Nell is…not okay, but getting there. I’m not okay, but I’m getting there.
And now we’re drunk and alone on the dock.
“Don’t Drink the Water” turns into “Blackbird” and I’m not sure if I’m doing Sarah McLachlan’s version or Paul McCartney’s, but it doesn’t matter. I’m singing it, and the words have never meant so much. It’s not really an epiphany, just a knowledge that we’ll be okay, somehow, someday.
She hears what I’m saying behind the song. She turns and looks at me and her eyes are bright in the moon-silver darkness.
“You were only waiting for this moment to arise…” She sings the last line with me. “God I love that song. How’d you know?”
I shrug and set the guitar aside. “I didn’t, really. I just knew, because it’s always meant a lot to me, and now more than ever.”
“Are we?”
“Are we what?”
She slides closer to me until her back is to my front. “Waiting for this moment?”
I give a kind-of laugh. “I’m not sure what you’re asking, but I’m gonna go with yes. There’s been a lot of heavy shit in our lives. And this…this latest business has been hell.” I still can’t even say the word for what happened; it’s too hard. “But we have to learn to be free. We have to, Nell. Doesn’t mean happy all the time, or okay all the time. It’s okay not to be okay. I told you that, but I’m relearning it myself. But not being okay doesn’t mean you stop living.”
She leans back, tilts her head to press her lips to mine. She tastes of Jameson, and the lemon-lime tang from the Sprite she’s chasing it with. Whiskey and Sprite? Blech. But she likes it, so whatever. She tastes like Nell, and that’s all that matters.
Her tongue sweeps my mouth, and I realize where she’s going with this. Her hand lifts to brush the back of my head, cup my nape and pull me against her. My fingers trail across her belly, find the gap between her shirt and pants, touch the silky heat of her skin. I tug the shirt up, and she pushes away from me so I can pull it free. We came down to the dock late at night, after she’d taken a shower, so she’s not wearing a bra. I like it. I can smooth my palms across her belly, up her ribs, slide my fingers around her taut nipple and cup the heavy weight of her breast. She moans into my mouth, and I know she needs this.
I do too.
I kiss her, explore her mouth, relearn the curve of her hips and the swell of her br**sts and the shower-damp curls of her hair. She kisses me, lets me touch her. Each caress brings her healing, I think. Shows her she’s more than the sum of her grief.
It does the same for me.
Finally, she twists in place and we slide so the dock is beneath my back and she’s pillowed on top of me, body pressed flush to body, softness merging with hardness. She lets all her weight rest on me, cradles my face in her hands and kisses me into oblivion, and sweet Jesus, her mouth is my heaven.
Nell
I didn’t realize how badly I craved this until his hands came up over my thighs to knead the muscle of my ass. Up until that point, kissing him was just…sweet and perfect and all the things I needed to forget. But then, something in the way his fingers dug hungrily into my backside unleashed a need inside me.
I need him. I mean, yeah, emotionally, mentally, I need him too. He’s my rock. He’s there, just…always there, exactly how I need him. Calming, comforting, protecting, and distracting me. But this…I have to have his arms around me, his hands on me, his fingers blazing a trail of heat on my skin and his mouth wreaking wonderful havoc on my senses. I absolutely cannot live without that another minute. It’s a madness in me.
I think he senses this in the way I suddenly attack him. We were just kissing, making out, touching a bit, and then I rear back and look down at him and see his vibrant sapphire eyes sparkling in the starlight and moonbeams and his eyes are taking me in like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and I just…lose it.
I dig at his jeans, fumbling frantically at the button and at the elastic of his boxers and at his shirt. I’m panting with need, crazed.
He stills both of my wrists in one of his hands and lifts my chin with the other. “Relax, Nell. Slow down.”
“I can’t, I can’t.” My voice is not mine, it’s almost a squeak, and I don’t squeak. “I need you. Right now.”
His eyes are calm but hungry. “I need you too. But slow down. I’m here. I’m here.”
He pulls me down against him so I can feel his hot flesh and hard muscle and his arousal against my thigh.
“It’s not enough. I need you inside me, Colton. Please.”
He brushes a wayward curl aside with his thumb. “I know, baby. But breathe for me, okay? It’s alright.”
I realize I’m hyperventilating. I’m not okay. But Colton makes me okay, not because he fixes me, just because he’s him. He’s unchanging. He’s raw and rough and kind and smart and nearly illiterate but so brilliant and so talented and so f**king hot it’s absurd and he’s mine. And all that makes me okay, because he loves me, even when I run away and even when I’m hyperventilating.
I breathe. I slow myself down, one breath at a time, like I’ve been learning in therapy, and slowly, I begin to find a semblance of sanity.
And then Colton stands up easily, lifting me in his arms, and carries me to the spare bedroom in his parents’ house where he’s been sleeping. The house is empty, silent in the way that only empty houses can be. His mom and dad are gone, finally taking a much-needed weekend away together.
Colton lowers me to the bed, and I catch a scent of his cologne and shampoo and whiskey. I watch him, stare at him, drinking in his rugged, masculine beauty. He strips his shirt off, doing that sexy guy thing where he peels it straight up over his head, stretching the slabs of muscle on his stomach and chest. Then he flicks open his jeans button, and I’m a trembling mess watching him unzip achingly slowly, teasing me. The jeans slip off to the floor, and his underwear are tented. He’s not self-conscious at all. He hooks his thumbs in the gray elastic waistband and draws the black cotton over the head, baring himself to me.
God yes.
I can’t help biting my lip and smiling at the sight of him, standing straight up, tip glistening. He’s naked, standing over me. I reach out and grasp him, pull him to me. He climbs onto the bed and kneels above me.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” he murmurs.