And yet, I crossed it effortlessly. My body felt like a wolf’s. Make that a bear. No, just like an animal. Every muscle moved with purpose, my eyes focused in on the two of them. I had no idea what I was going to say, and no idea what I was going to do. All I knew was that I needed her to pay attention to me. I needed to be the only guy in the bar for her; not Liam, not any of the other dudes sitting around, me. Me and only me. And I was going to make that happen.
There was one other moment in my life where I felt this massive internal plume of anger and desperation, and of hope, all mingle inside me at once and push me forward into a trajectory of no return. The last time I did it, it was all aimed at my dad. It was all negative. It was about pulling away, about pulling apart. This time, it was about coming together.
I found myself standing in front of them and Liam looked up, eyebrows raised, face amused. “Hey, Sam.”
I ignored him. Amy took me full on and looked up, face blank, a debater’s stare of challenge. She didn’t shy away, but the look in her eyes was calculating. I could count the words in her head that she was jumbling around, and organizing, and aligning as the most scintillating, sarcastic comment she could come up with was assembling behind those beautiful brown eyes.
This was the closest I’d been to her in four and a half years, other than in my own memory and my own fantasies. She opened her mouth and stood at the same time, our bodies a foot apart. Her face twisted into a smirk and she started to say something, and the next thing I knew...I was kissing her.
Amy
Wait...what? Sam’s hands were on my shoulders and he was kissing me. The witty, barbed comment that I’d worked and planned on for four fucking years had been on the tip of my tongue, but now completely dissolved and poured out of my head as his soft lips claimed mine. His hands snaked down my back, and I accepted the apology and the kiss that I’d waited too long for. It was soft at first, and then, he pulled back just enough to come in once more, this time more insistent. From a welcome to an invitation, and then, to a reunion.
The palms of his hands slid over my ribcage, his fingers dug into me, pulling me closer. I shifted my legs and he took that as an opening, body pressed against mine, the hard muscles of a man’s fully formed torso pressing against my softer curves. I got my chance to run my hands up his back like Darla had with Trevor, except, this was exquisite and mine. Mine.
Applause began, along with catcalls and hoots, and then the distinct sound of metal on glass, like people chiming spoons against wine glasses at a wedding, the crowd’s call for more kissing. The same gesture as last week with my fake kiss with Liam, but this time I cheered right back in my heart. Ignoring it was impossible, and yet somehow we both shut it out.
As our bodies communed with each other it was as if the time rolled back and we were starting over from that moment at the tournament where life had turned on a dime. We said four and a half years of conversation in each brush of our lips, every nip, every time his tongue touched my teeth, the heat of him pouring through his mouth into mine. Every stroke of his palm against the small of my back was another month forgiven, every gasp between our mouths like a month redeemed.
“Amy,” he whispered. As his lips explored my mouth and his tongue pierced my soul, everything linear dissolved in my head and I became something new. I was all being, I was all atoms, and skin, and hot, and flesh, and knowing. I was with Sam. Sam, who had abandoned me. Sam, who had not said a word all this time, was now kissing me in the back of a bar and it was perfect. And I was all his. I was all I ever wanted to be.
Sam
How did this happen? One minute I was standing in front of her, ready for the tongue lashing that I richly deserved, and the next minute I was pressed up against her, her hot little body morphing into mine. Her hands ran up my back and mine sank into her hair, the lushness of her mouth like finding the God I had doubted, and seeing that an ordained world makes sense again. All the pieces fell into place as I took her mouth with mine, as she parted her lips and let me say how sorry I was.
Her hands on my hips, her body against mine, our torsos pressed against each other—it made me hard instantly, my body on fire in a way that no beat could replicate. There was no music I could play to find this, no macrobeat, no microbeat, nothing that was comparable to the state of being that I had gone to with her in my arms.
The room exploded into a bunch of cheering, lewd comments and shouts about giving her more tongue, getting a room—words, words and more stupid words. None of it mattered.
It was as if they didn’t exist.
Four and a half years disappeared as her fingers trailed along my neck, her soft, pliant lips matched mine in fevered kisses. Blood pounded through me as every sense screamed her name. Amy. Amy. Amy. And then, someone cleared their throat. Amy pulled back and turned, I followed her, letting go of each other and dropping our hands.
Liam. Of course, Liam. “So,” he said, eyes bouncing between the two of us, “I am going to leave you two alone. It seems you have a lot of catching up to do.” He smirked and shot Amy a meaningful look that I didn’t understand. “But we have a set to do.” He thumbed the stage.
Fuck. That’s right. The idea that I would need to spend the next hour and a half apart from her was like a solitary prison sentence. It would feel like years. I turned back to Amy, and my eyes zeroed in on hers, wide and startled and searching my face. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand in a gesture that made me feel like a king.
“French kiss, french kiss!” the crowd chanted, clapping. Then another group across the room shouted, “Blow job, blow job!”
Liam crossed his arms and cocked his pelvis, as if he were the ringleader of the boozy, hyped-up crowd. “I know which one I’d pick,” he muttered.
“Go,” she said to me as we both tried to pretend Liam wasn’t there. “Play. That’s why I came here.”