If Only I Had Told Her(22)

No, Finn.

I try to bring my focus back to her lips—Autumn’s lips!—kissing mine again and again and again.

I try to be grateful for the breast that is pressing against my chest, but the other one is also right there.

Do I know how to make her happy? Because I can’t tear myself away from her mouth to speak. My left hand trails off her cheek and down her neck, around her shoulder.

Slow, Finn. Slow.

I try to signal what I’m doing so that she knows. No surprises, no mistakes. My thumb is at the bottom of the swell of her other breast, her ribs beneath my fingertips.

Slow.

I’m moving my hand, and then—

I’m holding Autumn’s breast in my hand.

After all these years of trying not to look at them yet having their silhouette branded in my mind, Autumn is beneath me and in my hand and under my lips and hips.

She sighs the sigh from the tent this morning, the one that I wished I had inspired, and I am gone again. I am only sensations. There is no other reality, only Autumn.

“Finny.”

I feel my name against my mouth at the same time as I hear it.

Again, I am crashing back into time and space.

I remember that my body is kissing Autumn.

The signal comes through.

Stop.

I raise my head and look down at her.

“Yeah?”

“I want—”

The light is still dim, but I can see her face a little better. She is flushed and her eyes are sparkling, wet. She looks apprehensive again.

I’ll say it for her if she can’t. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No!” she cries, surprising me. “I want the opposite of that.” Autumn bites her lip after blurting out the words, and she squirms nervously underneath me, setting off a series of feelings in my body that make it hard to process what she’s saying.

Because surely, she can’t mean what I think she means.

The opposite of stopping is—

“You want me to keep going?”

“Yes,” Autumn says.

My body screams for the same conclusion.

My instincts want to be in charge again, but this time, they are very wrong.

“I–I don’t have—”

Autumn must assume that I have condoms, which I don’t. Does she really want to do it with me after making out once, after waiting for so long with Jamie? No mistakes. No misunderstandings.

“I don’t care,” she says. There’s a firmness to her voice, a deep certainty.

“Autumn, no.” I should sit up and let us both cool down, but I don’t move. Autumn is nuzzling me. Nuzzling me.

“Please, Finny,” she says and kisses my neck in a way that melts me. “Please, Finny.”

In all my fantasies, there’s never been an explanation for why Autumn and I make love. I always jumped into the story after having magically seduced her under innumerable, varied circumstances.

And there have been many fantastical circumstances.

Never, not in any classroom, back seat, backyard, or rooftop scenario, has Autumn ever begged me.

“Please,” she says as her lips travel along my neck and jaw. “Please, please.”

The barrier inside my mind is crumbling.

Her lips are back on mine, and I am lost to desire.

Surely, she’ll tell me to stop.

I slide my hand over her shirt, and she pulls it off. She doesn’t tell me to stop when I reach for her bra’s clasp.

Autumn’s bra is off, and the feel of her skin and the shadowy shape of her body leave me in thoughtless wonder. She pulls on the button of my jeans.

She means it.

Autumn makes a frustrated noise as her fingers slip and the button stays fastened.

She wants me.

All my reason and logic have been lost to that undeniable fact: Autumn wants me.

Now I’m the impatient one.

I push her hand aside and do it myself. I pull away from her enough to scramble out of my jeans and boxers and toss them off the bed. There’s a muffled thud as my phone in my pants hits the floor, and I look back at Autumn, who’s raising her hips to slip out of her own jeans.

I am all hands again, trying to help pull them past her knees and almost pulling her into my lap instead. Autumn giggles, and I kiss her feet as they reemerge from the denim.

And then I’ve taken off my shirt and I’m looking down at her.

“Oh, Autumn.” My friend. My dream. My love.

The trust in her eyes is intense. I cannot deserve that look; this cannot be happening.

She starts to pull off her panties, the last clothing between us.

I’ve lost the will to tell her that we can’t, even though I know this is all happening so quickly that we probably shouldn’t. I help her. I toss her underwear to the floor.

If this is a mistake, we’re making it anyway.

She opens her arms for me to return to her embrace. I have to say it while I still have thoughts in my brain.

“Can I tell you that I love you first?” I won’t miss my chance to tell her, even if she knows it must be true. I’m already risking so much.

“Yes.”

I fall over her, catching myself in time to lower myself gently, positioning myself between her legs, the animal instincts back in control.

“I love you,” I tell Autumn, saying it for all the times I couldn’t before and all the times I may never be able to again.