She takes my face in her hands and places the most delectable kiss onto my lips. Who needs food when I get to taste her?
“Let’s eat,” she says. “After that, I need a shower, then I want seconds.”
“Seconds?”
“It’s my birthday. I get what I want, right?”
And what she wants is me. Part of me, at least. “That’s right.”
~
My third orgasm bursts from me like a dam breaking, leaving me moaning and my body quaking. In the aftermath, everything feels right. The trillions of particles making up the bed, walls, air, dust, all vibrate at a perfect, harmonious frequency. I feather kisses over Bri’s cheek, neck, shoulder, worshipping her at the bare minimum of what she deserves.
Pulling out, I see I’ve left her a mess again—exactly how I like it—rendering her previous shower useless. The delicious scent of her pleasure is better than any cologne. I am obsessed with her, yet for some reason, I’m always letting her go. Letting her tell me I can’t stay.
Her eyes open, and she looks at me with an intoxicated smile. I did well.
“That was fun,” she says, her voice raspy with exhaustion. “We should do it again.”
“Give me a few minutes, damn.” I chuckle, though I might need anhourto recover.
I grab a towel, then gently wipe her clean. She stares up at me as if I’m treading a line. What we do—the sex, and the way it erases my diffidence—blurs my judgment.
When I see her in the afterglow, sweat-glistened skin, lazy smile, I feel myself fall a little more every time.
Sex with her is everything. The satisfaction I get from getting as close to her as possible, seeing how much she wants me there . . . Fuck beaches, fuck Christmas morning. Bri is where my mind drifts when I want to remember what happiness feels like.
If we could stay in this moment, together, everything would feel okay, but that’s not what this is. That’s not how we’ll ever get to be aslong as she wants to stay as we are and I want more.
I lie beside her, drinking in every detail of this memory for later. “I don’t want to leave,” I whisper.
“I don’t want you to leave either.”
So let me stay, I want to say, but I know better. I’m obsessed. Fully, embarrassingly, dramatically obsessed with Bri.
“I was thinking about what you said. About looking for a job in San Francisco,” she says.
My phone buzzes loudly against the side table. I reach over Bri and silence it. “Yeah?”
“I still don’t want you to do it forme, but . . . maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea to start looking?”
The next breath I take doesn’t come in easily. “What do you mean?”
“Well . . . I was thinking, maybe—”
My phone starts its annoying shit again.Who is calling me at three in the—
It comes to me the second I think it. I reach over her again and look at my screen. “It’s my mom.”
“Answer it.”
“Pause, I’ll be right back.”
I hop into my underwear and leave the room as if Mom will know what I’ve been doing when I call her back. She answers. “Liem, baby. I am so sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“It’s your bà.”Grandma. “She doesn’t have much time left.”
