| |
––––––––
THERE WAS NO STOPPING now.
Our lips had touched, finally, and the need for her only grew. Not satisfied with the taste of her lips or the feel of her skin on mine, the tenderness of her touch combined with the roaring passion that lay just beneath, I felt an urge unlike anything I had ever felt. To kiss her harder, to feel her deeper, to entwine my body with hers more completely than either of us had ever known.
Her lips were soft and sweet. I wanted to touch them forever. Simply holding myself back when my finger touched them was hard enough, but it was worth it. The decision had been made, and in an instant, I knew what to do. Star had been informed. It was over. Whatever it was to begin with. It certainly wasn’t a normal relationship.
I pulled her tight to my body, relishing in the thin fabric of her clothes against the very little of my own. No matter how much my bruises hurt, none of it mattered now. I felt like a Greek god. I could do anything.
We sank into each other and then down into the sand. Disappearing over the edge of the dune to an empty, secluded world of our own, our kiss became more passionate. As our bodies hit the sand, I lay back and pulled her on top of me. It was weird for me to not want to press over top of her, but I wanted to be smothered by her. I wanted her all over me, in a way that I had never felt before. I wanted to be all-encompassed by her. Until all I could feel on my body was sand and her skin. Her lips. Her breath.
Her hands were pressed into my chest, but she wasn’t pushing. She was touching. Her fingers trailed down over my chest and to my stomach as my own rolled over her back. Her breasts were pressed into my stomach, and my cock hardened at the warmth of her core over it. My hands slid down to her ass, going inside her shorts and squeezing her soft, bare skin. Pulling her hard down onto me.
She moaned in my ear. A moan that was breathy and heavy with passion. She could feel my hardness under her, burying into her and only blocked by two layers of soft, stretchy fabric. The ridge of my cock slid between the folds of her pussy, and she gasped. But her hips moved expertly over me. She rode me, my cock surely brushing against her clit.
One hand slid around to her waist and climbed. Up under her loose shirt, I felt the swell of her breast against my thumb as my other hand moved to my shorts. I wanted to pull them down, to let her feel me at my hardest, without something between us. My thumb hooked under the waistband, and I began to pull down. The curly, soft hair of my center brushed against her stomach.
Suddenly, she pushed up, causing breath to escape me and pain to shoot up my shoulder. She pulled away, shuffling on knees in deep sand until she could get to her feet. She backed up, eyes burning into mine with a mixture of confusion and desire. Eyes that told me she wanted to strip down right then and have me inside her, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
A crash of water behind her sent bubbling, rushing, cold sea over her feet and up to my own. She stood out against the moonlight and stars, a goddess to me, her shirt twisted and showing more of her stomach than I had ever seen and a slight hint of the underside of one breast. It was enough that my cock pressed harder against my shorts, and I internally begged her to come back.
But she stood, silently, eyes bouncing between mine as she ran her hands through her hair and then looked away. When she looked back, the passion had been replaced by pain. My heart sunk.
“I can’t...” she said hoarsely, her voice barely above the sound of a whisper against the crashing waves behind her. “I can’t.”
“Why?” I said, sitting up on my elbows. I didn’t want to go to her. Not yet. It would seem too domineering, too aggressive. She would run, like a deer into the woods, and I needed to be careful. Slow and quiet.
“I just can’t,” she said, then seemed to rally. It was almost like she had been searching for a reason, like she knew one existed but had been ignoring and now had found it again. “Star. She hasn’t read that message. As far as she’s concerned, you two are still together.”
“Okay,” I said, shaking my head a little.
“And even when she does,” she said. “I ... I can’t. She’s my friend. My best friend. And my roommate. I can’t just date her ex. Especially before she even knows that he’s her ex. I just can’t.”
“Lila, wait,” I said, sitting up.
“No,” she said firmly, and I knew the moment was over. It was lost. That was as close as I was going to come to filling my cup with Lila and living in the bliss of that sensation.
“No?”
“No,” she said again. “I have to go. Now. I think you should go back to your own room. I will give Emma your stuff tomorrow to give Kevin.”
“Lila, just wait,” I began.
“No,” she said. “I can’t. I just can’t. I’m sorry, Gavin. I just can’t.”
She walked away, stomping more accurately as she tried to get through the ever-wetting sand. I didn’t try to stop her. There was no use. She was gone.
Frustrated, hurt, and angry, I threw myself back onto the sand.
What happened? What had brought that thought into her mind? Did I move too fast? Was it the act of touching her that brought it on? Was it all too real? Too passionate? Was she worried she would go further than she wanted?
I could empathize with that. I wanted her, more than I had ever wanted anyone before. More than I had wanted Star by an order of magnitude. But if she wasn’t ready, if she needed to move slower than that, I could understand. I could deal. Hell, I had dealt with Star taking things at a glacier-pace, and as I thought about it, I didn’t actually like her nearly as much as I did Lila. I just liked the idea of her. The glamour of her. Star was like a fairy, and her image was enough to blind you to the fact that what was projecting it was shallow and empty. A shell.
But Lila... Lila was real. She was funny and sweet and smart. And sexy. She moved with a grace I was positive she had no idea she had. She cut through reality like a sword, slicing a shape for herself in it. At least that’s how I saw her. It’s how I had always seen her.
I was just too stupid to admit it to myself because of my shallow, silly crush on Star.
And now, as Lila stomped away, I realized I had done this all to myself. What came over me in the first place? What was going on in my brain?
Lila and Star were close, at least as close as Star was to anyone. Lila protected Star in a lot of ways, caring for her and absolving her of all the tiny little sins she committed by simply being her. Star was always saying or doing something that could be hurtful to those around her, but Lila never let it get to her. Never let her know. And always tried to foster a sense of peace and calm so Star could create. So she could be uniquely, authentically herself.
The only time she ever meddled in that was to help me get near her. Lila helped me get close, and why? Because I helped her with her studies? Sure, that might have been it at first. But after a few times of hanging out, was that really what was going on anymore? Was I even really coming over for anything other than hanging out with Lila?
In my mind, I was waiting to get laid. I was waiting until Star put down her defenses and I got my hands on her body and let myself find out if it was everything I had built it up to be. And I knew, deep down, I knew it wouldn’t be. Being with Star would have been a sham. A joyless mark on a bedpost. A name to add to the list. A conquest that I would have made.
But it wouldn’t mean anything.
But Lila...
In just those seconds, those few seconds our lips had pressed together, I felt the earth move. More than just sand slipping away into the current, I felt fault lines crack and the sky part and the light of the universe fill me up. My bruises and cuts didn’t matter. Not even down in the dirt. I could handle the pain. I could handle the annoyance.
If it meant one more second of touching her. Of holding her. Of kissing her.
Of loving her.
I winced at the thought. That word... I had never felt that before. I had never even thought it in relation to a girl. I loved my parents, though they tortured me. I loved Kevin as my best friend. I loved baseball. But I had never loved a girl.
I hadn’t even dated Lila, and yet...
Our kiss had been our first, and yet...
Our bodies had never crushed into each other, our nakedness eliminating any pretention, any apprehensiveness, and yet...
And yet...
I put my palms over my eyes and lay there, my hardened body softening and exhaustion starting to take over. I had left my key in her door, blocking the latch. I needed to go get it. One last insult to the injury.
I sat up, brushing as much sand off me as I could, and turned toward the hotel. My leg was suddenly heavy, a numbness in the thigh that had temporarily disappeared returning and in spades. I felt tired. Tired in my bones.
Trudging up the small dune to where the sand leveled out, I nearly fell once. What was I going to do tomorrow? I was in piss-poor shape to play, but I had to. I wasn’t going to let the team down.
Once back in the hotel, I was keenly aware of how little clothing I was wearing at two in the morning. With just my shorts on, covered in sand, I looked like I had been doing something lascivious out there. I almost had. Either way, the guy at the desk gave me a somewhat knowing nod and grin. I felt my stomach turn.
Rather than go up the stairs, I went to the elevator, watching as the grin turned to a frown as the night clerk fetched a broom and dustpan as the doors shut. He was going to have to sweep up after me because I was shedding so much onto the floor. I wanted to feel bad for him, but I just couldn’t muster up any more pity for anyone that wasn’t myself.
I stopped on the girls’ floor, making my way toward Lila’s door. It was shut now, completely, and I almost knocked. But it wouldn’t do any good. Even if I had, she wouldn’t answer. And even if by some miracle, she did answer, it wouldn’t change anything. She couldn’t do this. Not until Star knew. Not until Star said something. And maybe not even then.
Glancing down, I saw my keycard, sitting on the ancient carpet that looked like it was out of a 1990s nostalgia picture. Ocean blue with weird triangular shapes in yellow, red, and green, it almost camouflaged the red keycard. As I bent to pick it up, my back protested with a series of pops and cracks.
Shuffling back to the elevator, I made it before it moved back down and was able to walk right back on. Apparently, the night clerk hadn’t been in a hurry to clean the elevator out. Just to let me know he had to. I guess that was the order of the day. People telling me what I should feel. I should feel responsibility for my parents. I should feel pain. I should feel guilt over Star and my feelings for Lila. I should feel shame for making the clerk sweep.
All I really felt at that moment was tired.
When the elevator stopped at my floor, I got out, noticing that Kevin’s room was dark. Good for him, at least. I hoped he enjoyed himself. Emma certainly looked like she was going to.
I opened the door to my room before I remembered the reason I had been staying at Lila’s. The off chance that something could go wrong. That they might be waiting for me. But as the door swung open, the lights still on from where I left them earlier, I saw that no one was waiting for me. No one was there at all.
The door beside me cracked open, and I saw Kevin’s face pop out. He saw me, looked back into his room for a second, and then slipped his massive body out, keeping one foot inside.
“Hey, bud,” he said. “Coming to get supplies?”
“No, I’m staying here tonight,” I said. “You’re off duty.”
“You sure, boss?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Good night, Kev.”
“Night, Gav,” he said.
I closed the door behind me and went to the bathroom, starting up a shower. At least I could be clean before I slept. Though I’d rather be covered in sand. And Lila.
