Here For You (21 page)

I heard shuffling sounds, then her voice, silky and smooth. “A pink babydoll nightgown with a thong.”

What the fuck was a babydoll nightgown? Whatever. “Do me the favor of pulling the straps on your shoulders down to expose those amazing breasts,” I commanded of her.

I could only assume she was doing what I asked as I heard her hissing through the phone. “I wish you were here, baby.” She was whining now.

“Me to baby. Now touch yourself, pinch your nipples like I’d do if I were there.” I heard her voice in response, moaning. She was a vocal one. “Does that feel good?”

“Yes, baby, so good.” A couple of seconds passed before she was commanding me what to do. “Unzip your pants and touch yourself.”

Forget about the foreplay with her, let’s just get to the nitty gritty. I didn’t think I was going to play along, but I was hard as a rock right now, so I undid my zipper.

“Are you touching yourself?” She was panting now.

“Calm down, love, I’m unzipping myself.” Finally getting the zipper down, I pulled my dick out of my boxer briefs. “I want you to put me on speaker, and when you do, keep one hand on your tit while your other travels down to your thighs, then…”

Fuck! My other line was beeping. Taking my phone from my ear, I looked at the call waiting. It was Becca.

Fuck. Fuck!

“What do you want me to do, baby?” I heard Juliana’s voice panting. Putting the phone back to my ear, I tried to tell her what I wanted her to do, but I just wasn’t into it anymore.

What did Becca want? I thought she’d be sleeping now?

I told Juliana really quickly what it was I wanted her to do. I heard her over the phone panting, making weird noises as she always did when we were in the bedroom. She was close to an orgasm and here I was with a limp dick while my girlfriend thought I was jerking off. Becca calling was like pouring cold water all over me.

“OH MY GOODNESS, JAMES! I’M GOING TO COME!” She was so loud I had to pull the phone from my ear. “Are you coming, baby?” she asked me, on the verge of hers.

“This is for you, baby. I want to hear you come,” I told her. Looking at the time, I counted that it’d been four minutes since Becca had called.

Another five minutes later and I was off the phone with Juliana. She wasn’t too happy that I didn’t finish, but I told her we could do it again some other time. But she enjoyed herself, at least. As soon as we hung up I dialed Becca but it just rang and rang.

As I was about to hang up I heard a faint, “Hello.”

“Becca?” She sounded like she was in the distance. “Becca, is everything okay?”

I waited some time for her to respond. As I opened my mouth she spoke. “Please stop asking me that, okay?” From the sound of her voice I knew that she had been crying again.

I nodded, but realized I was on the phone.
Idiot.
“Yeah, sorry.”

“I can’t believe you did this,” she whispered.

“Did what?”

Had she finally seen it? I thought when I saw her earlier she might've seen it and didn't care. But maybe she was in such a rush to get to the hospital that she hadn't focused on anything else.

“You know. Did you do this today while I was sleeping?” she asked.

My eyes were starting to burn from lack of sleep. “I didn’t want to wake you, and I figured Larry would need it.” I waited for her to respond but all I heard was her breathing. “Becca?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you hold on a sec?”

“Sure.”

After placing the phone on the bed, I jumped up and put on my grey t-shirt, black jean shorts, sneakers and I was out the door in record time.

chapter - 12

becca

“James?”

It’d been over five minutes and I was still holding the phone to my ear, but there was only silence.

“James?” Had he fallen asleep on me? I knew I shouldn’t have called him.

I couldn’t believe he’d built a ramp so that when my dad came home I could wheel him easily inside the house. James had spent all day doing this for him and I was speechless. There were no words to describe the feeling in my heart at that moment. Just when I thought he couldn’t surprise me anymore he went and did something like that. Yes, I was pissed at him earlier, but as I thought about it, there shouldn’t have been a reason for my attitude.

Turning around from the ramp I had been staring at for the past ten minutes, I made my way to the blanket I’d placed on the ground. I always had blankets handy, and I was happy I had one today. Wrapping the blanket closer to me, I looked up. Dad tried to do this with me as often as possible. You know when kids are young they’d get obsessed with one thing then change quickly to another? My obsession had never changed. I loved the sky. Morning or night, I loved them both. But if I had to choose, I’d pick night. I’d try to look up in the sky when the sun was out but it was pretty much impossible. At night, you get to see a different universe. A beautiful universe filled with night clouds, stars and hues of dark blue and purple outside of our shitty fucking reality. The shitty reality I was living in right then.

Dad
tried
to lay outside with me when I was younger. I would beg him just about every damn day, and sometimes he would, but other times he was just too tired. I wasn’t ready to go inside my house, so time outside was much needed.

James was the only guy to lay outside with me most of the time. My previous boyfriends never wanted to do that. I guess they thought it would be boring, or like Grey, too dirty.

Grey.

Fuck, I missed him. I never thought I would say that, but I really did. I needed to call him tomorrow. He’d tried calling today but since I’d woken up extra late I’d have to try him tomorrow.

I wished my dad were here right now with me, looking up at the sky. Damn, I wanted him home already, where he belonged. All of this bullshit was crazy. I’d already lost my mother, why did I have to lose my father as well? The tears were coming down my face. Shit, I wasn’t normally an emotional person, but crying was all I’d been doing. Every single day. I’d sit outside, or try to sit outside, and cry. It was like second nature all of a sudden. We were almost a week into this nightmare and he was still alive. I really hoped the doctors didn’t know what they were talking about. I wanted to have years with my dad, not months.

Just then, I heard steps getting closer. Not even a few seconds later, James was joining me on the dust covered blanket. I didn’t want to call James but I’d needed him here, and knowing that he wasn’t far made me go for it. I’d also needed to thank him so much for what he’d created outside my house. I was hoping that when I called him he would come over, but since he’d left me on the phone for a while I thought it wasn’t going to happen. Sometimes, in the past, I’d call him and just stay silent. He’d automatically know that something was wrong and come over.

“You didn’t have to come.” I told him, although I wanted him here and was happy that he was.

“Oh, shut up.” I knew he was joking. “I thought you’d be sleeping by now.”

Oh sleep, you had been good to me, but no more. “I couldn’t, especially not after I saw what you did.”

We were quiet for a few minutes. James knew that I loved to sit in silence. But not that much silence. “That’s nothing, it’s okay. Was that the only reason you called?”

Why couldn’t he ever just wait? Oh yeah, that’s right, because he was James. He needed to get to the point of everything. “What, I can’t call you now?” I snapped, then relaxed. “And I really wanted to say thank you, James.”

“You know what I’m talking about, Becca.”

I didn’t know why I called him. I wanted to hear his voice, someone I knew cared about me. “I don’t know, but part of the reason
was
because of the ramp,” I told him. It was the truth.

“Bullshit. What’s the other half?”

I turned my head toward him to find him looking at me. “You can’t call bullshit. It’s the truth.”

He sat up, leaning on his arms. His muscles were popping out as they held his body up. Even in the state I was in, my mind wandered to his amazing physique.

“I just did,” he argued. “You don’t talk to me for over a month and now you don’t know why you called me. I believe that part of the reason was because of the ramp, but that’s not all of it. So yeah, I call bullshit.”

I couldn’t do this right now, but when I tried to get up he grabbed me by the wrist. “You’re not going anywhere, Becca.” He was serious. Like, deadly serious. “Talk to me and stop running for once.”

So I did nothing but sit back down next to him and crossed my legs. “What do you want me to say?” I asked him.

“Are you shitting me? Tell me why you called me just now! Tell me why you’re so off with me! Tell me why you haven’t spoken to me in the last fucking month!” He was getting that angry aura that hovered over him whenever he was getting pissed.

I stood up. “Fine! BECAUSE YOU MAKE IT ALL REAL!”

He just looked at me, confused. I paced back and forth like a true crazy person, and felt a few drops of water hit my face. Great, it was going to start raining soon. I needed to hurry this up. “James, it would have been hard talking you. I know that sounds stupid, but you are my reality and my dreams altogether.”

I didn’t bother to look at him because if I did then I would stop talking and I didn’t want to stop. Not now. I had never told James this. Heck, I’d never even mentioned something along the same lines as this to him. These were my feelings about him I was spilling.

“I took my Dad to the doctors almost a month ago and they said that his diabetes had gotten worse, saying that if he didn’t start taking care of himself then he would end up dead. Soon. What was I supposed to do about that? How was
I
supposed to talk about that? This is my father. You of all people know how I feel about him. He can’t leave me, he’s not supposed to leave me.” The last part came as a whisper.

I pointed to my chest as the tears ran down my face but I wasn’t going to stop. The rain was coming down hard now. “Grey didn’t bother to ask questions, maybe because he knew I didn’t want to talk about it, but I appreciated it. So I tried to spend as much time with him as possible. I barely even spoke to my dad because I was furious with him.”

I couldn’t stop the emotions that were taking over and I didn’t know how to control them. “I couldn’t talk to you because you would have made me face the reality of the situation. I enjoyed being with Grey because he took me away from all of this shit. Everything.” I waved my arm around. “But if I spoke to you, you wouldn’t stop talking about it. You would have told me to try and figure it out, that there’s nothing that can be done, it’s life. That’s not the type of shit I wanted to hear then, or even now. I kept that shit in my head right up until almost a week ago, when he landed in hospital. The same fucking night Grey told me that he was being transferred to another office, moving away. The same fucking night he told me that he’d cheated on me, because of us,” I told him, pointing to him then me. “Do you know what that’s like to have another person that you care for just up and leave? Then to have the doctors tell you that your father is terminally ill, that there’s nothing that can be done for him?”

The whole scene was playing in my head now. From my peripheral vision I could see James still rooted to the same spot where I’d left him. “This shit happens to me, James. With everyone. I’m fucking cursed like this.” I stopped pacing. Instead, I gripped the back of my neck with both hands, lacing my fingers together as I looked up. My breathing was controlled as I allowed the raindrops to flow down my face. It was so soothing, just what I needed at that moment.

“First, my mother left me. Then you left me. Grey left me. And Emma is leaving me. And the one person I thought I was going to be with forever, or close to forever, is leaving me
permanently
soon. Who knows if it’ll be a couple more days or another month? How can someone take so much loneliness? I’m scared. I don’t want to face it, any of it.” I didn’t want to say it, but I’d held it in for far too long. I might as well let everything out now. “Then, when I saw you and you were with an actual girlfriend, I was shocked and…heartbroken. It shouldn’t have mattered with what I’m facing, but I couldn’t help it. I don’t know how you feel about me, but…”

No, I couldn’t say it. I peeked up, looking to the universe, but all I could see was the rain as it continued to dance on my face. I closed my eyes fully, wishing for it to cleanse the emotions I was feeling.

Suddenly, I felt a pair of cold hands on my cheeks. Looking down from the sky, I opened my eyes to see James looking right at me with eyes I knew so well, but this time, they had a different emotion behind them.

james

I couldn’t sit any longer, hearing her spill her heart out to the sky. I knew she was scared, but I didn’t realize it was because of everything. Even shit that had happened back then. I had been gone for a few years now, and it still affected her. I wished she‘d told me earlier. Would it have made a difference?

Standing up from the wet blanket on the grass, I couldn’t help but stand in front of her. I watched as her eyes closed, her head tilted toward the stars. Her long dark lashes were kissing her cheeks, which had turned a light pink from the breeze and rain. Her light green jacket was hugging her body, keeping her as warm as it could. The rain was streaming down her face, dripping from her chin down to her neck and soaking her completely in a matter of seconds. Her anger from earlier was no longer present. My hand reached up to her face and touched it. She started to talk about my current girlfriend but stopped. I wanted her to keep going.

She looked down from the sky and landed on my eyes. The tears that were visible earlier had mixed with the rain. “Finish what you were saying,” I told her. I wanted to hear it all.

She just stood quietly, didn’t move, didn’t gesture, just stood there.

Nothing.

I skimmed my thumbs across her jaw, up to her bottom lip, and pulled it from her teeth. Her lips were plump, and at that moment I envied all of those that had got to kiss that perfect mouth.

Shaking my head lightly, I realized that I had a girlfriend.

Turning over a new leaf.

I was taking Becca’s advice, but it seemed like I couldn’t follow through. When it was just us two, it was like we were in a different world. I only saw
her
when she was around. And it was like I could completely be myself around her too. I remembered the kiss at the pool party, and getting to feel her beautiful, plump, delicious lips, and all I wanted to do was feel them again.

Time stopped as I saw how nervous she was. She truly believed she was lonely. She believed that this world was out to get her. She didn’t see that everyone in her life was still
here.
We might have been a little far away, but we had never left her. I never left her. In my heart I knew one of the reasons behind the move was to keep my distance. Becca was not just some random chick, she was
the
chick. But how do you tell your best friend that? How do you know they feel the same way? How do you say that they were one of the reasons you left? I couldn’t do it, so I did other things to take my mind off of her, and they’d worked.

I was shocked to see her move a few steps back. My hand fell from her face to my side. “What are you doing?” she asked me, hugging herself. The wind had picked up a little more, making the rain sway to the side. It was smacking us, hard, and with the cold breeze it was freezing out.

But I wasn’t letting that stop us. “Finish what you were saying.”

She was facing me, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was looking past me. “It doesn’t matter right now. I already told you everything.”

Fucking keeping her emotions inside, that’s why I never did anything. Whenever I felt like I saw some sort of feeling toward me she backed up and played the friend role. But not this time. She needed to be a fucking woman about it. So I took those two to three steps toward her as the rain continued to soak my body.

“Yes, it does fucking matter.” Since she wouldn’t say it, I’d ask. “Does it bother you that I have a girlfriend?” I didn’t know why it would matter anyway. She’d always had boyfriends around me, but somehow I felt like this was way different.

She stood quietly, then, in a blink of an eye, she passed by me, bending down to get her drenched blanket from behind us. After grabbing it from the ground, she rolled it up, draped it over her arm, and then walked past me again toward her house. She couldn’t be fucking serious.

“Becca!” I yelled, but she didn’t stop, continuing up the steps. “Rebecca!”

She paused with her hands on the doorknob at the mention of her full name. I knew she hated her name but I had no choice. Too bad it did nothing, because she dropped the blanket, swung open the door and went inside.