Thirty-five #2
I keep it together, pushing in slower, gentler than my body wants me to do, retreating slightly before giving her more of me to maintain her comfort.
The more I fill her, the more she melts.
When my hips meet her ass, she’s laid out, eyes almost rolling, humming her approval while her pussy tells me the same.
Her body might hate her, but it loves me right now.
Looping my fingers around the string of her thong, taking over the task of keeping it out of my way, I smack a hand against her ass before I move again, feeling every inch of her stretching over me in too much detail to handle. I dream of this feeling, crave this sensation almost nightly.
I have to brace myself with a hand on the table to keep from going feral on her.
“You feel so good. You always feel so good,” she says in a breathy voice.
“And you feel better.”
Her eyes pinch closed, her teeth sinking into her lip as she moans. “More.”
I pump faster. “How’s that?”
“Harder.”
I grip her hips and crash mine against her over and over. That hungry pussy squeezes around me. “Like that?”
“Yes. Just like that.”
Her praise tickles my brain and makes me feverish. When all I want is to please her and she tells me I’m doing just that, it makes it so difficult to hold on.
And, this time, I can’t.
I lose myself too soon, the way she often makes me do, but while the orgasm floods through me and into her, I don’t stop. I won’t until I give her everything she wants.
The view of her ass shaking with every impact and her cries of enjoyment are enough to keep me hard all night. She’s a sopping wet mess for me, the way she always is, with or without my accidental addition to the equation. The more she enjoys it, the more I edge closer again.
“Please don’t stop. Please don’t—ah!—don’t stop,” she begs. Fuck, she needs to stop before I lose my shit again and leave her disappointed on her birthday. I won’t let that happen.
“Please, baby. Come for me,” I beg. A few more thrusts and she tightens around me. Her legs curl, and she screams my name. I fucking explode.
We moan together for a full minute. Her body trembles in my grasp, and as I slow my pace, the rest of my existence spills into her piece by piece.
Walls enclose our little heaven, a table appears beneath her, a floor manifests beneath my knees. Back on earth, the world feels nicer than before. It hurts less to exist.
The knock on the door makes us both jump and cover ourselves.
“Who the fuck is that?” Bri whispers so the possible intruder won’t hear her, seeming to forget the entire neighborhood probably heard us a few moments ago.
My brain cells start firing again. “That must be the sushi.”
“Babe . . .” She looks close to tears. “You got me sushi too?”
“I told you. This is your special day. I’m here to make sure you feel as special as possible.”
She takes my face in her hands and places the most delectable kiss onto my lips. Who needs food when I get to taste her?
“Let’s eat,” she says. “After that, I need a shower, then I want seconds.”
“Seconds?”
“It’s my birthday. I get what I want, right?”
And what she wants is me. Part of me, at least. “That’s right.”
~
My third orgasm bursts from me like a dam breaking, leaving me moaning and my body quaking.
In the aftermath, everything feels right.
The trillions of particles making up the bed, walls, air, dust, all vibrate at a perfect, harmonious frequency.
I feather kisses over Bri’s cheek, neck, shoulder, worshipping her at the bare minimum of what she deserves.
Pulling out, I see I’ve left her a mess again—exactly how I like it—rendering her previous shower useless. The delicious scent of her pleasure is better than any cologne. I am obsessed with her, yet for some reason, I’m always letting her go. Letting her tell me I can’t stay.
Her eyes open, and she looks at me with an intoxicated smile. I did well.
“That was fun,” she says, her voice raspy with exhaustion. “We should do it again.”
“Give me a few minutes, damn.” I chuckle, though I might need an hour to recover.
I grab a towel, then gently wipe her clean. She stares up at me as if I’m treading a line. What we do—the sex, and the way it erases my diffidence—blurs my judgment.
When I see her in the afterglow, sweat-glistened skin, lazy smile, I feel myself fall a little more every time.
Sex with her is everything. The satisfaction I get from getting as close to her as possible, seeing how much she wants me there . . . Fuck beaches, fuck Christmas morning. Bri is where my mind drifts when I want to remember what happiness feels like.
If we could stay in this moment, together, everything would feel okay, but that’s not what this is. That’s not how we’ll ever get to be as long as she wants to stay as we are and I want more.
I lie beside her, drinking in every detail of this memory for later. “I don’t want to leave,” I whisper.
“I don’t want you to leave either.”
So let me stay, I want to say, but I know better. I’m obsessed. Fully, embarrassingly, dramatically obsessed with Bri.
“I was thinking about what you said. About looking for a job in San Francisco,” she says.
My phone buzzes loudly against the side table. I reach over Bri and silence it. “Yeah?”
“I still don’t want you to do it for me, but . . . maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea to start looking?”
The next breath I take doesn’t come in easily. “What do you mean?”
“Well . . . I was thinking, maybe—”
My phone starts its annoying shit again. Who is calling me at three in the—
It comes to me the second I think it. I reach over her again and look at my screen. “It’s my mom.”
“Answer it.”
“Pause, I’ll be right back.”
I hop into my underwear and leave the room as if Mom will know what I’ve been doing when I call her back. She answers. “Liem, baby. I am so sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“It’s your bà.” Grandma. “She doesn’t have much time left.”
I hear what Mom says next, but I’m not really listening.
Numbness sets in. Denial, likely, though it feels familiar.
When Grandma first left us to go back to Vietnam to be with her sister, we knew she wanted to pass over at home, the way her sister eventually did.
But that was four years ago. I started to believe my mom was making it all up, that she would live to be one hundred and ten, saying the same thing she did every year during Tét. This is my last one.
“She might make it to New Year, but the doctor doesn’t seem confident in that. If you want to, I can set up a video call or something with you and your sister.”
“No, I . . .” My instinct is to go to her. To be there. But can I really leave in the middle of everything? “Let me think and talk to May.”
“Okay. Call me when you decide.”
My heart is still pounding when I end the call with Mom.
What do I do? What do I tell Bri? I’ve felt shredded since the last time I saw her, losing piece after piece the longer I had to wait to find time to be with her again, and now I have an impossible choice.
I know what she will tell me to do, but I still need to hear her say it.
I need her to take my anxiety away and remind me I can always look forward to seeing her again, even if it’s from afar.
“What’s wrong?” Bri asks with fear. Of course she can read it on my face in a second flat. The crease between her brows deepens. “Oh no. Is it your grandma?”
“Yeah. Mom said the doctors don’t think she has much time left.”
“How much time?”
“Maybe a week? Maybe a month? They’re not sure, but my mom is convinced it won’t be much longer.”
“Go see her.”
“I want to, but I just used all my vacation time. And May . . .”
“Go. Call Sai, ask if you can use sick days or take it unpaid.” She holds my face in her hands and makes me look her in the eyes.
“Trust me, Liem. You will look back and be so thankful you had that time with her. I’m around, and I don’t plan on going anywhere.
Get your sister and go be with her.” She can’t hide the tears in her eyes, and I can’t fight the tears her sorrow brings to mine.
“Okay.” We both wipe our cheeks. “I’m sorry all this is happening on your birthday weekend, I really wanted—”
“It’s just a day,” she says.
~
Sai wasn’t thrilled, but he understood. He has a big family, and they are as important to him as mine is to me—most of mine, at least.
“May is going to meet me at the gate,” I say to Bri.
She was kind enough to drive me, though she’s going to the hospital right after to be with Keisha again.
Most of the available flights to Vietnam left from LAX, so it worked out for May to come here and for us to fly the rest of the way together.
Dad probably isn’t happy that he has to run the restaurant by himself, but what is he going to do about it?
He lost the right to tell us we can’t leave.
We pull up to the curb, and I feel sick. Leaving Bri, my place of peace, I’m worried I’ll crumble under the emotions without her beside me.
“I’m sorry you have to go through this, babe,” she says. “Losing someone we love is the hardest yet most guaranteed part of life.”
I hate that this reminder of her loss is happening at a time when she should focused on living her new chapter. Though I doubt it ever really leaves her. “You’re right. Like always.”
“Tell your grandma I said hi.”
“I will.”
“Be good, babe.”
“You first.”
With a sad smile, she waves goodbye. After the car disappears from my view, I whisper, “I love you so fucking much.”