Sixty-Eight
Her bedroom was cleaner than Cary was expecting, but it still smelled close, like she needed to open a window. Shiloh’s room
smelled like incense and laundry and health-food store perfume. She’d worn patchouli oil in high school—Cary hated it then.
Now it was one of a hundred things making him hard.
He pushed her to her bed. Pushed her down. Climbed over her. Held himself up with his hands by her ears, kissing her head
back into the sheet. (Did she ever make her bed?)
He fell onto his side next to her and unbuttoned her dress until he could see his dog tag. Such a dumb thing. Juvenile. He
rubbed the skin beneath it, around it. Shiloh had perfect skin. He pulled the dress farther open. He kissed her clavicle.
Cary had always been making the best that he could with his body. He was built from spare parts, he knew that. He had moles
and eczema. He’d gone eighteen years without eating a fresh vegetable and then spent too much time in the sun. He was physically
what the Navy made of him.
Shiloh was something finer.
Tall. Broad. Hair so thick you couldn’t see her scalp. Skin that didn’t freckle or burn. Her nose was long and perfectly straight.
Her eyelashes were so dark, she always looked like she hadn’t quite washed off her stage makeup. The only thing wrong with
Shiloh was her crooked bottom teeth, and Cary wanted to touch them. He wanted to kiss them. He wanted to stick his dick in
her mouth and cut himself on them.
(He’d built walls around these feelings once—those were gone now. Disassembled, along with all the reasons he and Shiloh couldn’t
be together.)
He kissed her. He kissed her again. Her hands were on his neck.
“I got tested,” Cary said.
Shiloh looked confused for a second.
“At my last checkup,” he said. “Just to be sure.”
“Oh.” Her forehead smoothed out. “Okay. I’ve been tested a lot.”
That was strange; he let it go. “I also have a condom.”
She smiled. “In your wallet?”
“Yes,” he said. “Like a douchebag. There are more in the car.”
Shiloh laughed and touched his cheek. “You’re very prepared.”
“I’ve had six months to think about this.”
“Is that all you needed to fix everything—six months at sea?”
He nodded. Literally, yes, that was true. He could make any decision with six months to focus. He kissed her again.
“We’re good,” she said.
He kissed her.
“You’re good, Cary.”
His eyes welled up, he wasn’t sure why. He kissed her again. He didn’t trust himself yet to shove his tongue against her teeth.
He unbuttoned her dress to the waist, then got on his knees to take it off. To pull it up over her head. He went right for
the fly of her jeans and pulled those off, too. Shiloh’s legs were too good. He wanted to fuck them. Didn’t know how to fuck
them. Thought about spreading them wide right now and moving the crotch of her underwear aside, so he could push in.
He kissed her back onto the mattress, then sat up to pull her underwear off.
She was ten miles long.
The hair between her legs was dark.
She was every centerfold.
Cary used to tell himself that it was wrong to think this way about a friend. To use her in his imagination. She drove him
crazy... Pressed against him in the car. Draped over his desk. Sitting between his thighs once on a roller coaster.
Did it make it better or worse, he used to wonder, that he loved her?
Cary was so hard, he was seeing stars. He was hallucinating. He was making too much of this. It was just sex. (He’d never believed that.)
He stood up. He’d almost forgotten he was in uniform. He wished it was one of the better ones—he should have worn his dress
blues. He pulled off his T-shirt. Got rid of his white pants. Decided to lose the boxers, too. He didn’t want to stand up
again.
Shiloh had lifted up onto her elbows. Her hair was still in a ponytail. Her eyes were big and shiny. He put a knee on the
bed and leaned over her, unfastening her bra. In a second, he was going to see his dog tag hanging between her perfect breasts.
In two weeks, he was flying back to San Diego. How many months before he could marry her?
When they did this at nineteen, Cary had thought he’d never be able to stop, that he couldn’t live without it. How had he
managed to live ?
“Shiloh,” he said, pulling the bra away. Her breasts were heavier than he remembered. There were stretch marks across her
stomach. Her bottom teeth were crooked, and he wanted a way to fuck them.
“Cary,” she whispered. She touched his neck.
Cary pushed her back with his body. Moved half on top of her. A hand on her waist. His cock on her hip.
Shiloh touched his shoulder. His nose. She shivered. He tried to kiss her, but she turned her head. He kissed her neck instead.
He ran his hand along her bare hip and groaned. She was so beautiful—he should find a way to tell her.
He pulled back to kiss her mouth. Shiloh turned her head the other way. He kissed the other side of her neck. She shivered
with her shoulders and her head. Her hands settled on his neck again and squeezed.
Cary pushed against her, moving more on top of her. He tried to kiss her, but she ducked her head and kissed his throat. Her
shoulders seemed stiff. Her hands were too tight on his neck.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
Shiloh nodded. Her face was still under his chin. Cary tried to put some air between them so he could see her, but she stuck to him, squeezing his neck.
He pulled one of her hands away. “Shiloh.”
She wouldn’t look up. She shook her head like she was still shivering. “It’s fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
“You know how I am—what’d you call it, spastic and relentless? I get anxious.”
Cary twisted his upper body, so he could pry her other hand away from his neck. “You don’t get anxious with me .”
Shiloh was lying on her back. Head turned away from him. Her eyes were closed. “I get less anxious with you.”