16
Ella
3 Years Ago— Late November 2015
“A ll I’m saying is that it was weird,” Matty whispers as we walk toward my building. “We looked out of place, Ells Bells.”
“Will you stop!” I giggle as I pass him the last chip out of the bag. He takes it using his mouth and I giggle like a drunk person. “You’re so immature!”
“Hey, we just went to watch a kid’s film at the cinema. Surrounded by kids!” he snorts.
“To be fair, it was mostly teenagers, which we technically are.” I press a hand to my chest to emphasise my words. “And I would hardly say The Good Dinosaur was a kid’s film. Those poor bloody dinosaurs.”
“Don’t, you’ll set me off.” He sniffs for effect. “Again.”
“I’m going to start the rumour around campus that you cried at a Disney film,” I joke.
“Um, who hasn’t cried to a Disney film? You told me your one was Beauty and the Beast .” He snorts as we get into the elevator.
“Well, yeah, because of the song. It’s an emotional moment, okay?” I defend as he takes my hand in his, our fingers lacing together like shoelaces double-tied for safety.
“It’s all right, we’re going to see Star Wars next month. We’ll both see a Disney film that won’t make us cry!”
I kiss him, my tongue darting into his mouth to shut him up as the doors of the elevator open.
“Or…not.” I play around, putting the key in the front door. He taps my behind to tell me I’m wrong. I let out a yelp before laughing.
“We have to sit through the rest of the films first, you uncultured woman. You call yourself a Disney fan! My arse, are you if you haven’t seen Star Wars !” He winks at me, helping himself to a beer from the fridge as I take my heels off.
“Shut up, they weren’t Disney till recently!” I scoff. “I have an excuse!” He passes me a glass of wine when I walk into the lounge.
“I suppose I can forgive you, just this once!” He winks as I take a sip of wine. “I still can’t believe you wore a bloody dress like that to the cinema.”
I look down at my clothing: a black dress with a black cardigan. “Hey, I bought it the other day! I needed an excuse, and I dressed it down with a cardigan!”
“Ells Bells, we went to a kid’s film, and you dressed up as if we were going to, I don’t know, a fancy restaurant.”
“What’re you doing for Christmas break? Are you going back to Portsmouth to Nick’s?”
He shrugs. “Christmas break is four weeks away yet. Haven’t even thought about it. I gotta finish my essays first. But Nick and I will probably spend it together, otherwise, it’ll get lonely. What do you Webb’s do for Christmas? I’m imagining a Winter Wonderland with all the usual Christmas trimmings, right?”
I nod. “Pretty much. I used to love it as a kid. Not so much now, it’s the same old thing. Mum will get a cook in, and she’ll sit back and pass out around five p.m. Dad will sit on his butt all day.”
“Spend it with Nick and me,” he suggests. I stare at him, thinking about it. I could feign illness and tell them I’m staying in the flat. They wouldn’t really care or miss me.
“It could work.”
“You’d love it. We get a tree, though it probably won’t be anything like you’re used to. It’ll be a non-passing-out and non-macho day,” he says, pressing a small kiss to the tip of my nose. “No pressure. If you can’t get out of it, I’ll understand.”
“No, I want to. I’ll think of something, I promise!”
He kisses the tip of my nose again before moving toward the bathroom. “I’m gonna head for a shower quickly and change my shirt. Someone got ice cream down this one!”
I feign offence. “It’s not my fault you leaned into it!”
He smirks. “I won’t be long.”
∞∞∞
I walk into the bedroom, listening as he stops the shower. He’s already laid out a shirt from his drawer, and I smile to myself before fumbling in my drawer for my pyjamas.
“You okay, Ells?” he asks as he walks through the door of the bathroom. I stare at him in awe; the water is still dripping from his hair, and I watch the way he’s holding the towel around his waist. My entire body stops at the sight, and my mouth opens slightly, wanting to say something, but I can’t quite bring myself to.
“Ells Bells?” A sly ‘I know what you’re doing’ expression dances on his face.
I want to answer with ‘Well, if I can’t check out my own boyfriend, what can I do?’ but the words don’t quite form. I’ve seen him shirtless before, but this is something else. The desire – or what I think is desire – hasn’t hit me in this way before.
“Y…yeah, I’m good,” I stammer instead.
The thump, thump, thump of my heart forces my breath to speed up. I bite my lip; we’ve known each other for two months, dating for one, and not once have we discussed going further than kissing. The knowledge of the contract stipulating that I must remain a virgin has always floated between us, and we’ve not breached it further than a ‘not ready’ breathed after longing kisses and wandering hands.
When he stands in front of me, my hand reaches for his hair. Despite the water getting my hand soaked, I pull his face closer to mine until our foreheads are touching and I’m searching in his eyes for something that we both know I need. I move his hand away from the towel and when it drops to the floor, his hands move to hold my face. I take a moment to take all of him in, listening to his body sing its siren’s song.
“Are you sure about this?” His whispers fill my ears as icy shards, as a tsunami of warmth fills me, and I can only assume it’s desire. I feel his hands move around to undo the zipper of my dress and instantly the need for more shoots through me – I’ve never felt this kind of need before, but I know I will only ever feel like this in Matty’s presence.
“I love you,” I whisper against his lips. The weight of the first time I’ve uttered those words properly brings out a pang of hunger in him I didn’t know he possessed. He nips my bottom lip, demanding more as he pulls my dress off and it meets his towel on the floor.
“I love you too,” he breathes in reply, and everything around us evaporates until it’s just us with longing breaths and attraction.
All I can see is the infatuation light up his expression, hear the hunger in his reply; taste is his marshmallow-like lips, and that’s all I ever want it to be. Something niggles in my mind as he gently tugs at my dress. It ends up on the floor with an audible thump because of the silence in the room. He’s seen me like this before, and we’re no strangers to heavy make-out sessions, but this is something different. Swift hands take the rest of my clothes off, and we’re both only skin and desire. I know full well I shouldn’t go down the road I’m about to take, but when I pull him back on the bed with me, all I know is that the one part of me I have left to give is all his.
“Tell me if you change your mind, at any point,” he mutters in between peppering kisses up my body. They leave behind trails of fire and desire as he goes. When he reaches my face, we stare into each other’s eyes for what feels like forever.
“I won’t change my mind,” I whisper, pulling him closer so I can kiss him again. I pour all my promises, everything I want to share, my forever into him. His hands roam me as if my body were a roadmap until he reaches his destination. My mouth opens at the shocking tingle of pleasure his touch brings, and he fills my mouth with his.
I know there’s no going back from this, there’s no do-over, and once I do this, if they ever find out, I’ll be condemned. All I can think of as I take the plunge, I know there is nowhere else I’d rather be, there is no one else I’d rather navigate this path with than Matt, and I know that somehow, I have to stay like this forever.