Eight
Blake
Irun between the trailers after Kim, my heart pounding in my throat. Kissing her after all these years spun my head around, but I shouldn’t have let it carry me away. She knows now—shehasto know how I feel about her. I’d been barely passable at covering it before, but losing myself like that made it undeniable.
I need to apologize. I know that. But at the back of my brain, one thought plays over and over on repeat.
She kissed me back.
I hear the door to Kim’s trailer slam and approach it cautiously.
Of course she kissed me back. It was in the damn script. Her character was supposed to be dying, and yet she wrapped her legs around me like she used to and damn well lit my whole body on fire. I’m having reactions that are all too apparent in Farpoint’s skin-tight pants, and I pull the overcoat tighter around my abdomen.
Then I knock. “Kim? Are you okay?”
For a moment I think she won’t answer, but then the door opens and Kim’s standing there, still covered in fake blood, which one or the other of us smeared through her pale hair in a long, bright streak. She looks at me, her sky-blue eyes wide, then turns away, like she can’t stand the sight of me.
But she’s left the door open, and I don’t want the entire crew listening, so I step inside and close it behind me.
“Kim,” I say. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking, and I didn’t mean—I’m just really sorry.”
Kim flinches and looks up at me. She’s out of breath, probably from the sprint off set, but there’s something so . . . vulnerable about her expression, in a way I haven’t seen since before the divorce.
“You’re sorry,” she says. “So you’re saying you didn’t want that at all?”
My mouth falls open. She has to know that isn’t true—we were pressed so tight together that I know she felt exactly how much I want her. Still.
Always.
I stutter an incomprehensible jumble of syllables, wishing I knew how to tell her how much I hate myself for being so pathetic, for being so deeply and irrevocably in love with her that I can’t be a professional and kiss her like I’m supposed to without losing myself in things that can never be.
Kim takes a step toward me, and the stream of nonsense dies on my lips. She’s so close, not a foot away, this energy crackling between us. I try to breathe; I try to think of what I’m supposed to be telling her—that I can do this. I’ll do better next time.
Then Kim reaches her arms around my neck and pulls me down and kisses me. Her lips are insistent and hungry, and I’m lost like I was on the set, my body humming the song of us, the one I thought we’d never play again. Kissing Kim is like losing myself in all of my best memories, the days of my life I wish I could relive over and over again. Her hands slide up my chest and tug off my overcoat, and I groan as her lips move down my throat. My hands run down her arms, further mangling her makeup. And though there’s an entire set of people waiting for us to get our act together and run the scene like professionals, I can’t let go.
Kim obviously has no intention of letting go, either. Her hands are in my hair, and my visor—god, my visor, how did I forget about it, I look like an idiot in this thing—clatters to the floor. I go to pull off her crown but my fingers dig through the million pins affixing it to her hair, and then I have to stop because she’s pulling my shirt off over my head.Troy is going to kill us for ruining the shoot, but I’m unhooking her corset anyway, and then Kim pushes me backward and I’m lying on her couch with her on top of me, my hands smudging bloody makeup over her chest.
I kiss her breasts, brushing my tongue over her the way she likes, and she gasps, her back arching.There’s this cosmic energy between us that was always there, even before our first time together. It took me almost a year after the divorce to start dating again, and I’d been alternately terrified of discovering that the euphoria of being with her wasn’t special, or that it was, and I’d never get back there again.
I’d been right about the second part. No one compared to her, to what we had. Kim runs her teeth gently down my ear—because she remembers, god, she remembers—and the world around us turns a blinding white.
Kim unbuttons my pants and pulls down my underwear. Her hands begin to stroke, and I’m suddenly reminded of the time that she tried to explain to me how to drive a manual transmission using my dick as a stick shift and we laughed and laughed and then made love on our living room floor. I want to laugh now, at the memory, but the sensation of her touching me there is overwhelming, waves of heat and pleasure rolling through me, and instead I groan, my head falling back on the arm of the couch. I’ve missed this so much, wanted it for so long, and the unexpected elation at finally having her with me again has shut down every part of my brain that must know this is a bad idea. I slide down her shorts and her nylons, lost in the breathtaking sight of her, all of her, and then my mind snaps back to reality.
“Do you have—” I ask, but Kim’s already reached under the couch and spilled the entire contents of her purse across the floor. She rummages through it, and when she sits back up, I stare at her in awe.Her, here again, wanting me. “Kim,” I say.
She looks down at me. Her fingers crinkle a shiny square wrapper, but we’re staring transfixed into each other’s eyes.
I love you,I think.God, I love you.But my throat closes and the words don’t make it out. Instead I pull her down on me again, and my hands are roaming, desperate to take in every inch of her smooth skin, and hers are tearing frantically at the wrapper and sliding the condom on.
Then I’m inside her, and we’re together like we used to be. I haven’t said a woman’s name during intercourse since the last time I said hers—and got slapped by my soon-to-be-ex girlfriend. But I’m safe again, here with the only woman I want to be with, and it’s as natural as it is miraculous. Our rhythm builds, and her moans are so delicious, so incredible, and those waves of heat are cresting, and I want to freeze time, to live forever in this moment, where nothing in the world exists except her and me.Time seems to collapse in one bright flash, and I cry out and she cries out, shuddering around me—
And then we collapse. We lie there against each other, breathing hard, all sweat and smeared blood and the parts of our costumes we didn’t bother to take off. Kim’s hair hangs loose, and her crown frames her face like an angel, and my tongue is trying to find words for all the tangled thoughts inside my head.
Kim buries her face in my shoulder. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she says.
My chest constricts. God, doesn’t it? I mean, yeah, we’ve both had casual sex, but never with each other.
But then I remember. Kim’s not only over me, she hates me. I never made her happy, and nothing’s changed.
