But could be a little more.
My hands over his have pushed my T-shirt up and my breasts are bared, and even his big hands can’t hold them all, but he is trying, with that almost smile on his mouth, and if I weren’t so crazy-insane with almost coming, I would laugh.
“Like this,” I say, but my voice is all weird as I show him he can press and pinch harder, and he says, “Yeah, let me,” and he rolls both my nipples at once and I put my fingers in my mouth because it looks so good and feels so good I need to bite something, suck something.
“Fuck, Jenny,” and our eyes meet. He’s still pulling, firm and slow, at my nipples, in time to how my hips have started to move, which is a little faster, with intent.
I pull my fingers from my mouth and put my lips at his collarbone pulling aside the neckband so I can taste his skin. “Don’t stop,” I tell him.
“Not ever,” and the way he says it makes me ruck up his T-shirt, I need to feel his skin on my skin, and he’s hot, his muscles tight, when I fit a hand between us, the back of my hand slides through sweat on his belly. I hold on to his nape with the other hand, we’re past kissing, so air hungry, but our mouths at each other’s neck still tasting between our gasps.
I grasp him, and his hands still and then tighten around my breasts. I turn my hand to press where I need to, where we’re rubbing tight together, and he’s hot and hard along my knuckles, and I’m so sensitive, even through jeans, I shudder.
“Yeah,” he says, and it should be so awkward, dry humping, my hand helping us both, his hands softly thumbing my nipples while his fingers play with the goose bumps on my breast, now trying to kiss between breaths like an army is at our door, but it’s beautiful.
We’re beautiful.
This is what was always underneath.
What was over us, concealing, was beautiful in its way—dramatic and endless feeling.
But what’s underneath are the matchbox cars you forgot you left in the grass, the wild violets, the chalky seashells ringing the flowerbeds.
I always love the small things, the wild things, the things that change and adapt, the things you don’t see at first but were always there.
The things I could lose, the things that are most precious and dear and telling.
I come away from our kiss again and rest my forehead on his shoulder. I’m nearly there, and I pull up on his T-shirt more, want him as exposed as I feel.
There’s a tattoo on his rib, on his side.
A black, lowercase f. A number next to it.
I buck out of rhythm, shock like a riptide of cold blood through the chambers of my heart, but I’m already nearly there, his mouth and his hands and our friction are finally enough. “Open your eyes,” I stutter, and he does, and I look and look, desperate, even on the very worst edge of coming all over him, and he looks back, sees something, maybe some of my utter incomprehension, and we try to keep looking at each other, until we can’t, because it’s too good, too awful, because it’s all come to the surface.
I pant against him.
The look on his face when he held C’s picture.
His picture. Evan’s picture.
You’re so beautiful, C wrote to me last night, Evan wrote to me last night, after I sent him my picture.
I keep myself from tracing that f.
I come, shuddering, my arms around him, looking at him, bewildered.
Trying to understand.
Trying to trust my body as it falls.
My heart, beating painfully out of time.
This man I believed never withheld a thing from me.
Now we’re just holding each other, supertight, I let him hold me.
He doesn’t know he’s comforting me.
The snow’s picked up, I can tell even through the fog on the dark windows. Even when I ease next to him, his arms are tight.
We watch the snow accumulate over the windshield, one snowflake at a time.
Chapter Eight
Inches, Drifts, Storms
Dr. Allen is doing her thing, making me look into her instruments and click my remote when I see the wiggling lines, measuring with her string.
“How’s therapy?” she asks.
“I changed therapists, and I’m working with Allie Gould. She took me out in a trainer car yesterday to learn how to use the extended mirrors.”
“You’re going for a daylight license?”
“Yeah, I am.”
She sets down her ophthalmoscope after testing the movements of my eyes. “I think that’s great. Allie’s good.”
“She is. She likes going where I am. She set up software and headphones and a mic for me at work, and she spent a couple hours with the lab tech to learn about the ESEM so she can think about how my bench work would be adapted, if I would need it.”
“That sounds like Allie.”