Chapter 15 #3
“Yes, I was great. I bought you a few cheeseburgers because I knew you were hungry. I ordered scones and hot chocolate when you had gotten yourself a cup of water.”
“You mean when we met for coffee? You knew that I did that I was faking a hot drink?”
He smiled, the one I didn’t like because it made him look so unhappy.
“I went to get you a refill and the server told me what you had, water in a coffee cup to hide it. That day, I had been on my way to Morrocco and I didn’t get on the plane because I wanted to see you.
But then the only thing I did was to provide some baked goods,” he told me.
“I could have really helped but I was afraid of mixing myself up with you and dragging you down to my level.” He sighed. “My fiancée was an amazing woman.”
“Yeah, that’s great.” I got out of the car and he followed right behind into the kitchen.
“Viv, hold on. I’m not saying that I miss her and want her back, because I don’t.
We were not compatible, not even if I had been sober.
My drinking probably smoothed over some of the issues between us because it was what we both focused on.
We didn’t have time to deal with anything else.
” He put his hand on my arm. “I almost ruined her life with my problems and I didn’t want to do that again. I was afraid.”
“How could my life have been worse?”
“I thought I could manage it,” he answered. “I did, didn’t I? When Kolter found out that we had gone out to eat and seen each other, he assaulted you.”
“He was just looking for an excuse.”
“I didn’t see any solutions. The years in front of me seemed horrifically empty and dark. It wasn’t one thing, it was everything.”
“You said that to me in Roy’s Tavern on the night we met,” I remembered. “I asked you what was wrong and you said that it was everything.”
“There were many reasons that I went into rehab, like crashing my car and like getting stranded on the road in a snowstorm. Another was meeting you. I thought that I needed to do better and I hope I am.”
“You are!” I put my arms around him. “You’re doing great every day.”
“It’s not just day by day anymore,” he told me.
“At first, yes, I was counting up the minutes and the hours that I had been sober, but now, I’m also looking ahead.
I started thinking about it a lot when we were decorating the Christmas tree and you said that we could collect ornaments.
We could. We could do that for years, together. ”
“You want us to be together for years?”
He pulled off my coat and his, too, and then took my hand. “Come open your birthday present.”
I thought for a moment that he himself was the present, and that was why we were removing clothes and also why he was leading me up the stairs toward our room. But then he told me to sit down and went to get something out of his closet.
“Here.” He sat next to me on the bed and handed me a small box, the same size as what he’d given me for Christmas but with pink wrapping paper now and a white bow.
“Did you get me more earrings? You didn’t have to,” I started to protest. “What is this?”
Nolan shook his head. “The point of the paper is to prolong the suspense. Open it and see.”
It was jewelry but I looked up at him, confused. “A ring?” I asked. It was a beautiful ring, silvery looking with a green stone and clear ones—diamonds.
“It’s an emerald like before, since you liked these so much.” He touched one of my ears and then put his hand on my cheek. “This is part of my hope for the future.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m hoping that you’re in it, because then it’s going to be wonderful. I’m hoping that you’ll allow me to be part of your future.”
“I want us to be together,” I answered. “I want you.”
“Then, would you wear this?” He took it out of the box and picked up my right hand.
“I’m not asking you to make any promise to me and I’m not trying to rush us.
This ring is a symbol of my commitment to you.
One day, if you want to, we could call it an engagement ring and put it on your other hand.
Then we could put a band behind it. A wedding band. ”
“Like, we would get married? You would want to marry me?”
“If you would have me. But I have to tell you something, first.”
“Do you mean that you want to change up our relationship and have sex? I agree with that idea.”
“You do? I do, too, but—”
First I had to quickly put the ring on my finger so it didn’t get lost, and then I had to kiss him. “I want that a lot,” I said. “I want all of it.”
“Yes,” he agreed. He pulled his shirt over his head, and when it got stuck, he pulled harder and I heard buttons pop.
“That wasn’t what I was going to say, though.
” He also pulled my shirt off, but a lot more carefully.
We leaned back onto the bed and he kissed me again, then looked down into my eyes. “I love you, Vivi.”
“Do you?”
“I do,” he answered.
“I love you, too. I have for so long that I’m not sure when I started.”
“I know when I started loving you—no, I know when I realized it. You were wearing your Cum and Go shirt and eating a piece of the bread I made. You looked up at me and smiled and…I knew. That was months ago, but I wanted to wait. I also knew that I should.”
“Because you’re supposed to have at least a year of sobriety before you get entangled romantically,” I filled in. “And it’s a year tomorrow.”
“It’s a year tomorrow. I jumped the gun a little.” He kissed me. “I’ll keep working on that for the rest of our lives.”
“And I’ll support you as you keep at it, just like you support me. Since I love you.”
His hand moved to support my breast, too, and this all felt so different. I was quivery again, not scared and not full of dread. When he kissed my neck, it was like I was melting. We peeled off the rest of our clothes, none of which had any writing, and he settled on his back with me on top.
“What do you like?”
I shook my head. “Whatever.” I had liked everything so far.
“Should we try things? You tell me if it’s right.”
He smoothed his hands down my back and to my butt, which was right.
Then he adjusted my thighs so that I leaned forward and straddled his hips, and that felt even more right, especially when I also moved to massage our bodies together.
He kissed me at the same time and played with my breasts and it was perfect.
“I like all this,” I panted. “So much.”
“How about this?”
He turned us over and went between my thighs again, but this time with his tongue.
“Nobody ever…holy bells. Nobody ever…”
“Good so far?” he asked and gave me another lick.
It was so good that I came, right then, with all the moaning and heavy breathing that Cadence had shown me in her books and I had thought was just fantasy.
“It’s really that good,” I told Nolan. It felt like I was floating a little. I reached for him, too, and ran my hands over his erection. “You tell me.”
He answered something, more like a word that had turned into a gasp as I rubbed.
He buried his face in my neck and kissed that same spot he had already discovered, the one that made me get so quivery.
I didn’t really want to pull away from that but I wanted to touch him like he’d done for me.
I wanted to feel how warm his chest was against my breasts while I kissed his neck, too, and then I wanted to grab his butt to steady him while I licked him up and down.
He thought all of that was good—amazing.
He lasted for only a little bit of licking before he was asking me if I was ready, and I was.
Then he didn’t yank me under him and start pounding away.
We turned on our sides, like we were spooning again, and I felt him adjust a condom before he slid inside me, not hurting at all.
He touched me at the same time, kissing the good spot on my neck and massaging my clit as he moved in and out.
I intertwined our fingers so that I could show him how it would feel even better there and then—oh, it was bliss.
“I thought all the orgasm stuff was a lie,” I said drowsily.
“Not for me,” he said. He was breathless.
“Not for me, either. Nolan,” I murmured, and turned so that I could snuggle against him. “I do want to marry you.”
“Because the sex is so wonderful?”
“It’s all wonderful. We don’t have to wait,” I said. “We can just skip a few steps and sublimate.”
He laughed quietly. “Were you just studying that?”
“No, you told me about it on the night that we met, and I remembered. I thought it would be great to be able to suddenly switch into something else.”
“Like how we were strangers and now we’re in love.”
Exactly like that.
Nolan picked up my hand and we looked at the green stone. “We’re transforming,” he said. “It’s almost supernatural.”
“Except that I’m not scared of it and I know it’s real. There’s no doubt.” I absolutely believed in us.