Ray and I … Rain and Soldier …
We were always meant to be. And if it couldn’t have happened that one night when we were teenagers, then fate had seen to it to bring us back together in adulthood, to take our trauma and grief and hardship and somehow, someway, make it better.
She pushed the door open and met my eyes as she took my hand to bring me inside. “What?” she asked, smiling as the house enveloped us in its hushed darkness. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” I asked, pushing the door shut and locking it behind me.
“Like you’re seeing me for the first time all over again,” she replied, wrapping both hands around one of mine, taking me down the hallway to a room I’d never been to before.
“Maybe I am.”
The hallway was too dark. I could no longer make out her features or expression, but I felt her. I felt her hands; I felt her presence. I felt the warmth and need charging through the sliver of space that separated us on the short walk to her room, where she pushed the door open and released me from her grasp. A shred of light came in through the window, silhouetting her figure in its gentle glow as she wasted no time in sliding her hands over her breasts and belly and thighs to grip the hem in her grasp and pull it up and over her head.
“What do you see now?” she asked, her voice low and husky, as she stepped out of her heels and moved deliberately toward the bed in nothing but her bra and panties.
My heart hammered wildly—a pathetically nervous reminder that it had been ages since I’d been with a woman. That this was my first time alone in one’s bedroom. That this was the only time I’d ever felt something for someone I was about to sleep with. And thank God it had to be her. Thank God it was Rain.
“What do I see?” I parroted, entering the room and stalking toward her as my fingers painstakingly undid the buttons of my shirt.
She nodded as she met the mattress and stepped onto it, resting on her knees.
“I see my hope,” I answered, letting the shirt drop to the floor. “I see my dreams.” I undid my pants and pushed them down low on my hips. “I see my salvation and redemption.”
My hands reached for her, and hers, for me, and I framed her face with my palms. We lay together, and I worried I’d crush her beneath my weight, but she didn’t protest. Instead, she welcomed me, opening her thighs wide and inviting my hips to nestle comfortably against hers. Calling me home to her warmth.
I found her gaze as I pressed deeper, firmer, harder against her, stopped from entering only by a couple of scraps of flimsy cloth. I was certain the closeness was torture, but then, fuck, if I were to eventually find myself in Hell, maybe torture wouldn’t be so bad.
“I see the stars,” I continued, rolling against her gently, moving like the spilling waves against Connecticut’s rocky shore. “I see the way they pierce the darkness with light, making the night beautiful when it would otherwise be haunting and terrible.”
Her lips parted with a hushed sob, and her hands moved between our bodies to free my weighted erection and graze her fingertips along its length. I hung my head, hiding the humiliation of my shivering impatience. To feel her touching me now reminded me of when I had been young—horny and inexperienced and too fucking eager for my own good. I was going to embarrass myself—I knew it—and I wasn’t proud of it. But, holy fuck, if she kept touching me like that—gripping and moving her hand just right—I was going to blow before I could get inside her.
“Look at me,” she whispered, pulling her soft panties to the side and guiding my body to the entrance of hers.
Shame be damned, I did as she’d commanded. My eyes found hers in the hazy dark, and I sank into the wet, hot apex of her thighs in a movement so devastatingly slow that all I could do was hold my breath to keep the moment from ending too soon.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, my voice choked and my chest tight.
“Are you okay?”
She lifted her hands to frame my face, and I couldn’t help but grunt a strangled laugh.
“I should be asking you that.”
I knew what intimacy was like for her. How awful and deranged her toxic relationship with sex had been. I should’ve been more attentive. I should have been more present.
So, I found my voice and asked, “Are you okay?”
Fuck, I was light-headed. I lowered my forehead to hers, remaining still and just settling. Finding my breath. Calming my heart. Getting used to her body and what it was to be with her in completion.
“I’m fine,” she said as if she was surprised, letting her hands roam the length of my chest. “I’m more than fine. I’m … God, you feel so good.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
Her hips rose, pulling me in further, and I responded by moving against her. Finding a gentle rhythm with gritted teeth and a prayer that I could just hold on for a while longer.
“Fucking hell,” I gasped as that prayer went ignored and unanswered.
It was building too quickly, even as slow as we were moving. My breath hitched; my muscles tensed. I tried to still our bodies for just a moment, just to let the urgency die, but Ray shook her head.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, stroking her hands over my neck and chest. “Just let it go.”
And as if she alone commanded the functions of my body, I did in a way that was simultaneously beautiful and so fucking powerful that I gasped on a cry that would’ve been mortifying had I the capacity to think beyond how it felt to be with her, inside her, one with her in every meaning of the word. And if that were to be the only time it would happen, I absolutely would’ve felt like an asshole for lasting all of three minutes. But as I collapsed beside her, shuddering and panting and relishing in the beauty of being fucking alive, I knew without a doubt in my mind that this was the first time of many. I’d get my chance to make it up to her, and, dammit, I would.
“What do you see now?” she asked softly, brushing the hair off my forehead. Not at all perturbed by my embarrassing impression of a pubescent boy.
“Fuck, Ray,” I murmured, only half awake and barely able to pry my lids apart. But I did, opening my eyes to gaze into hers, and I smiled sheepishly. “Right now … I see everything.”
***
There were things I used to dream about. Having a wife, having a house, having a family—things that seemed more likely to be a forever fantasy than to ever become my reality, especially when I’d spent such a sizable chunk of my life locked up. Everything behind those concrete walls seemed far-fetched and impossible, but, man, I would dream, and I’d wonder what kind of husband I would be. What kind of dad.
I liked to imagine I’d be like Grampa—full of unconditional love and never-ending devotion for the people in his life. He never had a lot of money to express that love and devotion though, so he showed me in other ways. Taking me fishing. Reading me stories before bed. Making me a good, filling breakfast every chance he had. Those were the things I loved about him, and those were the things I missed the most.
And that was what I thought about now, the morning after Ray and I’d had sex for the first time, as I made her a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and home fries. The pans on the stove sizzled, adding an extra note to the music playing from the speaker wirelessly connected to her phone, and I remembered mornings just like this from my youth. Except in those memories, it was Grampa doing the cooking, wearing nothing but his pajama pants on a warm spring day, while Gramma sat at the table, watching him with undying adoration and singing along to the songs she played.