Lauren Blakely - The Thrill of It

“Wow,” I say, and turn in a circle. On the other side, we are fenced in by tall wooden posts. Ivy skates down the wood. “I feel as if I’ve made my great escape.”

“Yeah.”

“Can we stay all night?” I joke.

“Maybe,” he says softly, and his voice sounds different. I don’t know what it is, but he seems vulnerable, like he’s about to say something.

“Maybe?”

He shrugs, drops his backpack to the ground, and leans against the wall. The night air is warm, and I can hear the sounds of traffic not far from us — horns honking, tires squealing, but then it fades in my ears as he lifts a hand, and it feels as if he might be reaching for me. I don’t know, I’m not sure, I don’t know how to read this moment, and how it’s shifted to possibility. Because I don’t know what happens when a girl likes a boy, and a boy likes a girl, and if that’s even what’s going on here. All my finely-tuned radar is off, it’s skittering, it’s pointing in every direction because everything is different when I’m not being paid for pleasure.

The world slows down as he touches my arm. The second he makes contact, his fingertips both electric and unbelievably soft and gentle on my skin, I know he senses that something has changed. Maybe he could tell I was at the end of my rope, was veering toward Cam. I close my eyes for the briefest of moments, delighting in how my arm is tingling. The sensations race through my body, and I want to be touched by him. I don’t have to feign interest, or fake a turned-on look.

But an ominous sound squawks from my back pocket. Darth Vader’s theme music.

“Fuck.” The moment isn’t just broken. It’s shattered into a million shards that cut me and leave me bleeding.

I grab my phone and open the email from Miranda.

There’s no subject line, she never bothers with subject lines, I’m not worthy of a subject line. I have to open the email to see what she wants. It’s a small act, but it sends a powerful message. She holds all the cards.

I click on the email. She doesn’t write my name.

It just says: package coming friday after 330 by courier specific time unknown return per usual

Which is bullshit. She knows the time. She knows it down to the fraction of a second, I’m sure. She probably has an advanced computer simulation program on how to blackmail most effectively and relies on the perfect combination of algorithms and data and past behavior and future predictions to determine exactly when, where, why and how to send me her next set of instructions. And she’s not going to tell me the time, never has, never will. Her whole game is for me to be on pins and needles waiting for the package while simultaneously keeping my mom from intercepting the package. She often sends them to my mom’s house, so she can torture me, make me scamper across the alligator pit.

I write back to Miranda, equally curt, but managing to capitalize and use periods: Message received.

I shut down my email and close my eyes. I feel Trey press his hand on top of mine.

I open my eyes and look at him again. I am twisted inside out. I could punch this brick wall now, split my knuckles open, and slam it all over again. I push my hands roughly through my hair and groan loudly in frustration. “I fucking hate her.”

“Me too,” he whispers. “I hate her for you.”

“I hate how she controls my life,” I say between gritted teeth.

I breathe out hard, wishing I could release all this coiled tension from my body. Trey is still leaning against the wall, and his gorgeous arms are on display, the art swirling down in lines, shapes, patterns that mesmerize me. His arms are strong, sculpted and muscular. I want them around me.

Fuck everything else in the world right now.

I step toward him, cup his cheeks. “I’m tired of waiting for you,” I say, shedding all my walls. He knows all my secrets and lies. He can know my truth. “I’m so tired of it,” I say softly, then I hold his gaze and trail my fingers along his jawline, from his earlobe, across his scar to his chin, watching the expression in his eyes shift from surprise to desire. To desperate want. I run my index finger across his top lip, and he closes his eyes briefly, his chest rising and falling, his breath catching. He opens his eyes again, watches me. I touch his bottom lip, and he nips on my finger, then flashes a quick grin that fades as he whispers, “I’m tired too.”

That’s it. That’s all. I can’t wait. I don’t want to. I’m sick of it. I need this contact with him. I need this moment. I need to know what it’s like again to have this kind of connection.

I kiss him.

Slow. Soft. But full of need. Full of hope. Full of my wish for this, us, him and me, to become more than just friends. I want him so badly, I want to return to our night, I want him to take away the pain again. I want his touch to remind me that there is good in the world, that two people can care and be close, and it doesn’t have to be a game, or someone using the other.

That there can be something real and true.

He groans as I trace his lips with my tongue. His lips part, and he lets me lead the kiss, lets me taste his mouth and his tongue. Then, in seconds, the kiss changes. He spins me around, and now my back is against the brick wall, and he threads his hands into my hair, running his fingers through the thick strands, all while kissing me deeply, his tongue sliding against mine, his breath tasting so good, his lips capturing mine. It’s a fiery kiss, full of months of pent-up longing, borne of a night when everything seems so far out of reach that sometimes you have to grab the visceral, the physical, to tie you back to earth. To make you forget all the ways your life is spinning beyond your control. He kisses harder, insistently, as if he can’t get enough of me, as if he needs to taste me, to drown in this kiss with me.

I lose myself too. I let go of the meeting, of the SOS to Cam, of Danielle’s words, of my mom’s insatiable need to hook me up, of the stories Miranda makes me write, of my past. I shed them all. They are vapor, they are nothing, I am new again.

I am no longer that person.

Layla is gone as I am at once lost and found in a kiss like this. A kiss that has nothing to do with power, or games, or control. A kiss that simply has to be. His hands in my hair, then roaming down my back, then grappling at my hips. And all the while we are in this together, we both want this, we both need this, there is no uneven distribution of desire, or money, or want. His lips consume me with desperation, and soon he’s traversing my neck, and kissing the hollow of my throat, and I gasp quietly.

“ Oh ,” I say, but for me that’s everything because I don’t make noise, I don’t vocalize, I don’t let on when I’m turned on.

“Fuck, Harley,” he says, and grabs my ass and pulls me against him, so I can feel how much he wants this too. He licks his way up my neck, and I melt inside with longing as his lips brush my earlobe. As if he’s about to whisper something. Maybe tell me how much he wants to taste me and touch me.

But then his hands are on my shoulders, and he’s no longer holding me close. He’s holding me back. I’m standing here panting, lost in some sort of crazed moment of lust, and he’s suddenly all cool and calm as he says, “But I can’t. I can’t go there. And I have to get the fuck away right now.”

He grabs his backpack and leaves, the screen door swinging with several creaks.

He’s gone.

And I’m alone in this ridiculously romantic courtyard in the middle of New York. Hot and bothered and utterly left behind. Like an idiot. Like a stupid fucking idiot.

My phone buzzes. I grab it in milliseconds, hoping it’s Trey.