Yet it seems my heart will eternally engage in a tug-of-war struggle between my need for calm and my fervent desire to be surrounded by those who disrupt one sort of calm to bring another. Because thereiscalm among the chaos. There is a completion that comes when I am with an entire group and inundated by noise and constant talk and wild energy. This is not to say that, on his own, Chris doesn’t fulfill me more than I could have imagined, but he is one person, not a crowd.
I think Chris feels this as well. He’s spent his entire life watching over his siblings, first doing everything in his power to shield them from their father and later fighting to keep the aftermath from swallowing them up whole. He roots for each of them, and he celebrates their successes, but he stays on guard. I know he is always watching, waiting. There is no relaxing, no chance that this particular tension will ever leave his body or mind. I’m not sure he’ll ever escape his sense of responsibility. He lives in measured anxiety and fear.
But as much as he wants to keep incessant tabs on his brothers and sister, it’s probably good for him to be separated from them. He has to learn to trust in their abilities to function and succeed on their own. Each sibling hides their traumas differently—Chris perhaps better than the others—but I see he is trying to clear out pieces of the wreckage, and he’s getting there.
Music pounds through me on this run—and emotion as well. Sometimes, I clear my thoughts and collect my miles in a near trance. Then, there are days like this where I dig my way through feelings. Because I blocked out life for so many years, I’m phobic about missing something. It’s why I push myself toward introspection, toward clear thinking. I’ve missed so much, and I’m afraid I’ll miss more—in myself, in James. I failed him massively before, and I refuse to let that happen again. So, I keep myself in check to protect him and to protect everyone I love.
Oh. So, I guess I have that in common with Chris.
That’s another thing that ties us—fear that we’ll fail those we love.
I run harder because I miss them all and because I need space. It’s an impossible fact of life that I might never resolve because we cannot collect our siblings and lock them in the house with us forever while also allowing each of us to define who we are outside of the others. We all need to tolerate distance and find the good that can come with that.
Sabin calls and texts me a few times a week. He hasn’t found a job, but he has seemingly found the beach because I have about six hundred pictures of waves. The cheap motel where he’s staying doesn’t thrill me, particularly because the Yelp reviews I’ve read universally address a rather severe bedbug issue, but Sabin claims to find something humbling about slumming it.
“One does not stay at the Ritz when one is looking for an entry-level job, my fair lady!”
The song in my ears fades away, and I wait to see what the next track is. Instead, I hear Christopher’s voice, and I nearly trip over my own feet. I’m almost embarrassed at the slight shiver that runs through me, and I mentally shake my head at my physical reaction. After all these months together, this boy still gives me butterflies. I regain my stride and listen to what he’s recorded.
“If I timed this right,” I hear him say, “you’ll have another few miles before you’re home.Home. It’s such a stupidly simple word, but it carries so much weight.”
There’s a long silence now. So, I run. I can pass the time. Because I know what it is to feel Chris even in these moments of silence. It means he’s thinking and processing. He’s controlled in what he says, and he doesn’t waste words.
I round a steep curve in the road. It’s one I’m familiar with and one that makes me push myself. The hill hurts every time I run it. My calves ache, my quads ache, but I take this one on because of the hurt and because I know I’ll be stronger after fighting to conquer it. So, I take what’s in front of me.
“Home,” Chris says, “used to be a terrifying place. It’s not anymore. And you did that, Blythe. You gave that to me, to all of us. I haven’t forgotten it for a minute.”
It’s unlike Chris to even mention his past without my asking, and I can see that he’s doing it in a way that’s contained for him, having recorded this for me to hear. It guarantees a safety, a way to separate himself from addressing this in a style that’s too straightforward. He doesn’t have to face me. I can’t respond or react. He’s pouring out what he can in a way that is tolerable for him. I want to be there for him, I want to let him shed this pain in person, but that is and will always be a lot to hope for.
Still, in this audio, he’s telling me something difficult. He’s putting out so much of his history and himself, even in just a few words, and that makes me even prouder of who he is.
“So, come home to me, Blythe. I know it’s been a little rough for both of us. The loss of the summer isn’t easy, and we haven’t been in our usual groove. We’re going to change that. I miss your body and your taste. I miss the way we move together, the way we come together. We need to get back to us and the indescribable way we connect. Your body is part of me. I need you.”
Chris and I are not by any means all about sex. We never have been. Yet I can easily admit that it’s a near constant with us. A palpable draw constantly lures me to him. Everything we feel and do on a physical level is a reflection of our emotional tie, so I never once feel guilty, nor do I question that bond. The heat we share is there for a reason.
With that said, not much throws off our sexual connection, but this last month of adjusting to our family leaving has slowed even us down. Melancholy does not breed sexual appetite, we’ve discovered, and we’ve gone longer than ever without making love. I miss him, and I miss us.
“Come home to me,” he says again. “We both feel the difference between a full house and the two of us alone, but I want to remind you that there are benefits to having privacy.” The tone of his voice changes here to one that I remember easily. Chris can go from serious and heartfelt to heated and sexually clear the next. “With no one else around, we can make all the noise we want. We can fuck anywhere we want…”
In an instant, I am undeniably glued to his voice, to the essence of Christopher and his desire.
“When I go down on you, when my tongue is moving against your clit, you can get loud. I know how you are. You start with a certain strain in your sounds, a whimper that drives me crazy. I love making you feel that good.” Chris pauses, and I can feel he’s making that coy smile he gets when he’s flirtatious and teasing. “Later, I get to listen to so much more. There’s nothing better than when I hear that purr from your throat, the sound of your heat, the way you manage to push out my name when that first wave of your orgasm hits.”
There’s the Chris I know. It’s tempting to pick up my running pace even more, but I have an appreciation for foreplay, so I continue to run evenly.
We got used to stifling our tendency to get loud, to fuck anywhere in the house we liked, to let ourselves get carried into lovemaking in the middle of the day. It used to be easier to ignore the fact that our siblings were always within earshot, but at some point, we started to feel a certain responsibility to control ourselves.
I can’t exactly complain about all the times Chris whispered in my ear, trying to keep me quiet, while grinding against me. Like the night he nearly made me lose my mind because we fucked so slowly and endlessly that when he finally picked up his pace, I couldn’t help myself from screaming out.
Thinking about that night now makes me wet.
“Shh, baby,” he told me as I got close to coming. “I feel how tight you are, how you’re on the edge. Breathe, Blythe. Breathe for me. Don’t make a sound.”
In a haze, I told him I couldn’t, that he was too good, that it was all too much. I wouldn’t be able to keep silent.
“Of course you can. Because if you make any noise,” he said, “I’m going to stop fucking you. You don’t want that. I don’t want that.”
So, I dug my fingers into his back, and he kissed me while I lifted against him over and over, his tongue against mine, until my climax subsided.
