If You Hear Me

by Jenn LeBlanc

  I laugh, and she stands and leads me to her room, where she strips to her T-shirt and booty shorts, then points at me and says, “Jeans are uncomfortable, I get it, but the rest stays.” Then she crawls into bed.

  I pull my jeans off and slide up behind her, and it’s like the spoons had never left the drawer. We always fit so perfectly and even now, though we’ve both grown up, we still do. I smile against her shoulder blade and breathe in the scent of her. I’ve missed this more than anything. This simple closeness is something I’ve never felt with anyone, the sort of comfort that comes with knowing someone so intimately and trusting them so fully that your whole being can relax. I try to stay awake to savor the moment, but I can’t, and my eyes close as her breathing slows and controls mine.

  “Isa…”

  The voice is so quiet I almost discount it to my dream, but I feel her muscles tense all along the front of me and when I lean up and kiss her cheek, it’s wet.

  “Hey, Cam,” I whisper, my hand stroking her arm slowly until I feel her relax. Her hand swipes at the tears on her face and she breaks my hold, looking up at me. “You okay?” I ask and she nods, pulling away from me until there’s enough space between us that the air chills a little. “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I just have dreams and I—”

  “Your parents?”

  “No, I don’t actually dream about them, strangely enough.” She rolls until we’re facing each other and draws her knees up until her shins are flat against my thighs, her knees at my abdomen.

  “You said a name,” I remind her.

  “I…did I?” she says and crosses her arm over her chest and slides her hands under the pillow at her cheek. She may be touching me but she’s about as closed off as she can get right now, and I can feel that through to my bones so I keep still and wait for her to decide what she’s doing next. “I did. I said a name.”

  “Who is she?” I ask.

  “I—” She stops. “Was,” she says as her eyes glaze over. “She was my daughter.”

  Meli

  “You had a daughter.” He says it so simply, noncommittal, almost as though he’s reserving his judgement for more of the story. Or perhaps it isn’t that. Perhaps it’s that he’s just exactly as I remember him. Strong, smart, supportive, loving, considerate. He was always the strangest of boys, but I never knew that until later, when I met other boys and realized they were all pretty self-centered when it came down to it. Though adolescent women are often the same way.

  Maybe it’s the creative part of us that opens us up to the possibility, also making us more vulnerable. I’ve thought about what would have happened had I met someone less…less than him when I was young. I would have been broken undoubtedly, just in a very different way. I was entirely too trusting, always, to a fault, really.

  “Get some rest,” he says, and it isn’t what I expect. I fully expected to have to stop his questions. I know he has them. That he’s so patient right now is utterly ridiculous. He should be asking questions, he should be. Or perhaps it’s only that I think he should be asking questions, because I know the answers to the questions I think he should be asking. But he doesn’t. I don’t think he’s made the final step to the baby being his. He has no idea the questions he needs to ask, not yet.

  I push the heels of my hands to my eyes to try to keep them from tearing up again, because I’m exhausted and if I’m crying I won’t be sleeping. I want to be sleeping, avoiding all of this. I don’t want to be thinking right now, and that’s about all I know for sure. He pulls my hands away from my face and rubs them between his, massaging my hands then my forearms, and then I’m just too tired to think of anything but being thankful.

  I’m sprawled across my bed, which is odd to me. Feeling so much of my cotton sheets along so much of my body isn’t the norm. The norm is me sleeping in the dip I’ve created at the edge of my bed, because I sleep in the same small ball in the same little dip, every single night. I stretch, and it feels so good I almost fall asleep all over again but then I take a deep breath and smell coffee, and something else…bacon. I close my eyes and pause because I don’t want to yell at him for ruining the bacon. It’s difficult getting bacon cut thick enough in the U.S., but cooking it rare enough to be like I get at home is completely impossible.

  I roll out of bed and pull baggy pants on, then trudge out to the kitchen. I really do trudge, like, full on dragging my feet and swerving. Because I’m so fucking relaxed right now I can’t believe it. I haven’t slept like this in…about a decade. I pause and put one hand on the wall to steady myself and throw my head back, looking up at the ceiling and trying to think of a way to get him out of my house for a little while so I can just think. I have to figure out how to do what we need to do. I need to tell him so much, I already told him too much, but it’s something he has to know. I just…I don’t know how hard it’ll be to learn that you were a father, but only for a moment. That for nine months this child grew into a person, but that little person simply couldn’t survive out here in the world.

  I can’t imagine how this will affect him. He may not even care at this point, and that may be exactly what I’m afraid of. Not that he’ll be hurt, but my greatest fear is that he won’t care at all. I’d rather he be angry with me and yell and scream than to simply not care about our child. Our child. I feel a sob in my chest and double over, my hands on my knees as I try to breathe. I knew this was coming; I just didn’t think it would be coming so soon. I thought I’d have time to find him and to figure out a time and a place to tell him. That, obviously, didn’t happen. I stand up and stretch, then start shuffling toward the kitchen again.

  “Hey,” he says quietly, and I smile because maybe he remembers how much I hate the phrase good morning. I’m weird, I know, but it’s a thing and it’s my thing and I’m over trying to figure out why that is.

  “Hey,” I reply and slide onto the stool at the bar.

  “Oh no, you have to come finish the bacon, because I’ve got it started but I know you’re particular and I want to be sure you like it.”

  “If you wanted that you shouldn’t have started it, because this was meant to be dinner, not breakfast. That’s your first error.”

  “I knew there was something I was forgetting. Well, it’s too late for that. Come help me before it’s cooked wrong too.” He winks at me, and I can’t help but to smile. So I slide off the stool and walk around the counter, taking my spatula and pushing him out of the way with my hip.

  “Go do something else. I’ll finish this.”

  “I was going to fry some eggs in the bacon grease, but now I’m not sure how to proceed.”

  “Yeah, I’ll take care of the eggs. You squeeze the oranges. Since we’re doing breakfast.”

  “Okay, that I can do.” He reaches around me and sets a cup of black coffee next to me, and I inhale the strong scent of it, fortifying myself for what comes next.

  “So…” I start but then I think perhaps I need to be looking at him, and I need to be sitting down, because I’m not sure I can stand and do this. But I’d love to not be looking at him to do this. I shake my head.

  “Hey, breakfast first, then we’ll deal with the rest. One thing at a time. Let me concentrate while I squeeze, okay?”

  “Okay.” I laugh and go back to cooking. After breakfast, he waves me off from the kitchen and cleans up.

  “I need to go home for a while. I need a shower and, you know, boy stuff. Do you want to meet up later? Come with me? Tell me to order new clothes and have them delivered? Amazon does same-day delivery here…” he says and he has me laughing again.

  “Go home. Take my number. Text me when you’re decent. We can do something this afternoon.”

  “Okay.” He nods but he looks worried, so I walk over and take his hand.

  “I’ll text you. And you’ll have my number. And we’ll meet up somewhere later. Or…”

  “Or?” he says and perks up.

  “Or I can come to your house as soon as
I get myself together. I can… Yeah, I can just come over when I’m ready if you want.” There’s no power behind my words; I know this because his body is drifting toward me, trying to hear me. But I don’t feel powerful right now, and saying the words was hard enough, but putting any emphasis behind them would be too much. I’m just too raw.

  “I want. I do, I want that. I could wait for—” I put my hand up.

  “That’s good. I’ll come over as soon as I’m ready.”

  “Okay,” he says, but he looks nervous.

  “I’ll come over when I’ve dressed, eaten, and am prepared for today,” I specify and he smiles then leans down and his lips meet mine and they’re sweet from the juice and salty from the pork and I want so much more, right now. I want it all and I want it now. Right now.

  “Don’t go,” I mumble against him, then I’m pulling him toward me and his cock is rising against my belly and I just want every single bit of him. I put my hands on his chest and push him away, setting some definitive space between us, because he needs to leave. I need him to leave so I can pull myself together and prepare to see him again.

  “I should…” he starts, but he leaves it open yet again, because he isn’t going to make any decisions.

  “You should…” I look at him in the T-shirt and jeans, with the crotch hanging mostly open, his cock rising behind the buttons. I’m a wreck for vintage 501s. “Do whatever it is you want to do,” I finish, because that’s what I want. I want him to stop giving way to me and what I want. “What I want is for you to show me what you want.”

  The words have barely gone beyond my lips before his hands are on my ribs and he’s lifting and my legs are wrapping and he’s carrying me back down the hall and throwing me on the bed. He crawls over me, up my body, peeling my clothes away as he moves, leaving his on. The scrape of his jeans against my skin makes me want…so much. The cold of those copper buttons against my mons wracks my body with shudders until they slip, and the cold edge of one grazes my clitoris and I let out a heavy breath, my nails digging through his shirt and into the skin of his back.

  The moment his shirt is gone, I’m looking up at a man I never had the pleasure of knowing ten years ago. I’m looking up into the face of someone I’ve never even been introduced to, and I suddenly feel so free I can’t get his jeans off of him fast enough. I pull a condom from the bedside table and slide it on. He rises above me, giving me the access I need. I’m so wet I can feel the fluid running down my inner thighs along the crease at my buttocks to puddle beneath my ass and I shudder, then pull him into me and hold on.

  Eight

  Daniel

  It’s like she’s a completely different person, and I sink until I can’t go any farther and then I just savor the feeling of her, pressing her into the mattress and absorbing her breath and her shudders and her want as I shift and adjust minutely until I don’t think I can get any closer. I let the want of her crawl through my blood, igniting my nerves and waking my senses.

  She claws at my back as her heels dig into my ass and her breath is heavy and insistent at my neck. I calm her with the weight of me, moving in her so slowly that the only thing I’m aware of are my muscles slowly tensing and releasing. It’s like waiting for the wave then diving below it and swimming through the calm seas, only to rise again before the crest.

  Once her tension dissipates somewhat, I lift away from her body. I blow across her chest, sending shudders through her as her head falls back to the pillow and her neck is presented to me in a perfect arch.

  I press my tongue to her pulse, licking the salty sweat that beads there, then I suck gently and kiss the space just behind her earlobe. My dick pulses in response, filling her. Her legs loosen and her ankles slide down my thighs, anchoring behind my knees, just above the waistband of my jeans that I hadn’t quite removed.

  She tucks her toes into the waist and starts pushing, and I rock back and forth as she works to get my jeans down until I can kick out of them, and then I’m free and she has no idea what she’s in for.

  I bend one knee, bringing it up beneath her ass, and hold that hip and lean on my opposite elbow and I stroke slowly at first, letting her experience the full length of me, letting her feel just what she’s getting into—what’s getting into her. Like any man with a larger-than-average cock I like to prove its size at every opportunity, but this backfires in the way her body holds mine so snug, in the way her flesh is so tight around me. My dick pulses another warning, and I close my eyes and concentrate on pleasing her because if I continue to concentrate on the softness of her, on how she feels around me, how she smells and how beautiful she is, I’ll end this long before I’ve even begun.

  I test the angle of her hips, moving so slowly, searching until I find the give that I want, until I can see the reaction I want, until I know exactly where my stroke is going to hit and just how much she’s going to love it, then I draw back, careful to hold her hips just where I want them. I push forward with my hips so my cock slides along the front wall of her vagina until she screams and then I drag it back out the same way and I’m relentless as I set the perfect pace and drive her crazy until she’s saying my name like a prayer and shuddering beneath me.

  Her pussy clenches around me as though it wishes to keep me there forever and I want to stay, I do, I never want to leave this place inside her but, happily, I’m not finished with her yet.

  I keep pushing, keep pulling, keep pressing until her body loosens again, her breathing stilted against my chest where she’s tucked her chin. Her nails dig into my shoulder blades and I know she’s going to come again and the minute her muscles start to contract this time I drive. My movements are erratic because I’m no longer in control of them. I let my hips go and let my cock lead the way and I simply follow until I’m coming so hard I have to close my eyes and hope I don’t pass out on top of her…but I do collapse and my come is warm inside the condom but not as warm as her body, so it’s cool as I slide free, kissing my way across her collar bone as I reach down and pull it off, then tie it and toss it in the bin next to the bed, thinking maybe someday there won’t be anything between us again, just like it used to be.

  I take her with me, draping her across my chest as I collapse, dragging the sheets over both of us. It doesn’t quite help the chill, so I drag the comforter too, and then it’s too warm and we’re pushing it back until we can cool off. And me? I know I drift off to sleep because when I wake, I’m alone in her bed.

  Meli

  To say I haven’t had an orgasm in ten years would be an outright lie. I know full well how to take care of myself. I’m a grown-ass woman. However…there’s something about this orgasm in particular that’s entirely different from anything I’ve ever felt before in my life. Granted, when we first came together it was literally the first time either of us came, and we both had to work for it.

  Well, Daniel didn’t exactly have to work for it…he was a boy. A fifteen-year-old boy. A stiff breeze and the slightest hint of a breast could make most fifteen-year-old boys ejaculate. It was a bit different for me. I came but it wasn’t anything like this, and I know Daniel’s picked up some additional moves somewhere along the way. The model he was all over the internet with, perhaps. I mean, there have to be certain things you can pick up that might be universal. Or he could have had any number of female partners, which I have no right to fault him for even if it does make me fifteen shades of jealous.

  I take a breath and try to shake off the thoughts. I know I’m simply trying to convince myself I’m the only woman he’s ever been with, just as he’s the only man I’ve ever let in like that. I have to stop trying to justify his sexual experience since I left because I left and there was no reason for him to be celibate, especially since he had no idea where I was, if I’d ever return, or why I was gone.

  I fall to my side on the sofa, bundled up in my fuzzy blanket. I have to stop thinking about this. That I stayed away from men after him had nothing to do with him and everything to do with me and w
hat I wanted. There were no promises, no words, nothing—there was nothing between us. We hadn’t even gotten as far as promises like that. So this feeling is one hundred percent on me. And what he did was on him and perfectly acceptable.

  I close my eyes and try to drive the jealousy from my head. Jesus, that was some amazing sex. I should be thankful, not jealous. I should be groveling at her—or his—or their feet, not wishing Daniel had never learned anything. That’s what I should be taking away from this experience and nothing else. I feel a finger press to the worry lines I know are carved between my eyebrows, then his voice, low and steady, breaks my maundering.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “Nothing, just…ridiculousness. Jealousy mostly, which is unfounded and patently absurd. Just let me be to get over it. It has little to do with you…obviously.”

  “I’m flattered. Why would you assume there’s someone to be jealous of?”

  I feel his thigh against my feet, and as I roll to my back, he pulls my legs across his lap and starts rubbing life into my feet. “Oh God, that feels wondrous.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Not at all my fault. You touched me.”

  “So…jealousy?” he asks.

  “Just that…” I look down to see his gaze on mine then up at the ceiling, throwing my arm over my eyes and blocking the light. “You’re quite a bit more talented than I remember. That’s all.”

  “Oh, well…thank you.”

  I pop one eye out from under my arm so I can see him. “You’re welcome.”

  “I could have read a book.”

  “This isn’t something that can be learned in a book.”

  “I watched plenty of porn….”

  “Pornography has very little to do with the pleasure of women and you know it. What you did…” I clench my thighs tighter both to feel the vibration from the muscle awareness and to stop the flood of want from bubbling up. “Oh, God.” The very thought of him rushes my skin and sends shudders the length of my body until he grabs the blanket that slid away and tosses it over me.