The steam flows out of the ajar door like water, like something from a dream.
I know a normal, sane girl wouldn’t go in there and intrude on his privacy, but I’m not a normal girl.
I’m not sane either.
I’m crazy for him. Crazy, crazy, crazy.
And in love.
I’m in love with the man on the other side of the door and I’m going in. I push at it with my trembling fingers and it opens without a sound.
As soon as I enter, I’m hit by the misty quality of the air. Everything is foggy and thick and barely visible. Even so, I still make him out.
Just like I thought when I was sixteen, he still looks like the tallest and the broadest thing I’ve ever seen.
So tall that I have to stand on his feet to reach up to his mouth. So broad that when I hug him, I don’t think my arms will meet.
And he’s naked.
Oh God, he’s naked.
He is partially hidden by the shower curtain –stupid shower curtain –so I can only see the back of his body but gosh, do I see it.
His shoulders are corded. So corded. They are like heavy slabs of stone that slope down to his back. The back with all the grooves and the great plains and terrains that the water is sluicing down from.
But that’s not the shocking part.
I’ve seen his bare upper body before, back in Connecticut when he’d work in his yard during the summer. What I haven’t seen ever in my entire life is his… bare ass.
My breath hiccups when I see it. When I see how round it is. How tight and honey-colored like the rest of him. There’s a curve to it that I wanna run my hands over.
And then there are his thighs.
His heavy, powerful thighs, and just the sight of them makes me wanna clench mine. Because they are so muscular and big, dusted with dark, springy hair.
I was right about them.
They are so big that I can easily perch my tiny self on them.
I can straddle my little body over one of his mighty thighs and I can rock against it. I can rock and undulate and rub my needy core against his flesh until I become so wet that I’ll glide. I’ll sail over his limb and his coarse hair will rub against my oh-so-swollen clit and I’ll come.
I’ll cream all over his tree trunk of a limb.
God, I so wanna do that. I so wanna ride his thigh that I’m dying with the need.
I’m so dying with it that I almost miss something important. In fact, it’s the most important thing.
I miss the fact that his hand is holding something. Something big and thick and hard.
Oh my God, his hand is holding his dick.
Although, it’s not a dick, nope.
He was right. It’s a cock. For some reason, dick makes me think of something narrow and something pale and thin.
So unlike this.
So unlike his cock.
Somewhere in the past few seconds I’ve been staring at him, he’s moved and now I can see the front of his body too. I can see his cock.
It’s wide and big and his fingers are wrapped around the base of it. Not only that, they are moving. They are moving up and down and for a second I think, I’ve caught him washing his shaft.
But that’s not true.
I’ve actually caught him masturbating, I think. Because his hand is not moving, it’s pumping. It’s stroking and going up and down so fast that it makes me think that he’s angry at his cock.
Mr. Edwards is mad at his erection and so he’s beating at it and beating at it. And all the muscles on his body are standing taught and beautiful. I can even hear the slick sounds of his frantic movements, which is crazy because the shower is loud.
My breaths are louder. Louder than his hand jerking off his cock.
God, he’s jacking off and I don’t know what to do.
How to simply stand here and not go to him.
I’m salivating for it. My mouth is full of saliva and I’m biting my lip and licking it.
I’m gasping and probably rolling my hips in the air and that’s how he knows I’m here.
He catches me perving over him while I’m making noises.
Yikes.
As soon as his eyes hit me, his face goes from flushed to furious in a split second and he whips around, his shaft hard and pointing toward me. “What… What the… What the fuck?”
I don’t flinch. I don’t act ashamed or afraid.
My shyness as always is a thing of the past when it comes to him.
“Were you thinking about me?”
His expression scrunches up and he snaps at the shower curtain and covers his lower half. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“The door was open.”
“And you thought you could just walk in?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“You couldn’t have waited until I was done?”
I shrug, watching water rivering down his chest, slicking his dark hair against his flesh. “I could’ve but the thing is, I didn’t want to.”
“Get out. Out. Right now.”
He’s angry, understandably so. I intruded on him.
But I’m not going anywhere.
I won’t.
Until he accepts it too. Until he’s free and at peace.
Until he admits he wants me too and it’s okay to do that.
“You never say you hate me.”
“What?”
I swallow and fist my hands. “You called me a nightmare. You said my face took away your peace. But you never say that you hate me. Not once have you said that.”
All day today, I replayed his words over and over. I thought of everything he said to me. Every little detail. I analyzed it to death and I realized that he never said it.
He never said the word hate ever.
I’ve said it but he hasn’t. Not once.
Shutting off the shower, he scrubs a hand over his face. “Violet. Get the fuck out right now.”
I take a few steps in. “It’s because you don’t hate me, do you?”
“I’m not going to ask you again.”
My legs are overcome with a strange current and I can’t stop myself from walking in further and further, until my bare toes bump with the ceramic bathtub and he actually has to take a step back to get away from me.
He doesn’t go easily though. His chest heaves; his fists clench; his jaw grinds; and he glares at me like I’m torturing him.
“You don’t say it because you don’t hate me. If you did, you never would’ve asked Brian to call me and talk to me. You did it because you don’t hate me. You just want me to think that you do so I’ll go away. And I did think that. I did and you never corrected me. You never told me the truth. Why didn’t you tell me the truth? Why do you want me to go away?”
His mouth twitches and curls and he takes such a long, deep breath that the wayward strands of hair around my face flutter.
“I don’t have time for your teenage hormones right now, okay? I need you to back off and leave me alone.”
“You know, you call me a teenager a lot,” I whisper, studying his features.
He cleaned up today for the camp, I realize. He trimmed his beard. It isn’t as savage and untamed anymore. It reminds me of the beard he had back in Connecticut, polished and civilized.
Although there’s no way after seeing him make repairs around the yard and living in this woody cabin that I can ever think him civilized.
He’s a man of nature to me. All big and flowing with strength.
“That’s what you are, aren’t you?”
“I am, yes.” I reach up with my hand, wanting to caress his jaw, touch that neatly trimmed beard but he stops me.
He grabs my wrist with his wet fingers, the only place he’s touched me so far, and squeezes. “Don’t be dumb enough to touch me right now.”
I didn’t expect anything less from him. I didn’t expect anything less than threats and a cru
el grip.
“You saying it over and over won’t make me grow up any faster,” I tell him, ignoring his warning.
“And I care about that? You growing up faster.”
I nod, letting my hand, my entire body go limp and lax. Like clay. He can mold me and press and push into me as much as he wants. He can shape me however he wants.
I’m his.
“You do. Because if you didn’t, you would’ve kissed me back that night.”
I think I dropped a bomb on him or something.
Or at least, that’s what it feels like when he shudders and jerks back. He steps away from me and lets go of my wrist.
Then he snaps the shower curtain open and climbs out, reaching for his jeans and whipping them off the hook. In a flash, he has them on, covering his gorgeous nakedness.
“Brian told me everything.”
He pauses, going still.
I watch the planes of his back shift up and down with his breaths, as I say, “How he wanted to ask me out that night.”
“So you have your answer now, don’t you? I’d like you to go away because my son wants you.”
He’s not getting off that easily.
“But he doesn’t. He doesn’t want me anymore.”
At this, he turns around, his face a blank mask and his eyes arrogant and slitted. “So what? Am I supposed to pounce on you now? Because my son doesn’t want you and my path is clear.”
“No.”
“Good. Because I’m not going to.”
“You’re supposed to tell me the truth though.”
He folds his arms across his misty, wet chest. “Truth about what?”
“Would you have kissed me back that night if we hadn’t gotten interrupted and I was older?”
His response is to grit his teeth.
“Because see, I’ve been thinking about this too. That’s what I did today. I thought and analyzed. You know all these things about me. You know where I liked to sit in school while I wrote in my journal. You know my favorite things to eat. So that means you watched me, right? You knew who I was that night. The night I kissed you. But still, you pretended not to know me. You let me think that you hadn’t seen me before then. You kept saying go home. You wanted me to go away then too but you didn’t know about Brian’s crush.”
“And that’s supposed to mean something?”
“Yes. It means that you were ashamed of watching me, weren’t you?”
A growl escapes him then.
It’s very low, barely audible, and I wouldn’t have heard it if I wasn’t so attuned to every little detail about him in this moment. His breathing pattern. The tick-tock of the vein on the side of his neck. The flare of his nostrils.
“You were. You were ashamed maybe because I was too young and you were too old.” I swallow. “And I know this because I was too. Not because of those reasons. But because I was watching my best friend’s dad. In fact, I used to avoid you. I mean, I’d only go over to your house when you weren’t there and the rest of the time, I’d have Brian over to mine.”
I realized this much, much later in the day.
When Brian’s words really sunk in.
He likes you too…
He likes me. That means he knew who I was on my eighteenth birthday. Not only that, he kept asking me to leave. I was throwing myself at him but he kept saying go home.
Go home, Violet…
And then, I realized the only reason he did all of that was because he was ashamed.
Just like me, he was ashamed of his desires, his wants. Long before everything went to hell. Long before he found out about Brian’s crush. Long before he started to hate himself for wanting what his son wanted.
His eyes narrow at my declaration. There’s a genuine curiosity, disbelief, shock in them. “You watched me?”
I could’ve laughed. I could’ve cried.
Jesus Christ.
Have there ever been any other two people so fucking similar to each other?
All the while I was dreaming in my bed, he was across that driveway, dreaming in his. All the while I was writhing, he might have been longing for me too.
I nod, smiling slightly. “Yes. I did. I watched you like there was no one else in the world.”
“Why?”
“Because I had this massive, gigantic, epic crush on you.”
“You had a crush on me?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t a stupid, drunken mistake, Mr. Edwards. I would’ve kissed you regardless. I would’ve kissed you because I wanted to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was sixteen.”
He breathes out after I finish.
A tight but long breath as his eyes sweep all over my face. They sweep and swirl until I think he’s touching me with his gaze.
Touching me and holding me up, keeping my feet on the ground because I wanna fly right now. It feels so, so good to finally tell him that.
To admit my truth to him.
But then, he speaks and his voice is tight and angry. “You know what happens when a thirty-four-year-old man watches a sixteen-year-old girl?”
“But I’m not… I’m not sixteen anymore.”
“Tell me what happens.”
I swallow, my heart hammering in the chest. “He goes to jail.”
He nods. “Now tell me what happens if he kisses her.”
I take a step toward him. “It doesn’t matter. Because you didn’t. Nothing happened.”
He scoffs, running a hand through his drenched hair. “Yeah, nothing happened. So that makes all of it okay, doesn’t it? It makes everything okay. I’m off the hook for all the things I thought about a sixteen-year-old girl.”
Fuck it.
I’m going to him.
I don’t care if he doesn’t let me touch him, I’m going to try regardless.
Thankfully though, he lets me touch him and I make contact with his bare skin for the first time ever.
I put my hands on the globes of his shoulders, touch my bare toes to his and crane my neck up to look him in his tormented eyes. “Yes. You are. You’re off the hook for everything.”
His shoulders shudder when he barks out a rusty laugh. “Yeah? I’m off the hook for watching a girl half my age? Watching her like I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Watching her like I had this… this compulsion. This need to look at her. To look at her pale skin and her gorgeous as fuck smile.”
I dig my nails in his hot flesh as I’m overcome with a swell of emotions. “Y-you think my smile is gorgeous?”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Fuck yeah, it’s gorgeous. Every night, you’d climb up to your roof and you’d just open your arms like you were soaking in the moon and you’d smile and Jesus Christ, I’d lose my mind. And I’d tell myself over and over I wouldn’t do it, that I wouldn’t go out but I did anyway. I’d still go out there and watch you while pretending to work on my roses. I’d still wander around the house, chasing after your strawberry smell like a disgusting creep.”
So years later, I get my answer.
I get the answer for the question I always wanted to ask him: What’s keeping you up, Mr. Edwards?
Turns out, it was me.
I was keeping him up. My smile was keeping him up.
My hands snake up to his drenched hair. “Is t-that why you were never there? At the house? I mean, I’d make sure you weren’t but sometimes you’d just run away. Disappear.”
“Yeah. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as you and not…”
“Not what?”
“Not go to you. Not touch you.”
“But it’s okay now, isn’t it? I’m eighteen. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to suffer like this.”
I swear his flesh turns up in temperature. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not about the fact that my son doesn’t want you anymore or that you’re fucking eighteen now. It’s about the fact that whatever they said was true.”
“What?”
His eyes are glowing now, brimming with everything he’s been feeling and thinking for the past years. Everything that’s torturing him, giving him pain, and I can’t see that.
I can’t see him like this.
“You want the truth, don’t you?” he rasps. “Here’s the truth: you didn’t ruin anything for me. You didn’t take away my job. I quit. You didn’t make me move halfway across the country, I did it myself. I did it because everything they say about me is correct. I wanted you to think that I hated you, I wanted you to go away because whatever they think I am is true. I am dangerous. I am diseased. I belong on the fringes of society. I belong in fucking jail. They can’t trust me around their kids. No one can trust me. I’m sick, you understand? I am everything that they say I am. Every filthy, vile, criminal thing.”
My fingers fist his hair. They clench and flex. They tug and pull at his strands.
It’s like they’re going into shock. They’re spasming.
How can he say that about himself? How can he not see that he’s different, this fucking amazing?
Instead of giving in to his desires, he chose to ignore them. He chose to hate himself, torture himself, remove himself from my presence.
If he’d given me one hint, one sliver of a clue that he wanted me, I would’ve done anything for him. Anything at all.
If he’d wanted it to be a secret, I would’ve been his dirty little secret.
If he’d wanted everyone to know, I would’ve screamed it from the rooftops.
How does he not see any of this?
I’ll make him see, though. I will.
So I blurt out the only thing I can think of. “They called me a slut.”
He pauses.
His heavy, noisy breathing stops and his eyes, brimming with hot emotions, go cold. “What?”
“There were rumors and gossip and…” I swallow, trying to gather my thoughts. “They’d make up stories about me. People would recognize me on the street and stop me and talk to me and say things to me. I’d get all these emails and they were, like, really bad and they all called me names. They called me a slut for throwing myself on you. They said that that’s what I do, I go for older guys and all of that. And…”
I lower my eyes and look at his throat. It’s flushed around his collarbone, droplets of his shower still sticking to the skin.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this story because I’m not going down the anxiety route. Because, hello? I’m fine. So I’m not telling that but I’m telling him something.
DREAMS of 18 Page 19
