31. Fiella
My mind was full of nothing but heat–mouths meeting, hands gripping, blood thrumming. I wanted more. I wanted everything. I wanted to drag him inside, yank his clothes off, and have my way with him.
Or let him have his way with me.
I blindly reached out with one hand, feeling for my doorknob. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice a single moment of this scorching kiss.
Ah, got it. I yanked the door open, and we stumbled inside. As I glanced at the entry table to set my things down, I caught a glimpse of white paper.
Shit. I’d forgotten about my penpal. I suddenly felt like I was betraying my mysterious friend. Reality came crashing down like a tidal wave and I wrenched myself out of Redd’s grasp.
“This is a bad idea. We shouldn’t do this,” I panted.
“What, why? What do you mean?” Redd looked bewildered, his face flushed, and his lips swollen. I purposely avoided looking down at the obvious bulge in his trousers. He tried to reach for me again and I sidestepped away from his outstretched hand. He let it linger for a moment before he let it slowly drop to his side.
His eyes were glued to my face, trying to read my expression like a book. I locked my roiling emotions down so I could sort through them later.
“We just got carried away. Not a real date, remember?” I tried to laugh but it sounded more like a choke. My heart was still racing, and my body felt like lava.
He just looked confused. “Right… Okay Fiella. I’m sorry, you’re right.” He shook his head and ran his hands hastily through his mussed hair. “What you said. We just got carried away. I’ll get out of your hair. Goodnight.”
Redd fled my cottage and bee-lined back towards his end of town, hastily straightening out his clothes as he went.
Fuck. What have I gotten myself into? This was exactly the kind of mess I was trying to avoid.
I pulled the door shut, pressed my back into it, and slid to the floor, my face in my hands. My mind was spinning.
I could still feel the lingering heat of his hands on my skin, taste the blueberry and mint of him on my tongue, smell him in the air. I had to resist the urge to yank the door open, call out his name, and beg him to come back. Beg him to fill my mind so entirely that he was all I could think about.
I wanted him. I didn’t just want to fuck him, and that was the problem. I wanted all of him. And that terrified me. I didn’t want to give him the power to break my heart.
I didn’t want him to take a part of me with him when he eventually left.
Redd didn’t show up the next day.
Or the next day.
Or the day after that.
I didn’t see him around town, either. We didn’t cross paths in the square, he wasn’t working in any of the neighbor”s shops, and he didn’t take any meals at the diner. He didn’t walk back into Ginger’s Pub for another taste of cider.
I had begun to accept that he had simply walked out of my life, that I had finally scared him away, that he had never intended to grow attached to me in the first place.
Maybe it was all in my head. He probably never really liked me anyways. He had been saying from the start that he didn’t intend to stay in Moonvale forever–I knew this wasn’t his home.
I just wished he would have said goodbye first.
His absence dug under my skin in a way I didn’t expect it to. It needled between my muscles, through my bones, into my marrow. It ate at me in a way I couldn’t shake.
Why hadn’t he said goodbye?
I couldn’t even write him a letter to find out, as I didn’t know where he went. I supposed I could send a letter to his previous town in Sunhaven, but I had no way to know if he would be back there any time soon or if he was simply continuing his journey across the realm.
The dark cloud I had begun to escape settled back over my head, making everything seem just a bit greyer.