Seasons of Change (10 page)

While I’m riding the wave back to shore, Jake shifts and hovers over me, looking so earnest that I just want to cover his face with kisses. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to last,” he says after a moment, looking apologetic. “Are you sure?” he asks, suddenly appearing more nervous than me for once.

In answer I reach between us and feel his shaft, encased in the rubber he’s retrieved from some corner of the bedroom.

He probably has piles and piles stashed in every corner of this place
, the little voice in my head pipes up. I’m really starting to dislike her.

I shake my head, trying to get her out of my mind and look up at Jake, concentrating on this moment, just him and me, together. “I’m sure,” I tell him, feeling more certain than I ever have before. “I want you to be my first,” I assure him honestly. “It could only be you.” The moment that we’re sharing feels even more intimate than everything before it.

Jake doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. Instead he touches my face with the pad of his thumb as I lead him towards my opening. There’s a moment when I actually wonder if he’s going to be able to fit inside of me, because my entrance is still tight, but we take it slow, giving my body time to adjust and expand to fit around him.

Jake’s chest is rising and falling as he takes one deep breath after another. The sight of how turned on he is drives me crazy. I lift my hips so that he’s even deeper inside of me and he lets out a low grunt, struggling to hold on.

“Christ, Aimee, what are you doing to me?” he asks, trying to calm himself down.

But I don’t want him to be calm. I want him to lose control like I have, so I tilt my hips up, sighing as Jake fills me up and he starts to move inside of me, slowly at first, pumping in and out.

As the rhythm picks up, I lift my hips to meet him, wanting to feel every last inch of him, wanting him to be as deep inside of me as possible. I want to feel everything.

Jake bends his head down and catches the bottom lip that I hadn’t even realized I was biting between his teeth and he lets out a low growl. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he says, panting heavily as we move against each other.

I can feel the heat start to spread again from my pussy up towards my stomach as Jake pumps in and out of me and I dig my nails into his shoulders, trying to steady myself against the tide of my climax that I know is going to bowl me over. I look up at Jake, my best friend, my first, my lo—,

No,
I tell myself,
I can’t think that yet
. I can’t let myself feel that way about him, not when there’s so much at stake, and not when everything is so uncertain—even his feelings for me.

Soon enough I lose the ability to think as pleasure overtakes me and all rational thought flies out of my head. “Jake, I’m close,” I manage to get out between deep breaths.

He’s in the perfect position, his cock rubbing against my clit, sending waves of pleasure through me. It’s then that I feel him let go. He slams into me once, twice, three times and that’s when it happens—I have the most intense orgasm of my life. I scream his name as my body is wracked with bliss and our cries mingle together as we lose ourselves in each other.

I’m not sure how long we’re still for, but as I start to come back down to Earth I can see Jake’s face grinning over me. To cover my embarrassment at how vulnerable he’s seen me, I try to casually cover my eyes with my arm and note, “You don’t need to look so pleased with yourself.”

He pulls my arm away from my face. “Don’t, I want to see you.”

He whispers against my lips as he kisses me, sweetly and deeply, before he rolls onto his back and maneuvers us into a position to sleep. He pulls me close to him and I curl up, my hand over his chest, feeling his slowing heart beat as we lie there.

It feels like the most natural thing in the world, as if we’ve always slept like this. Touching him, lying like this with him, brings a warm and fuzzy feeling all over me that I can’t quite place. It’s something familiar, but I don’t remember ever feeling like this before and I can’t put a name to it. It seems like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but it falls away almost as soon as I think I’ve caught it.

“Jake,” I whisper against his warm skin.

“Yeah?” he replies, his voice starting to take on the foggy sound of sleep.

“Thank you,” I tell him, planting a soft kiss on his lips before I settle back next to him, feeling more complete than I have in a long time.

“Aimee,” Jake says after a moment, his voice sounding husky. I’m not sure if it’s from exhaustion or intense emotion.

“Yeah?” I ask, on the edge of drifting off to sleep.

“Nothing,” he replies after a moment, kissing me like he’s trying to tell me something. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” I tell him quietly and close my eyes. Just before I lose consciousness, I realize that I know what Jake feels like. I know what that sense of familiarity and safety and happiness is.

It’s been so long since I felt anything like it, it had seemed like a foreign concept. Jake feels like home to me. He feels like he can make up for everything I’ve lost, like being in his arms is a shot at real bliss, an escape from the nightmare of this place, finally.

Before it’s even light outside, my eyes fly open and the memory of what happened the night before comes back to me. I also realize that it’s the first time in a long time that I haven’t dreamt about my dad and the events of that final, awful day.

I’m still curled up against Jake’s side, neither of us having moved since we fell asleep. His arm is still around me and in the quiet, I steal a look at his impossibly handsome face. He appears totally at peace while he’s asleep and I reach up and trace the line of his jaw with my finger, feeling the grate of the stubble. It’s only when he stirs in his sleep that rationality starts to come flooding back into my brain.

I edge away from Jake slowly, not making any sudden movements that might jerk him awake. I tear my eyes away from his muscular chest and his too-handsome face and think about the events of the previous night. It dawns on me that I’ve had sex with my best friend and, right now, my only
close friend
, and that could potentially have thrown everything out of whack.

It's hard enough being his friend and thinking about what was going to happen when he turns twenty, but now all my intense feelings for him have come bubbling to the surface and there doesn’t seem to be any way to bottle them back up.

I can’t lose him, and at precisely the wrong moment, the horrible little voice in my brain rears her ugly head.
But you don’t even really have him to begin with
, she reminds me.

I try to push the intrusive thought away but every time I focus on how sweet and tender and kind and wonderful Jake had been to me the night before, how he had made me feel so special and so beautiful.

The little voice reminds me that at no point has he said how he feels about me. He’d said that he thought I was perfect, I reason to myself, and I get that warm glowing feeling that--I’ve recently discovered--comes unbidden when I think about Jake.

But how do I know that it's not just a line?
After all
, she says,
How do I know that he doesn’t act that way with all the girls that he’s trying to get into bed?
The simple answer is: I don’t. I don’t think that Jake’s a bad guy, but he might just be more of a typical guy than I thought. He said himself that he’s been going through a dry patch.

And it wasn’t even like he had to work particularly hard to get you into bed
, the snide little voice points out.
You were so lonely and desperate you gave it up to him without even thinking twice about it
. She succeeds in exactly what she was aiming for: she makes me feel ashamed. Ashamed and slutty.

I try to remind myself that I’ve only been to bed with one guy, and he just happened to also be my best friend. But, as always, it’s the crappy stuff that’s said about you—or even that you say to yourself—that’s hardest to believe.

Wading through the crappiness that starts to overcome me, another thought pops up and I feel a massive sense of guilt. My mom.

I had completely forgotten about her. I always checked in on her at night before I went to bed, even if I was going to or coming from the graveyard shift at work. I had never left her alone all night. Not ever. Spending the night with Jake had managed to make me forget my responsibilities and I suddenly feel ashamed all over again. I have to get home. I reach my hand out as if to wake Jake, to let him know that I’m leaving. But, before I touch him, I pull my hand back.

What am I supposed to say? How do I even know how he’s going to react when he wakes up? He may have expected me to have left already, like he did with the other girls he spent the night with. He’d said something once to me in high school along the lines of “only girlfriends get to stay the night” and I’d punched him on the arm, called him a pig, and felt sorry for all those girls that fell for him and then never heard from him again.

Now I was one of those girls. I’m not a girlfriend though, I remind myself. Not even close. What if he wakes up and decides that it was all a mistake? Would I be able to pretend that I felt the same? I already know the answer. I need some time to prepare myself for the inevitable brush-off, and the longer I spend here, within touching and kissing distance, the harder it’s going to be to go back to being “just friends.”

I slip out of bed, carefully and quietly, and start to collect up my clothes. I tip-toe, trying to avoid any floorboards that look like they might be creaky. I shimmy up my short denim shorts which, in the cold light of day take on a much sluttier hue than they had when I’d put them on in the safety of my bedroom yesterday.

I pull my top over my head, trying not to think how I felt the night before when Jake took it off and what happened after that. I steal a look behind me to check that he’s still asleep, and I try not to dwell on how difficult it feels to leave him behind. I walk out the door, closing it softly behind me.

As I wander home, almost breaking into a run as I leave the body shop, I realize that I should have left him a note. But what would I have said? My pace quickens as I think about my mother sitting all alone in a dark house. I don’t focus on the fact that it would be a miracle if she even realized or even cared that I wasn’t home.
She’s my responsibility and I let her down
, I berate myself. I rush through the front door of our home, running into the living room, and touch my mother on the shoulder.

“Mom?” I ask hesitantly. “I’m home.” There’s no reaction. Although her eyes are open, they’re staring through me rather than at me. I sink down to my knees, holding her hand as she continues to stare, almost unblinkingly. “Are you thirsty Momma?” I ask softly, wondering what it would be like to hear her voice again.

I hate to admit it, even to myself, but I feel like I’ve started to forget how she sounds. I remember my dad had always said she had a voice that was full of sunshine, but it turns out that my dad had taken all the sunshine with him when he died.

“Something happened last night,” I start to tell her, holding her hand and trying to imagine what her side of the conversation would have sounded like.

It’s been so long since we’ve spoken, I don’t think I have any idea of what she would say. But I’d like to think that she would have listened quietly as I told her what had happened, that she would hold my hand and quiet all the negative thoughts in my head. That she would hold me close and stroke my hair like she had when I was a little girl, that she would tell me that everything would be alright and that I deserved a little happiness, after everything.

But none of that happens, and after a few minutes of holding my mother’s hand and staring up into her empty face I start to feel a little stupid to be sitting on the floor, imagining a conversation with a woman who hasn’t opened her mouth in six years.

I stand up slowly and wander into the kitchen to retrieve a glass of water, inclining my mother’s head so that she takes a few sips before I set it down on the table in front of her. I make sure to leave it by her hand, a habit I only seem to realize the stupidity of now.
It’s not like she’s going to reach out and take a drink while you’re not looking, Aimee
, the grumpy little voice in my head says.

Suddenly feeling so tired that it’s almost hard to move, I trudge up the stairs towards my bedroom, wondering how it is possible to feel lonelier than ever after having so intimate with someone. I suppose a smarter person would call that irony. I just call it my life.