Friends Don't Fall in Love(26)
She’s quiet and eventually I turn to look at her. Her brows are pulled together and her lips are tight. I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t. She steps into my space and gingerly lifts her hand toward my face. Eventually her cool palm finds my burning jawline. She stumbles the tiniest bit forward and I reach up my hand to steady hers on my skin. This close, the scent of White Zinfandel mixes with her breath and covers me in soft puffs of sweet air.
“I’ve been—um.” She pauses. Starts again. “Your face. It’s so smooth. I wanted—” She swallows, her eyes searching my own. She has to be able to feel the way my blood is rushing beneath my skin. The way I can’t help but sway toward her, magnetized. “I was curious if it was as smooth as it looked.” Her thumb brushes along my cheekbone, back and forth, and I’m pulled closer still.
“Is it?” I ask her, dumbly.
She blinks, her lashes fluttering, and I sway even closer. Her inhales are bringing her chest within inches of mine. I don’t dare look down to confirm, but I swear to Christ her breasts brush against me. Her lips are open ever so slightly. I can practically taste her. If I just bent the slightest bit …
“Look out!” Suddenly I’m swept to the side and knocked off-balance as someone zips past on a rented scooter, reeling out of control and shrieking over their shoulder, “Sorry, man!”
Lorelai untangles herself and straightens first, eyes bright and brimming with amusement. I shake my head, getting to my feet. “Are you okay?” she asks, holding out a hand. I take it, but she releases it almost as quick, biting her lip. The moment, whatever the fuck it was, has passed.
“Yeah.” I laugh once, rubbing at my bruised ass. “Yeah, I’m … fine. Good. I mean, I think I broke my tailbone, but it’s nothing an inflatable doughnut seat can’t fix.”
My bruised pride, however? That’s gonna need something stronger.
10
LORELAI
SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT
Is my breath wasted if it’s only exhaled between your lips If my fingers print the sway of your hips, If my eyes crave to trace your freckles unseen, If my tongue licks and lingers just in between, If I tease out your cries,
If I spread apart your thighs,
will you save your sated sighs
only for me?
I say a quick good night to Craig on our porch, and by the time I hear his feet ascending the staircase and his apartment door shut, I’m already wearing my hardwood floors smooth with my pacing. Thankfully I’m on the first floor, so he won’t know by the creaking of floorboards that I’m emotionally and physically spiraling. What just happened between us on that street corner? He definitely leaned. Full frontal leaning. Slow-motion nipple brush. There was contact. I felt it zing ing straight to my damp panties and circling wildly through my bloodstream. If that guy on the scooter … if we hadn’t been interrupted … was he about to … was I about to???
I flop on my navy faux-velvet sofa with a loud sigh and slip out of my boots, letting them thud softly against the inexpensive blue-and-white area rug I picked up at Target when I realized the duplex was outfitted in hardwoods. I still haven’t bothered with lights. There’s a full moon shining through the slats of my blinds, painting everything an ethereal blue, pale enough to see my way around. My phone buzzes, and thinking it might be a text from upstairs, I check it, turning the screen light way, way down. But it’s only an email. Instead of closing out, I listlessly scroll through Instagram, not really taking in the images posted by people I wouldn’t recognize if I encountered them on the street.
Another zing of awareness breaks through the inattentive fog. He’s posted. Not on his account, but on his other account. The poetry one. I wish I knew if it was scheduled or if he wrote this after leaving me … I settle against a cushion to read.
And read again. And again.
I probably have every one of his poems imprinted in my memory. What makes his account so popular, and likewise his lyrics, is the uniquely sexy accessibility of his words.
Blah blah blah, now I’m horny and he’s literally just upstairs. What fresh hell. I try to shift mental gears, but all I can come up with is the accidental nipple brush from an hour before. Which makes me even hornier.
My eyes slide shut and my head is full of traitorous thoughts, images conjured within and filling the spaces between his written words. I imagine them precisely chosen to trigger a reaction in me. Which, honestly, is so unfair, and the next time I’m drunk, I might tell him, because, right now, inside the hidden walls of my mind, I see only him, his dark brows drawn together, his newly shaven cheeks flushing, his breath panting between us.
I think of the way his air traded places with mine on that street corner, twining and covering us in things unspoken. In my imagination, we’re not interrupted. Deep inside the secretive hollows in my mind, his long fingers reach for my waist and tug me close. Close enough that our hips meet and sparks fly. And it’s with intention. There’s nothing accidental about it. His blue eyes dip, just long enough to be followed by his hands.
And like that, I lose control.
My imagination takes over, or maybe my memories. Behind my closed eyelids, I watch as he unbuttons my shirt (because of course I’m wearing a button-down—way sexier than a tee), popping each individual button through its hole and placing a cool, open-mouthed kiss on the feverish skin left bare by the effort. On my couch, in my apartment, only one floor away from him, I clench my knees together, but his words echo inside of me and spur me on … if I spread apart your thighs, and I let them fall open. My skin is aflame in nerve endings and sensation and I quickly unzip my jeans, my fingers ghosting inside my panties to find the exact spot where I’m soaked and aching. I imagine his hands, his mouth, his breath all over me. I imagine him hard and thick inside the cradle of my legs and I press and tease and expertly dip the way I wish he would. My free hand finds my breast and I cup and pluck and roll until I cry out into the silence, shattering against wave after wave after wave of real release.