Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Naomi
I wake when it’s still dark outside, moonlight through the sheer curtains casting the room in an eerie glow. With Sam curled around me like a cat, I have to stretch very carefully to keep from waking him. It takes several long, slow tries for me to get my outstretched hand on my phone. I bring it back with me and wait for a long moment to let him settle back to sleep before lighting the screen up.
Usually, I would go through the motions of checking each of my favorite apps for notifications one after the other, and then go back through each one, letting the algorithms serve up the exact stream of posts my dopamine-starved brain was searching for. After nearly a whole day away from my screen, there are so many things to check.
Right now, however, I can’t even hear the call of the apps. And I know it’s not because there are no notifications waiting for me due to my complete lack of posting. That’s never stopped me before.
No, this time, it just feels different. The phone feels the same, the same heavy plastic, the same glass screen that seems to breathe like a living thing under my fingers. But there’s only one thing I want to see on this device, and it’s not contained within any app.
I find the video tucked into my password protected folder and key in the code. Making sure the volume is down all the way, I hit play.
I smile at the scene that jumps out of the glowing screen at me. I’m setting the camera up on the dresser in my room at Dom’s, trying to get it pointed at the right angle to capture the whole bed. I look backward and call out to Sam, and he struts over and sits on the edge of the bed, grinning at me. I say something else and he’s beside me, pulling the dresser closer to the bed while I try to keep the phone from falling off.
I scrub through the video a bit until I get to the frame where he has me spread over his body, my knees on either side of his, my back arched over his chest. One of his strong arms holds me around my ribcage, just under my breasts. The other snakes between my legs.
I have my eyes closed and my lip bit between my teeth. I was posing. I knew that at the time. I loved the feeling of being displayed for the video this way. My eyes linger on my own body for a second more before finding what I really came here for.
Sam’s expression.
The first time I used my phone to record an intimate moment, it wasn’t even my idea. The closest thing I had to a high school boyfriend, this guy who used to come over to the house and swim in the pool, watch movies with me in our home theater, and later started sleeping in my bed, suggested it.
I wasn’t stupid enough to let him record it on his own phone, but I was curious about how it all looked. How we looked.
How he looked at me.
So I videoed the whole thing on my Nokia N95 slider, the absolute top of the line phone at the time. I smile thinking back on that crappy, pixelated video now, but it was the start of something big for me.
The guy wanted to watch the video after, and we did, but I never got pulled into the action like I know he did. For me, it was all about the faces. What we looked like, where we were looking, what expressions were captured on our faces when we were lost to the heat of the moment.
iPhones upped the video game a few years later and my little hobby took on a life of its own.
I wanted to see.
Talk about distracting, it was all I could do not to perform for the camera. Not to look over at where I often had it hidden during my various one-night stands or one-week relationships over the years.
Soon enough, however, I realized that the real prize wasn’t my own face, it was the face of my partner. What expression he had. Which things I did made that expression turn favorable. Whether or not he was actually into me, or if he was just sticking his dick somewhere.
Whether I was good enough.
Looking at Sam’s face now, in the paused image of my own body spread open for the camera, I can barely breathe.
He’s looking down over my shoulder, his gaze cast over my body to where his fingers are trailing closer and closer to my core. His eyes are a little wider than usual, his cheeks flushed. The expression on his mouth could almost be reaching for a smile, but caught before it got there, slightly tipped, eager, like he’s dying to get his lips on my skin. It’s not hard to see that his entire being, every ounce of his focus, is trained on me.
I slowly move the video forward a bit, watching Sam’s face the whole time. He slips his fingers inside me, and his eyes roll back before dropping closed and then shooting open once more to watch with reverence as he sinks knuckle deep into my wetness. When I come, his whole face lights up with pleasure and desire, as if he’s having an orgasm right alongside me.
I move forward until I’m on my hands and knees, and Sam reaches forward to wrap my long hair in his fist. His forehead is creased with concentration as he gets a better grip on me, pulling me up by my hair until my head lifts toward him.
“Tell me to fuck you.” I remember him saying. I can see the intensity of his body language as he says it.
His face snarls at my answer, and I can feel a pulse between my legs even now, remembering how it felt when he turned feral.
“I meant beg.”
I almost slide my hand down between our bodies, underneath the soft, light blanket Sam draped over us against the slight chill of the tropical night, but then I remember why I got my phone in the first place.
It wasn’t to get riled up by the action scenes, or even to scroll through the library of Sam’s facial expressions, cataloging each one in my memory bank.
No, I took this risk, gave up these moments snuggled up asleep in Sam’s arms, for a reason. And that reason is at the end of the video.
I scrub all the way to the end, smiling as we move through sexual motions at lightning speed, until I get to the part where we’re lying still on the bed, side by side. Sam’s propped on one elbow, facing the camera. I’m on my back with my side tucked in close to the curve of his ribs and hips.
I can see myself talking, but I don’t dare to turn the volume up, not with the man in question sleeping so peacefully beside me now.
I know what I said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I watch as Sam’s face spreads into one of his heart melting smiles and he starts to tell me about how much he loved having me there to do yard work with him.
I watch as I get into the stuff about my mother’s death and how it changed our family, words I’ve never spoken aloud to anyone.
He watches me speak, his face calm and sad and empathetic. He smiles, closes his eyes, and raises his eyebrows before he scoffs and turns serious. All the while, never taking his attention off me for a second.
He loves me.
The thought shakes me so much that I startle a bit, nearly dropping the phone onto the head of the sleeping man in my arms.
He stirs and I quickly close the screen, sending the phone into darkness. I drop it over my shoulder onto the bed behind me as Sam cracks one eye open, peering up at me in his half-asleep state.
“You awake?” he asks.
I shake my head, even though it’s obvious that I am. “I was just…something woke me, but I’m going back to sleep.”
He curls himself a bit lower, leaning his face forward to place a line of kisses on my naked torso, starting at my navel and continuing up between my breasts. He kisses the nape of my neck last and then curls into his sleeping fetal position once more, arms draped over my body.
I lay my hand on his head, stroking his short hair gently as his breathing evens out once more, falling into a long, slow rhythm.
He loves me.
He’s never said it, but I know it’s true.
Honestly, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. In the way he takes care of me, the way I catch him smiling every time he looks my way.
The way he offered to do the one thing he’s so scared of and tell Dom about us, just so I wouldn’t feel like he was ashamed of me.
I said no, and I don’t regret my choice. These days we’ve spent together, alone in our little cocoon of secret looks and touches and smiles, have been the most transformative of my life.
I love Sam.
That thought shakes me even more.
Is it true?
Yes.
Is it convenient to have fallen so utterly and hopelessly in love with a man who lives a million miles away from my entire life and who is so inextricably connected to my brother—the last person in the world I would want in my personal life? Hardly.
But I guess that’s how it goes.
For so many years, I’ve waited to find my person. Hoped and even prayed. Searched and been patient. Did all the things you’re supposed to do. I wanted to find a person who would slot into my life seamlessly. Probably move into my apartment, settle into the routine of my job and hobbies. Someone who wouldn’t rock the boat of what I thought was the perfect life I’d built for myself.
I guess it’s lucky I never found that person. Not when the life I was so proud of turned out to be one giant lie. All my connections and friends turning on me just when I needed them most.
What would have happened if this perfect partner had a channel of his own? A personal brand he needed to protect. Would he have turned on me just as quickly to save himself?
For a moment, I’m completely and utterly blown away by the mysterious ways of the universe. How it saved me from the dumb shit I thought I wanted and delivered me straight into the arms of this perfect man.
Ask and you shall receive. Isn’t that what all the Instagram manifestation coaches drill into us with their ten second reels and heavily stylized lifestyle photos?
I’ll admit, I got impatient. But I also asked for the wrong thing.
At least my brain did.
Turns out, my heart and soul were asking for just what I needed all along.
And here he is.