I shrug. “College. Everybody I went out with was. So, it was just easier for me to do it too.”
“Peer pressure, huh?”
“I guess.”
“Is that why you wear the eyeliner?” He takes my hand and runs his finger over the chipped polish. “And this?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something I liked doing. It was something I could do in New York that I couldn’t do in Port Leyden. You know?”
Shane rubs my hand, slipping his fingers through mine. “I like it.”
I put the cigarette out and kiss him. He kisses me back. He kisses me like he knows what he wants. And he’s going to get it.
I can tell it’s going to lead somewhere; a path we’ve gone down before. There’s a pause in our kiss as our heads turn and noses bump, and I take the opportunity to slide a hand under Shane’s sweater. His skin gets prickly and his muscles tighten. The room changes trajectory and there’s something soft against my back.Shane’s weight over me is familiar. His short nails dragging over my stomach are too.
I get glimpses of Shane’s chest in the low motel lamplight. Shadows under his jaw as I kiss his shoulder, yellowish light glancing off his hip as I undo the button of his jeans. He’s familiar but different at the same time. He’s what I dreamed about for years.
A thought occurs to me. “Wait.” I shift from underneath him and get up from the bed. I pull the bedspread from the other bed and carefully lay it over the urn.
“What are you doing?” Shane asks, poised awkwardly on his side, his pants unzipped and halfway down his hips.
I look at the lumpy bedspread. “I don’t want Everett to see.”
Shane looks at me, incredulous. Then he grins. Then he laughs. I laugh too. The entire room seems to warm by ten degrees. I climb back into the bed and lie beside him. He stares at me, nestling his cheek against his bent arm.
“You know,” he says, “that I didn’t come along just to fuck you, right?”
I trace a finger across his chest. “But you did.”
“I want to be as close to you as I can possibly get.” He slides his fingers across my face. “Close as you’ll let me. But that’s not the only reason. I want you to know that.”
“I want to be close to you too,” I tell him. “And I know.”
I get so lost in kissing him again it’s sort of a surprise when I look down at our bodies to see we’re both completely naked. Our hands bump and fingers get tangled as we reach for each other’s dicks. Shane’s touch is gentle, but it feels so good every muscle in my body tenses and my hand goes slack around him.
I hear him whisper my name, then he’s moving, his head sliding down from right in front of my face to my crotch. This, this very thing, his mouth around my dick was what I’d fantasize about and it’s finally happening now; although, it’s years later ina random motel far from home. It shouldn’t matter, and in one way it doesn’t, but I’d missed Shane. Will this be the first, last, and only time we’ll ever do this? Those intrusive thoughts make it hard for me to enjoy it. Shane can tell.
“I’m sorry,” he says, rubbing my thigh. “I should’ve asked you first. I don’t want you to be…overwhelmed.”
I open my eyes. I hadn’t realized I’d closed them. “Let’s just lay here for a minute.”
Shane pulls me into his arms, sealing his warm, naked body against mine. For the first time in a long time, I feel…safe. Minutes pass. I almost think he’s gone to sleep, but he says. “Remember prom?”
“Absolutely.”
“I wanted to dance with you so bad,” he says, his tone dreamy. “I almost did. Ev would’ve shit a brick, but I wanted to hold you like this. In front of everyone.”
I remember all that now. It was hard for me to not get distracted by him and pay attention to Jenna. I remember Jenna kept getting closer and closer to my face as we danced, hinting around for me to kiss her. Every time I’d look over at Shane he was looking over at me. I believed so much—or maybe I just wanted to believe—that we were in love. Turning away from Jenna and going to him would have been so easy, but one of the hardest things I’d ever have done. I wonder if other people saw us. I wonder if they could see how badly we wanted each other.
There’s one person we can’t ever ask.
And the truth is, that magnetic pull is still between us even now.
I kiss Shane and it gets heated, and I roll over him so he’s on his back. We’re rubbing our hard dicks against each other, and I know what I want. I ask him if he wants the same thing, and he tells me he does. I get the condoms and the lube. I don’t want to waste any more time.
For a while, I’m in some kind of disbelief that Shane is going to let me fuck him. That he’s going to let me lube up my fingers and slide them inside him. That he’s actually going to let me pump those fingers in and out of him over and over until he says he wants my cock.
We’ve already had sex, so I don’t know why I’m so clumsy with the condom this time. I don’t know why my knees bump against his while he’s trying to position himself for me, or why I can’t seem to lay over him just right so I can watch his face.
