Being Kalli (23 page)

“I’ve got it in there for you,” I say and he
opens my bedside table drawer and withdraws the condom. We shouldn’t have mucked around like that before, but he didn’t push into me anyway, just slid at my entrance.

He slips on the condom and flips my back to the bed. I lay there with my legs open in the air, pointed at opposing angles so wide and far for him to come in any way as quickly as possible. He grabs my foot and bring
s his hands down and together at my inner thigh.

Then he stops for a moment and
gazes down at me.

Cutting my thoughts off, he says, “
You look so beautiful like this.” Leaning an inch from my ear, he turns dirty and says, “I’m going to pound you.”

He does. I’m so wet and opened up by him that his first thrust pounds so deep his balls slap
against me. And he repeats.

I cry out softly, with my wrist between my teeth each time he
drives into me. His lip, too, is clamped between his teeth. Us having to silence ourselves is as erotic as hearing him cry out for me.

I’m ashamed to admit we do
n’t last long after being on the verge of orgasm multiple times before starting.

He
whispers, “Oh God, Kall, I’m coming,” from above me, and both of us unabashedly stare at each other. His neck weakens and lolls as his length pulses in me, and I finally give in to him and arch back and push the pain harder, pushing my pleasure as long as it will release me.

“Fuck, I love you,” Nate says as he thrusts the last time, which is the same time
as my quivering voice says, “I love you so much.”

P
unished, rewarded and now spent, we fall asleep without ever having the talk we need to have about our future, but I know there’ll be plenty of time for that. Plus, things can’t go downhill from here anyway.

• • •

Nate rolls off me and says, “Thanks, babe,” and I ask, “Do you really love me?” and he replies, “Oh, about that. I was just saying it to make you feel better.”

I’m beyond hurt. Nate seemed so realistic. But I knew I shouldn’t have believed him.
“He” said that I was beautiful and kind, too, before he forced me. I’m just weakened by love, which is a reminder as to why I swore off it too long. Love makes you vulnerable like that.

“Kalli!” Nate
shout whispers.

I wake with a start,
whacking my forearm on my bedside table and cursing at the same time. I shoot up.

Looking around, things fall into place
in a specific order.

There’s the sunlight. That tells me it’s morning. Then there’s
the fact Nate’s voice has called me. Sleep ridden, and thoughts still adjusting to the confusion, I tell myself Nate talking to me has to mean he’s here. That he’s
still
here.

That Nate spent the night.

Nate made love to me and then slept with me all night.

“Crap,
crap
,” he mutters.

I touch his arm, say, “Um, hi,” in this shy, girly voice I didn’t know I had.

“I’m going to come across as an incredible asshole here but what’s the time?”

I
flip around to my clock radio and read, “Eight-thirty?”

“
Eight-thirty
?”

Nate’s voice breaks somewhat close to the
soprano range at that, and he jumps off the bed.

Now, I need to break this down for you. Nate jumps off the bed and Nate is naked.
I’m gawking, with the possibility of drool, at Nate’s most sexy appendage. It’s hard and I follow that, rather than
him
, with my eyes as he searches my room like a hound dog on speed.

I should help but my female urges pulse so strongly at me, I have to bring my fingers to myself to stop myself from convulsing into a quivering mess.

“Kalli, I know you’re tired but can you please help me? I don’t know where my shirt went, and my keys fell out of my jean pocket, too.”

I sit there.

One.

Two.

Three seconds.

And then I snap out of it. God, he’s gorgeous down there
; like he’s an art form. So gorgeous that I want to do things to him to please him in every way I can and … I thought this last night. Wanting to make him happy instead of doing it to give me a rush. I’m forgetting, repeating myself. I think I’m losing myself and falling faster than I would have guessed I could.

“Sorry, I maybe overslept
.”

I find his keys after I crawl my fingers hal
fway under my bed. Nate pulls out his shirt, balled at the foot of the mattress.

It’s as he hurries to cover his chest and my
mind starts thinking about us and what this means, and all the real stuff that I blurt out, “You’re just leaving? Now?”

He rushes up to me, hands on either side of my face and presses a long kiss over my lips. “Kall Bell, I’m so, so sorry but I have a
photography session today. My mate from class needs help with his set and shoot, and I’m shooting after him. We promised. Project is due, like, in two days.”

Nate links his hands at the back of his head and turns from me.
He seems to whisper to himself, and it sounds like self-cussing. “Shit,” he says, louder than the other words.

Nate
storms in, right in my space, his hands joining our hips together. “Stuff it. I’ll just tell him something urgent came up.”

“I’m an urgency for you?” I say, kidding around.

Really, I’m feeling the water works. When it comes to love, Nate could all but spell out the words I love you and I’d still half-joke about the prospect with him to safeguard myself in case he decides to reject me. I realise he’d never do that, though. God, first love. It’s driving me into a flutter of freaking butterflies.

He caresses a finger across my cheek, sliding it to
my chin and kissing me quickly.

“No,” I say. “Please go.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know why I was in a rush. I’ll just say I can’t go. It’s my choice.”

His look
tries to be sure, stern, but I see it as asking, needing approval from me.

“Since when did you lose your backbone, Nate?”

“Since needing to spend every moment with you.”

“Aren’t you embarrassed that it’s obvious you’re totally whipped?”

“You’d need to whip me with those breasts, in that case.”

Quick—so quick I only feel air whoosh—Nate hikes me up on his hips and my legs wrap around him. H
e buries his head into my boobs.

“Ahh,” he sighs. “Yup, feels so good.”

Hiked up on him, my legs secure me to him as close as possible so we never have to lose this perfect connection. I find myself blinking, slowing, trying to take every bit of Nate in. Looking at him mesmerises me, and I can barely think staring at him so close while I’m also so connected to him.

He starts to smile, but covers his lips with mine instead, and our lips moving together are slow, like a beater on speed one.
We’re feeling, tasting, understanding each other.

I don’t want him to go anywhere.

I pull back and look at him. His face mirrors my thoughts with that dreamy look, flushed cheeks and sexy gaze.

“I’m not going anywhere. I promise
,” I say.

Instead of a retort, he smiles and puts me down. “Really?”

“Yup. Pinky promise.”

As we hold out our crooked fingers Nate’s phone rin
gs. I motion for the bathroom and duck out quickly to change.

I come back into my room to
hear Nate finishing up, “… yeah I’m leaving in a few. Mhm. Cool, bro. See ya soon.” Nate mucks around with my phone, spinning it in his other hand.

He hangs up
his mobile, but continues to stare at mine.

“What is it?”

Nate ignores me, looking at something.

“Nate?” I repeat, prompting him.

When he doesn’t reply, he says, “Tell me this is a lie.”

I lean over to look at the phone, but Nate snatches it to his chest. I eye him for a moment in case I can sense some clues, but I’m getting a very shaky feeling standing so close to him with his fist crushing my phone, and his jaw working his teeth against each other. His eyebrows are perked, waiting.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about! Stop playing games and just spill it.”

He snorts. “Whatever, I’m sick of your shit. I thought you were different. You seem
ed … forget it.” I catch the phone as he throws it on the bed, scanning the text I never got to read last night:

Donovan:
Ey, sexy Kally. Wanna come with to that party tomoz night at the usual? I miss that tight ass and short black skirt.

“Wait!” I scream out
, as Nate is a second away from stepping out of my room.

I run behind him and slam the door shut, trapping him here in my panic. I need any moment longer I can get.

“You’re kidding; you’re not mad. Are you? I haven’t spoken to him! You can even see the text is unread.”

“Kalli
…” Nate dips his head, his eyes searching mine. At least they won’t find lies. But I’m trembling at the thought he’ll mistake my fear for fear he’s discovered I’ve been chatting to Donovan, because that hasn’t happened. I’m just flipping out, palms spread over the door, blocking Nate in case he leaves because of Donovan’s careless text.

“Please!”

“He ‘misses’ you?”

I shrug, attempting to act cool.
“I’ve been with him before, so …”

“So he ‘misses’ you? I think that’s bull. You know it too. A guy doesn’t miss a girl unless he wants to fuck her. He’s asking you to the party because he obviously thinks you’re interested.”

I swap to cross my hands across my chest. I was defensive, trembling at the thought Nate would end all this happiness for this mistaken text message, but now he can go jump if he won’t give me a chance. His first instinct is to judge me for how I was, how I used to be. What a liar, saying all that deep and meaningful shit about me.

What’s the point? I knew this was too good for a reason. I say as much, and add, “I’m not a sympathy case. You’re with me for me
, not because you’re sorry my mum almost killed herself or I stuffed up and you somehow feel bad. You’re here for
me
. I’m telling you the truth. Go through the phone—” I point at the bed, where it lies “—I haven’t texted him once. Just another number like the other hundred or so other people at uni I have stored.”

“I don’t know,”
he mumbles, leaning back to the wall behind him and crossing his arms over his chest too.

I heard once this stance was defensive, that it was a sign people don’t want to let the other person in
. It sure feels exactly like that with the tense air separating us, and us not meeting gazes.

“You mean you don’t know if you trust me still.”

Nate shakes his head, nods at the door as a gesture meaning he wants to leave. I get up, sidestep to let him open it and walk away—from us. This is bull. Fucking bull. How did we get here so quick?

“You said that, Kall, not me. What I want to know is why he doesn’t know we’re
dating. All my mates know. In fact word travelled so fast when I told them we were working things out that absolutely everyone in the lecture on Friday knew about it by then.”

I wanted to say I don’t go to
uni anymore, but Donovan does, and his classes cross over with ours. Nate must think I’ve suggested otherwise to him, or kept it hidden in case I had a chance. The latter is partially true, I realise now. I haven’t told anyone but Scout in confidence, but it’s been out of fear that what I have with Nate is too good to be true.

I open my mouth to tell Nate his assumption is wrong, but I’ve been lost in my own world, and Nate’s footsteps are far at the start of the house, near the entry. Running, I hook my hand around the doorway into the main room and continue to Nate, almost at the door.

“Wait,” I call, panting. I hold my hand up, gulp in some air, and explain. “I haven’t told anyone. I haven’t told him or anyone anything.”

Nate’s face
drops, and that’s when I realise I’m digging a hole far from that happy place last night. I wonder how I can get back to it.

“I think that’s the point, Kall. You’re keeping us to yourself—what?—in case we don’t work out?”

Crap, he read my mind.

“The hell?” I throw
one hand up, disgusted. “I wasn’t aware it was a rule.”

“
It’s not, but I’ve never known you to keep anything to yourself, apart from your own secrets you’re ashamed of.”

I put my hands on my hips and utter slowly, “I
. Am. Not. Ashamed. Of. Us.”

“I’m late,” Nate replies. “I really don’t want to start saying things we’ll regret. We’ll talk tonight at that party,
‘ey?” he says, finishing off with rich sarcasm. “I’ll just be a little late ‘cause of my shoot and some personal stuff.”