molding to me, she’s softness and warmth, slick moisture and all perfection. This girl has given me love and made me love. She has squeezed and wrung my inexperienced heart on a rollercoaster ride to this moment.
And now, here we are. She’s mine, all the way mine.
Our place is a mess of boxes, furniture, guitar gear, clothes, and pillows. The new bed is not set up, but the brand new king-sized mattress I surprised her with is at the dead center of the living room. We’ll be renting storage space for the things we don’t need anymore, where reminders too painful to keep in sight will be brought to rest.
For now, all we’ve unpacked is Nadia’s candles. Not her old tea lights but the new stash of big, scented ones from some home décor store. They paint our home with glowing orbs of green and orange.
Skin alive in the shifting glow, she’s beneath me, eyes hooded and expectant at my touch. “All mine,” I whisper, and I revel in the smile she responds with.
“Yes, all yours,” she answers. I sigh with contentment as I let my lips travel down her stomach. I lick fragrant folds and make her jut up against me. Tonight she’s not shy when she lets her legs drop open. Tonight she doesn’t press her lips together holding back the moan in her throat.
With one hand under her ass, I lift her into me. With the other, I press against her abdomen while I lap and hasten her pleasure.
“No,” she whimpers, wanting to take her time. I don’t allow it. I want her to come fast and hard. Then she’ll be slow and delicious with me afterward.
“Let go, darling. Be lovely,” I rasp out. I’m hard and needing her soon.
Her eyes open slowly, and I find no shame in them. They’re void of guilt, of worry. Tonight there are no anxious concerns.
In the pocket of my jeans, on the floor, next to her crumpled-up dress, there’s a ring that would sparkle if the sun hit it. But I’m not rushing things. Nadia just removed Jude’s band. I won’t present her with my ring on the first night in our own home.
It’s there though. It makes me happy that it is. I’ll carry it with me—for months—for years—however long it takes to read in her eyes that she needs our bond to gleam in gold and diamonds as much as I do.
Love exists. Love is patient. For some, love lurks, waiting for that single woman who can ignite a man’s love muscle. And when that beautiful person enters his dressing room, love strikes hard.
BO
Sex is a dance with her. A slow tango where skin flows over skin. It is slick readiness, a quiet welcome. It’s smooth, warm, right, and all wrong.
There’s no move she makes I don’t preempt. When it’s new, I follow. When I’m different, she forms to me. She was the ground I walked on. The air I worshipped. The first years together she was my everything.
With Ingela, sex is love. It is guilt over not giving her what she’s worthy of.
This girl. She deserves so much. And I?
I don’t have it all.
The way she looks at me. It’s knives sharpened and twisting in my gut because the extent of her love is beyond my capacity. I tell her again, for the seventh time in five years, what the answer always must be:
“Ingela, I can’t. You are the best person I know. You deserve someone with the chops to love you hard and forever. I’m not that man.”
Again, I’ve reduced her to this; her body, the one I just took to the skies in ecstasy, wracks with grief. This is why tonight is the last time we break up. I hate myself. I have to accept that I can’t make her happy.
It’s time I quit chickening out, quit running back to her over a bleak fling and whenever I need solace. To me, she’s comfort and familiarity. I’ll never stop loving Inga.
But to her, I’m still everything.
CAMERON
The chase is over. Right here, right now, this is it. Even if it only lasts thirty seconds, the rush of what I’m about to do floods me and makes me feel. It’s so intense, every muscle in my body goes rigid with anticipation.
The air is sharp and early-morning raw. I stare out from my post on an overhang off Firam Peak. Let my eyes judge the ste
ep drop into the ravine on the backside of the mountain. Jagged granite walls form unpredictable patterns that crash to the bottom the way I will soon, and a light dusting of snow contrasts starkly with the somber stone.
I shake my arms. Not to relieve the tension but to make sure I’m nimble and ready. I didn’t invite my friends, Dan and Marek, along today. I’d be better off with someone else around, of course, but nothing compares to the thrill I experience as I step forward alone. I’m on the edge now, in every sense of the word.
I draw in a breath of icy oxygen. Crack my fingers inside my gloves and adjust the strap on my helmet. I’m ready.
It’s so easy to plunge off the cliff. All I do is heave up on my toes and extend my arms. A light bend at the knees and I’m off, flying.
Ah, yes. I fly.
So good.
The wind howls around me. I’m fast—I’ve jumped a dozen times into this ravine so the speed doesn’t surprise me. When we started base jumping, Dan and I would heave ourselves as far out as we could to stay clear of the rock walls during the free-fall. With the velocity you take on, the smallest miscalculation will throw you against the ragged stone, toss you around, and beat you about like a rag doll. It’d be hard to survive.
It gets boring, though, to be careful every time. Which is why, at this point, to get that rush—the woozy bliss inundating my brain for hours afterward—I simply tip off the edge.
The wingsuit I wear is advanced technology. I stretch my arms out to the side, the fabric spanning open at my sides. A familiar sting of disappointment sings through me as I realize I’ll never fly without the squirrel suit. I can’t even begin to imagine the drug it would be to base jump with no security equipment. Straight to death, of course. I chuckle to myself at the thought.
I’m reaching the white ravine floor too quickly. Fuck, I’m lightning fast. The parachute on my back is a click away, but I postpone it, postpone it—
I’m on top of the world!
I’m so fucking alive while I plunge to what could be my last moment on Earth. I curl my body into a somersault and shout my rush out in an echo against the surrounding rock.
“Wooh-hooh!”
The ground shoots up toward me. No one, no one is here to help—or hear—if I hurt myself.
I pull the strap of the parachute. It deploys in the nick of time. Again, I’ve done it. I’ve survived by calculating the fall correctly. The parachute slows my speed so I tumble onto the snowy blanket with minimal impact to my legs. Somehow I’m lame enough to hit the snow with an arm under me, and my ring finger snaps—the same one that gave up in Italy a year back when I raced down a pine tree with my legs on each side like a fucking cartoon character. It’s a miracle my balls are intact.
I squirm and laugh on the ground. Fucking A—what a loser I am, breaking a finger of all things. What a girly thing to do, right?
Once I’m done laughing and groaning in pain, I climb all the way back up again to the car—a goddamn mile and a half up a trail only fit for mountain goats. Note to self: “Park at the bottom the next time and walk up before you jump.” It’s what we usually do anyway—because Dan and Marek are smart and can handle delayed gratification. Me? Not if I can avoid it.
In the car back to my dorm in Deepsilver, I can’t stop grinning. Dan and Marek won’t need me to tell them I flew solo today. No doubt, my face will give me away. They won’t whine for long, though. It’ll be more of a “Shit, dude,” sort of situation, as in: “You’re nuts,” and “don’t do it again,” and—“I wish it were me.”
INGELA
My cell just buzzed. It’s four in the morning on a weekday. On an instinctual level, I know who it is. I’m not one to give myself breaks; not once, not once, do I not answer when he calls, so I sit up, adrenaline diluting my blood and telling me to go-go-go.
“Stop missing me, asshole,” I say into the receiver.
Brooding, emotional, feel-sorry-for-himself, wishy-washy, sexy nightmare Bo. He’s the epitome of inconsiderate. I’ve been studying in the US for over two years now, but my ex keeps calling me from home. Not giving a damn about the time difference, he calls right when the hell he needs me.
I fumble for the light. Turn it on. Squint and clutch my phone tighter. “Hej,” I puff out next since he doesn’t respond right away.
“Hej, Inga,” he breathes back. Voice silky, like the damn singer-guitarist he is, he says what I knew he would as if he didn’t hear my initial greeting. “I miss you.”
“You’re horrible, Bo.”
“Come on, Inga—this is hard.”
I know what he means by hard. “Is it?” I ask, sitting up straighter. “Is it, now? Then, why did you break up with me for the fifteenth time in, like, what…”
I don’t want to repeat the number of years out loud. Bo and I were an item on and off between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. All I care about right now is him shutting the hell up. Whenever I’m almost over him, he’s there again. Black-velvety soft voice in my ear, making adrenaline, my worst enemy, course through my body until I tremble.
The man on the phone drove me to the brink a while back. There’s a reason why I’m here and not in Gothenburg where I’d be subject to his erratic moods on a daily basis.
For the millionth time, I wish I didn’t remember the good parts. Me, starting out as the sixteen-year-old groupie of his local band. The parties, the fun. The endless nights in our own little world in the dump he rented with two fellow bandmates. I swallow a lump in my throat. It was supposed to be us always. Not just for a few years. And he wasn’t supposed to be… the way he is.
“Inga, did you hear what I said?” Bo whispers now, like he cares that I should be asleep at this hour.
“No.”
“I call you, and you don’t even listen?”
“Doing my best,” I say. By the displeased huff he makes, I can tell he understands; I’m doing my best at not listening to him.
“I’m accepting a scholarship to a one-year guitar clinic in Los Angeles.”
Even sitting, my knees go weak. Deepsilver, the gorgeous little college town I’ve set new roots in here on the East Coast, must be only hours from Los Angeles by plane. The pull is on my heartstrings already—I’m too close to where Bo will be.
“Why?” I ask. “They can’t teach you anything here that you can’t learn in Gothenburg, I’m sure. And the band—are they replacing you?”
He puffs a snicker. “Naw. I don’t think so.” Bo is aware that he’s the chick magnet of the bunch and the reason they’ve been doing decent as a college band since they moved to the big city.
“I might check in with some labels while I’m in L.A. The band is with me on this. Probably heading over too, if I can scrounge up some gigs for us. Maybe we’ll tour the East Coast. How about that, Inga? We’ll pop by your little town.”
“Uh-huh, whatever.” I hurt. I try not to admit it to myself, but I miss him so much. The need to have him with me under my covers sucker-punches me. No one. No one is like Bo in bed. I feel the ghost of his hands on my skin as he lets out a quiet laugh on the other end.
“You’re so silly, Ingela. Just give it up already. I’ll take a couple of days in Deepsilver on my way there, okay? I’ll treat you well.”
I blush. There’s a reason to his sexy chuckle, to his sudden promise. As soon as I’m the slightest bit turned on, my breathing stops cooperating. Five years of on-and-off dating has Bo tuned in to the smallest changes in me the way he is to his guitar. So yes, he’s completely aware of his effect on me.
“Fuck you,” I mumble.
“Do you swear as much in English as you do in Swedish?” he purrs like he’s describing dirty pleasures.
“None of your—”
“—goddamn business?”
“Yeah, that. Bye, dick.”
To read more, click here
ARRIANE
>
The man I’ve loved for years is going ballistic. Books, glasses, and candles ricochet off the walls and crash to the floor. The low growl contained in his throat unleashes as he hurls his stereo at the window, making the glass panes shatter on impact.
“She fucking left me for him!”
He spins and locks on me. When Leon stares at you, he consumes you. He traps you in a small, flustered vacuum where he’s all that matters. “Leon… you’ll be okay,” I begin, but my voice trembles.
I can’t wrap my mind around this meltdown. Nothing ruffles him, nothing surprises him; in all my years at the club, I’ve never seen fissures in the marble of my boss’ beautiful façade.
Chaos is the antithesis of his life—of his apartment, his staff, his job—heck, of him! With the exception of his girlfriends, everything he touches remains orderly, and yet he’s losing it so completely right now.
This state he’s in… It doesn’t rock my need to be there for him. I—
Am always close.
He’s my love. My unreciprocated love, because I am just Arriane, his left hand, the favorite bartender. Not one of the dolls he breaks.
“Arriane, she never stopped dragging him into our thing, insisting that she loved him.” Leon’s chest lifts and sinks with his turmoil. “I never work to keep someone, and yet I did with her. Fuck, I did everything I could, while all he needed to do was barge into Smother. He fucking stole her from under my nose!” Angry tears glitter, drifting over his surreally blue irises.
Does he not hear himself?
Every day I was here to witness their “relationship.” Since Pandora couldn’t escape Leon’s territory—the club and his upstairs apartment—she disappeared inside herself. He tried to coax her out, but he never fully succeeded.
“Why…?” I hesitate, unsure of how he’ll react if I ask. Still, I need to vocalize my thoughts. His gaze snaps to my mouth, watching me continue.
“Why did you insist when she always talked about Dominic?”
