But you won’t hear me complaining. Not after the most intense climax of my life, a refractory period barely long enough to change condoms, and a fucking mind-blowing encore.
But it’s this that’s most novel to me. The lying in bed together. The cuddling. Touching her, holding her, not as any kind of foreplay, but just because.
The most post-hookup contact I’ve ever had with a chick is crashing at her place, and even that’s rare, and usually unintentional. I’m not some kind of manwhore or anything, but I’m a single, red-blooded, relatively good-looking guy who’s never been in a relationship. Who’s never even considered one. Relationships are for guys who want marriage and a mortgage and a nine-to-five. Not a guy who has no idea where he’ll be when he graduates less than two years from now. So one-night stands and the occasional fuck-buddy has been it for me. And though this thing with Beth isn’t really anything more than the latter, she’s the first girl I’ve been with whose company I not only still want after sex, but want just as much.
I trace the outline of her earlobe with the tip of my nose from where I spoon behind her, marveling at the baby-softness of it. I can’t see her face, but I’m too preoccupied with this small area of territory—from her ear down to her shoulder, and every inch of neck and jaw in between—to even lean over to check if her eyes are closed or not. I’m quiet when I ask her about her dance class—the one she took at the student rec center tonight—just in case, half expecting her not to answer.
But her soft, angelic voice is just as low when she does, whispering how Toni mentioned it to her a few weeks ago, how dancing at Hot Box reminded her how much she loved it, and gave her the courage to take Toni up on her offer. And then, even more softly and as though as an afterthought, she adds, “and you weren’t here anymore, anyway…”
I bite back the reassurances and the apologies. I’ve already given her the latter, and the former could confuse things. They could be read as promises. And that’s not what this is.
But Beth continues on, murmuring something about choreography that goes over my head, but her jaw stretches in a smile, and I scrape my midnight stubble along the back of it, happy enough that she seems to be. Beth isn’t quiet—to people who actually know her, anyway—but she isn’t especially talkative either. So when she goes on like this about something, I know it’s something she’s genuinely excited about.
I brush the long mess of blond hair—which came out of its knot at some point during our hours-long fuck-fest—over to her left shoulder, uncovering more soft skin to busy myself with as I listen to her talk. I like her like this. Open and chatty. Other than a few hums and maybe a grunt, I contribute nothing to the conversation as I skim my lips along the delicate tendons that run from the back of her neck to the tip of her right shoulder.
Every touch seems to encourage her, though—which is fine with me because I sure as fuck like touching her—and she detours into the Student Help Chat, and how well it’s all going, never once reminding me of the fact that the entire thing was her idea. She talks about it like it’s just a student program she’s volunteering for, too focused on the people it’s helping to give a fuck about something as trivial as credit. But she’s the one who suggested an updated alternative to the help line during, like, the first week of classes, and if I didn’t happen to remember her mentioning it to me at the time, I doubt I would ever even know about it.
“There’s this one girl I chatted with—or guy, I don’t actually know—but I think I really helped her, you know?” she says with such hopeful empathy my chest aches a little. But at the same time I can’t help the way it swells with affection and pride for this girl who’s been through hell, and who has come out the other end better than the rest of us. Because she is better than the rest of us.
“Of course you did, Bea,” I mutter against her warm skin, still not willing to pull my lips away.
“You never told me about your birth mom,” Beth murmurs after another minute, taking me by surprise even though I’ve been waiting for it. There wasn’t a part of me that thought she’d let it go. I’m not sure I’d even want her to.
I grin against her shoulder as bittersweet memories—far too few—float around the edge of my consciousness, keeping the pictures out of focus, but letting in the sentiments. Laughter, jokes, shock and awe, and blinding brightness, even in the wake of utter bleakness. That’s what thoughts of Delia are.
That’s what Delia was.
And aside from telling Cap and Tuck about her existence, and my parents, obviously, I have never spoken of her to another living person.
But then, Beth is the first person I told she existed at all, and even as I consider her brother and Tucker, and even Reeve…I don’t think there’s anyone I trust more. Maybe it’s because of her unquestionable compassion, and the fact that I can’t see her face. Or maybe it’s just because I promised I would. And so I do. I tell her all of it.
Well, not all of it. I leave the man who raised me out of it. Because a man doesn’t have to get physical to hurt his kid, and that door only leads to anger and resentment, and I don’t want to feel that right now. I don’t want to invite negativity into this bed with us, into this apartment. So I skip the part where I worked up the nerve to come to my dad with the request, and how he used it to force me into a PSAT study course I’d been avoiding. I also skip the six months I had to study my way into earning the right to reach out to my own birth mother, and the way my dad held her information hostage as if my PSAT scores were its ransom.
But I do tell her vaguely about coming around to the idea of meeting my birth parents, and I wonder if she realizes how much of a role she played in it—that night when our families were on vacation, when she was really still just a child. When she’d called me brave, and for some unimaginable reason I gave her my deepest, darkest confession on why I wasn’t. And she called me out on that, too.
I murmur soft and low, right behind her ear, my head resting on my pillow, hers resting on my arm. I liked her lying in my bed, but I like her lying on a part of me even more—it helps relax me, making it easier to go there. So I do.
I tell her how I went back and forth on whether or not I really wanted to know their story. My story. If I wanted to know them. “In my mind, all the possibilities I pictured left a fuck of a lot to be desired, you know?” Junkies. Fourteen-year-old rednecks. Perfectly normal douche bags who just didn’t want to keep their kid. “And I pictured a lot of possibilities.”
Beth breathes out a small laugh. “Writer’s imagination.”
I chuckle into her hair. “Yeah, maybe,” I admit.
I tell her about how I worked up the nerve to tell my parents what I’d finally decided I wanted. I was just about to turn sixteen at the time, and, well, they were the ones with the information.
I skip over the time I lost because of my dad.
I jump instead to meeting Delia for the first time.
“That’s when I found out the guy who knocked her up was never in the picture.” He was her high school boyfriend, supposedly loved her, but when he found out she was pregnant, he offered to pay to terminate it—me—and when she wouldn’t go through with it, he terminated their relationship instead.
Beth’s spine tenses and if it wasn’t pressed right up against my chest, I might miss it.
So it was just Delia, some lady from Queens who’d gotten knocked up and fucked over at eighteen, the latter all for refusing to end my life before it began. Since I’d learned I’d been adopted, I’d always presumed the choice was to keep me or give me away. I’d never questioned my life itself. It’s funny—I’d never thought much about abortion before that afternoon at all. I just figured, chick’s body, her choice—while taking every precaution known to man to make sure I never put a girl in the position to make said choice, other than abstinence, of course.
I brush my fingers lightly over Beth’s stomach, loving the way the tight little muscles of her flat belly react to my touch. Her skin against mine is warm and soothing, and every touch keeps me grounded as I talk.
I tell her Delia’s dad had died when she was young, and her mother was on hospice care. She had no extended family or anyone who could help her, and she could barely take care of her mother, let alone a baby.
