“You think I’m thinking way too much about this?”
“I think you’re making it hard on yourself… and Kate, too. It’s temporary. No one wants to live with their parents. It’s not the best situation, but at least it gets her out of an even worse one.”
I’m amazed at how at ease Scott’s words are making me feel. He’s done a good job of bringing me down, soothing all that rage that built up so quickly when I was back at the house yelling at Dad.
“Thanks,” I say.
“For what?”
“For following me out here. For not letting me be on my own right now.”
“I honestly wasn’t sure if you’d want me chasing you down like this. Thought you might have seen it as annoying as fuck.”
“No, it’s helping. Making me breathe a little more. Feel a little more at ease in this whole crap situation.”
“I’m glad. And I’m sorry that you had to deal with all this tonight. This week. I know that wasn’t easy when Kate dumped that shit about what was going on with her on you.”
“What an understatement. In the past few days, it feels like everything’s sort of fucked me over from every angle.”
“Hey, I’m the one who’s been fucked from every angle,” he reminds me.
I smirk. “Trust me, that’s been the only good thing to come out of any of this.”
“And there’s definitely been a lot ofcumout of this.” He pats my crotch.
I chuckle. God, it feels good to go from that intense hate toward my father to being lighthearted with Scott.
“There we go,” Scott says. “This is the Mikey I prefer to see.”
“I don’t want to go back there.”
“We don’t have to do that. We’ll figure something out. Maybe Jordan can come pick us up… or maybe we can Uber. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think anyone is going to be asking you to go back there and revisit any of that.”
“Right?!” I laugh at the truth of it.
“It’ll be okay.”
I believe him. “Kinda sad that I’ll be leaving for good on Wednesday.”
“Well, at least it gives us time for some more fun.”
He glances around. I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking.
He approaches me slowly, a shy expression on his face, but considering the way he moves, I don’t imagine there’s anything shy about him right now.
He pushes up against me, and I lean down and kiss him.
It sets me at ease—chases away all those thoughts that have been running through my mind, making me obsess about them, making me dwell on the fear that had returned to me. He frees me of the imprisonment of these thoughts and the hold that my father’s sins had on me once again.
19
I didn’t know if this would work, especially while he’s so stressed out about Kate, but as he reciprocates my kiss, I know this was the right decision. Plus, his reminder about how little time we really have, about how we need to savor this while we can, just makes me want to do this even more.
His kiss destroys the uneasiness that I started feeling back at the house.
I want him to relax. I want him to feel like he does when we fuck—like he doesn’t have anything to worry about and can be free from the pain that just worked up in his mind as he was forced to revisit his past.
He pushes me back against a nearby tree and moves his hands under my shirt, his fingers massaging my skin. It’s hard to focus on his kisses and touching at the same time because they both generate such powerful sensations, like explosions within me, overtaking my senses and leaving my thoughts scattered.
