Corbin #2
I searched her eyes one final time, my chest aching with the weight of everything I couldn’t say. The air was thick with the weight of missed chances, but the words wouldn’t come. Both of us pretending this was just another farewell, despite our souls already knowing better.
“I better go.” The fight left my voice and I … I want to stay lingered, unspoken in the air. I ached to tell her, to shake her until she saw reason, my eyes shining with everything left unsaid .
“Message me when you land.” She opened the front door and the cold swept in as I stepped out with my suitcase in tow. With a brief final kiss to those lips which would forever haunt my dreams, I swept a thumb across her cheek and did my best to ignore the tears lining her face, matching my own.
How did we come to this?
“It’s frostbite weather out here,” I shivered, and she smiled sadly.
“You were built for beaches, my friend.”
Turning, I carried my luggage to the awaiting car and hopped inside, looking back towards where she still stood on the porch. She looked beautiful, the house lit with warmth and memories and the white blanketed ground only making the final sight of her more picturesque.
With a small wave, the car pulled away – away from what could have been, away from the most wholesome thing I’d ever experienced. Something we didn’t even have the courage to name.
I kept my eyes on her until we turned the corner, and she hadn’t moved, still standing there, holding my heart like it was always meant to be in her hands.
I was four drinks in when I remembered the gift Shelby gave me for Christmas. There was still another thirty minutes until we landed, and it couldn’t come soon enough. Even the shots of liquor were doing nothing other than making me feel more restless.
As I boarded, I’d been worried about the flight, terrified of doing this alone and the infinite possibilities while in the air completely at the mercy of a pilot I’d never met – but that didn’t last long.
My mind was more focused on the woman I’d left behind and how I was going to live without thinking about her every damn second.
As it was, she’d distracted me from having a panic attack, without even being near me.
She was everywhere, in everything, and the farther I went, the sharper the longing cut.
The angrier I became at myself, at the situation, at how fucking far apart our worlds truly were.
I rifled through my backpack, retrieving the small package and placing my drink on the tray.
When I opened the wrapping to discover Aunt Talia’s blue diary, I was confused.
I flicked through the pages which depicted the travels of her and my mother all those years ago and glanced out the window, careful not to read anything.
Shelb had read me parts already and I was certain there were things a son should not be reading about his mother and aunt, but the photos I could scan.
I’d already seen some of those and I quickly flipped through, hovering over those which matched the places we too visited.
My confusion as to why she chose to give this to me was only answered when Aunt Talia’s scrawl ended and what were once blank pages, were now filled by a new hand.
Recently written and in a handwriting I recognised instantly.
I exhaled deeply through my nose as I followed our recent journey across Australia, random polaroids accompanying each entry.
Pictures of me while I drove, while I slept or while I looked out at the ocean, completely oblivious to the sneaky little photographer behind me.
A different crayon was used on each page to indicate the way she felt on any given entry.
I ran my hand across the pages, devouring her words until I came to the final one.
Written after the first time I had her underneath the stars of the east coast of Australia.
I still remembered the sound of the waves crashing along the shore in front of us, the whizz of cars passing on the highway behind.
And her .
Effortlessly beautiful with her blue stained lips from the cocktails, those eyes which could see into my soul and the feel of her wrapped around me as we both shattered at the same time.
A night I was never going to forget because sex wasn’t like that.
At least not for me. She took me, held me and matched me like no other.
It was as if she was made just for me, the other half needed to make us whole.
Reading about that night from her perspective was something else though.
Screaming. Crying. Throwing up. All in excitement of course.
Because Corbin and I just fucked . Actually, that’s not true.
That takes away from the beauty of it all, the beauty of him.
Tonight, I was made to feel like a woman in a way I’ve never been made to feel before.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine a pleasure like that, and I am certain it wasn’t just the cocktails, the gorgeous setting or that body.
Holy shit, where has he been hiding that?
! And that tongue! Holy mother of all that is good! Anyway, sidetracked…
It was him. Corbin. He was attuned to my body as if he felt what I did, as if giving me pleasure brought him pleasure. As if he would rather die than not taste me right then in the middle of nowhere on the back of his truck.
Sexy enough in itself - we all dream of this scene playing out - only this was different.
This was life changing and I’m not sure how I will wake up tomorrow without telling him that.
Telling him there is a part of me that has always longed for him to be not just my first kiss but my first everything.
That I’ve never felt entirely whole in Canada, because part of me was still back there with him.
Even sending letters as kids, video calling as teens and sharing text exchanges as adults only solidified my reliance on having him as my person.
Without telling him he is always my first thought in the morning and my last at night and has been for as long as I can remember - even with all the miles between us.
Mum would often say I dreamed of him and when I would deny her claims with forced horror, she would quietly whisper that she heard me call his name.
Almost every night, even in my sleep, I called for him.
And now, I know why. Because Corbin is my one true soul mate.
And making love to him was always in our cards, only it took us far too long to get there.
I wonder if Mum planned it all along. If she is looking down on us now with a smile on her face, telling me, ‘Told ya so.’ I wouldn’t even be mad, because she was right, my soul did call for him, and I would never again be the same.
Now that I know what he looks like when he loses himself it will forever be what I think about on those lonely nights.
When I slip my hands beneath my sleep shorts and touch myself, it will be to Corbin.
To his slightly furrowed brow and parted lips, the undiluted intensity in his eyes and hunger in his touch.
He is my new forever and no one will ever come close to making me feel the way he does.
Fuck.
Snapping the diary closed, I put it back in my bag while I waited for the realtor to return.
This was the final space to look at and we were none from three.
I was going to have to call Old Ed and let him know New York was a bust. None of the offices were big enough and their locations were never going to scream affluent.
We dealt with high-profile clients which meant our offices needed to reflect the same and I wasn’t sure where he’d found these listings, but he’d been duped.
They were studio apartments at best hidden beneath piles of garbage and slapped with a subpar coat of paint.
I glanced at my forearm, the tattoo now healed.
I ran my finger over the backward ess, smiling at both the memory from our childhood, and the day we got them.
The dare in her eyes when she suggested we do something crazy to forever remember our trip – as if I’d be able to forget.
The widening of her eyes and intake of breath before she broke into a fully-fledged grin when I called her bluff and told her I would if she did.
But I wasn’t prepared for how much I would fucking love seeing my initial forever marked on her skin.
She’d chosen her hip and anytime her sleep shirt rose, or I stripped her bare, a carnal longing coursed through me.
It was her idea, she had the photo, and once we walked out of the tattoo parlour, each wearing the same memory, the magnetic pull between us only solidified.
Mum had worried we might find travelling together difficult.
Even mentioning her and Aunt Talia having their quarrels, but at no point did Shelby frustrate me.
Even when she unintentionally ordered laced desserts or booked us accommodation in the armpit of the world, I could only shake my head and laugh.
She was so unapologetically herself that being with her for so long only created a primitive urge for more.
An obsession I wasn’t sure I would be able to recover from.
And now, re-reading her depiction for the fiftieth time of our first night together, and what it meant to her, confused me more. Words I have longed to hear fall from her lips memorialised in ink.
I cycled between disillusionment, anger and shock and had been since I first read it two days ago. Why would she give this to me and only allow me to open it once I left .
What did this fucking mean? Did she love me? Because I sure as shit fucking loved her and should have told her every single time I thought it. Only I hadn’t. I’d taken something I so desperately wanted for far too long and refused to acknowledge why.
With so many things to say, I’d called her the second I landed, ready to confess my love.