Winter Jacket: Finding Home (35 page)

“Wow. It’s really coming down,” she remarked. “Maybe you should stay the night.”

“It’s only a little rain.”

Gods, why had I said that?
Hunter was inviting me to spend the night. The obvious answer was yes.

“Are you sure?”

The weather had been unpredictable lately, sunshine and chirping birds one moment, and cloudy and stormy the next with unrelenting rain and whipping wind.

The lights in the room flickered and then went out. Hunter’s eyes went to the ceiling and the blacked-out lights. The room periodically filled with white light as the thunderstorm continued outside. “I think a greater power thinks you should stay,” she mused.

“Maybe, um, maybe I
should
stay.”

“I’d like that,” Hunter quietly replied. “If it’s okay with you, I mean.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, not wanting to sound too willing. “Can I borrow something to sleep in?”

“Of course. Feel free to dig around in my things for whatever you need. I’m just going to go brush my teeth.”

Hunter lit a few candles before she left the bedroom again to finish getting ready for bed. The atmosphere was dangerous—her bedroom, lighted candles, surrounded by her things and her scent.

I stood from her bed to find something more suitable to sleep in. I opened the top drawer—socks and underwear. I opened the second drawer and pulled out a long sleeved t-shirt she’d gotten from running a half marathon. Unable to help myself, I pressed my nose against the material and inhaled the scent of her fabric softener.

Underneath the shirt I discovered a metal object, silver and smooth. The silver cylinder was small, no larger than a tube of lipstick. It came to life when I pressed down on the rubber button on one end. It was relatively conservative as far as sex toys went, but I was sure it still got the job done.

Hunter returned to the room, unnoticed. “Oh my God,” she panicked. “I forgot that was in there.”

I dropped the vibrator back into the top drawer as though it had scalded me. It bounced around amongst her t-shirts until I retrieved it and hastily turned it off. I was embarrassed she’d caught me with it, but probably no more so than she was that I’d found it.

“So it’s yours then?” I said smoothly.

“I can’t really lie and say I’m holding onto it for a friend.”

“No,” I quietly laughed. “I suppose not.”

The ground had become very interesting. “I’ve been waiting, too,” she murmured, “but a girl still has needs.”

“Oh, I know.”

“We should, um, probably get to sleep.”

“I’m going to sleep on the couch,” I announced.

“Are you sure? It’s not very comfortable,” she warned. “I don’t even like
sitting
on it.”

“I don’t want to … uh, take advantage.”

Her long, pale eyelashes fluttered. “You’d be tempted?”

I breathed out roughly through my nose. It felt like the temperature in the room had spiked. “Yeah.”

“I’ll get you some blankets.”

That night was one of the most torturous sleeps I’ve ever had to endure. I tried to quiet my brain, to be lulled to sleep by the rhythmic pitter-patter of rain against glass windowpanes, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Hunter sleeping in just the next room and the sex toy in her second drawer.

At some point I did fall asleep, but not for very long. The living room was dark, but a streetlamp in front of Hunter’s apartment complex provided just enough light to realize that I wasn’t alone in the living room. The power had come back on sometime in the night, and the rainstorm had quieted to barely a mist.

I could see Hunter’s silhouette standing next to the couch and that she wore only an oversized t-shirt that hit the top of her thighs.

“Hunter?” I sat to attention, but my sleep-addled brain couldn’t compute what she was doing out in the living room at that hour. “What’s wrong?”

“Shhh,” she hushed me. “You don’t have to say anything.”

She took one of my hands and pulled it towards her. My hand immediately slipped beneath the bottom hem of the long t-shirt and rounded the pert globes of her backside, feeling the dual softness of her skin and her cotton underwear.

I pulled her closer to me and pressed my forehead against her abdomen and inhaled her scent. I closed my eyes from the surging sensations; she was warm and soft and perfect, and I couldn’t imagine loving a person more than what I felt for her.

She climbed onto my lap, straddling me between her parted thighs, and lightly resting her full weight on me. As she settled onto my lap, positioning me between her thinly muscled thighs, her long t-shirt slid higher up her thighs and backside. My gaze dropped to my lap and the space between her parted legs. My hands slid up her naked thighs and beneath her long shirt. I ran my palms along the smooth expanse of her bare back.

She cupped my face in her hands and drew me in for a soft kiss. Her lips pressed lightly against my own, barely there, like a ghost of a kiss while her fingertips slid across my cheekbones and wound themselves in my loose hair.

I could feel her deepening the kiss. The fingers at my temples tightened their grip on my hair, increasing the intensity of my feelings when she tugged. Stiff fingers pressed against my breastbone urged me to fall backwards, but I resisted. I wanted her. I always wanted her. But we couldn’t keep doing this.

“Wait,” I whispered. “We shouldn’t. Not tonight. Not like this.”

I didn’t need to give her additional reasons or elaborate. She exhaled deeply and dropped her head to my chest.

“Lay with me for a little while?” I proposed instead.

I felt her nod her consent against my breastbone.

The couch wasn’t very wide or long, but with some skilled maneuvering and shifting, we were able to resituate ourselves into a somewhat comfortable position. We both lay on our sides with her backside pressed against my stomach and one of my arms draped over the dip of her hip and waist. I could feel the heat radiating from her body.

When I next came into consciousness, I could hear the distinct sound of canned laughter, and I could feel sunshine warm on my face. I slowly opened one eye and then the other followed.

The television was on. Loryssa, a former student and Hunter’s roommate, sat in an adjacent easy chair, eating cereal out of a giant ceramic bowl.

“Good morning, Professor.” She sounded far too casual to have woken up to find the two of us on her couch.

“Morning, Loryssa,” my voice croaked out.

I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. I also couldn’t feel my left arm; Hunter had used it as her pillow during the night. Not only that, but she had one arm flung over my chest and beneath the covers was a long leg pinning me down. I gave up trying to extricate myself. She was a notoriously heavy sleeper. I’d once joked to her that I could die in my sleep and she wouldn’t notice until morning; she hadn’t found that very funny.

“I take it you guys are back together?” Loryssa said, gesturing toward us with her spoon.

I glanced down at Hunter, still sound asleep. “I, uh. You’ll have to ask her about that.”

Her spoon scraped the bottom of the cereal bowl. “Well, I’d better get to class.”

“You graduate this semester, right?”

“Yep.”

In a more conventional setting I might have continued by asking what she planned on doing after graduation, but I was currently spooning her roommate on their living room couch. There would be time for real-world conversations another time.

“Have a nice day,” I said instead.

“Thanks,” she replied, standing from the easy chair and turning off the television. “See you later, Professor.”

I heard the heels of Loryssa’s shoes click down the hallway, followed by the sound of her putting her breakfast dishes in the kitchen sink. The front door unlocked and opened next, and I heard it shut seconds later.

With Loryssa gone and the television turned off, the apartment was once again cloaked in silence. Through the old single-pane glass windows, I could hear the faint chirping of birds outside. With nothing else to do until Hunter woke up, I studied the pattern on the forest green wallpaper in the living room. Old wallpaper always reminded me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”–a short story about a woman who has become a kind of domestic prisoner and slowly grows mad from intellectual inactivity. The walls of the woman’s bedroom—her prison—had been covered in an old, peeling wallpaper that causes her to hallucinate.

As the minutes passed and Hunter continued to sleep, I came to the conclusion that I needed to slip out from beneath her. We had only had one dinner and had watched a movie together. That didn’t add up to morning spooning, and there would definitely be no forking. But before I could do anything to remove my arm from beneath Hunter’s head, I heard the rhythm of her breathing change. Instead of the even inhalations that came with easy sleep, it came now in short, staccato bursts. It reminded me of when Sylvia had dreams and her entire body twitched all over.

I touched my fingers first against the arm thrown across my chest. “Hunter,” I whispered.

Her eyes shifted beneath her eyelids, but she didn’t wake up.

I gripped her shoulder and gently shook her awake. “Hunter,” I said more loudly.

Her eyes flipped open and she gasped for air like she’d been submerged in water and oxygen starved.

“Hey.” My brow creased with concern. “Are you okay?”

She shifted on the couch, putting a little more space between us. “Yeah. Just a bad dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. It’s okay. I’m fine.” She looked discombobulated, as though she couldn’t recall how she’d come to be on the living room couch. I hoped my presence didn’t add to her confusion. “Sorry if I was smothering you.”

“I didn’t mind,” I dismissed. “What time do you have to be at work today?”

“I don’t. After what happened yesterday, Michelle, the head nurse, gave me the day off.”

“That was really kind,” I observed. I liked her employer and supervisors even more after hearing that.

“Mmhm,” she hummed in agreement. “Do you have any place you need to be today?”

At some point I’d have to go home and feed Sylvia, but I was in no hurry to leave. “Nope.”

She turned over in my arms to face me. “I don’t think I’m ready to be awake yet. Could we move this to my bedroom? This couch is brutal.”

“Anything you need.” I leaned in and pressed my lips against her forehead. Her skin was soft and sweet smelling from the recent shower. It was an intimately familiar action, but after spending the night together, I felt safe in expressing myself like that.

The blanket came off and Hunter rose from the couch. It took me a little longer and with a little less elegance to do the same. I wasn’t a young co-ed anymore who could get a good night’s sleep on any surface. My body demanded proper mattresses and pillows.

Hunter headed straight for her side of the bed, and I routinely slid beneath the covers on the other side. Our thighs touched beneath the sheets and she pulled away, not quickly like I had a disease she didn’t want to catch, but the retreat was noticeable and it stung more than I liked to admit. It was a strange reaction; we’d spent the night draped over each other and now she wanted distance?

“We need to stop apologizing and being awkward around each other,” I announced. “I know we’re not back to being girlfriends, but that doesn’t mean we have to flinch every time we unintentionally touch.”

She exhaled deeply. “I know. And you’re right. It’s just tricky, you know? I don’t know what the rules or boundaries should be.”

“Well I think we’ve agreed to no sex.” I wiggled my eyebrows playfully. “Unless that’s back on the table.”

Her pensive look turned into a laugh. “No. No sex.”

I couldn’t be disappointed. Sex would only complicate things. We were steadily rebuilding that which had been lost while I’d been in California. And as much as I loved sex, I loved her more. I didn’t want to ruin our progress.

“But we’re at least dating, right?”

She nodded.

“And people who date get to cuddle,” I reasoned.

“In bed though?”

“I don’t know. Is that against the rules?”

“Why don’t we give it a try?” She pulled on my arm and played with my fingers. “Thank you for last night. For being there when I needed you, and for not taking advantage of the situation.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I miss you.” She chewed on the inside of her lip. “I miss
us
.”

“You mean you’ve had enough sowing your wild oats?”

Her features pinched. “I deserve that.”

“No. No, you don’t,” I said quickly. I thought about Jasmine and Sonja, and even Jessica. I wasn’t above reproach.

“You were my first girlfriend, and if I was going to have a significant other, I wanted her here,” she started. “I wanted to sleep in the same bed with her, to have someone to watch movies with on a weekday night, someone to hold hands with, and I wanted that someone to be you. I was just getting used to having a girlfriend and being in a relationship, and I loved it. But then you took that away when you moved to California.”