“I love the way you smell.”
He lifted his chin to give her better access, sliding his free hand down her back. He brushed her backside and squeezed gently before trailing back up her ribs. Her perfect lips covered his face with kisses, and his throat was so tight he didn’t trust himself to speak.
But when he cupped her face in his palms and she sighed happily, he thought maybe that was okay. He looked her in the eye and arched up to kiss her, gaze unwavering.
He’d always preferred action to talking, anyway.
Claire slept like the dead beside him.
He couldn’t stop looking at her.
Something was happening inside the hollow cavern of his chest and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t have the urge to run away screaming.
Which worked out because he couldn’t run even if he wanted to.
As a guy who hadn’t been in love since the eighth grade, he wasn’t usually one to wax poetic after sex. He wasn’t a hit-it-and-quit-it kind of guy, but he didn’t dwell on it long after the fact, either.
Sure, there were high points pinned in his memory as particularly good, but every single one paled in comparison to the past week with Claire. He wouldn’t be surprised if the others started to fall off his radar completely.
He desperately hoped Claire felt the same. He still worried it wasn’t as enjoyable for her because of his physical limitations, but he’d been creative in his endeavor to please her and so far, she’d voiced no complaints.
On the contrary, the sounds she made were…encouraging. To put it mildly.
What made these last few experiences stand out was how it felt everywhere, not just the usual places. The second she made eyes at him and he knew what was about to happen, his stomach dropped in anticipation. His heart leaped into his throat and his lungs constricted. It was hard to breathe or think about anything that wasn’t her.
Them.
Carefully, so as not to jostle her, he pushed to a sitting position. He grabbed his laptop and propped it on his lap, turning the screen light to the dimmest setting.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Four letter words
Claire,
Fear isn’t something I experience often, and I do a lot of dangerous shit. Only when I do something really out there do I get a whiff of actual crippling, bone-chilling fear.
But you? You scare the hell out of me, Claire Harper.
If you ever find these emails, or if I ever grow the balls to tell you about them, I’m sure you’ll wonder why a single embarrassing event in the eighth grade had such an impact on my life and approach to relationships. While I don’t think I can fully describe how devastating that moment was, or the utter humiliation of the months （yes, months） that followed, I can sort of see your point.
There’s more to it.
That situation with Angela happened in the fall, and the rest of eighth grade was hell on earth. There were days I made myself throw up just to avoid going to school. But my mom was diagnosed that year, and my concern for her started to overshadow my own shame, and I didn’t want to do anything to cause her or my dad more worry. So I sucked it up and finished the year.
Camping had always been like a reset for me. My dad and I had started going a few years before that, and even though trips were less frequent after my mom’s diagnosis, we still went about once a month. Being out there and seeing how much bigger the world was outside of that small, judgmental school that smelled like money and arrogance was a shift to my perspective every time. It reminded me there was more to life than what happened inside those walls, and there were things I was good at.
Like rock climbing.
The summer after the year of hell I was on one of those trips, and just before night fell a kid from my school ran into our camp. He’d come out with a group of inexperienced climbers and one had frozen with fear on the side of a rock face. They were afraid he’d get tired holding on and fall, and even though he was on belay, they couldn’t just let him stay up there all night. My dad and I grabbed our gear and followed the kid to the site. We were familiar with the area and knew there was a way to get to the top of the face on foot. My dad set the anchor and I climbed down to meet the stuck climber. Once I got there, I realized it was Blake, one of the most popular kids in my class and, incidentally, the guy Angela ended up going to the fall dance with.
Anyway, I talked him through getting off the rock, and by the following week the story had spread through town. I was in the newspaper and Blake, who turned out to be a pretty decent guy, invited me to his house the next weekend.