It was a heady moment, a moment led to with lip smacking flirtation. Almost everyone else had left, and we sat on opposite chairs by the table, the air between us all fused with energy. Energy like fire that I had fanned and coaxed into higher flames and now could do nothing with except watch it burn aimlessly. Energy like that. What does one do with energy like that with the last guest out the door, the door closed on the evening, my boyfriend asleep in the next room and Cade turned to me with a look that could kill me, collapse me, confuse me, and arouse me all at once.
He said, “Let’s lie on the rug and make out awhile,” like a softly pleading question, or suggestion, and it caught me off guard, even though I knew it was coming. Of course it had been coming. It had been brewing for weeks, since I had begun dating his friend, since he had broken it off with the ex, since this strange dance between us had begun and ended and begun and ended and begun and ended yet again.
Cade said, “C’mon,” and “C’mere,” in that way of his, that way he had of stunning me into silence with silky spoken words dangled on a string, sort of sardonic, but suggesting satisfaction, and then shockingly sweet all at the same time.
Cade said, “Come”, and patted at his lap as I propped one leg up against his chair, like a barrier, like a welcome mat, for I longed for his lips. I was crazy to feel his kiss, but I couldn’t let myself start. I wouldn’t be able to stop just there. I knew.
Cade said, “I just miss kissing you,” in a way that felt like a wire being pulled taunt. I could feel the tensions those words created in my belly, in that way that words can pull at you and make you so keenly aware of what you miss.
I said, “I miss kissing you too,” and the confession felt dangerous, like I was suddenly standing on very shaky ground. Like a steep, slick cliff with a sick edge that you couldn’t help peering over, even though you suffered from vertigo. The words made me spin. His hand crept over to enclose my ankle and then continued with a slow slide up my pant leg. It made me feel like I was sliding down that cliff, sliding into him, colliding, as he murmured at my skin, mumbled softly at my black boot, held an entire conversation with my calf as he slowly slid his fingers up to my knee, brushing lightly with words about soft thighs. I sat stoic, wanting nothing more than to leap into his lap.
I can’t, I wanted to moan, Not with our friend in the next room. Not with another girl’s things still strewn around your house. Not with the way that you can still make me feel, this way you can hold my heart in your hands and squeeze it without thinking, or blinking.
And I want more, I yearned to yell, So much more than just a kiss. More than a kiss filled with scandal in a room filled with smoke with our heads filled with drink. More than a beginning that never reaches an end.
But I said nothing, and in that he heard me quite clear, and without speaking, we went to wake our friend, so I could take him home. But oh, still so drawn, I found myself following him first to the bathroom to watch him brush his teeth, sitting on the closed toilet seat like a chair, like a groupie, dumbstruck as he loomed close, mouth clean, all tempting, laughing in a wickedly innocent way as he asked me,
“You sure?”
And then he rubbed his cheek against mine.
Agony. But lip to lip would be my undoing, so I simply turned my face with my mouth playfully open and let him flick his tongue against mine, laughing, Yes, to his question of Do I taste all clean?
How, I wondered, am I supposed to go off with another man now? Even if it only is my boyfriend?
“Not my job anymore,” Cade had said to me to me earlier at the bar, flashing a wad of cash.
“Go and get your boyfriend to buy you a drink.”
And I had wanted to mock him. When exactly was it ever your job? You never signed up for that class. There was no tuition paid. You were always just auditing.
Even so, it was Cade that my thoughts wound around as I wound myself down, twisting up on my side under the bedclothes in my little alcove, pulling my blankets close and a soft pillow into my arms, and turning away from my lover, and dreaming of some cylinder clean where I could sleep warm and untouched. Some safe, solitary space where I could lie still and imagine his kiss. Some space where it all could come together slow, finally calm, and open, and perfect. A space meant to belong in a dream, as that was all it really was, sleepy longing. Awake, with my eyes wide open, it all looked so different, when sobering daylight was lit full, and there were no night shadows to hide behind.