Dreams of 18(95)

Then I told him that I wanted to ride his thigh and come all over it and he let me. He let me ride his bare thigh until I came and spread all my juices over him before he fisted my hair and looked me in the eyes. “You’ve had your fun, Jailbait. My turn now.”

I thought he meant he wanted me to suck his cock but he growled, “Sit on my face.”

Not only that, he actually made me.

He maneuvered me and positioned me until I was sitting on his face while he ate me out and made me come again, this time on his jaw and beard, while jacking himself off.

Meanwhile, we’d forgotten about that nail polish bottle and in all of our shenanigans, it had spilled, staining the sheet.

I see the stain now as I wake up the morning of my nineteenth birthday. The token from the night when he painted my toes after he said he wouldn’t.

His side of the bed is empty and it’s cold, meaning he’s been gone a long time.

He’s probably at work.

He’s probably found out by now. About me, I mean. And he’ll talk to me about it when he gets back.

Strangely, I don’t have any fear in me.

The fear went away yesterday when he saved me from Richard and my own mind so I could forget that I’m ill for a little while.

I didn’t even feel anything other than a pounding heart when I set the plan in motion last night after I turned nineteen.

I thought about how to tell him. How best to convey everything that is inside of me, and the answer was simple.

My journals.

I could give them to him and he could read it all for himself. So I left them on the coffee table, the complete stack of them along with a few other things.

Now he can know everything.

He can know that at sixteen, I saw him and fell in love. At eighteen, I kissed him and a scandal broke out that almost broke me and at nineteen, I’m telling him all about it.

I throw off the covers and climb out of the bed.

The floors creak under my feet and that sound somehow brings me to my knees.

The creak of the floor, the wooden slats of the headboard, the unpolished door of his closet. Things that I’ve come to love.

It’s open now, the closet door, and I can see my dresses hanging with his plaid shirts.

I put them in there as a joke, telling him that if he keeps buying me all these dresses, then I’m taking over the closet. His reaction was to flip me over and fuck me doggy style on the bed with his thumb in my ass, while he made me watch our clothes together. Every time my eyes would fall shut, he’d tug on my hair that he’d wrapped around his wrist and tell me to keep watching.

He’d ask me, Which one’s your favorite, baby?

And when I’d tell him – the one with pink roses on it – he’d ask me why. He’d ask me to describe it to him exactly like he didn’t know what it looked like.

They still look pretty, my dresses along with his shirts, hanging there.

Everything about this place looks pretty. I can’t believe I thought that this cabin was falling apart. I mean, Graham has done major work over the past weeks and there’s still more to be done but I don’t even care.

I like this cabin.

I love this cabin.

I love it because this is my home. This has become my home in the past weeks.

My things are everywhere.

On the nightstand and on the floor, and when I walk out of the room, I see my pink bottles of shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom. Even the air smells like me: strawberry.

This is my home.

My home.

I don’t know why I keep chanting it over and over in my head. I don’t know why it’s hitting me only now that this cabin in the middle of the woods is the first place that I’ve belonged.

But it is.

It hits me even more when I walk down the hallway and I find him there.

My feet come to a halt.

He’s here.

I thought he’d be gone. I thought he’d be at work by now. I thought I had time.

I had more time to prepare myself.

God, he’s here and he’ll have all these questions and I thought I was without fear and I was up until I saw him but I’m not.

I’m just so, so weak.

So weak that I whisper his name. “Graham.”

His back tenses.

He’s sitting on the couch, facing away from me. His shoulders seem to be slouching, bent forward, and I realize he’s got his elbows propped up on his sprawled thighs and his hands lying limply between them.

But all his muscles bunch up at my whispered call.

I see them rippling under the thin t-shirt he’s wearing. He usually sleeps bare-chested but by the time I wake up – always later than him – he has one of his old t-shirts on along with his plaid pajamas.

He stands now and slowly turns toward me. He looks… lifeless.

So blank and empty, almost.

It makes me weak in the knees. They almost buckle. I didn’t think he’d look like that. I thought he’d be… angry.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

I thought he’d be mad at me for lying or maybe he’d be disbelieving or something like that. I didn’t think he’d look so defeated.

Yeah, that’s kind of how he looks.

Like he’s lost all the battles and all the wars and now he has nothing to live for.

“You’re home,” I whisper uselessly.