by Penny Wylder
Our climax hits together, a pure white blazing star. A nova that seals us together in a bond that cannot be broken. Not anymore. No matter what happens, we will weather it together.
“I love you,” I say as we’re shaking together. “I love you. I love you.”
He laughs softly. “And I you.”
“I feel like I’ve been waiting so long to say it, that now I need to say it more.”
For a moment Eric’s eyes shine, and I think that he’s as moved as I am. “You can tell me whenever you want,” he says. “I’m going to be saying it too.”
“There is no space for anything else in me but love.”
He gazes down at me. “Tell me you’re still writing, Seph, because sentences like that need to be in the world.”
I sigh. We just promised honesty. “I try, but I struggle. I’ve always wanted to write about the world I see, but I can’t afford to do the traveling I want to do. I’m still hopeful though.”
“I’m glad. If you had stopped writing because of me, I would never forgive myself.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s just…hard to find the time.”
“I will help you find the time,” Eric whispers against my lips. “And maybe the travel. Come back to New York with me at the end of the summer. Be with me.”
My heart leaps, and I’m nodding before I even register that I am. “Yes! Yes of course, yes. But you never told me why you’re not there now.”
Eric closes his eyes. “My dad is sick.”
“What?” I gasp.
He nods. “Cancer. He didn’t want anyone to know. The prognosis is good, but the treatment kept him from doing his normal camp thing, and my mom is taking care of him. So they asked me to take it on.”
“Oh my god, Eric I’m so sorry.”
He smiles thinly. “It’s okay. He’s in good spirits and the treatment seems to be working. But I couldn’t say no to that. And as terrible as the reason is, I am very, very glad that it brought me here.”
“Me too.”
He glances out the windows. “We should get back for the generator,” he says, pulling out of me and helping me fix my clothes and fixing his own. “But there’s one more thing that I want to ask you.”
“Sure.”
“I will take care of the arrangements, but I want you to move into my cabin.” He cups my face and puts his forehead against mine. “I don’t think I can survive another night when you’re not in my bed.”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “I think that we’ve both waited long enough for that.”
The kiss he gives me for that is almost enough to make me pull him back down and tell him to fuck me again. But he’s right, we need to fix the generator, and a couple counselors are waiting in the parking lot when we get back. “You two okay? We were about to send out a search party.”
Eric laughs. “Rain slowed us down, but we got what we needed. Should be up and running soon enough.”
I lock the car and follow along to help him. I feel settled and happy, but there’s one more thing that I’m going to have to face, and I have no idea how to do it. What the hell am I going to do about Leena, now that I know everything?
25
Persephone
Present
When I wake up and stretch in my brand-new bed in the director’s cabin—our bed—and am alone, there’s a sense of déjà vu. But this time I know why I’m alone. Because Eric is already up and about, doing the rounds for the camp. I’m taking the day off from counselor duties, and Mabel was more than happy take over my responsibilities for the day. I’m not exactly sure what Eric said to her, but she was beaming.
When I turn over, my hand brushes something hard, and I sit up, finding a gift on Eric’s side of the bed. Which brings another wave of memories. I’m sure that the significance is not lost on him either. It’s a notebook. Not like the ones I had before. This one is much nicer. It’s leather, blue gilded with gold and thick, creamy paper that makes me want to write everything and keep it perfect all at once.
When I see him, I am going to pounce on that man. Last night, we had so much sex that I thought I would be set for the next few days. One look at this present tells me that I’m wrong.
I toss on comfortable clothes and grab a pen, because I have a plan, and I want to get a move on it. I’m going back to the waterfall. I don’t want to leave a bad taste in my memories there, and so I make my way down that trail and perch on the rock, new book in hand.
And for the first time in forever, the words flow smoothly. I write about love, and about the waterfall and the strangeness of returning to a place after a long time. And the beauty of hope in the darkness. Of dreams and everything more.
I write until my hand starts to cramp and my stomach grumbles in hunger. It’s time for lunch anyway. Maybe Eric will be there. We haven’t talked about whether we’ll be making our relationship public to the rest of the camp, but we need to talk about it. Now that he’s mine—really and truly mine—I don’t want to be stopped from holding hands or kissing him. Though I don’t plan on dragging him out to fuck under the dock again.
Making my way back to the mess hall, I hear a long sound of a car pulling into the parking lot. Nearly skidding. That’s weird. We aren’t expecting any deliveries or visitors today. I step around a few trees into the parking lot and find a sleek black Mercedes parked haphazardly in front of the trail. And a blonde woman gets out of the car.
My stomach drops through the ground. It’s Leena.
“Seph! Hey! Man, this is a fucking trip, isn’t it? It looks exactly the way I remember it.” Her smile is huge, and I remember how that smile used to make me feel warm and safe. But now, knowing what I know, I have to wonder how much of our friendship was just Leena using me as a witness to her life.
Things started to fall into place when Eric told me everything. The lack of concern or checking in about my life. The way she brushed off my problems to focus on hers. The fact that she always promised to help me with publishing but never seemed to follow through. I had always justified it somehow. She had bigger problems, bigger concerns, she was busy. But I think that this is just who she is.
And now that I’ve seen it, it’s all that’s visible.
That same smile now makes me cringe.
“Leena,” I say, trying to keep my voice neutral. “What are you doing here?”
She grins maniacally. “I was texting Eric and he didn’t answer, so I decided to stop by. I want to see the tramp he’s fucking and show him how much better it could be. I think he needs a little reminder of what he’s missing.”
She brushes past me down the path, and I follow. I’m not letting her out of my sight. Just then Eric comes around the corner of the mess hall and sees me. He starts to wave and then sees Leena, and I’ve never seen him look like that. Suddenly pale, like devastation and shock and horror. I never want to see that look on his face again.
I put myself between her and him. “Now that you’re here, do you want to see our old cabin? I think our names are still carved where we left them.”
The look on her face speaks of bugs that need to be crushed. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
“What do you mean that you just wanted to stop by? I thought that you were in Miami?”
She doesn’t answer me, practically shoving me out of her way to stomp toward Eric. “Hi, asshole.”
He’s still frozen, but he manages to speak. “Leena.”
“Listen,” she says, “this is what happens when you ignore somebody like me. I’m the best thing that ever fucking happened to you, and I don’t care what you say, you’ll never be done with me. When I call, you answer. When I dare to send you a sexy photograph, you say ‘Thank you, Leena, for sharing your beauty with me.’”
As she speaks, I have no idea how I called this person my best friend. There’s nothing but poison in her words and in her tone, and there are people gathering now. Leena isn’t quiet, and the campers gathered for lunch are spilling out of the mess hall, drawn by
the noise.
“You are a worthless, spineless, piece of shit who doesn’t know how to treat a woman. Show me the person you’ve been fucking around with so I can revel in how low you’ve sunk. I dare you.”
I look at the faces of the campers, and I find them to be troubled and confused. Everybody here loves Eric, and the fact that he’s being yelled at like this isn’t good for them to see or hear. Especially when it’s not remotely true. After the bonfire he’s their hero. That image is evaporating by the second.
The look on his face, he’s not defending himself. He’s used to not defending himself against her because this is what he always thought that she would do. This is Eric’s worst nightmare.
“Come on,” Leena says. “Show me what you’ve done with yourself now that you’re a failed musician heading up a camp for children, no doubt fucking the bottom of the trash pile as a substitute for a real woman.”
“That is enough.” The words fly out of me so hard that they echo off the trees. Every eye in the camp turns to me, and Leena is the last to turn.
“Excuse me?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She takes a step toward me and stands her ground. “What did you say?”
“You have no right to come here and hurl insults and lies at people. Especially at people who have nothing to do with you anymore. Eric is brilliant, kind, and talented. He is good to his friends and makes unfathomable sacrifices for his family with no thought about himself.
“You can’t throw stones in glass houses, Leena. You treated Eric like shit for years. While cheating on him. I can’t even list all the things that you’ve done that fall under the category of being a ‘worthless, spineless, piece of shit.’ So don’t come here spouting lies to people who know the truth.”
She looks livid, like she’s about to blow up again, so I keep going. “You were a shitty girlfriend. And even the bad things I saw—which I’m sure was only a fraction—I supported the two of you because I thought that Eric was happy. But I know the truth now. You’re not only a shitty girlfriend, you’re a shitty person for coming all the way here and trying to ruin his reputation.”
Leena rolls her eyes. “Jesus Christ. Why are you defending him? Are you in love with him or something?”
Straightening my spine, I stare at her straight on. “As a matter of fact, I am. And I have it on good authority that he loves me too.”
There’s sudden applause, and I realize that the campers are cheering the fact that Eric and I are together, and Eric looks more normal now. He’s looking at me with awe and love and gratitude.
Leena is as red as a tomato, and then someone in the crowd says. “Go home!” And just like kids do, others pick up the call. Until it’s an overwhelming chant. “Go! Home! Go! Home!”
Her face is white with rage, hands curled into fists. She stomps toward me and her car, and the whole camp cheers. She stops next to me, and if looks could kill, then I’d already be dead. A cruel smile before she speaks. “If you want him, you can have him. He’s my leftovers, and you’re just a pathetic scavenger.”
“You know that summer before you met, and the boy I fell madly in love with? That was Eric. I was his first everything. And his relationship with you was one giant misunderstanding and bad teenage communication, so if you want to talk about scavenging, look in a mirror.”
Leena goes pale and stiff like a corpse, before storming to the car and slamming the door so hard that I’m shocked she doesn’t break the windows. She peels out—as much as you can peel out of a dirt parking lot—to the roaring cheers of everyone in the camp, teens and counsellors alike.
I watch her until she’s out of sight, and when I turn around, Eric is right there. He sweeps me into a kiss, dipping me back in a show of romance that’s meant as a thank you and to publicly confirm everything that I just said. There are equal amounts of cheering and gagging noises from our audience, and it makes us break apart laughing.
“You’re something else, Seph,” he whispers. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I owed you.”
Eric frowns. “For what?”
“For saving my life in the lake.”
He laughs so loudly it echoes, and not caring who is watching, he kisses me again.
Epilogue
Eric
Three Months Later
“Eric, get in here!” Seph calls from the living room. Her voice is so frantic that I sprint from our bedroom in our new New York apartment and skid to a stop.
“What? What happened?”
She jumps into my arms and I barely catch her. “Listen!”
I suddenly focus on the threads of music floating through the room. “Holy shit.”
It’s our song. While we were finishing up at camp, Seph encouraged me to send the song that I wrote for her all those years ago to my agent. I wanted it to be only for her, but she claimed that it was too good to keep all to herself.
My agent agreed. And once I was finally able to be honest about my leave of absence, he was more than understanding. But the last month has been a whirlwind. As soon as we finished at Red Rock, Seph moved with me to New York. We found an apartment that’s a better size for the two of us, and my agent booked recording sessions for the song. He’s even offered to help Seph look for a literary agent when she’s ready.
That will be soon. She’s been writing almost non-stop since we arrived, filling pages and pages and pages with fiction. She’s going to be brilliant.
I’ve had more gigs than I can handle, and Seph has been at every single one, listening and singing along with my songs. It’s exactly how I dreamed it would be all those years ago when I asked if she would be with me. Because no matter how big the crowd, I get the biggest thrill out of performing for her.
Things have slowed down a little, and I’ve just started to show her the city. My city. Not the touristy parts. The little places that I love. But I’ll admit that it’s a little hard to leave the apartment when she’s here. Because there’s a lot of sex.
We have a lot to make up for, and I don’t think that I’ll ever get tired of sinking into her. Every time it’s a miracle that I do not take for granted.
The song sounds so good on the radio, and the response has been really positive. But this song will never not remind me of the reason that I wrote it. I carry Seph over to the couch and lay her down, pulling up the long, loose dress that she has on.
She laughs, but it’s breathless. “What are you doing? Your song is on the radio.”
“It’s our song,” I growl. “And it’s about me taking your virginity. I think this is entirely appropriate for hearing it for the first time.”
I don’t give her a chance to protest, licking her through the dainty lace thong that she’s wearing. Such a sexy little piece of fabric, and such an annoying barrier when I’m trying to get to my favorite flavor in the world. The only reason I don’t rip them off her is because I’ve destroyed too many pairs of her panties already. I’m tempted to do it anyway, just to hear the moan she makes when I do.
Shoving them down, I ravage her clit with my tongue, diving straight into the patterns that I know that she likes best. There are a few, and I choose the one that’s fast and swirling and never fails to make her come. Loudly. Today is no exception.
“Fuck, you’re too good at that,” she says, panting and arching underneath me.
“I don’t think that there is such a thing.”
Slipping a finger, and then two, inside her pussy, I fuck her with the beat of the song, curling my fingers up and back, thrusting directly across her G-spot. She’s going to come before the end of the song. I guarantee it.
“Oooooh.” Her voice is one long exclamation, and I don’t let up or give her a moment to breathe. Straight up and over the cliff. I love that moment when she falls into climax. Her pussy gushes wetness and clenches my fingers, and I savor the taste of her. It’s always been the best fucking taste in the world.
Her cries echo
off the walls of our small apartment, and I wonder for about the hundredth time since we’ve moved in if our neighbors hate us yet. We’re not quiet, and I don’t ever intend to be. I like it when Seph is loud. It lets me know that I’ve done a good job fucking my woman. My woman.
And she is my woman. The glittering ring on her hand tells me that. I proposed the day that we moved into this apartment, and she said yes. Then we fucked on every surface that we could find before we even unpacked any boxes. We’ve waited long enough to be together—no need to wait another six years to make it official. As far as we’re concerned, it already is.
While she’s still limp and shuddering, I switch out positions so I’m on the couch and she’s straddling me. It’s easy to slip inside her, and I curse loudly, because she feels so fucking good. She knows how to grip me, squeezing down on me just the way I like as I drive up into her.
The dress she’s wearing has a deep neckline that teases me with just a glimpse of her breasts, tightening and releasing as they bounce. God, I could stare at her forever.
The song is over now on the radio, but I don’t stop. This is the best celebration that there is. But Seph suddenly slows me, and settles down onto me so that she’s taken my whole cock to the hilt. “Oh fuck,” she whispers.
We don’t use this position often. I need to make sure we do it more. She’s trembling, and I like the way she’s arched back. Impaled by me. She likes it when I don’t hold back. When I take charge and pull us both along into pleasure.
Slowly, Seph rolls her hips, and this time it’s my turn to groan. I’m so deep that the way she moves—that friction and motion is mind-blowing. It brings up pleasure from a deep place. One I don’t often find.
Settling my hands on her hips, I help her. I pull her down onto me with every smooth motion she makes, and we build together to the inevitable climax. She needs to go first.
