Fluffy(67)

Please let there be plenty of them.

I finish my wine and move to him, unable to be idle while he does everything. Standing next to each other, we make light work of it, the food put away and the dishwasher humming soon.

Parts of me are humming, too.

Will excuses himself to use the bathroom and I grab the edge of the kitchen counter, reeling, the few moments of alone time crucial for regulating my emotions. My “gynecological parts,” as Mom so delicately referred to them, are beyond regulation.

I'm a runaway train of oxytocin and pent-up need.

Nervous, I flit around the room, fluffing my sofa pillows, straightening a stack of books on my side table. I'm good in the grooming department. Condoms and lube in my bedside drawer. Will's comment earlier about staying for breakfast makes his intentions clear.

This is happening.

This is really happening.

I need music. My powered-off phone is normally docked into a speaker set, but instead of re-opening a portal into hell with my mother by turning it on, I find my laptop and re-connect to streaming music, picking a soothing jazz-filled station with a little blues, making the air spontaneous and loose. I sit down on my sofa and hold the stemless wine glass at the base, resting lightly in my palm like a man's sac.

It's fragile.

It contains something you swallow.

Squeeze too tight and someone bleeds.

“What are you thinking about?” Will asks me as he walks in and sits down next to me, body language clear that we're moving on to the sex part of tonight.

Do I tell him the truth?

I blush.

I remove my glasses. He's so close, he's almost crystal clear. If I move three more inches toward him, true clarity will set in.

“Ah,” he says softly, looking at me. “You look so much softer. Sweeter.”

“Without the glasses?”

“Yes. Younger.” He strokes my arm. “Something.”

“I can put them back on.”

Two fingers touch my face, tracing the cheekbone. “I like you however you are.” Before I can react, he looks at the wine in my hand and adds, “Want more?”

I look at his package. I can't help myself. “Yes.”

“Now who's making every comment into a sexual innuendo? We're a pair, aren't we?”

Pair. Sac. Testicles.

Oh, no.

How much wine have I had?

He makes his move without any pretense, because seriously–why bother? We both know what comes next.

What comes next is us.

A kiss that is a prelude to making love feels so different from any other kiss. Like the first step in a long journey you know will require all the effort, stamina, and fortitude you have, but you also know you'll come out on the other side of it stronger, knowing yourself better, and changed.

From the tips of my toes to the tip of my tongue, this kiss, his breath, the feel of his hands on my body, moving down to my breasts with questions that are too complex to answer with words – it's all about to change me.

For the better.

Smooth and confident, Will takes the wine glass out of my hand, setting it down on the cocktail table in front of us, a mid-century modern piece I picked up at a small second-hand shop in Chelmsford last year. My mind does this–it starts tracking the rooted origin of everything he does. Each physical item in my apartment has a story. Just like me.

Just like Will.

Just like this.

The long kidney pillow behind me has a jewel-toned pattern of teardrops, colored in orange, turquoise, amethyst. As it rubs against my lower back, warm from the blanket of his body, our kiss growing more intense, my mind conjures the pattern. Perhaps I'm curating our movements, attaching them to important markers that chronicle what we do.

Or maybe I'm just filled with anxiety because OMG WILL LOTHAM IS CUPPING MY BREAST AND WE'RE MAKING OUT ON MY SOFA AND WE ARE ABOUT TO BE NAKED.

Pretty sure I thought that so loudly Will can hear it from outside my own skull, because he suddenly stops, his hand on my cheek. Looking down at me, eyes filled with an excited, smoky heat, he asks, “You okay?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You tensed up.”

“I did?”

“We don't need to do anything you don't want to do, Mallory.”

“Are you kidding me?” I laugh, brushing the hair off his brow. It's fallen across his eyelashes, the tips moving as he blinks. “Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for this?”

“Me, too.”

“What?” I nearly fall off the couch. “What do you mean, you too?”

“I always wondered what it would be like to kiss you.”

“By ‘always,’ you mean a month, right? Since you saved me from my failed porn career.”

He laughs, his warm breath tickling the tip of my nose. “No. Before that.”

“Before that, Will, I hadn't seen you since high school.”

“That's right.”

“You wondered what it would be like to kiss me back in high school?” I squeak out.

“Mmm hmm.” He kisses my collarbone. I stare at his thick, brown hair, each strand standing out like a member of a Greek chorus, waiting to chant something incriminating at me.

“Hold up, mister. You can't just drop a fact like that on me without explanation. I confessed my crush on you and you never said a word!”