I pull my hand from the warmth of Corrine’s grasp. I need my hands free to talk about this.
“The day Mom died...” I take a deep breath. Saying this out loud feels like a betrayal because my mother never did a thing to deserve these feelings. I push past the guilt and let the words out one by one.
“The most overwhelming emotion I felt was relief.”
I wait for a lightning bolt to hit me. But all that really happens is a tightness I didn’t realize I had loosens in my chest. Corrine reaches out, placing her hand on my thigh, and it feels like permission to keep talking.
“People always say that caregivers need to take time for themselves and I did. But it wasn’t... It didn’t help. Because no matter what, even if I got away for a few hours or overnight or even a weekend, I knew what I was coming back to. There was no escaping it.”
There are tears in my eyes and this is too heavy of a conversation for a person whose mother is in the hospital but now that the words have started I can’t stop.
“She was dying, Corrine. She was going to die and there was no way out of that. We just had to wait for it. And she had to wait for it.” My voice breaks. “And then she did die.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that we were there. That we held her hands and she took her last breaths in our living room. She insisted we play this song, this Beatles song she always loved. ‘Rocky Raccoon’ was on repeat for days. She said she wanted to hear it as she went because it made her happy.”
Corrine laughs and sniffles.
“It was as painless as it could have been but she was still gone. She wasn’t ever coming back.”
I take off my glasses and clean the lenses with the hem of my T-shirt. My hands feel so cold. I don’t know how to make them warm again.
“I should have felt grief, you know? I thought that was what I was supposed to feel. And I did eventually. I feel it now. But when the nurse said, she’s gone. It felt like...like...”
I take a shuddering, gasping breath. I’ve never said this out loud. “It felt like my own death sentence had just been commuted.”
I’d kissed Mom on the forehead and I’d hugged Amy and I’d just walked out. I walked the fuck out of that house and I didn’t come back for hours. “I left. You know where I went?”
She shakes her head, a quick, decisive no.
“I walked all over the city. I got a Big Mac and chicken nuggets and ate them until I felt sick on the curb of a parking lot I don’t even know where. And I felt selfish and so, so relieved. Because I knew that no matter what, no matter how hard it was going to be to live every new day without Mom, that the next time I came back to that house, she wouldn’t still be sick.” I lose my voice for a moment, the grief choking me. “I wouldn’t have to clean up her vomit or pretend that I couldn’t hear her crying when she should have been sleeping. Mom was free and so was I.”
I laugh, my horribly timed laugh. “It was the worst kind of freedom I’ve ever felt.”
Corrine says nothing. Her silence feels both peaceful and condemning. The air thick enough to choke on, with judgement, with my pain, with her own.
“I’m sorry.” I wipe at my face. “I shouldn’t have said that. That’s not why I’m here.”
“That is exactly why you’re here.” She kisses away a tear.
“She didn’t deserve that, Corrine.” My heart breaks again, more painful than the first time because now there’s scar tissue. “She didn’t deserve to die like that.”
The warmth of Corrine’s body moves closer and we lean against each other.
“Surrounded by her family? Listening to music that made her happy?” she asks.
“At all,” I say, stubborn. I feel small, a kid again.
She runs her hands through my hair. “Thank you for telling me.”
I rub the side of my face over my shoulder to rid it of dampness.
“I’m sorry I never asked you sooner,” she says.
The Blunts keep their home equatorial levels of hot. I’m in nothing but my boxers with the sheets pushed off the bed and the window cracked but I still feel like a furnace. Maybe this is why Corrine sleeps with the windows open, as a bit of rebellion.
Mr. Blunt came home this evening with the good news that Mrs. Blunt was awake but had begged him to go home to sleep and shower since he “kind of smelled a little bit.” When Corrine introduced us he didn’t seem fazed by the fact that some dude was in his kitchen wearing his wife’s apron and a pair of rubber gloves.
Stress does weird things to people.
I haven’t slept in a house this full in a long time. It feels crowded and loud even though I’m in my own bedroom, a spare at the end of the hallway, and sleep is a fairly quiet activity. One of the Blunts snores but it’s barely a distant buzz from here, like listening to the sound of a car or two as it passes by the side of the house.
The sound of footsteps is easy to recognize, though, and I sit up when they stop in front of my door. Corrine lets herself in. She shuts the door with a quiet click and stands with her back against it.
“Hey,” I say, for lack of anything better. There’s a small, pathetic part of me that hopes she’s here for something that involves my penis but I know better than to dream.
“Why are you here?” she whispers.
I pause. “I already told you,” I say slowly. “To help.”
And maybe to try to win you back, I don’t say.
“But...” She takes a step toward the bed. “I broke up with you.”
The way she says it, it’s like she’s asking for verification. “Yeah. I recall that. Vaguely,” I say with a thick layer of sarcasm.
She sits on the edge of the mattress; the brass frame makes a quiet tinkle. “I just mean, you had every right to be mad at me. To hate me. And you chose to help me instead.”
The confusion in her voice pisses me off. “You think I would leave you to suffer just because you hurt me? Do you think that’s the type of person I am?”
Her small, cold hand finds mine, fisted into the sheets in the dark. “No. I just... Thank you.”
Her other palm cups my jaw. She scratches the stubble there and I lean into her like a cat.
I squeeze her hand and admit the thing that I never would have admitted a few months ago. “Just because we’re not together anymore doesn’t mean I stopped loving you, Corrine. It doesn’t work like that.”
She sucks in a breath but stays silent.
“You don’t have to say it back,” I whisper. “I’d be surprised if you did.”
She lets out this small sound of pained protest. “Why?”
I shrug. “You don’t say things like that.”
“I’m sorry.” There’s a strain in her voice, like she’s trying to hide the fact she’s crying. “I’m sorry I can’t give you what you want.”
Something sharp stabs my chest. But I shake my head, holding my hand to where hers still rests on my jaw.
“What is it you think I want, Corrine?” I’m so thankful for the darkness in this room, so she won’t be able to see the truth on my face.
“You...you want to be together.”
A dog barks somewhere in the neighborhood, the low bass of a large canine. I let it get in a few gruff bellows before I speak again. Now that I’m here, I’m not sure that’s what I came here for.
“I came here to help you, first and foremost. And yes, I also came with the hope that I could maybe remind you who I am. But now that I’m here I think what you said in the hall outside Richard’s office?” I take a deep breath. “I think maybe you were right.”
Her hands cover more of me, my forearms, my stomach, like if she can touch me she can make me believe. “No. You are not a mistake. I’m so sorry I ever said that to you.”
I hold her skin to mine. “Not that. You were looking for a distraction and I needed a place to put my grief, at least at the start. We turned into something more. But maybe we should think about reminding ourselves of who we are. Everything moved so fast. Maybe before we come together again, we take it slow?”
She pulls away in the dark but I bring her back close to me. Her hair tickles my chest. Her hands are cold. “I’m not saying I don’t want to be together. I want to figure out who I am without my mom and how I can be a better brother and friend. I want to figure out where I stand with my career so that when I come back to you and you choose me, it’s because of me. I don’t want either of us to ever feel like this was a mistake again. I think it was the secret that made it hard. My sister said, secrets push people together but they also push people apart. And I thought she only meant her and I would be pushed apart. But it was you and me, too. We couldn’t be who we were meant to be if we were trying to keep it all a secret.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe.”
But she doesn’t sound sure. Maybe sounds like another word for never.
She crawls up the bed and straddles my lap. Every cell in my body is desperate for her, terrified that this could be the last time. I am hopeless for her touch, even if it’s a consolation prize.
“Can we...?” she asks.
“What? For old times’ sake?”
The heat from her body is now the hottest thing in this room.
“Wesley,” she says, like she might say please. “Let me show you.”
No. I should say no. If I had a modicum of self-respect I would say no. When I leave here, I won’t have her back. But at least I’ll also know that she loves me, even if she can’t say it.
“Hurry up and kiss me already,” I say.
Her hands move through my hair, tipping my head back, and her lips come down over mine. She tastes like cherry-flavored lip balm and minty toothpaste and she maps every inch of my skin.
My cock is a steel rod. I think I almost have a stroke, I get hard that fast. My hands find her thighs, blessedly bare. I sneak my fingers beneath the hem of her T-shirt and play with her through her panties.
She gasps into my mouth, grinding against my thumb. The fabric is wet and I slip my fingers beneath it to glide them over her swollen skin. Her hands grip my hair to the point of pain in response.
I feel like I haven’t touched her in so long, too long. After a few short days, I’m a starved man confronted with an all-you-can-eat buffet. My eyes might be too big for my stomach, but I’m going to do my best to consume every piece of her.
I scoot lower on the bed, holding her up with my hands on her hips.
“What...?” The glow from the streetlamp outside illuminates the confusion on her face.
My hands move to the inside of her thighs and I pull her panties to the side. Her eyes are as big as planets as understanding washes over her face.
Holding on to the bedframe, she lowers herself slowly over my mouth. The salty taste of her, the heat of her body, it’s an electrical charge straight to my cock. I could live off the taste of her, her soft quiet gasps, her wetness over my upper lip and down my chin. I keep one hand hooked in her panties, with my other I palm her ass, urging her to move.
Other than following her cues, I have no technique, no idea for what I’m doing—I’ve never had someone sit on my face before. But none of that seems to matter. Corrine hovers over top of me, chasing my tongue with her body. I have the most amazing view of the underside of her breasts. But before I can reach for one, her hand anchors in my hair, holding my head in place.
“Oh fuck,” I say, muffled into her body. I love how she takes what she wants from me. She might have difficulty telling me how she feels but she’s never been afraid to take her pleasure.
She grinds down on top of me and I flick my tongue over her; her thighs tense, her breath hitches. “Fuck my face, Corrine.”
“Wesley. Yes,” she whispers and just as quickly as we started, she is coming.
As I sit up, I can’t stop touching her, my hands roaming over her smooth skin without a purpose, just to feel her. She pushes her hand into my boxers and lifts up onto her knees, sinking onto me.
I hold her still, her head resting against mine. My eyes open. Hers closed.
“I love you,” I breathe into the space between us. Saying it is liberating. The best and worst kind of freedom. Even if I won’t hear it back.
She starts to move. Hot, slow, sucking pulses of her hips. My heart might stop from the force of its beating. She kisses me, long and wet, licking the taste of herself off my lips.
She holds me here, in a purgatory of pleasure, keeping me hot but never going fast enough to get anywhere. I find her clit again, rubbing just barely against the taut and sensitive skin, and she moves faster, pulls more from me until blessedly she’s coming again. She takes my mouth as I groan, moves on top of me, the tiniest, tightest movements, as I lose myself in her.
“What will you do next?” I ask later. The house is still quiet around us, making only the sounds houses make at night. I’ve already decided I’ll be gone in the morning.
Her fingertips leave chills in their wake as they drift over my arm and shoulder. “Wait until I know Mom is okay.” She sighs. “Then go back to Boston and try to pick up the pieces.”
I squeeze her to me in a quick hug. No matter what, she always works so hard. If she has this kind of drive for her career I have to believe she’ll work for us, too.
“What about you?”
“I...don’t know.” My career, our house, my family and friends. I don’t know what I want to do with any of it. “I guess figuring it out is what I’ll do next.”
She kisses me over my heart, holding her lips there as the muscle beats against her. “Where do you think you want to work next?”
I stroke my fingers through her hair. It doesn’t smell like coconut. It’s spicier, like she’s used whatever she could find in her parents’ bathroom. “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you one thing.”
I kiss the top of her head. “Wherever it is, I’m going to make sure my boss hates coffee.”
I keep my mouth shut when she bites my pectoral. But only barely.