Once I got home, I couldn’t help thinking how nice it had been to spend a few minutes with her, to catch up a little, to reminisce just a tiny bit about old times. When our eyes met and we laughed about the umbrella stand, that had been a click moment for me, where everything seemed to shift back into place. Then her fingers had brushed mine just a little when she handed me the check. I considered for a moment not bothering to cash it. Because she would be the kind to balance her checkbook or keep track through online banking and notice the check didn’t go through. That would drive her crazy and she’d have to call me, have to insist that I cash it. I didn’t need the money, and I wanted an excuse to talk to her. It wasn’t a great plan, but it wasn’t the worst either.
My mind just kept going back to that first kiss on the Fourth of July all those years ago. How she’d been smiling all day because she’d just gotten her braces off so her even white teeth were perfect. She’d been downtown with her friends, and they’d been on some kind of float throwing Sweetarts and waving and laughing together. She had looked right at me from the back of that flatbed truck covered in crepe paper and she’d chucked some candy right to me. I had pocketed a packet of Sweetarts and let the little kids have the rest. I had carried that blue and pink packet in my pocket all day and it got sweaty, but I didn’t throw it away. I remember putting it on top of my dresser with my wallet that night and keeping it there for a while because it was the only thing she’d ever given me. Before we had four years of birthdays and Christmases and anniversaries. I would pick her flowers. She would buy me something expensive that made me uncomfortable. But the time I tried to give back the fitness tracker—they were pretty new and costly when we were kids—it hurt her feelings, so I just wore it. I didn’t like hurting her feelings. Until I had to do it.
I could shut my eyes now and it was like being back there again. Back to a night when I snuck into her house, never through the front door after the umbrella stand incident—but through her window. She slept upstairs, so I climbed the trellis with dark purple clematis blooming on it, crushing it pretty badly with my shoes. She had been waiting, the window open. Her long blonde hair was loose from its ponytail and trailing over her shoulders as she leaned on the windowsill. She’d had on a white cotton nightgown. The gown looked old fashioned, perfectly starched and ironed by their housekeeper, of course. So she looked like an elegant young lady from the turn of the century or something, with her hair loose and those ribbons trailing over her bare, tanned arms. She had untied the bow, let the neck of the gown fall open to show the freckles on her chest and the faint swell of her cleavage. I had climbed that trellis, my mouth so dry with longing for her. When I reached the windowsill, my hands on either side of her arms, I’d leaned in and kissed her right there, hanging off the side of her house under the moonlight.
Those secret nights were magical. I gave in. I let myself think of it. Just once, just this time. I’d shut down those memories for a long time. Locked them away. But now I felt my body come to life as I recalled how the breeze had stirred her hair, a lock brushing against my face as we kissed that night.
I climbed into her room. She stood there, barefoot, her tanned legs disappearing under the loose gown. She crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly a little self-conscious around me. I stepped forward and nuzzled her hair, her cheek.
“You’re beautiful, Chel. You’re better than any fantasy.”
“Now you’re lying,” she’d said with a giggle that sounded nervous.
“It’s us, Mouse, you and me,” I’d said.
Her old nickname, the quiet mouse in grade school, the silent, observant girl who missed nothing, made her smile now, those perfect teeth showing.
“I bet that’s how you get all the girls to say yes. Give them rodent names,” she teased.
“There’s only one girl I want to say yes. To say my name. To sleep in my arms. Just you. For the rest of my life.”
“I wish we could know that for real,” she had shifted from foot to foot.
“Hey, I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere. Unless your dad comes up. Then I’m going right out that damn window and hoping I don’t break my leg,” I had said, making her step into my arms and rest her forehead on my chest. I ran my hand up her back. “You’re all mine, Chel. And all I’ll ever want.”
I made her promises, and, God help me, I meant every word I said to her.
Pressing my mouth to her freckled collarbone, I reached for the ruffled hem of her gown and worked it up her legs. “We have to be quiet,” she whispered, a catch in her breath as I kissed her neck. We broke apart and I dragged the fabric off of her, leaving her smooth, tanned skin bare in the moonlight—small, high breasts, the flare of her hips, the thatch of curls between her legs. I was breathless at her beauty, at her sweet curves in the shadows and moonlight.
Palming her head and parting her lips, I kissed her, my tongue roaming in her mouth, her fingers in my hair. It was longer then and she loved to run her fingers through it, and the soft tug at my scalp galvanized me like a shot of pure electricity. I pulled her against me, held her in my arms and kissed her so fully, so deeply that I felt like my soul had escaped from my body and I’d given it to her. My hands mapped her bare body, the dip of her waist and curve of her bottom, the soft swell of her belly and the delicate peaks of her nipples that hardened under my touch. She pulled my t-shirt and shorts off, and I kicked them away. We were naked in the bright moonlight of summer and couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
I lifted her easily and placed her on the old-fashioned four-poster bed. She sat up and held her arms out to me, an invitation, and I joined her. She kissed my face and my hair, her hands roaming my chest and stomach.
“I love you so much, Drew,” she choked out. “Sometimes I think my heart will break just seeing you like this, having you with me. Nothing this beautiful could be wrong. We’re made for each other—” Michelle had broken off, wide blue eyes shining with unshed tears. I’d kissed her lips again.
“I know,” I admitted, “I feel like my heart’s in my mouth when I see you waiting at the window, knowing you’re waiting for me. I feel too lucky, like I don’t deserve this. Like this is the most special thing in the universe.” All the time, I was kissing her face and her throat, her bare shoulder. Then my lips fastened on to her nipple and drew on it. I felt her body bow and arch, her hand clutching at my hair. When I looked up at her, I saw her mouth open in a silent oh, her face twisted in an agony of pleasure as I laved her nipple. We had discovered all of this together, every place I could touch and kiss her that made her body go haywire. It was a secret between the two of us, those intimate spots where my finger or tongue sent her spiraling into an ecstasy that made her cover her mouth with her hand to stifle the screams. It was glorious.
Now I set my palm on her mound, savoring the softness of her curls there and parting her folds with one long finger, feeling the hot wetness there already. I shuddered when I touched it, when the slickness between her legs gave me proof of her arousal for me. “Yes,” I whispered, and her eyes fluttered open, looking at me. “I love doing this to you. I dream about it, Chel. Touching you this way.”
“Can people tell by looking at me?” she gasped. “I wonder sometimes when I go to the library or the grocery store, can people look at me and know by my face that you just had your fingers in my pussy, that I rode you in the driver’s seat of your truck half an hour before?”
“No way,” I said. “You look as innocent as ever. I’m the only one who knows. And I’d never tell anyone. You know that. I want you all to myself.”
“I like it. I like sneaking around with you. I want everyone to know I’m yours—but at the same time it feels holy, just the two of us together anyplace we can find,” she had said. That we had something sacred. I felt it, a shuffle of rearranging inside my chest, opening up a greater well of love for her, a sense of wonder at what we shared. I had kissed her forehead then, reverently, and then breached her tight sweet sex with my lo
ng finger, stroking and curling forward. I brushed that place inside her we had found that gave her tremors, that made her abs clench hard and her toes curl, her legs shake. With a few probing strokes of my fingers, she shattered in my hands, back arching so hard, bucking against my palm, biting her lip. I kissed her to capture her cries. Still shaking, she climbed into my lap. She was this vulnerable with me, this trusting, that before the last waves of her orgasm had passed, she straddled my lap. She took my painful erection in her hand, so achingly hard, throbbing for her. She pumped up and down, once, twice with her small, strong hand. Then she guided my eager cock to her wet entrance, rocking over me, one hand on my shoulder for balance.
I dipped my head, captured her mouth and kissed her. Then I rocked my hips hard, plunging my cock into her soft, sweet pussy with a cry that she took into her body from my mouth. I couldn’t stifle it. It was too powerful, the shudder that ripped through me when I penetrated her. Chel’s snug sex gripped me, easing my way with her juices as we rocked together. We made love this way almost every day, her in my lap, our hips locked together in a perfect rhythm, arms around each other. We could kiss this way, it was so intimate. When I couldn’t stop pumping into her, when I was going hard and she ground her clit against me so it hit her just right, we came together, my cock exploding in her slick sex that claimed me and owned me.
My cock burst with streams of pent-up cum, exploding just thinking of those nights, how perfect they were. Of her body in my lap, of the way I fit her inside like a key fits a lock. I finished jerking off and lay there, wasted and ashamed and missing her.
7
Michelle
“Did you get this salsa at the Piggly Wiggly?” I asked Nicole.
“Yeah, but I got the good kind from the deli. Not a jar.”
“That explains it. It’s awesome,” I said, scooping more up with another chip.
“I liked it,” she said, taking a drink of her diet soda. “Mainly I like this. We used to do this all the time, you know, before I got married and had a kid.”
“Uh, you got that backward, girl,” I teased.
“It went just right as far as I’m concerned. I love that Noah put Coop to bed so we can hang out.”
“Where is he?”
“Noah? Man cave. He fixed up the basement months ago. It’s his retreat. So we’re free to finish While You Were Sleeping without cynical male commentary.”
“Good. I love this movie. I think I wouldn’t mind a little bit of a coma. Just a few weeks, to get some rest and maybe wake up and find the love of my life waiting patiently for me. Takes all the drama out of searching and giving up and getting cats and living alone.”
“She wasn’t the love of his life,” Nic said stubbornly. “She was in love with Jack, not Peter. Peter was in the coma.”
“Yeah, I know. But I have a point. I mean, Peter was a little snobby—"
“He was the Jared Fisk of this movie.”
“Don’t invoke Jared. He wasn’t a bad guy. He just wasn’t for me.”
“Obviously. And he wasn’t the one. He was just the other guy. So who’s Jack for you?”
“I don’t have a Jack Callahan. I think—I think it’s time I just accept that. You know, be happy with the life I’ve got, enjoy my friends and their kids.”
“You’re giving up? You’re not a hundred years old,” she protested.
“I feel like I am. I’ve felt off ever since the other night when I got my car back from being fixed.”
“When are you ever going to tell me that whole story? I mean, you told me you were together a long time ago and he dumped you and broke your heart. I mean the real story.”
“He had to follow me back to my house to get a check for the car repairs. First there was the part where he looked around and he hasn’t been in the house since we were teenagers, so he looks right at the corner where this ugly umbrella stand of my dad’s used to be. When we were together, I used to sneak him in at night after my dad was asleep and once time he tripped over that umbrella stand and we woke everyone up in the entire town, I think.”
“Wait. You snuck around with him?”
“Oh yeah. All the time. We were together for like four and a half years. My dad never thought he was good enough, so I fought with my dad all the time about him. And basically snuck around and did what I wanted.”
“You’re so quiet most of the time. I guess I can’t imagine you fighting with an authority figure or being secretive.”
“Oh, I have hidden depths. And I’m not quiet all the time. Not with you and Trixie, at least. But my dad was always on my case to break up with him, but I loved him so much. It was like the kind of thing you see in the movies.”
“Or the kind you read about all the time?” Nic teased.
“I like romance novels. They’re amazing, and there are so many ways to tell the story of how two people—or sometimes three people—find love and negotiate a relationship.”
“So was this in high school?”
“Yeah. All through high school. We first kissed on the Fourth of July before I started my freshman year.”
“Oh, under the fireworks?”
“Nope, it was before the fireworks. By the time the fireworks happened, we’d been making out and he asked me to be his girlfriend. I don’t know if I can explain to you how hot he was. He had his hair shoulder length then, this jet-black hair with soft waves. He kept it pulled back most of the time, but he let me take it down whenever I wanted to. Anyway, he dumped me the night before graduation, and said it was because he stopped loving me. I just couldn’t believe it. For a long time I was screwed up about it. Because I never loved or trusted anyone the way I did him, and it came out of nowhere. It just turned my whole life upside down. So I think the times I’ve gotten serious with somebody since then, I backed off and called it quits when it didn’t feel like it did when I was with Drew.”
“But you were kids. I’m sure first love is different, and you can’t measure everything against something that was so long ago that you’ve probably idealized it in your mind,” Nicole said. “I’m not saying it wasn’t amazing. I’m sure it was because you still look—like, your face transforms when you talk about him. It’s like something comes over you. So I know it was real, but you didn’t miss out on your only chance to be happy. Do you still have feelings for him?”
“No, of course not,” I said quickly.
“So that’s a yes,” she said wryly.
“I’m not in love with him. That would be pathetic. But I avoid him like the plague because even riding in a truck with him, I just kept remembering everything, and it hurt like hell. Does that mean I didn’t really get over him?”
“Maybe you need to talk to him, confront him so you can put it behind you. Just say, ‘hey, let’s clear the air between us. A long time ago, I thought we were happy, and you dumped me, and to be honest, it trashed me. Can we talk about that?’”
“Well, that sounds like a fun conversation,” I said sarcastically.
“No. The important ones are never fun. Remember when I had to tell Noah I was pregnant and I couldn’t even make words come out? Because I thought he didn’t want me and that he wouldn’t want Cooper? That was like I was being strangled and it was pure dread. And it turned out fine.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to go the same for me. I don’t think he’s going to be thrilled and say he loves me. That really only worked for you,” I said ruefully.
“Maybe the fact that you kind of wish he would, maybe that’s another reason to clear the air. Ask him to tell you what was going on in his head then and maybe let him apologize if he wants to. But don’t forgive him for his sake. Do it for yours. So you can have closure and move on and be happy.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said with a sigh.
I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to cram all the rest of the chips and salsa in my face and then go hide where no one would ever ask me to process my messy emotions again. The library. I wanted to g
o to my happy place and read books, maybe not even unlock the door. Although I didn’t think the board would keep paying me if I didn’t open the library once in a while.
All the way home, I wondered if talking to him would help. Nearly two decades of avoiding him hadn’t made him a distant memory, so maybe confronting my fears or my misery or whatever might help.
8
Drew
It was good to have Greg in town for our dad’s birthday. My parents were thrilled to spend time with him, but I managed to steal him for an hour to grab a beer. It was so nice just kicking back with my brother.
“The garage is doing great. You should be really proud of yourself, man,” he said to me. “It never did this kind of business when Dad ran the place.”
“I’ve been really lucky. I found a mechanic that works on the new luxury cars, so we draw in a lot of business from Overton and other surrounding towns where there are higher priced clientele. It’s been good for business, taking him on. And I know a couple of the doctors at the Overton hospital have gotten the new Teslas, so I’m considering getting certified to do electric cars too.”
“That’s a good idea, get ahead of the market.”
“That’s the plan, brother,” I said. “I wanted to tell you, last week Michelle had car trouble, and after it was fixed, our card reader was down so I followed her to her house to get a check for the repairs.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“What? No!” I said. “Do you think I live in a porno? I’m the grease monkey that fixed her car and picked up a check. It wasn’t an invitation for anything else. But it felt—weird. Being there again.”
Falling in Love: A Secret Baby Romance (Rockford Falls Romance) Page 4
