The music sinks into my bones with its annoying, jarring rhythm. The constant carousel of guys parading around me, wanting to give me far more than their phone numbers, is starting to grate on my every last sexual nerve. And, God knows I can't breathe with this linebacker trying to suck an artery out of my neck every few minutes.
"Excuse me," I say, clawing my way through the mass tangle of flesh.
I haven't seen Cruise in hours. It's almost New Years, and I've spent far too long drowning in the deep end of unwanted male suitors.
"Lauren!" I spot her over by the stairwell, and she gives a brief wave.
"You really packed 'em in tonight." She wobbles on her heels. "I thought you were trying to bag Cruise?"
"Shh!" I push my finger to my mouth in a panic. God, she's wasted, and she's going to ruin everything. "I was - I am. He sent me out on a mission, then I saw him with this girl, and I got all pissy and hung out with the football team." Basketball team, too, but that's beside the point.
"I did you a favor." She shouts it all whispery - employing the secret keeping method preferred by drunks the world over. "I told Cruise to stop dicking around." She starts in on a tittering laugh and doesn't let up until she falls into my arms from the apparent hilarity of it all.
I'd ask why in the hell she'd say that, to Cruise of all people, when I specifically enlisted him in activities that involve his honorary member, but it's clear she's completely toasted. Normally, I'd be upset, but I opt to file this misstep under drunken debauchery. Lauren's too shit-faced to realize what she's done. It's the "dicking around" I'm most looking forward to with Cruise.
I do a quick visual sweep of the area for her presumably sober BFF, so I can lovingly pass her along.
"Where's Ally?" It'll be midnight in less than five minutes, and if I don't find my smoking hot roommate, who knows whose lips he'll be gracing with my New Year's kiss?
"Dear God." Ally magically appears and helps me land Lauren in the stairwell. "I can't find her boyfriend." She shrugs into me. "Lauren thinks he's cheating." She leans in. "She's totally paranoid. He is so not cheating. Have you seen him? He's lucky he has Lauren."
"Right." I hope to God it wasn't Lauren's boyfriend who tried to give me a necklace of hickeys. I may or may not have accidentally kneed him in the balls to make my great escape.
"Oh look, there's Cruise." She nods behind my shoulder as her eyes swell the size of grapefruits "Never mind. Let's get Lauren to the car instead."
"Never mind what?" I try to spin around, but she secures me by the wrists. "Oh I get it. He's with some other girl." I give one bionic pull and wrangle out of her death grip in time to see Cruise heading in my direction sans any female appendages. I lower my chin and do my best to seduce him.
The countdown begins, and Ally jumps on the nearest jock.
"Just in time." I beam as he strides over. He gives the slight glimmer of a smile, but overall, he looks a little ticked as if some emotional altercation just occurred. I cut a glance behind him, and a girl with strawberry blond hair douses me with a look of venom. She sears me with a fresh brand of hatred and my stomach pinches as if I've genuinely done something wrong.
"Three, two - one!" The crowd breaks out in cheers and screams.
Cruise softens into me, molding his body to mine. He latches onto my gaze, and we meditate on one another for a brief moment. Cruise dips in with a grin. Our lips crash together in one hot, delicious kiss. His tongue maneuvers through my mouth, slow and deliberate. He holds the slight taste of beer and spearmint, and his warm, familiar cologne springs my senses to life. This was no frat boy trying to pick me up for the night. This isn't Pennington from whose touch I would repel. This is Cruise, and something about the way he kisses me, the way our bodies sway in time - it's as if we were meant to do this all along.
Happy New Year, Cruise. But I don't say it.
I don't ever want this special brand of magic to end.
Cruise races us home at speeds that exceed the sound barrier. I'm positive this measly cloth seatbelt is not going to prevent me from testing the dexterity of the windshield once centripetal force insists I meet my untimely demise.
He lands us in his driveway and whisks around to my side before I can ever get out of the truck. Cruise helps me along every inch of the way as if I've morphed into a hopeless geriatric.
I race him to the door, completely smitten with this playful side of him.
"Are you drunk?" I giggle into him as he unlocks the door. I turn on the light and bounce inside still reeling from the heavenly kiss he graced my New Year's with.
"Nope. Not drunk. I'm hopped up on something all together different," he says as he follows me in and bolts the door behind him.
Oh God, he's thinking with his little head - and as much as I find this exciting, I'm scared to freaking death.
"Aren't you going to ask what I'm hopped up on?" He lowers his chin and approaches me with a seductive prowess I haven't seen in him before. Well, maybe that first night when I was still a prospect, but I thought I took that off the table in a roundabout way. Didn't I? Weren't we saving my deflowering for some nebulous point in the future? I was sort of hoping heart shaped boxes and sappy greeting cards would somehow be involved. Perhaps an "I love you," but I don't really believe in that. Do I?
"I'm pretty sure I can guess what you're hopped up on," I say, rounding out the coffee table as he hedges in on me from the other side.
"I'm pretty sure you can't." A wicked grin slides up his cheek. His brows dip in a sharp V, and he looks beyond gorgeous in a demented I'm-going-to-chase-you-around-the-furniture kind of way. He darts in my direction, and I retract. "Every one of those guys tonight wanted to do just this."
"Well then, aren't you the lucky one?" I squeal as he pulls me in by the waist, landing us both on the couch.
"I guess I am the lucky one." His chest rises and falls in a dramatic fashion, and I can feel his breath gently caressing my chest.
I wonder if this is what it would feel like to be lying next to him, his body writhing over mine in a fit of passion then nothing but the afterglow, the breathing that commences as we stare into one another's eyes.
"Kenny?" Cruise doesn't move. He simply drinks me in with those watery pools, and I melt at the sight of him.
"Yes?"
"What do you want from me?" There's an earnestness in his tone that I haven't heard before, something far more honest than the playboy that perennially resides inside him.
For a moment, I consider telling him I want only him and that I think we should get to know one another because I think we could have something special... but chicken out. I seriously doubt happily ever after is in the cards for me or anybody else for that matter.
"Teach me how to use my body." In all of my twenty years, that single sentiment is perhaps the saddest to ever pass through these lips. Although, I have no intention of prostituting my mortal instrument to every, and any, male at Garrison, those very words only seem to highlight the fact how immune I pretend to be from love. The concept itself might be alien, sure, I may not have had the greatest examples, but something is brewing in me, and it's all for Cruise. An entire volcano of wanting is percolating deep down inside of me, and I only want to experience it with the wonderful person holding me right this very minute.
I gaze into him and run my finger down his cheek while his stubble tickles my flesh.
I want to tell him that I'm bubbling - ready to burst to life for the very first time - that everything is new again in this strange springtime in my heart. I'm falling, and it feels so very right.
Cruise brings my hand to his lips with a forlorn expression.
I've managed to douse all the joy he exemplified only moments before.
"Okay, Kenny." He presses a kiss born of sadness against the back of my hand. "I'll do anything you want."
I wish I could be honest with Cruise.
I wish I could be honest with myself.
Cruise
Teach me how to use my body.
I pour over Kenny in all her inordinate beauty and wonder why in God's name she would choose this path. Who hurt her so bad that she couldn't understand something greater than a string of one-night stands waited for her?
I get up and start a fire before we freeze to death. The night riffles through my mind like a disorganized filing cabinet shaking out events in random order. Kenny and I arriving at Ackerman House, the sea of hard-ons surrounding her once she drifted in that ocean of depravity, then Blair showing up like some twisted nightmare. The last time we stood face-to-face was the day she declared everything I thought I knew about us null and void and asked for my "blessing" to move on with her new Mr. Uptight Right. Tonight she wanted to talk, to start the New Year without any bitterness. I simply told her I wasn't bitter and walked away.
It was Kenny I wanted to talk to, to be near. It was Kenny and all of her beautiful glory I wanted to surround myself with. Then her lips gave that mile-wide resplendent smile, reduced me to nothing, and I kissed her right there. I wondered if Blair was watching - if she thought it was some kind of perverse revenge kiss. A part of me was sad for her because I knew the truth. I was kissing someone special, someone I'm falling for a lot harder and stronger than I ever did for Blair all those years combined.
Kenny lands on the sheepskin rug as the fire roars to life. I pull two more rugs from the corner and blanket the floor with the fleece of three dead sheep, discards from the bed and breakfast. Something about the irony doesn't escape me. There's definitely something dead inside both Kenny and me if we can't pinpoint love, if we can't figure out that it just might be staring us in the face. And here I was all amped up to tell her how I felt when we walked through the door, but those weren't the words she wanted to hear.
"Second lesson." I let out a quiet groan as I land beside her. She's got her top hanging so low her cleavage bulges out like perfect twin mounds.
"Second?" Her eyes sparkle like cut glass as she reclines onto her elbows.
"The kisses were first. Which, by the way, you've mastered, but I highly suggest we practice to keep your skill-set high." I give a devilish grin and sweep my lips across her cheek just enough to tease her. "But tonight, we're advancing to the fine art of touch." I run my fingers up her bare thigh then slowly up her skirt until I round out the searing skin of her bottom. Her lids close partway, and her chest rises and falls in one quick motion.
"I don't know..." She rolls into me. The slight curve of her mouth lets me know she approves. "What about all those phone numbers? You said get six, and I got twenty." Her teeth graze over her blood red lips, and my jeans cinch at the crotch.
"You were trying too hard." I hold back a laugh. "Besides, other people don't count."
"No?" She watches me with that diamond vision of hers. I can feel her wanting me, trembling to have me. I want to string it out - make it hurt until she abandons her efforts at becoming anything that remotely resembles the predator I've morphed into.
She picks up my hand and rubs slow circles into my palm.
"This sounds personal," she whispers, her eyes heavy with either lust or fatigue. I'm hoping for the former.
"It should always be personal." My fingers land firm on her thigh. I run my thumb under the lip of her underwear and trace over her hip. "Take off your clothes," I whisper it like a dare.
"No." She bows into the word as if she never had any intention of doing something so vile.
"You're going to make a lousy one-night stand." I bury a kiss into her neck in lieu of a laugh.
Kenny bubbles with a string of giggles. She arches into me and I lay over her, my body conforming to hers.
"I like tonight's lesson," she murmurs in my ear. "Touching."
I sit up and pull off my shirt, leaving my arms extended for a moment while she rakes me with her eyes.
"All right." I slip back over her and dot a row of kisses straight down her chest, stopping just shy of burying myself in her cleavage. I've envisioned at least a thousand times what that would feel like, lost in the soft pillow of her flesh. Kenny has me shaking with a hard-on ready to rip from my jeans. "Next lesson will be conducted with considerably less clothing. And believe me, you have nothing to be shy about."
"Neither do you." She runs her fingers over my shoulder, soft and unsure.
I gently take up her hand and run it down my chest, never breaking our gaze. Kenny interlaces our fingers. She closes her eyes as I pull her lower, inch by inch, until we crest the hard ridge in my pants and she gives a soft moan. Her hand escapes mine, and she cups me over my jeans. Dear lord, yes. She lets her fingers glide over me soft and achingly sweet. I glide my hands under her sweater, and I slip them over her breasts, feel the lace of her bra, and trace out her hard nipples underneath.
Kenny pulls me in and crashes her lips over mine. Her mouth is ripe with the taste of strawberries as she delivers her sweet, juicy kisses. Her tongue strokes over mine, slow and easy, as if we had already logged a decade of doing exactly this. I could spend an eternity holding Kenny with her lips, her body welded to mine. Her cool hands slip into the back of my jeans and dip into my boxers. Kenny relaxes her fingers over me and gives a gentle squeeze. It takes everything in me not to move her hand around to the front, introduce her to the physical part of me that craves her most. Her bra unhooks beneath my fingers, and I move my heated hands over her bare stomach until I feel her quiver beneath me. I glance down at her beautiful face. Her lids are closed and she licks her lips in anticipation as I cup her breasts full with both hands.
Kenny takes in a sharp breath and bucks beneath me. Her lids flutter with ecstasy as if this simple act of loving her made her dizzy.
I lay my lips over hers as we indulge in a spastic war of limbs. Kenny tastes and feels as if she were made just for me.
Kenny is stabbing at my heart with her being - molding herself over my existence.
Something amazing is happening - something meaningful and real.
Monday afternoon, Cal and I run side by side on the treadmill in the overcrowded equipment room. Every person on the planet has meandered into the gym today, trying to work off that extra slice of holiday pie. A couple of girls across from us have all but resorted to smoke signals to let us know they're interested, and for the first time in a long while, there isn't anything in me that's up for a hot and sweaty quickie at the gym. Now, if it were Kenny initiating the offer, I'd take her right here in the middle of the room, with an audience, if she wanted.
"Kenny thinks 'touch' should act as an extended lesson." I marvel at my dumb luck. "But for whatever reason, she's still hell bent on continuing with her experiment," I say out of breath, trying not to shout too loud should the girls across the way be moved to eavesdrop. I wouldn't put it past Blair to set her eyes and ears in my midst.
"Touch, huh? Maybe she could give some pointers to Lauren. Can you believe she thinks I was cheating on her New Year's Eve?"
"You tell her you were with me?" I flinch at the thought. After I saw Kenny surrounded like a pageant queen on parade, I hauled ass outside for a pity party and ended up confessing to Cal that I had more than a few feelings rolling around for Kenny - that surprisingly, they weren't solely tied to my balls' incessant urge to release some pressure. I used the 'L' word for the first time in a good long while, out loud, and not even my own ears could fucking believe it - still not sure I do.
"Yeah, I told her I was with you." He catches the worried look on my face. "Relax, I didn't rattle off any of that bullshit you were shoveling." He wipes down his forehead with the towel draped around his neck. "I thought you swore off love and traded it in for, I believe the quote was, 'quick and dirty ass.'"
I try to shake the accuracy of his words out of my head. "I thought so, too. Don't worry. You're not the only one who's disappointed in me." I don't tell him that I saw Blair at Ackerman House - that she wanted to talk, that I essentially blew her off and fused my lips to Kenny instead. I don't want to drag Blair into every conversation. I want her and the ghost of who we were, hidden in the back of the closet. I wish I could burn it down, torch every memory we ever made. And now, here she is, showing up just when things are shaping up in my life. Figures. She probably doesn't feel she did enough damage the first time around.
I drain the rest of my water and end up spilling the reserve down my chest.
"Watch the equipment, buddy. That's a three thousand dollar machine you're desecrating. You think getting your heart ripped out of your ass hurt like hell, wait until I come after you for restitution. How's the bed and breakfast going? Business mistreating you much these days?"
A groan escapes my throat at the mere mention of that money pit. "I handed the reins back to my mom last summer when I ditched my sanity. I should swing by and glance at the books."
"Wear safety goggles. Those books have a way of trying to knock you out. I should know. Hey, school starts tomorrow. You ready to begin instructional duties?"
"Yup. Already found my favorite student."
"No way."
"Yes," I say, exhilarated by the thought. "Wrote up a syllabus just for her."
"I bet you did. You fucking perv." He says it with a marked sense of pride.
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
Pennington struts in with his thin frame puffed out, his glazed expression that lets me know he's already high as a kite at this early hour.
"I bet he rolls his joints with your daddy's Benjamins." Cal spits out exactly what I was thinking, and I give a little laugh. Then an idea comes to me.