Chapter 11 – Angie
I didn’t wantto tell him like this, and I sure as hell didn’t want to cry, but the past few hours have been torture. He looks so handsome and nervous, and he smells like a combination of three different soaps, colognes, and aftershaves. It should be too much, but it’s perfect. He’s perfect. He tried so hard to keep the conversation going, and I was no help at all.
The whole time during dinner, I kept worrying about what happens when he kisses me. He’ll want to take it further, and I’ll have to tell him and ruin everything. I had an idea that when we got to his place, I’d sit him down and tell him, but the dread was too much. I couldn’t take it anymore. I blurted it out. I didn’t even let him put the popcorn down first.
The little bit of steak that I was able to choke down is a lead weight in my stomach. He stands in front of me like he got slapped in the face out of nowhere. My throat convulses. I’d puke, but the only thing in my stomach is that lead weight, and it’s not going anywhere.
I should run.
I’m not wearing shoes. They’re next to his boots in the foyer, and they’re lace up, so I can’t just slip them on and bolt. I could grab them and just carry them.
I don’t have my car. Why did I let him drive? Why did I say I wanted to come here? I should have had him drive me home. I could have told him in the truck and bailed. What was I thinking?
My gaze lurches from the front door down the hallway to the stairs, desperately searching for an escape from this moment, but there’s no way out. I said it, and now I have to live through what he does now. At least I don’t have to worry about breaking into tears anymore. I’m already crying.
I was going to be calm and business-like, but my face is crumpling like a baby about to melt down.
I keep my eyes on him and brace myself.
He looks confused.
He clears his throat.
This is it.
My hands ball into fists.
He takes a step forward and holds out the popcorn bowl. What does he want me to do?
He holds it out a little further. I take it.
“Here. Sit,” he says and guides me back toward the coffee table. My calves bump the wood ledge, and I lower my butt. It’s a sturdy piece from the ’70s with storage cabinets in the middle. My grandmother had the same one.
I wrap my arms around the bowl. He sinks down next to me, reaching across my lap to set a beer down by my other side. Then he takes a long swig from his own bottle.
My shoulders hunch forward and rise toward my ears like I can protect myself now that it’s all out in the open. A tear splatters into the bowl, shriveling a piece of popcorn. Brandon exhales and sets his beer down with a clunk.
“Herpes is the one you can’t get rid of, right?” he asks.
“Yeah.” Everything inside me sinks, and every inch of my skin burns.
“But you can’t die from it, right?” His voice is really gruff, like it used to be. Sometime over the past few months, it had gotten warmer. Not less deep, but less curt, and I didn’t even notice until now when it’s harsh again.
“No. There’s medicine that I take. I don’t really get breakouts anymore, but I can still give it to people.” I stare at the popcorn. I heard the microwave beep earlier. He must’ve dumped a bag in the bowl, but the bowl is huge. It looks like we already ate most of it.
He reaches in and grabs a few pieces. I startle, and he bumps my thigh with his. It’s a reassurance—don’t freak, it’s just me.
I glance over. He has his phone out, and he’s scrolling with his thumb. With his other hand, he reaches for more popcorn.
His screen is a bunch of search results. In the box at the top, he typed: is herpes fatal?
I guess he’s not taking my word for it. “You can ask me what you want to know,” I say. “I know everything about it.”
At first, I didn’t. I didn’t want to think about it. A few weeks after Ivy was born, though, I got really paranoid that I’d give it to the girls without knowing—like if we used the same towel or something—so I read everything I could find online. You can’t get it from towels or toilet seats or soap or silverware.
“You’re shook,” he says. “Drink your beer and eat some popcorn. You hardly ate anything at dinner.”
I couldn’t possibly swallow anything with the lump in my throat, so I watch him search.
does herpes hurt?
what is it called when you have a disease and it causes something else really bad to happen?
The top search result for that question is sepsis.
“Herpes doesn’t cause sepsis,” I tell him. “You want the word complications.”
He grunts and types herpes complications into the bar, and his face goes gray.
“I don’t have any of those things,” I say.
He grunts again and keeps searching.
is herpes dangerous?
“Did you have it when you were pregnant?” he asks.
“Yeah. I found out when I was almost due with Ivy.”
His teeth clench, and that bump on his jaw pops. I can see him adding two and two in his head, and not coming up surprised. He types some more.
herpes symptoms
“Does it hurt?” he asks.
“Yeah. It used to, but I haven’t had an outbreak in a long time.”
He hums and taps.
sex with herpes
He goes down a rabbit hole with that one. My face burns, but it’s a different kind of burn than a few minutes ago. More prickly, less scalding.
At one point, he mutters, “What the fuck is a dental dam?”
He taps and skims, intent on his screen, occasionally grabbing more popcorn with his free hand and washing it down with a long swig of beer.
Like Madison and me, Brandon was not the best at school. Unlike us, he wouldn’t do his homework unless Miss Dawn sat on him.
When we were young, there were many times when I was over for dinner, and Brandon had to stay at the table afterwards until he finished his missing work. He hated it, and he’d glare at the worksheet as if it had done him wrong, the same way I stare at my car’s engine when it won’t start, like I know it’s the problem, but damned if I know how to fix it. That’s how he looks now, frowning as he scrolls on his phone.
Is he figuring out whether or not this is a deal breaker, right now at this very minute, based on what he’s reading on the internet?
While he eats popcorn?
Oh, fuck that. I don’t want to be here when he decides.
I stand, forgetting about the bowl. It flips off my lap and onto the floor. Popcorn spills on the carpet. Brandon blinks up at me, surprised.
“Shit,” I say, my lower lip wobbling.
“Shit,” he somberly agrees.
“I’ve got to go.”
He quickly stands, too, dropping the hand with his phone to his side. “Why?”
There goes my chin. Now it’s wobbling, too. “B-Because I don’t wanna hold your popcorn while you decide if I’m too gross to fuck or not, Brandon.”
My vision blurs. I’m tired of crying.
Where’s my purse?
I squint all over the fuzzy room before I remember that I’m still wearing it.
“Hey,” Brandon says from inches away. He closed the space between us while I was distracted. “No. Don’t.”
He tilts my chin up, holding my head in place as he awkwardly blots at my eyes with the cuff of his shirt. His face comes into focus. His deeply serious brown eyes. His firm jaw. His stern mouth. So familiar, but also a total mystery, like a boarded-up building you pass every day for years but you have never once seen inside.
Now he smells like beer, melted butter, and cologne, and underneath, he smells like Brandon, like the past, the good times, the long, happy hours when we were young. I want to dig my fingers into his biceps and make him feel like I do—like there’s nothing that could make me let go—but I’m the mess here, so all I can do is breathe him in, and hold him close that way, but I’ve been crying, so my lungs shudder.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” he says and grabs me by the upper arms so I’ll look him in the eye. He gazes down, as serious as I’ve ever seen him. “Fuck, Angie. I’d take a bullet for you, and this ain’t a bullet.”
It’s not a line, not the way he says it. It’s a fact. Like Cummins makes the best engine, Pittsburgh sucks, and he’d take a bullet for me.
He leans down and presses his lips to my forehead, tender and awkward, as he cups the sides of my neck. “Don’t cry now,” he says against my skin. “This is nothing. This is just life. We’ll deal with it.”
I sniffle. He drops another kiss.
“You don’t have to be the good guy,” I mutter into his shirt. “I get it. If this is too much, I won’t blame you or tell anyone.” I don’t know why I’m saying all this. It’s not like I want to run him off. I want to stay right here, huddled against his chest, tucked under his chin. Forever.
He wraps his arms around me and holds me tight. For some reason, we rock in place, slowly, side to side.
“Shut up, Angie,” he says softly. “It’s not too much.”
“It might be…after you’ve had time to think about it. You might change your mind.” I can’t stop. I have to recite all my fears.
“You know me to be one to do that?” he asks, somehow gathering me closer.
I crane my neck, trying to meet his eyes, but all I can see is the five o’clock shadow under his jaw.
“No,” I say to his Adam’s apple. He has always seemed to know what he’s doing and what he thinks. Drives Madison nuts.
The muscles in his neck tighten as he smiles. “That’s right. Stop worrying. We’re good.”
My arms are folded and squished between our bodies. One of my socks is slipping down my heel. My eye sockets are swollen, and my sinuses ache.
“I can’t ever stop worrying.”
“I know.” He smiles gently. “I’m just sayin’—it’d be okay if you took a break for now. We could watch a movie. Afterwards, we could talk about it some more. Or not.”
He strokes my back soothingly. I’ve never felt this close to a person before.
Every breath he takes, his chest rises against mine, and I feel the same thing I felt watching Tamblyn and Ivy sleep when they were babies and every inhalation meant the world. Like I’m not floating alone in space anymore.
“So what do you say? Want to watch some shit blow up?” he asks, his low, teasing voice sending shivers down my neck.
“Does that mean you’re done with the internet?”
He growls, bends, and puts his shoulder into my stomach, hoisting me up and over until my front is dangling down his back. I shriek, but I don’t dare struggle lest he drop me on my head. He slaps my ass and strolls toward the couch.
“Put me down! You can’t carry me!”
“I just did,” he puffs, lowering me to the cushions, more quick than careful. Then he grins down, a little out of breath and pleased with himself.
He takes in my mussed-up hair and twisted skirt, and his lips curve higher at the corners. His brown eyes somehow darken and sparkle at the same time. My stomach flips, my cheeks heat, and I drop my gaze. I don’t mean to look, but his fly is poking up. It’s not a whole tent pole, or anything, but it’s definitely not an air pocket.
“Just ignore that,” he says, flopping down next to me and kicking his feet up on the coffee table. He’s got the remote in his hand.
“The popcorn is still on the floor,” I point out.
“I’ll get it after we pick something.” He clicks on a streaming service and scrolls.
He’s bent the knee closest to me, so I can’t see his hard-on anymore, but it was there. He told me to ignore it. That means he’s not permanently turned off. I lean forward, snag my beer, and sink back into the leather.
“Now we’re talking,” he says, swipes up his own drink, and clinks our bottles. “You want to watch Jason Statham blow shit up or John Wick or what?”
“Do we have to watch an action movie?” I begin to feel like I’m on steadier ground. I’ve argued with Brandon over the TV many times before, although usually, it was Madison arguing while I hold the remote in a death grip so Brandon wouldn’t take it.
“So what are you feeling like, then?” He squints to read off the screen. “Here, we’ve got ‘Award-Winning Directors?’ Or how about ‘Gems for You.’”
“They won’t be gems for me,” I say.
“Me, neither. Shane has my password, and he’s the one who watches all the time. These recommendations are for him.”
“Is that your excuse in case there’s weird shit?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” He slides me a look and grins. He’s not relaxed by any means, but he doesn’t look like he’s bracing himself to take a punch anymore like he did at dinner. My news didn’t ruin things.
Lightness fizzes upward inside me like I just rolled down a soda machine and someone unscrewed my cap.
“How ’bout this?” he asks. It’s a rom-com I saw a long time ago.
“Sure.” There’s no way I’ll be able to focus, anyway.
Brandon starts the movie and hops up to clean the popcorn. He disappears into the kitchen and comes back with more, this time still in the bag, and two more beers. He sits down closer than he was before he got up and puts his arm around my shoulder. We both stare at the screen intently. He munches away.
“I can’t believe I told you I had herpes, and you ate popcorn and looked it up on the internet,” I say, not looking over.
“I didn’t want to say something ignorant,” he says. “And I didn’t want to ask you shit when you were upset.”
“And you were hungry.”
“I’m always hungry,” he says.
We fall quiet and watch for a while. Well, he watches. I take the opportunity to really look around his place. There aren’t any pictures on the walls or tchotchkes, but it’s clean. There are stripes from the vacuum on the carpet.
The first floor is open concept, although the sink and stove are on a far wall that you can’t see from the living room. There’s a breakfast bar with nothing on it except for his keys and wallet, and the counters I can see are bare. It’d look like a model apartment except for the big-ass home gym in the dining room area and the “Cable Workout” poster taped to the wall with a bunch of illustrations of a man doing different exercises.
I feel Brandon’s eyes on me, so I stop gawking at his place and focus on the movie. There are some kind of wacky hijinks going on. I guess we should be laughing, but neither of us has made a sound.
Brandon coughs, and then he asks, “So, we can have sex with condoms, right?”
The leather couch is overstuffed, but not enough to swallow me whole, which is what I wish it’d do. My heart pounds, and my face flames. I do want to have this conversation, but I also want to disappear down the crack between the cushions like the snack wrappers that Tamblyn sneaks.
“Yeah. There’s always a chance you can catch it, but it’s safer with a condom, and if I’m not having an outbreak.”
“Okay.” He waits a minute—to give me time to stop wanting to die, I guess. “I don’t, uh, have anything. That I know about.”
I blow out my cheeks and nod.
“I don’t want to assume anything, you know, but—” There is a very, very long pause. I don’t know where he’s looking. I’m staring straight at the screen. “Do you want to?” he finally asks.
I’m shell-shocked, terminally embarrassed, terrified, and raw as hell, but theoretically yes. Very much. For a long time now.
I chew my lip. “Yeah.”
“Okay, fuck, yeah,” he says, and before I can blink, he turns, plunging a hand into my hair, and kisses me with all he’s got. He doesn’t stop, bowling me over onto my back, pressing me into the couch with his weight.
He tastes like beer and popcorn. He tastes hungry.
Oh, shit. I didn’t know he meant now.
What do I do with my hands?
He raises up on his knees and grabs me by the waist, resettling me higher up on the couch so he can cover me with his whole body, and all the while, his tongue and teeth coax me. Open up. Open wider. Lick me back. I never liked French kissing before, but this is different. He’s not trying to see if he can choke me with his tongue. I’m letting him in, and he’s exploring, and vice versa.
It feels trusting. Like confiding, saying the things neither of us can say out loud.
I want this. I want you. This is everything. This is only the beginning.
I don’t have to worry about my hands. Brandon draws them above my head, pinning them to the cushion, interlacing his fingers with mine. He wedges his knee between my thighs. My skirt is caught between his leg and my pussy, and it twists at the waist, digging into my soft middle. I’ve sunk into the couch. He uses his elbows to keep his weight off my chest, but his hard hips grind against mine, his cock poking my belly.
He’s breathing so hard. His eyes are closed, and his arms shake, but not from holding himself up. He’s swept away. I peek, captivated by the look on his face. He’s lost. Lust drunk. I made him feel this way.
He knows everything about me, and he wants me, and the idea is so big, it leaks out my ears.
This started fast, but he’s not taking it further. His hips rock, tugging my panties tight over my clit, and my overwhelm clears enough so I notice the pressure, and it feels good. He moves to kiss my neck and nip my earlobe with his teeth, and that feels good, too, but none of it feels as good as his weight. I’m caught, and that’s how he wants me.
He lets go of one of my hands so he can shove one of his under my sweater. I clutch his hair. He groans and lets my other hand go. My fingers fly to his shirt buttons. I pop them open, and it’s like I’ve given him the permission he’s been waiting for. He moans and drags my top over my head. I push his shirt off his shoulders.
A grumpy whine escapes my lips. There are still clothes. He pulls the white tank top off one-handed. I splay my palms on his chest. His skin is hot. The leather is cool against my bare back.
We pause, breathing hard, staring at each other. It’s not a check in. I want to look at him. I want to track his gaze as it travels from my breasts to my face to my bare thighs and back again like he can’t pick. My hands rest on his shoulders. He grabs them, urging them around his neck.
“Hold on,” he orders. I hardly have time to tighten my grip, but I don’t really need to. He’s got me, his hands cupping my ass, lifting me as he stands. I wrap my legs around his waist the best I can. He carries me to the bottom of the stairs, kissing me the whole time.
He raises a foot to the first step and grips me tighter, his muscles flexing.
“What are you doing?” I ask, breathless.
“Carrying you upstairs.”
He hikes himself up the first step. He blows out a breath like the guys at the gym when they deadlift.
“Put me down. I’ll walk up.”
“No.” He places his next foot, grunts, and hauls us up the next step.
“Come on, Brandon.” I wriggle. “Let me down.”
“No.” He hoists me up to the next step.
I uncross my ankles and let my legs dangle. “This isn’t romantic. You’re gonna put your back out.”
“I am not. I can deadlift two thirty-five.” He grunts and up we go again. It takes a little more effort than the last step.
“I’m not impressed.”
He takes two more steps. “You should be. This is very fucking impressive,” he huffs.
My lips quirk, and I bury my face into the crook of his neck. “You’re not gonna have any energy left by the time we get up there,” I mumble into his shoulder.
“Just you watch,” he says, making a final push up the last few steps and then striding down the hallway, breathing heavily but not at all slowed down. He opens his bedroom door with his foot and lays me on the bed, following me down, his hands and mouth everywhere.
He rolls me onto my stomach. Unhooks my bra. Kisses and nips down my spine until he hits the waistband of my skirt, and then he rolls me back over, unzips the skirt, tugs it off, and tosses it behind him onto the floor. He kneels above me, his spread thighs bracketing mine, and unbuckles his belt, staring at my breasts like he’s got plans, serious plans, and our clothes need to get out of the way.
He shucks his pants. Then he hooks his fingers in the sides of my panties, starts to pull them down, but he stops before he bares my pussy to glance up at my face.
I watch him back.
I can’t believe Brandon Kaczmarek is kneeling over me, naked. His chest and shoulders are a lighter tan than his forearms. He’s got one of those Vs pointing between his legs, a thick, dark thatch of hair, and a thick, veiny cock. It twitches, straight up against his carved abs.
My heart races. It’s Brandon, but he’s also a gorgeous, ripped, naked man with a massive hard-on wearing the most smoldering expression I’ve ever seen. The Brandon I know is cool and collected. He doesn’t say much, but he’s steady.
That Brandon isn’t going to go further until I give him a sign that it’s okay no matter how much he’s smoldering. Shivers race down my spine and prickle the back of my neck. My nipples harden into itchy, achy points. Blood rushes through my veins, a kick of pure adrenaline, because this new Brandon looks like he could shake off steady Brandon in a split second and fuck me like a rag doll.
Am I ready?
I’ve never been with anyone but Tyler, but I’m not going to think about him right now.
I’m scared.
What if Brandon changes his mind when he sees me? What if he looks real close at my pussy for a long time to make sure there’s nothing wrong with me?
Nausea joins the other clenching and fluttering in my belly. My gaze flies to his face. He’s calmly looking back at me.
“Scared?” he asks, his voice so low and gruff that it sends another round of shivers zipping from nerve to nerve.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“Me, too,” he says, his thumbs stroking circles on my bare hips. Excitement swells in my chest. Or maybe panic.
Maybe both.
“Why?” I ask.
“I don’t want to scare you off.”
“Why would you do that?” I ask, breathless.
His voice drops even further, the hunger in his expression burning even darker. “Because I want to fucking wreck you.”
My eyes widen. “What does that mean?”
“Say yes, and I’ll show you,” he says.
“Okay,” I agree. ’Cause what else would I say?
“Okay,” he repeats, and he kind of surges forward, over top of me, reaching for his night stand while he kisses me again like he just got let out of jail.
A drawer slides open. Foil crinkles. He bites my bottom lip and then captures a breast, raising it to his mouth, and suckles, rough and demanding. He’s not gentle, not with how he holds me or how he sucks and lashes my sensitive nipple with his tongue. I cry out, and he rumbles, pleased. Self-satisfied.
Every move he makes is swift and assured. My panties disappear. I don’t have time to think or worry. He flips me onto my stomach again, using his arm like a crook to hike my knee up, opening my pussy to him. Breathing hard in my ear, he pushes into me from behind, slowly but surely splitting me, filling me. A sound I’ve never made before slips from my lips. It’s a startled squeak that somehow ends in a demanding wail. He grunts, even more satisfied.
He reaches around my waist and delves between my legs, finding my clit like it’s a homing beacon, circling it with his two middle fingers. He cups my throat with his other hand, not hard enough to cut off air, but firm, so I’m held in position while he rides me, fucking me so hard my teeth would rattle if his palm wasn’t holding my jaw shut.
His hair brushes my cheek. “You like this?” he asks.
I can’t answer. I’m coming already, my stretched channel somehow clenching as a wave of release crashes through my belly, hot and bright and deliciously sharp. My whole body shudders, electrified. My legs flail. My heart slams in my chest. I press my palm between my boobs to calm it down. Oh, please, don’t let it blow.
This has never happened before. It takes concentration for me to come. I have to focus, but with Brandon, my brain can’t even follow one thought to the next. It’s mush. He’s leading, and I’m following, but I’m not entirely sure my body can take it.
He keeps thrusting, slower but unrelenting. I’m still spasming, and it feels so, so good. The intensity dwindles, but the pleasure doesn’t fade. It mellows, lapping in lighter and lighter waves like ripples in a lake. I whine like an idiot. I can’t help making these noises, and each time I make one, Brandon touches me differently, better, more.
As my trembling finally stops, he lets my knee go, smooths his hand over my hip, and murmurs, “You’re so fucking beautiful when you come. I want to see you do it again.”
He draws his cock out, and I whimper. He laughs low, flips me over, and slides back inside me on the next beat, his hips not losing time. He pumps like a machine, but a machine that knows exactly what rhythm I need and exactly which angle lets his pubic bone rub against my clit.
My knees fall open. My inner thigh muscles are putty.
Brandon cradles my face, kissing me, nipping my nose and chin, lowering his head to lap and suck my nipples like he can’t bear to leave them alone for very long, stopping every few seconds to mutter dirty, bossy things that banish every single, self-conscious worry that tries to rear its ugly head.
“Feel how wet that pussy is for me. You’re soaking my sheets, aren’t you, Angie? You’re making a mess on the sheets, aren’t you?”
I whimper. I am. I’m dripping, and every time he thrusts, he smears my wetness up my belly.
“Let’s see,” he says, withdraws, and flips me again, propping me on my hands, knocking my knees apart and slamming into me, hands gripping my hips, jerking me back when he thrusts forward so he goes even deeper. I’m looking straight down at the wet spot. “See the mess you made with that pretty, wet pussy?”
He teases my clit, his breathing heavier and heavier, but his pace doesn’t slow, doesn’t ease an inch. I had no idea, but this is exactly what I need. Hard and long and greedy. I can’t ruin anything. I can only hold on for dear life and go along for the ride.
“Can you feel me, Angie?” he pants.
I whimper. That’s not good enough for him.
He pulls my upper arms back so my chest goes flat to the mattress, holding my elbows behind me as he spreads his thighs to open me wider. It feels like a yoga pose. My knees are bent and splayed like a frog.
“How about now, Angie?” He drives into me, and he should be hitting my cervix, he’s so deep, but he’s not. He’s scratching some weird, wonderful place that I didn’t even know itched.
“Yes,” I gasp. “It feels so good.”
“What feels good?” he asks.
I don’t know what to say. Tyler just panted during sex, and I’ve heard dirty talk in porn, but damned if I can remember anything that they said right now.
“Does my cock feel good in your pussy?”
“Yes,” I moan. Bingo. That’s the answer.
“Where’s my cock?” He pounds that spot he found, and each time he hits it, pure satisfaction bursts through me, an exquisite relief that somehow ratchets higher and higher, which isn’t how satisfaction and relief are supposed to work. It’s magic. “Where is my cock, Angie?”
“In my pussy,” I slur.
“Say my name.”
“Brandon,” I sob.
“Say it again,” he demands.
“Brandon.” I’m demanding, too. He needs to finish what he started.
“I’ve got you,” he says, thrusting a few more times like he can’t help it. Then he hooks me around the middle and hauls me up so my back leans against his chest. While he pistons his hips, nailing the same spot from a different angle, he grabs my fingers and shoves them between my legs. “Play with yourself.”
His hand stays on top of mine like he wants to learn how I do it. For once, I’m not worried about whether I can get there, or how much longer I have, or if I should go ahead and fake it now. I’m riding high, and I know he’s not going to stop.
He pinches a nipple and scrapes his teeth along the crook of my neck, and it’s exactly what I need. My orgasm rises like a tsunami, hovering on a knife’s edge for an excruciating moment before it crashes down, washing every last brain cell away. I scream.
He groans, exultant, like he’s freed himself from under the weight of a car, and bucks wildly. I’m a rag doll, so I just flop, taking everything he gives me. Then his body tenses, and he wraps his arms around me tight. He shudders and holds me up as we both gasp for breath.
At some point, he tips us over, and we land on our sides, spooning. The sheet is damp against my face.
“Shit. Sorry,” he says and works his arm under my cheek so I can rest my head on his bicep instead of the wet spot. I’m happy he did because I can’t move. I’m as limp as a dishrag.
The seconds tick past, and the rise and fall of his chest slows against my back. His hand roams, stroking my hip, smoothing over my belly, cupping my breasts. Every so often, he kisses my neck.
There is nothing I need to do, nowhere I need to be but here, and if there’s something I should be worried about, too bad, because my brain is a sieve, and it can’t hold on to worries.
“Hold on for a second, okay?” he says, rising from the bed and disappearing into the bathroom. I hold on. What else can I do? My legs sure as hell don’t work.
A toilet flushes, and the sink runs. The mattress dips, and then he’s back, nudging my knees apart so he can gently wipe me with a warm washcloth.
Should I be embarrassed? Probably, but I don’t have the energy.
When he finishes cleaning me up, he balls the washcloth and shoots it at an open hamper across the room. He makes it.
“Two points. No net,” he says, rolling onto his side to face me.
My mouth curves. I’m too tired to giggle. He’s such a dork.
For a second, I float in the afterglow, soaking him in while he gazes into my eyes like he lost something there. His bicep flexes as he props up his head. His muscles are freaking amazing.
His brown hair is a sweaty mess. His abs still have ridges even though they’re doing no work at the moment. Somehow, as I watch, his dangling dick stiffens. My surprise must show.
He glances down at his cock and flashes a playful grimace. “Yeah, I’m kind of impressed, too. I jerked off like five times today. It should be out for the count.”
I can’t believe Brandon Kaczmarek just admitted to jerking off. “Five times?”
“I wanted to last. You know. If things went, uh—” His words fail him, and his expression reverts to the tough-guy mask that I’m used to. My heart swells. I love his poker face. I’ve seen what’s under it now, so I know what he’s been hiding. His hard face makes the truth sweeter. Underneath, he’s crazy about me.
My pulse spikes. It feels like winning the lottery when you’re behind on the rent.
What happens when the crazy wears off?
When he realizes now that he’s had me, he doesn’t want me, and he’s gone ahead and slept with a woman with herpes without thinking it through, and that actually wasn’t a risk he was willing to take?
My stomach aches. I draw my knees to my chest. Where did my underwear go? I want my clothes. I’m too naked.
Brandon frowns. He reaches across the space between us and rubs his index finger between my eyebrows. He must be smoothing the line that shows up when I’m upset.
I tighten my arms, tucking myself into a smaller ball. Brandon sighs, stretches his arm flat, and lays his cheek on his bicep to stare at me.
“Remember that time on the Henry McCarthy?” he asks.
“Yeah.” It was a long time ago. Before Ivy. Tamblyn was a baby. The McCarthys are tugboat operators. Every fourth of July, they invite business associates and their families to cruise and watch the fireworks from the middle of the harbor.
Folks bring their own snacks and coolers, spread out blankets on the deck, and enjoy the best view in the city. I’d gone once before, when I was really little, before my dad left. He was a marine surveyor, so he knew the McCarthys that way.
The time that Brandon’s talking about, I was Madison’s plus one, and she was tagging along with Randy who knew the McCarthys from the port. I didn’t know Brandon was coming. I didn’t notice him until well after the boat had launched.
Miss Dawn was watching Tamblyn that night, and Tyler was away on a whitewater rafting weekend with his boys. I hadn’t been out in months. I drank two hard seltzers, and I was three sheets to the wind. It was hot as the seven hinges of hell, but I was blissed out just being nineteen years old and having a break from the constant vigilance. Tamblyn was in her grab-it-and-put-it-in-your-mouth phase.
Brandon stops rubbing away my stress wrinkle and pries away one of my hands to hold it.
I squeeze it tight. “Why do you ask?”
“I was thinking about that night. You were leaning against the gunwale with your neck craned back, watching the fireworks, your face lit up, grinning ear to ear. For a whole half hour, you were smiling.”
“You were watching me?” I was with Tyler then. If you’d asked me, I’d have said I was in love. I never stopped to ask myself why love felt like shit.
“Yeah. I was skulking by the wheelhouse so you didn’t see me.”
My mouth softens. “I was wasted.”
“You were beautiful, and it fucking broke my heart.”
“Why?”
“Because I hadn’t seen you smile like that for years, and I was so busy trying to act cool around you, I hadn’t realized.”
“You tried to act cool around me back then?”
His lips curve. “I tried.”
“I didn’t know.”
He lifts our joined hands so he can smooth the line in my forehead again with his thumb. “I was a dumbass kid, but I thought if I ever got a chance with you, you were gonna smile like that all the time.”
“There were fireworks. You can’t have fireworks all the time.”
“Beg to differ,” he says, smirking and casting a glance down at his dick. It’s not as hard as it was, but it’s not soft either.
I roll my eyes.
“I know that,” he says, serious again. “But whatever went through your head just now that made you curl up like you got kicked? I’m not having it. So you might as well tell me what you’re thinking, and we’ll sort it out.”
“You’re not having it?” Until tonight, I had no idea that Brandon had any bossiness in him. Maybe it should piss me off, but it doesn’t. It makes me want to close my eyes and fall back like it’s a feather bed. Like an acrobat’s net.
“You know what I mean. What was that, Ang?”
I’m so used to making nice and smoothing edges for a man that my brain is already supplying me with convenient lies—I got tired all of a sudden. I got cold. My stomach hurts. Cramps. I was thinking about something that happened at work. The girls. I could pick any one of those things, and say, “It’s nothing. I don’t want to talk about it,” and I’m one hundred percent sure that Brandon wouldn’t believe me, but he’d drop it because I asked.
I don’t have to trust him.
But I could.
I could try.
I’m so used to clinging to something flimsy to keep myself from drowning. What would it feel like to grab onto something solid?
I swallow, and then I say, “I’m scared that once you have time to think, you’ll regret that you got carried away, and you won’t want to risk being with me.”
He nods. He doesn’t argue. It takes him a long time to speak, but for some reason, my stomach doesn’t sink, and my heart doesn’t climb into my throat while I wait. Somewhere along the line, he won my sympathetic nervous system to his side.
“I’m scared that by some fucking miracle, Tyler is going to smarten up and beg you to take him back, and you’ll do it for the girls.” He guides our clasped hands to press between his pecs, right over his thumping heartbeat. “I’m scared that you’re gonna finish your glow up and realize you can do better than a guy like me. I’m scared that I’m a rebound, and you’re only with me ’cause I’m familiar. You’re fucking it for me, Angie. If I’m your rebound, it’ll kill me.” He tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling. “It’d kill me, but I still wouldn’t regret this,” he says to the light fixture. “Not ever.”
I curl my fingers around his thumb, squeezing tight, and inchworm until I’m plastered to his body. I throw a leg over his and hook my foot around his ankle. He exhales and presses my head to his chest. We’re fully tangled now.
“I guess we can be scared together, then,” I say.
“Or we could relax.”
“What’s that?” I joke.
Chuckling, he rolls me onto my back and grins down, drawing my hands above my head. “Or we could do the fireworks thing,” he says.
“Okay,” I agree, lifting myself to capture his lips and steal that smile.
His weight comes to rest on me, and we start at the beginning all over again, eyes locked, hearts pounding.
I didn’t know that you could feel this close to another person, or this safe and happy. I didn’t know that love could feel like something other than wanting and longing and wishing.
It can be having. And holding.
A fresh start. A moon shot.
And yeah—
Fireworks.