42. LIAM
42
LIAM
Three Summers Ago
Waiting for an answer from Emerson is like waiting for rain in a desert. I don’t think there will be one.
Maybe it would be better if she didn’t reply. Perhaps if she doesn’t, we can rewind to before that moment. We can go back to how things were before I told her I love you, and she didn’t say it back. I was happy with our situation—I think. We had each other in every way possible but one.
It was enough. It was enough till I knew I could have more. We could have more.
Telling her I love you was a release. A horse off to the races, and her love is the prize.
But am I going to be jockeying toward a prize that keeps getting farther away? I’ll do it. It’ll fuck me up in the process, but I’d do it. I’d do anything to have her. Anything to have her.
“Do you love me?” I ask for a third and final time. If she doesn’t answer, I’ll stop torturing myself and find a way to make peace with it.
Emerson shakes her head no.
I don’t believe her. I don’t believe that she doesn’t love me.
“You’re lying.”
“Maybe.” She shrugs her shoulders. There, I’m right.
“Why?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“Because I can’t. I wish I could. If I did, I’d have the ability to feel all of this without it crashing down on me like a ceiling. You shouldn’t have to ask if I love you. I should be able to sa—” she cuts herself off.
Her shoulders drop. My gaze drops to her hands. The nails of the pointer fingers of each hand are digging into her thumbs. It’s not obvious to most, but it’s a tiny tick that she does when she’s anxious. “That’s because you do. Emerson, you do love me. I know it,” I respond to her.
Her head shakes from side to side. Turning around to face me, she’s sucking in her lips, trying to do everything in her power to restrain herself from telling me.
I take a few steps backward, giving us space. Don’t want to, but I do.
“You can. You have to try. I’m trying here, Emerson. Please try with me,” I plead with her.
“I tried, but I can’t,” she says to me, her head still shaking.
Her tears and emotions overtake her body. I can see them raking through her, shaking her to the point that she collapses to the floor. Her knees underneath her, she falls forward, her hands catching her head in them. Emerson cries there on the floor in front of me.
“Don’t say that. Don’t do this.”
I cover the distance between us in three strides. Dropping to the floor in front of her. My knees hit the wood floor with a thud, and brush hers. Too close, but too far away at the same time. I feel the rough texture of the original floors through the material of my pants. I know her bare knees will be scraped and red from them after this. I want to touch her. I want to reach out, but I don’t right away. I want to pull her into me and never let her go, not let her do what I can see is coming.
How did it get to this? How did we end up on different emotional continents?
I thought we were on the same one. I thought we were finally moving in a direction together.
When she stood there on Sunday, what did I miss?
Emerson isn’t speaking .
“Talk to me, States.” I’m looking at the top of her head. Her brown hair is wild, falling to the sides of her face, shielding the remaining part of her face that her hands aren’t covering from me“
“I—I found myself in you—but then I lost myself all over again,” she stumbles over her words between tears. “Your love, I don’t deserve—it—or you. I’m broken. I’m damaged. And I was wrong. This—” She leans back, her glossy eyes are like glass looking at me. Almost through me—“has to end.” She gasps, elongating the word. “I can’t do it anymore, not because we aren’t right for each other, but it’s messing me up. You deserve someone better than me and whatever I could ever give you.“
“Of course, it’s fucking you up!”
“See, you agree?”
“No. I’m not even close to agreeing with you. You’re running from this—us, because, for the first time in your life, someone loves you unconditionally. You are enough for me, Emerson. My love for you is untamable. It’s wild, demanding, compassionate, and yours . It’s the type of love you’ve always deserved.”
Her eyes soften, brightening momentarily like a shock of love electrocuting her. It doesn’t last. It quickly fades back to the broken, tear glaze she’s been wearing.
“Bu—”
“There are no buts. You are the only person I know who has relentlessly pursued being loved despite saying they don’t believe in it. It’s your marathon, and this is the finish line. We are at the finish line. Why are you slowing down? Why are you turning around and running back in the other direction?”
“I’m messing it all up,” she repeats over and over. Emerson drops her head so that she isn’t looking at me anymore.
I reach out, taking her chin in my hand. Her skin is ice-cold, our fire burning out within her.
“It’s a mess that can be cleaned up,” I assure her.
“I don’t know how.” Her lips wobble .
“You do, Emerson. Deep down, you do. And when you don’t, which some days you won’t and neither will I, we’ll get through it together. We’ll figure it out together. Together. ” I emphasize the word, letting it come out of my mouth as a sucker punch.
I raise her chin, bringing her head in line with mine. Our eyes are holding close enough that I can see how green her’s have become because of the tears. Their dark green is now a bright Peridot green. It compliments her brown hair and sun-kissed skin. Even with the hurt and agony behind them, they’re beautiful. She’s beautiful. She’s the most beautiful person, inside and out, that I’ll ever have the joy of loving. And if this is it—this is the last time I’ll get to look at her— stop. You can’t think like this. This isn’t it. You can’t let it be it.
“We can’t. Not right now, at least,” Emerson says. She bites down on her bottom lip, releasing it to speak. “I hope you can forgive me.” We’re frozen in this position, face to face. Her chin is in my hands. Neither of us move because we both know what comes next, that when we move it’s over. She wants us to be over.
I lean forward and brush my lips against hers. Pulling away to look at her, then pressing my lips against hers again—a goodbye or a Hail Mary, I don’t know.
Emerson reciprocates the kiss back.
My other hand moves to the back of her head, my fingers tangled in her hair possessively. It’s not that I own her, but she owns me. All of me—my thoughts, heart, body, and mind.
Our kisses are intentional, savoring each other’s touch and taste. Memorizing and committing it to memory—at least I am because there isn’t anyone else who’ll kiss me as she does. No one else whose bottom lip will pull in between mine like hers does. No one else that’ll release a sweet, high-pitched moan when I bite down. No one else that mine are fitted to.
Not breaking the kiss because I don’t want to allow her the chance to bolt, I guide her backward to the floor. My body is on top of her, throwing all of my love around us like a force field so that it’s all she can see, touch, and feel right now.
“What are you doing?” Emerson asks me.
“Loving you,” I reply.
She fuses her mouth to mine in an intense kiss. I break the connection of our lips, working mine to her chin and along her jaw. Then to her neck, right below her ear. I nip the skin there before placing a full kiss right over the spot. Kissing across her neck to the other ear, I do the same.
“Is that okay?” I ask through my lips on her skin.
“Yes,” she says. If only she truly meant it. It doesn’t matter how much I love her if she doesn’t let me love her.
Her hands find the buttons of my shirt. She slowly starts to undo them. I push up off her, rising to my knees that are straddling her hips. I finish taking off my shirt for her before reaching for her tank top and pulling it up her arms. The built-in sports bra was a pleasant surprise, leaving her breasts bare and nipples erect.
I lean down, placing a kiss between her breasts, then moving to her right breast, sucking the nipple into my mouth. Twisting and pulling it between my teeth, Emerson’s back arches, her breast pushed further into me. With a gentle bite, I release her nipple and trail kisses down her stomach, stopping right above the waistband of her iron blue spandex shorts.
Damn, these things are tight. How do women wear these all day? Does the suction not drive them mad? I barely enjoy my balls being trapped in suit pants for too long, especially when I’m pushing against the fabric.
She lifts her hips to help me slip them off her. Emerson’s hands come to my waist. A leg wraps around me, and she flips us so that I’m now underneath her. Emerson’s hair falls to my face, tickling me.
“How am I losing you?” I ask as I look up at her, a broken smile forms on my face .
“You aren’t.” Her hands undo my belt and then the button of my pants. I hear the sound of the zipper, and all I can think about is how that’s what it’ll sound like when she leaves—us zipping apart, cleaved back into our worlds where we don’t exist together.
When she has me bare beneath her, between her legs, she lays on top of me, meeting my lips.
“I am,” I heartbreakingly confess.
She shuts me up with a kiss. Followed by a series of them down my chest and abs till her plush lips are around my tip. She uses her tongue, making slow, taunting circles around it. The sensation is too good. Too fucking good. My head digs into the floor, my chin jutting upward with a groan.
With a quick surge of euphoria, I touch the back of her throat. Emerson’s movements are deliberate from bottom to top, pulling up enough that I’m almost out of her before her warm mouth is right back down.
I work my hand into her hair, gripping the back of her head. I pull and push in rhythm with her. There is no need to control or change; she knows exactly how to make me come undone.
My other hand joins in hers. She brings it out to the side.
“Emerson,” I groan.
That encourages her to keep going—faster, tighter. She’s too good at this. Then she slows down, pulling her head upward until almost none of me is in her mouth, only the tip. She flicks her eyes at me, looking at me, knowing what she’s doing to me. I’m not going to last.
“Emerson. I’m going to—” I can feel her smile around me. The sensation ignites my entire body and brings me dangerously close to finishing. “If this is the last time I get to have you, I want to be inside of you.”
She releases me, moving on top of me and then guiding me inside of her.
She sighs, her eyes rolling to the back of her head as her body stretches to fit me. Emerson starts to move. It’s not fast. It’s fluid. It’s not feral. It’s tender. Sex can be and mean a lot of things, but this, it’s an I love you. . . and an apology.
Emerson repositions herself, angling her body just right, causing her head to be thrown back, panting. And if I wasn’t as obsessed and in tune with her, I could have missed the quietest whimper of my name coming out of her mouth.
I let her keep at it for another minute before I pull her down and kiss her. I need more of her body on me. I need more connection. I couldn’t last another second without feeling the weight of her on me.
“I love you,” I whisper to her.
“I love you,” I repeat it like it’s bait, fishing inside of her for the feelings I know she feels, wanting to reel them to the surface so she can feel them.
Even if it’s not me, I want it so damn bad to be me. To be the one that finally gets her to stop believing she’ll never be enough. Because she is. She’ll always be enough for me.
I grab her ass and pick up our momentum.
“Liam,” she moans—this time, not a whisper. It’s loud enough that I hope someone on the street outside can hear her—can hear precisely who she belongs to—who I belong to.
“More. I need more,” she says.
Faster and harder—our movements, our pants. I’m barely breathing in between our kisses and the inferno that’s burning between us. We could set the world on fire.
Her body clinches around me tighter, and I know she’s close. I’m right behind her. “I’m close,” she tells me.
My fingers are rubbing her between them, adding pressure that pushes her into that last level of pleasure with a cry. Her body lying on top of mine, movements slowing.
Nursing it out of her, I keep going. I feel her tightening around me again, and this time it’s the both of us releasing together.
This doesn’t feel like I just got off or another shag. No, it feels like releasing a part of me—the best part of me that I want her to have forever. Loving her, being with her, knowing her—that is the best part of me.
We come down from our high. Emerson lays beside me. I roll over to face her.
I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she says, “I should leave.”