Lily of the Valley (16 page)

I stare at her body and she’s just so
good
. How did she get here? She smiles sweetly and lies back on my bed, beckoning me to her, and I rest myself over her, still scared that this is a dream. She bites down on her lip and slips a hand down my body, stroking me slowly. I love that she can be so sweet and so kind – and yet also so wild when she’s with me like this. I feel like Lily has shared a secret with me, some part of her that she’s reserved for only us, and it’s such an honor to be that guy.

I smile back at her; I want to give her what she seems to be craving. As I enter her, I can feel her take me in. I move on top of her and cup her face before losing control and pushing harder. She feels so unbelievably amazing, and I just can’t get enough of her. I flip my hand over and run the back of it across her cheek, whispering her name.

She looks at me with so much love in her eyes that I feel like I’m falling apart and I lean down to kiss her. It’s the kind of kiss I never imagined I would have, the kind you see in movies and read about in books, but that doesn’t seem to exist in real life. The entire world stops moving as I kiss her. She is all I can feel and I want her and need her more than breath.

She reaches for my hips and guides my thrusts. I’m losing air and I can’t stop looking at her. She must think I’m crazy, because all I can do is say her name. Over and over again, as if it’s an incantation to keep her here.

She comes underneath me, her body tightening and then letting go as she digs her nails into my back and holds me inside of her. I feel her arch upwards and her eyes grow wet, tears of ecstasy slipping down her cheeks. I move faster and, once she falls back onto the bed satisfied, I seek my own satisfaction. Part of me wants to drag it out forever, but the realist part of me knows that will never happen. It just feels too right to do this with her, and I’m close to orgasm when she pulls me down to her, kisses me, and whispers in my ear.

“I love you, Jack.”

The words are the trigger for the explosion that rocks my body. Four syllables and the entire world as I know it is annihilated. No one has ever said those words to me like that. And the fact that it’s Lily, this perfect, wonderful girl, saying them? I don’t know if I should hold her close to me and never let go – or if I should run away before this goes too far.

I come inside of her, but after, I’m anxious. I’m not ready for love. I’m not ready to mean that much to anyone. And I am definitely not ready to know that I feel it back. Because if she changes her mind, I’ll be devastated.

“It’s only been a few days,” I argue. I can hear all the logical voices telling me this won’t work, all the rational reasons that we are so wrong for each other, but her eyes speak louder and I give in to them. I would so much rather listen to her eyes.

“So what? Something in you makes me want to believe in you. Believe in us.”

“We aren’t ready to be an us.”

“Maybe not, but I do love you,” she says. And with that, it’s been said, and there’s no taking it back. I’m not ready to say it to her, although I feel it through my entire body, and my heart breaks knowing the words exist within me. I hope she realizes how I feel, but saying it? That’s just too real – and I can still picture a bleak world in which she is missing, and knowing those words are out in that place? It’s too much.

Lily sighs contentedly and wraps my arms around her as she falls asleep. I spend the night cradling her in my arms. I have an exam in the morning, as does she, but I can’t sleep. I don’t want to wake and find out none of this happened, so I stay on guard all night, holding her and listening to her soft breathing as she dreams. I hope it’s of a place where she and I are happy.

In the morning, I realize we have to get ready for our exams. I wake her by kissing along her face and she smiles up at me. I’m hard, even though I wasn’t asleep, but it’s not really new being around her. I press my erection into her thigh and play with her clit, bringing her to full wakefulness.

“We don’t have time,” she laughs.

“I can be quick,” I argue.

I kiss her and she moans under me, but pulls away and then slides down my body until she has me in her mouth. She takes in my entire length and her tongue moves along my cock as she clutches me from the base and strokes in tempo with her mouth. I roll onto my back and she moves with me, going faster and deeper now that she has a better angle. I push her head all the way down, wrapping my fingers in her hair.

“Oh, fuck, Lily, yes. You are fucking beautiful,” I cry and I burst into her.

“More later,” she teases.

Hell, I want more now, but we need to study and she’s right to suggest breakfast. Otherwise, breakfast would be something very similar to what just happened. I follow her to the cafeteria and, this morning, I don’t even care that I don’t belong here. Lily looks at me like I do and it blurs the edges of the world. She has an incredible ability to make me feel like someone special, and I want to hold her and kiss her and tell her that I love her, but instead, I focus on my geometry textbook and eat pancakes.

There is an odd normalcy of being in this moment, eating in the cafeteria, studying for a test, and sitting with my – girlfriend? – and I wonder what it must be like for people whose lives are always this normal. Do they even appreciate the wonderfulness of such mundane moments? Do they know how lucky they are? If I died right here and now, this one morning would be the memory I’d most treasure.

I go to my exam, leaving Lily by her classroom, and despite my lack of sleep, I feel like I can take on the world. I think I do well and when I get outside after the exam and the sun is shining, I start a list in my head of all the things I want to do. Somewhere in the back of all my racing thoughts is this nagging voice reminding me not to get too comfortable, that this is a borrowed moment from someone else’s life, but I drown it out with more ideas and plans. While I wait for her to finish her exam, I write a few songs and I text Neil about tomorrow’s practice.

Lily comes down the steps toward where I’m sitting on the grass and she glows. It’s ridiculous. A giant grin breaks across her face as she waves. I turn around as a reflex, looking for the person who’s made her smile like that, and then it hits me -
I
am that person. Holy shit.

She looks like she’s waited years to see me. She runs down the last few steps and tackles me on the quad, kissing me across my face and neck.

“Bring me back to your room and let’s finish what we started this morning,” she demands and she runs her hand over my crotch.

I don’t even have the door closed before she’s naked and hopping up on my bed. I trip over my pants trying to get to her and she laughs, but I quiet the giggling fast enough when I flip her over, cover her mouth, and slide deep into her. She arches her ass up toward me and bites down on my hand.

“You are fucking perfect, princess,” I growl at her. And she really is. She’s soft and sweet in all the right ways, but also wild and hungry in others. I feel like she’ll never be fully satisfied and I love that her desire matches mine. I fuck her hard, which is a relief after the gentleness of last night, and it makes me crazy that she’s so into it. I reach down with the hand she’s not biting and rub her clit as I fuck her. She grows so wet that it’s impossible to focus on anything else. I forget everything but Lily’s cunt as I come, and then I flip her over to face me.

She grins. “I love your cock.”

It’s vulgar and dirty and, coming from a girl like her, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s just as good as hearing her tell me she loves me.

“You’re such a dirty slut,” I tease her, and then I worry that she’ll be offended. I’m only playing and I don’t want to hurt her feelings, and I definitely don’t want to discourage her slut-like behavior with me, but she just giggles.

“Yeah, but I’m
your
dirty slut.”

I play with her tits and her nipples get hard under my touch; it doesn’t take long before she’s moaning and begging for more. I slide down the length of her body and slip between her legs. Her pussy is wet again and I lick along the length of it, loving the way she tastes.

“Oh, God, Jack. More,” she begs, and I swirl my tongue over her, writing her a little love letter with my tongue. I imagine she has no idea, since she’s losing control, bucking wildly and slamming herself against me. I flick her clit and she screams. It’s loud and desperate and almost painful. I feel her come. I don’t know if she’s ever come like this, the wetness spilling down her legs and onto the bed. She looks mortified when I look at her face and I smile, licking along her thighs and around her cunt until she’s clean. Then I sit up and meet her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

“For what?”

“That was, um…”

“Fucking fantastic,” I tell her. “Princess, you are a fucking dream come true.”

She still looks sheepish, but I gather her into my arms and hold her, our naked bodies fitted together perfectly, and this time I do fall asleep. Although the nagging voice is still trying to ruin my mood, I silence it.

Chapter 16

We both have exams and we agreed to a mutual, albeit forced, exile, so we could work on papers. It seems like my entire day is gone and I haven’t seen Lily at all. I still have band practice, too, but she promised to come by later so we could at least sleep together. I miss her and I feel embarrassed that I do. I also have to fight not to listen to the voice reminding me how dangerous this is, and how badly it will go when it ends. I know it will have to end, but the delusion is too pleasant to give up. And so I stumble along, like an ignorant fool, and I derive great joy just from looking at her.

At practice, I decide to share a few of the songs I’ve been writing, and when they’re done playing, Neil just stares at me. Eric and Devon smirk and I don’t know what they’re thinking.

“Really, dude?” Neil finally says.

“What?” I ask.

“Did you just come in here and play fucking power ballads?”

“I-” But there’s nothing I can say, because yes, I did write fucking power ballads. I close my mouth and look at the three of them and suddenly everyone is laughing.

“Hey,” I whine.

“Fucking power ballads,” Neil says and I laugh, too. Because who the fuck writes power ballads?

I don’t mention Lily, because the next thing you know, I’ll be writing shit for a boy band and I know they’ll never let me live it down. Neil shakes his head and we go back to our moody rage songs. I need to stop writing music with Lily around.

There’s still enough buried in me to put into the band. Lily makes me happy when I’m not thinking obsessively about how it will end, but she isn’t everything. There’s still my dad, my mom, my own hatred of things, Alana…

I play and try to lose the thoughts as they swirl around me, darkening the once bright light of being with Lily. I push them into the bass, telling myself that I won’t leave here burdened with them, but when everyone else is tired, the thoughts are still there. The blackness is starting to settle over me again and I try to shake it. Band practice is over and I’m afraid to go back to Lily like this, so I walk. I have no destination and no plan.

I light a cigarette and I realize after I’ve been walking a while that I’m heading toward the bar. Since I met Lily, I’ve felt the need less, but it’s back and it’s destructive. I don’t want to feel; I don’t want to be alive.

I take out my phone and I think about texting her, but I can’t. She thinks she can handle me; she thinks we’ll be okay. How can I tell her that sometimes her eyes aren’t enough to stop me? That sometimes all I can think about is dying? No one has ever really understood it, except Alana, and that’s what drives me to text her instead.

I need you
, I type.
I’m a fucking wreck.

What about Lily?

She won’t understand. Please?

Sure. Give me an hour.

And so I tell her to meet me at the bar and I walk slowly, smoking half my pack of cigarettes and wondering why the darkness is so heavy. It feels like whenever I think I’ve moved past it, it finds me again and obliterates all that is good.

The night I gave into it, I stood in my bathroom for an hour, just staring at myself in the mirror. I could have called someone, could have yelled to my grandmother, but I didn’t. I just stood, silent, trying to come up with one reason to stay. After an hour, I had nothing – and so I gathered the rope. My grandmother told me later that she found me in the morning. I fucked it up, so I was still half-conscious, and she got me to the hospital. When I woke up, all I could think about was the fact that I couldn’t even die right.

I hate these nights. I hate the way it comes from nowhere. Everything was good. It was so fucking good and now, here I am, spiraling.

I dig in my pack for the last cigarette. How the fuck did I smoke more than half a pack in such a short time? The self-destructive voices are back, telling me everything I already know.
You’re worthless. You’ll only ruin her life. Just kill yourself. You will never matter.
For what was both the flicker of a moment and the wonder of a lifetime, Lily drowned them out. She was hope. She was release from pain. I don’t know what I was to her, if anything other than an enjoyable distraction, but in a short span of time, I thought she
could
be part of me. But now, the voices are laughing. Because why would a girl like that ever want to be included in my world?

Alana is already at the bar. She’s anxious and I see her before she sees me. She’s biting her nails and tapping her foot. I hate doing this to her. I can’t give her anything of myself. For whatever reason, I close myself off to her, yet I demand her attention and affection when I want it. And she always comes running. I’m not even a good friend.

“Hey,” I say from behind her.

She spins quickly, nearly falling off the stool.

“Are you okay?”

That’s the question of my life, isn’t it? Everyone always wants to know if I’m “okay.” What is okay? Is it the same as happy? Is it hopeful and willing to fight? I’m none of those things. Is it being able to talk it out, rather than running to the nearest bridge and throwing myself from it? Because I guess I’m there. I reached out to someone for help, so does that mean I’m better?