Chapter 47 Yes
YES
We stumbled into my mother’s house. The house Callie had rented was a few blocks away, so we smoked more pot on the walk home. I tripped over the trash can my mother had placed in front of the door. She did this when I was a teenager, too, so she would know when I came home.
“Shit.” I tried to stifle the laugh. Tristan had his hands up my shirt, his mouth on my neck. I was tugging at his belt and the buttons on his jeans when my mother called.
“Evan?” my mother asked again, turning on the hall light.
“Fuck.” I flipped it off with the switch by the door. “Yes, Mother, it’s me.” I tried to untangle myself from Tristan.
“What the hell are you doing?” She turned on the small lamp and frowned at me and glared at Tristan, who pulled his hand away.
“Coming home. Why is the trash can in front of the door?” I tried to not sound stoned.
“Why are his pants undone?”
I looked over at Tristan; he looked stoned.
His eyes glittered in the low light. He did nothing to fix his pants or the corner of his shirt that had ridden up.
I had missed him so much over these past two years.
My mother wasn’t going to rob me of these moments.
I turned back to my mom. “Because I undone them. I undid them. Now go back to bed.” I took Tristan’s hand and stumbled up the stairs.
“Evan Michael Blu, I swear to all that is holy that if—” The rest of her words were cut off when I slammed my door.
My hands and mouth were back on Tristan.
I struggled to get out of my jeans because I still had my shoes on.
I fell to the floor, pulling him with me. We both laughed, lying on the floor.
“Ev, I gotta ask you something.” He sat up and tugged my shoes off, then my pants.
“The answer is yes.”
“You don’t even know what the question is.” He sat back. “Is he better for you? I mean, can he give you the life you deserve? A good life? A stable one?”
I sat up and leaned into him. “He’s not better than you. And you? Is there someone who thinks you two are together?”
“No one.”
“Are you sure there’s no one you have pledged your loyalty to? Or made a blood oath with? Or tattooed her name somewhere on that fucking hot body of yours?” I leered at him. Pot made me say those things.
“Fucking hot?” Tristan arched a dark brow.
“Answer me.” I kissed his mouth and tugged at the button on his pants.
“No blood oaths or tattoos. One more thing.” He sat back and tugged off his jeans and boxers.
“Yeah,” I said, slipping off my underwear. “What is it?” I crawled over to him.
“Wait.” He swallowed. “I have to tell you this.” He cupped my cheek and studied my face.
Fear chased away some of the high I felt. “What?”
“I want you…I mean I do want you. But…” Tristan stopped, searching the space between us. “I have no right to ask this of you. And you can say no, which would probably be for the best. For you. Not for me.”
“Stop. I already said yes.”
Tristan ran his thumb over my knuckles. “I wish I could give you more. Because you deserve more. But I have is a promise that no matter where I go, no matter how long I’m gone, I will always come back to you. Always.” He let his breath out slowly. “That’s it. That’s all I got.”
“Promise?” And that was all I wanted. A promise that I was enough to keep him here. To keep him from giving up.
“I promise,” Tristan whispered.
I brushed the hair from his face and studied the man he had become. I realized while sitting here on the cold floor of my childhood bedroom that just because our love was written in the stars didn’t mean it would be easy.
“Come here,” He whispered.
I sank slowly down on him. He kissed my neck and breast. I pressed my mouth to his and breathed him in. The years between us melted. Or maybe I couldn’t remember them. Maybe they weren’t worth remembering. The muscles in my body tightened, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
An orgasm and anxiety feel a little bit the same.
My heart was racing, my thoughts scattering like wishes cast into a pond.
They both build to the point where you get lost in them.
They both drag you to a sharp edge. But with anxiety, the edge is scary.
With an orgasm, it is freeing. As you fall over, all the worries and fears vanish.
And the only thing that mattered at that moment was how his body felt under mine.
The flex of his muscles. My name on his lips. The ragged edge to his breath.
I laughed at the thought of my mother downstairs fretting over what her adult daughter was doing on the floor of her childhood bedroom.
“Laughing is better than crying.” Tristan brushed my hair from my face.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“Good, now can we get off the floor? I’m not seventeen anymore.”
We moved from the floor to my bed and lay there listening to the quietness of a small town.
I moved closer to him, my body half draped over his.
The lightness of sex mingled with the giddiness of the pot that still swam through my veins.
It made things easier to talk about. “If we got married, what last name would I take? Anderson or Hanson?”
He twisted to face me. Our noses almost touching. “I think I’d take yours.”
His voice was low. The sound of it raced down my spine. “Tristan River Carter. I’d fuck him.”
“Would you?” He cupped my ass, pressing me closer to him.
“Yep.” I could have done this all night, lay here touching him. That was what was missing with Carter. Sex was our release, not our way to reconnect, because we never connected.
“You’d marry me?”
I ran a finger over his brow, down his jaw, then over his full bottom lip.
“Yes. I would’ve married you in eighth grade.
” I would have married him that night in the tree house if he asked.
I would’ve said yes that first day in Craig’s restaurant.
It wasn’t the commitment of marriage I wanted.
But the promise he would always come back.
That there was something connecting him to this world.
“Wow, we hadn’t even had sex yet.”
“I did give you a hand job in my bathtub.” We had come close several times in those first years.
We were so young, and only he knew what sex was.
I still thought sex was like the pictures in our sex ed book in school.
Just parts of a human body joining. There were no photos of kissing, touching.
The book didn’t talk about all the emotions that you felt in those forbidden moments.
The odd way your body felt when his fingers skated across your ribs.
When his eyes were so green that your brain would compare all green to that color.
Sex ed didn’t touch on all emotions that bound you and that person to you.
That no matter what happened, you would always be bound to him.
And Tristan and I were already tied together.
I think it happened in the fourth grade the first time he smiled at me, and sex entangled us more.
“Did you know your cock is the first one I ever saw and definitely the first one I ever touched?”
“Yes, love. I did.” He smiled and bit his bottom lip.
“I was thirteen. And you didn’t complain.” I scrunched my nose up, remembering that night. It wasn’t my best work. But I learned with each step we took.
“Would you marry this Tristan?” he asked softly.
“What other Tristan would you be?”
“A better one. One that doesn’t get lost in his own shit. The one you need me to be.” His voice was soft and sad.
“You’ve always been the Tristan I need. Plus, I like this one.” We were so close we were breathing the same air. I could see the flutter of his lashes as he looked down.
“Yeah? What do you like about this one?”
I didn’t understand how a man who looked like Tristan, who had as much talent as Tristan, could be so scared that he wasn’t enough. “Your mouth.” I watched him lick his bottom lip.
“What do you like about it?”
“I like to kiss it.” And I did, running my teeth over his bottom lip.
“What else?” He watched me.
“Your hands. I like them.”
“Really?” He moved his hand to the side of my neck and ran his thumb over my bottom lip and teeth. “What else do you like?”
That was a trick question. I loved everything about him. The way he smiled. The sound of his voice. The heat of his skin on mine. I would forever love Tristan. All of him. “Your eyes.”
“Is that it?” He smiled into his kiss.
“That’s it.”
“Nothing else?” He shifted closer, his hard cock pressing against my stomach.
“Nope.” I reached down and grabbed it, running my finger over the tip, then down the length. I had learned a few things since that night in the bathtub. I knew how to make his breath hitch, how to get that low almost growl out of him. “Okay, your shoulders.”
He pulled away. “Yeah? You like them? Well, I don’t like your mouth. Roll over, ass up.”
I did. And yes, there were other parts of Tristan I loved very much. And I explored every one of them that night. And yes, I knew there was so much that we needed to work out. But there would be time for that.
There is a time for everything.