Nine
A FEW HOURS LATER WE’RE kissing on my couch.
Really kissing.
He’s leaning back, angled diagonally with one of his legs bent up on the middle cushion and the other foot planted on the floor. And I’m sprawled shamelessly on top of him.
He’s been hard in his jeans for several minutes now, but he’s not pushing us forward toward a particular destination. His hands are moving all over my body, and his tongue is deep in my mouth. He’s definitely tense. Just as into our embrace as I am. But it’s more like he’s reveling in every touch than demanding even more.
I’ve never known anyone else with that kind of patience.
In truth, I’ve never been with any man other than Chris. He was my first, and I haven’t kissed or had sex with anyone since him. Chris was always gentle, but he also eagerly initiated each next move. He made things happen every time we were together intimately, and I always loved being with him.
But this is different. Entirely new.
The freedom and the power of it is as scary as it is exciting.
He’s never articulated it directly, but I know it’s true. Theo is always holding himself in check.
Waiting for me.
But he’s not frustrated or impatient about it. He’s loving this as much as I am. He makes a lot of low, sensual moans as I rub against him, when I caress his skin under his T-shirt.
He took off his jacket and sweater when he got here, and we both took off our shoes. I hiked my skirt up to my hips to free my legs so I can straddle his thighs and get more friction where I need it.
“Theo,” I mumble against his mouth, one of my hands tucked under his shirt so I can stroke his chest.
“Mm-hmm.” He’s cupping my ass with one of his big hands and holding my thigh with the other. I wore thick wool thigh-highs with my boots instead of tights for this exact reason. He’s loving the bare skin above the band.
“You’re a really good kisser.”
He chuckles, his whole body shaking in the most delicious way. “So are you. You’re so passionate. You throw your whole self into this, just like you do everything else. I feel like I’m on a high from you. Completely intoxicated. Submerged in all your passion and feeling but somehow not drowning in it.”
I’ve been pressing little kisses against his jaw and neck, but now I lift my head so I can see his face. He’s flushed. Sweating slightly. And his eyes are deep and hot.
He’s not just giving me a (very effective) line. He means it.
As emotionally affected as I am aroused, I pull off my soft sweater and toss it on the floor. Underneath, I’m wearing nothing but a thin camisole. My frame is long and slender, and my breasts are rounded but not very large. I don’t bother with bras much in the winter.
His eyes drop to my chest with a hungry gaze, running over my bare shoulders and the outline of my breasts.
“Okay,” he says with a lot of gravel in his voice. “Now I might be drowning.”
I giggle until he reaches up to cup my breasts and thumb my peaked nipples through the silky fabric. My breath hitches, and my head falls backward as I arch into his hands.
I let him caress me until my need becomes too urgent. Then I lean forward again in a ravenous kiss. As our tongues slide together, he moves his hands back to my bottom, rubbing it through my panties. His fingers gradually get more presumptuous, but he’s still not reaching where I desperately need to be touched.
“Theo,” I gasp out. “Please.”
He makes a long guttural sound as he slips one hand into my panties so he can stroke my hot, wet arousal. I’m still trying to kiss him, so I make a whining sound into his mouth at the sharp tugs of pleasure when he finds and rubs my clit.
I’m so far gone I could probably come in about twenty seconds, but he doesn’t focus only on my clit. He fingers my entrance and pulls my thighs farther apart so that he can slip a finger all the way inside me.
Eventually I no longer have the concentration necessary for the kiss, so I pull away and tuck my face into the crook of his neck as I gasp and whimper. My body is rocking eagerly, like I’m instinctively riding his hand.
Theo is moving with me, making tight thrusts up into my weight as he pumps his finger. He’s huffing with our rhythm, occasionally grunting out a gruff sound that might be my name.
I don’t care if we’re so desperate we’re going at it in an adolescent dry hump on the couch. It’s still one of the sexiest experiences of my life.
When my rising orgasm coils so intensely that I can’t help but make embarrassing sobbing sounds, I smother them by biting down on his shoulder through his T-shirt. Something about the gesture finally breaks all the tension inside me. I come hard, my body shaking and arching through the waves of pleasure as I stifle my loud cry against his shoulder.
He’s making groaning sounds as he pushes his finger against the clenching of my inner muscles. He’s still rocking up against my weight but slower now, more lingering.
When I’ve worked through the last of my climax, my body relaxes, and I’m humming pleased and sated into his shirt. He’s fallen still too, panting loudly. He’s withdrawn his finger, but he’s still cupping me intimately with his hand, giving my clit some relieving pressure.
“That was so good,” I say when the power of speech has returned. I lift my head to smile down at him. “Thank you so much.”
He smiles back endearingly. “You’re welcome.”
“Now I can do you too.”
He chuckles. Looks sheepish. “No need.”
“What?” Frowning, I reach between our bodies so I can feel his groin.
He’s no longer hard.
I stare at him for a few seconds, processing what it means. Then a little giggle spills out of me. “Did you actually come in your pants?”
“There were extenuating circumstances,” he says, still smiling warmly. He can’t be too embarrassed. He looks as happy and relaxed as I feel.
“And what were those extenuating circumstances?” I tease him, leaning down to press a soft kiss on his lips.
“Those circumstances were having Maya Alexander coming on top of me. What the hell else can a man do but come too?”
I collapse into more fond laughter, and this time he laughs too, wrapping his arms around me in a hug.
After a few minutes, he does get up and go to the bathroom to clean himself up, and I’m still giggling a little when he returns.
He pulls me into a full body hug as we settle back onto the couch. He gives me a slow, tender kiss that lasts for several minutes.
Then we lie there together, enjoying each other until I actually fall asleep.
***
T HEO MUST FALL ASLEEP too because it’s early morning the next day—Christmas Eve day—when I wake up.
I feel warm and cozy but not entirely comfortable. I’m still wearing my thigh-highs and camisole with my skirt bunched up around my hips, and Theo’s big body is resting on one of my arms, making it lose circulation.
He’s sound asleep, breathing slow and even. I carefully pry my arm out from under him and shake it out to get the blood flowing again.
As I do, I look at him, smiling like a sap at the sight of his thick, rumpled hair and five-o’clock shadow. Even his eyelashes are thick and slightly disarrayed.
I’m not sure how or when it happened, but it did.
I adore this man.
I want a life with him. It might be a miracle that I feel this way again.
After a minute, I’m so overwhelmed with feeling that I need to distract myself. I go to the bathroom and then return to settle back on the couch.
Despite my efforts to not wake him, he blinks a couple of times and peers up at me from under heavy eyelids. His face softens into the sweetest smile, like seeing me on waking makes him happy.
“Good morning,” he says, reaching up to touch my cheek with his fingertips.
“Hi.” I smile back at him like a dope. “Happy Christmas Eve day.”
“Oh yeah. It is Christmas Eve. I don’t have to work.”
“So what are your plans for your day off?” I stretch out on top of him in my favorite position, pleased when he wraps his arms around me.
“Well, I hadn’t thought about it. But lately the only thing I want to do with any free time I have is spend that time with you.”
I smile against his neck. “That sounds good to me.”
He takes my head in his hand and moves it in a position to kiss me, smiling against my lips as he does. “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“You brushed your teeth.”
“So?”
“I haven’t. That needs to be remedied.” He eases me off him to head to the bathroom. “I’m not going to be the only one with morning breath.”
I fall back onto the couch, laughing again. I really can’t seem to stop.
Then, since we’re both awake and up, it makes sense to have coffee. I make some in my French press as Theo walks around the small space, opening up my blinds and letting the bright winter sunshine in.
We end up back on the couch to drink our coffee, talking about our plans. I always have dinner with Tee and Daniela and then we go to midnight Mass together. Theo’s parents are expecting him for dinner, but he asks if it’s all right if he comes to Mass with us.
I agree, ridiculously thrilled that he wants to.
It’s almost an hour later when we start kissing again. And, not unexpectedly, it gets heavy fast.
Knowing Theo is trying to be good and wait until I’m really ready, I fight the arousal enough to break our embrace and sit up so we can talk.
He’s stretched out lengthwise on the couch the way he always seems to end up. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” he asks thickly.
My heart pulses at the endearment. “Do you want to have sex with me, Theo?”
“Of course I do. You know I do.” He hefts himself up to a sitting position beside me.
“When we... when we talked about it before, you said you wanted us to not jump into that until we had time to settle into things. You wanted to make sure I’m ready and that this is really what I want.” I swallow hard. “I appreciate that you gave us that time. It’s helped me to know for sure that I want to be with you. But I know it now. All the way. You’re the man I want, Theo, and I’d like for us to be together in every way.”
His face changes. Transforms with an emotion that’s awed and full of joy at first but then tightens into something like fear. Or guilt.
Something entirely unexpected.
I make a choked sound at what I see in his expression. “As long... as long as I’m still who you want.”
“You’re the only person I want, Maya. And it’s been that way for a really long time.” His features twist in obvious reluctance. “And I want to have sex with you more than anything, but I need to tell you something first.”
It still feels like I’m strangling, but I make myself breathe through it. My heart is racing as I resituate myself so I’m not all over him. “Okay. Is something... is something wrong?”
“No. Not exactly. There’s just something I haven’t told you, and I feel like I need to do it before we... we take this next step.” He’s not warm and relaxed anymore. He’s not radiating that happy affection I’ve sensed in him for the past week.
He’s nervous. Awkward. He’s not meeting my eyes.
I try to mentally brace myself as I nod. “Okay. You can tell me.”
He clears his throat. “I... I’ve been into you for a long time. A really long time. I’ve told you that before, but I didn’t give you specifics. I was crazy about you back in school.”
This isn’t what I expect. I blink a few times. “While I was with Chris?”
“Before that.” He’s staring down at the floor. His shoulders and jaw are visibly tense. “That... that winter dance your sophomore year. You remember?”
“The one Chris asked me to? That first time we got together?”
“Yes. That dance. I was planning to ask you first.”
My stomach is doing weird flip-flops, but this doesn’t sound nearly as bad as I feared. “What? Chris wouldn’t have asked me if he’d known you—”
“No, no, he didn’t know. I didn’t tell anyone. I was... It was my secret. That you were special to me. So that year I finally resolved to do something about it. There was that dance coming up, and I tried over and over again to ask you.”
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you ask? You never even—”
“I was shy. Painfully shy. And it felt like asking you at last after liking you for so long was an enormous risk. So I was still trying to work up the courage when Chris caught up with me at school one day and told me he’d asked you to the dance. And you’d said yes.”
“Oh my God.” My chest is actually aching for him. I reach over to squeeze his knee. “I’m so sorry, Theo. I had no idea about any of it, but that must have been so hard for you.”
“It was... terrible. I think he noticed you for the first time shortly before he asked you, but he was all in with you pretty quick. And then you two were a pair. Always together. And any hope I’d ever had was... was gone.” He’s still speaking gruff and stilted. This confession is incredibly hard for him.
“Oh no.” I rub his thigh, seeking to comfort him in any way I can. “What did you do?”
He shrugs. “There was nothing to do. I tried to put my feelings aside. Talk myself out of wanting you. But the problem is that the closer you got to Chris, the more I got to know you too. And the more I got to know you, the more there was of you for me to... to want. So I tried to avoid you. Tried not to talk to you too much so I could keep my feelings in check.”
“I really thought you hated me and didn’t think I was good enough for Chris.”
“I’m sorry you thought that, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t have those feelings for my best friend’s girl. I couldn’t let myself get any deeper.” He rubs his face with one of his hands. “I tried to be interested in other girls. As you know, I’m not the most outgoing of people, but I forced myself to ask other women out just so I could try to get over you.”
“Did it work?”
“To a certain extent. My feelings for you never went away, but they weren’t always so urgent and so right in the front of my mind. I really did try. I had a couple of relationships that lasted almost a year. They both fell apart for what felt like natural reasons at the time, but now I wonder if one of the reasons I could never really make it work with someone else is because you were... you were always there first.”
I put a hand on my chest. Over my heart. It’s aching almost painfully for what Theo must have gone through for so long when I had absolutely no clue.
“I’m so sorry. I was about to say I wish I had known, but I’m not sure that would have been good. What would I have—”
“No, no. You never could have known. It would have been absolutely wrong to tell you while you were still with Chris. I might not have been able to stop myself from wanting you, but I could at least stop myself from doing that. I loved Chris, and I would never do that to him. I would never be that man. I just... I just held it. Carried you in my heart. But it always had to be a secret.”
Something about his words strikes me. Feels familiar. But I’m so overwhelmed with feelings that I can’t pin down where I heard them before.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say, reaching up to palm his face and turn his head so he’s looking at me again.
His mouth twists again. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart, but that’s not all I need to tell you.” He leans into my hand for just a moment before he eases his head back.
“What else is there?”
With a raspy breath, he gives a brief shake, as if he’s trying to wake himself up. “So then Chris died. And... and it was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. But I couldn’t even grieve for him without feeling guilty.”
“No! No, there’s no reason you needed to feel guilty. You never made a single move on me. You never betrayed him. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I hope not, but I still felt so guilty. Because I still wanted you. So much. I just couldn’t make the feelings go away. You were gone then. You left town and didn’t come back, but it didn’t make it any better. I couldn’t date anyone else because suddenly you were right back there at the forefront of my mind when I’d worked so hard to keep you out.”
He sounds so anguished I feel like I need to answer the feeling somehow. “Oh Theo. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. You had to work through your grief just like I did, and you had those old feelings to complicate things.”
“They weren’t old though. They suddenly felt brand-new again, and nothing I could do would get you out of my mind. When you started posting your pictures and thoughts, I... I kept going back to look at every single one. They felt so much like you, and they made me feel close to you in a way I was never allowed.”
“I didn’t know you followed me.”
“Followed you.” He breathes out the words like they mean something different. “That’s exactly what I did. Follow you. Everywhere you went, I was right there with you in my heart. Until finally... finally...”
He tries, but he can’t seem to finish the sentence.
I wrap an arm around him. “It’s okay. Just tell me.”
“Until finally I sent you a message.”
I hear the words but can’t immediately process them. “You—”
“Sent you a message. Just some thoughts about one of your posts. Reading and looking at your pictures weren’t enough anymore. I needed to... to connect. If I was ever going to get out of my paralysis, I had to at least try. So I sent the message from the account I sometimes use online, and you responded.”
My stomach starts sinking as if my body is catching up faster than my mind. “I responded?”
“Yes. And you were so lovely and authentic and deeply reflective—exactly as I’ve always known you are. So I wrote back, and you responded again. And... and we kept talking. For almost a year.”
I slowly pull my arm back. My back stiffens.
Theo is suddenly urgent. Like he’s scrambling to hold back an avalanche. “It meant so much to me. Talking to you every day like we did. It... In a real way, it helped me heal from losing Chris. And it felt to me like... like it was helping you too. So I didn’t think it was wrong. I kept telling myself it would never be anything but an online correspondence, but maybe both of us needed it. And you’d never have allowed it if you’d known it was me.”
I make a weird, choked sound. “So you... you...”
“It was me. Your pen pal. All along. It wasn’t supposed to be a lie. It didn’t start that way, and then it got so far and so deep I didn’t know what to do. Because finally telling you would feel like a betrayal. I knew you’d never liked me, and I was terrified you’d misunderstand my intentions. So I just never told.”
It’s so much—so overwhelming and disorienting—that I can barely see his urgent face in front of me. I can barely breathe. “So all this time... But you kept... Even now you didn’t...”
“I meant to tell you! When you mentioned you were coming back, I decided that this was the time to tell you. That very first day I saw you in the store with your Tee, I came in so I could finally get it said.”
“Then why didn’t you?” There’s almost a sob in my voice, but there’s no way to control it.
“I tried. You won’t believe me, but I tried so many times to get it out. But I’ve always been so tongue-tied around you. It’s always felt like the weight of the world rested on each interaction because I felt so... so deeply for you. And this was worse than anything. Because I’d fallen in love with you all over again over the past year, and I wasn’t sure how I could ever stand losing you.”
I hug my arms to my belly. Shake with spasms of emotion.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Please don’t cry. When your Tee recruited me into your mystery, I went along with it because it gave me the chance to be with you. And each time I figured I’d finally tell you the truth, but I never did. Then you started to like me. And then you started to want to be with me the way I’ve always wanted to be with you. And it felt like all my dreams were finally coming true, but if I told you this one thing, I might blow it. Lose everything I’ve always wanted.” He reaches out like he’s going to touch me, but then he pulls his hand back. “But I didn’t want to take this last step when... when you still didn’t know.”
I sit very still for what feels like a long time, staring at his tense body and anxious, emotional face.
He’s so upset. Every bit as upset as I am. And he’s terrified about my reaction.
And my reaction is... impossible to describe. My whole being is flooded with far too many conflicting feelings, and I’m not sure I’ll ever untangle them.
I stand up abruptly.
“Maya, please,” he says hoarse and urgent. “Just talk to me. I understand if you’re angry or hurt, but we can work through it. I’m sure it feels like a betrayal, but that’s the last thing I’d ever want to do with you. I was just... I was just so scared.” He takes my face in both his hands, holding it tenderly. “Scared I’d lose everything.”
“I... I... don’t...” I can’t get anything said. I pull out of his hands with a jerk since it feels like the earth is shaking beneath my feet. And I’m falling. Falling. I might never stop falling.
“It’s been me the whole time. The real me. I’ve been my real self with you this whole last year and I’ve been my real self with you these past two weeks. Everything we shared was real. We’re good together. You know that too. We can be... we can be happy together.”
His voice keeps breaking, and it’s breaking my heart.
I hug my arms tightly to my chest and squeeze my eyes shut through a few silent sobs.
“Please don’t cry, Maya. It’s going to be all right. Just tell me what you need from me, and I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you anything.” He reaches out for me again, but he stops himself this time.
I can’t stand to see his face. See his heart in his eyes. I stare out one of my windows as I manage to force out, “I’d like... I’d like you to leave now.”
“No, no, no. Please don’t push me away. If we can just talk—”
“I can’t talk right now.” I sound colder than I feel. Almost brittle. Completely unnatural for the person I’ve always been. “I need... I need space. I can’t even breathe.”
“Okay,” he rasps as he collects his sweater and his jacket and his shoes from the floor. “Okay. I’ll leave for now so you can get some breathing room. But please don’t push me away.”
I open the door for him, needing to get him away since it feels like I’m going to shatter into pieces at any moment.
He steps out onto my deck in his jeans, T-shirt, and socks. “I should have told you before. I should have been... been braver. I never meant to hurt you, but I can see that’s what I’ve done. But I love you, Maya.” I choke on another sob as he continues, “I can wait for you. I can give you all the time you need. I’ve already waited more than half my life for you. I can wait however much longer you need me to do. But you’ve been happy with me these past two weeks, and I know—I’m absolutely certain—that we could make each other happy for the rest of our lives.”
The final words are almost wistful.
I close the door in his face and burst into tears.