Georgie, All Along (54)
“Why not?” I ask her, my voice low and quiet to match hers. I don’t know if I’m wanting her to disabuse me of those possessive notions, if I’m wanting her to say that she was being practical, avoiding something dicey. Avoiding something I told her I don’t ever talk about anyway.
She lifts her eyes to mine. “Because I like how this is, only the two of us. I didn’t even tell Bel. I was . . . I couldn’t wait to come back. To go back, with you.”
I should say something here, and my mind is spinning with possibilities, simple and complicated. I like it, too. I like this messy house and your hair still wet; I like that robe and the color of your mouth from the cider you’ve been drinking. I like that you’re a hometown girl from far away, that you know me and I know you, but not in the way everyone else around here does.
I like the way we fit.
But I can’t get any of them out. Instead all I can do is wrap my hand gently around her bare ankle. She’s warm and soft and smooth when I rub my thumb along her skin. I can hardly believe I’ve done it.
But Georgie?
Georgie can believe it; Georgie has been waiting for it. Before I can process what’s happening, she’s pulled her ankle from my hand only so she can tuck her legs beneath her and lean forward, lean into me, and then—then, I’m enveloped. It’s her damp hair and her silky robe and her hard cider mouth on mine, and it’s a mess, this kiss; her bottle pressed between us and cool droplets from it on my shirt, but I can’t care, not when I’m trying hard to keep it, to clean it up so she doesn’t realize the clumsy start and decide to stop. I don’t want to see her flush from embarrassment again; I want to see her flush from this, from our mouths pressed together and our hands all over each other.
I shift, tucking a hand between us and taking the bottle from her hand, keeping my lips on hers while I set it on the small table next to the couch. Then I get my hands on her hips, over the fabric of her flimsy robe, and she gets it—she comes right over, settling herself on my lap, straddling my thighs and leaning forward, deeper into our kiss. It’s better this way—stable and so good, her mouth opening against mine and her tongue dragging across my bottom lip in a way that draws a hoarse noise from my throat. I clutch at her tighter, holding her to me. I’m caught up in her, everything about my senses dialed way up, but not so much that I can’t think of how Georgie this kiss is, how right away she put her whole self into it. Sure you can stay here, sure I’ll watch your dog, sure I’ll tell you about my strange list Georgie. Expansive Georgie. I’ve never met anyone like her in my life, and getting this close to her is perfect, dizzying, overwhelming.
“Just this,” I murmur between kisses, trying to cling to some sense even though I’m pretty sure I have no blood left in my upper extremities. “You’ve been drinking.”
She laughs against my mouth, and that’s my favorite way I’ve ever experienced a laugh. I want to eat it, that laugh, and I kiss her harder, tighten my grip on her waist.
“So have you.” She rocks her hips against the hardest part of me. Every day I waited and worried over whether this was worth it for that one hot, perfect pulse of her lap against mine.
We make out as if we’re back in time, as if we’re teenagers—so long that the screensaver on the TV comes on, a bouncing white logo that eventually gives over to a black screen. My hands are in the damp mass of her hair, and Georgie’s got hers on my neck. If I kiss her a certain way she squeezes her fingers gently, right on the tightest, tensest muscles I’ve got on my body, and every time, I make a grunt of helpless pleasure. It sounds like sex; it feels like sex, even though neither of us has taken a stitch of clothing off.
When she starts rocking her hips again, rhythmic and desperate, all I want is to give her what she needs, even if I’m dangerously close to desperation myself. I get my hands beneath that robe, set my thumbs at the bottom edge of her tank top, rubbing at the line of warm, perfect exposed skin there, trying to ask for permission in a way that keeps me kissing her.
She nods, pulls away only long enough to whisper a panting yes, her hips moving faster now, and that’s it: my hands are up and under her thin tank top, no bra—Jesus Christ, no bra—my fingers are teasing the part of her that’s sensitive, the part that tightens and peaks beneath my touch. I match her pace, meeting her movements and listening for the moments where her breath hitches in pleasure. Half of me hates that I said we’d only do this, but half of me loves it, too—this is going back, this is having something I was too stupid and scared to take for myself the other night when she first kissed me, and I can see how it could become its own perfect, magic list:
Tomorrow we can go back to tonight, and we can take more.
The next night we can go back to tomorrow, take more.
The night after that, and after . . .
Georgie gasps and pulls her mouth from mine, pressing her forehead against my shoulder. I know she’s close, and I’m aching for her to have it—this wild and soft and expansive part of her coming apart against my firm, stable control. I clench my teeth and concentrate on everything about her and nothing about me—her scent, her speed, her sawing breaths that eventually give way to her soft, satisfied collapse against me.
I’m holding her close, tight, because it’s how I’m holding myself together. But I’m wound up, too close to the edge of a coming-in-my-pants cliff, and that is the sort of back in time moment I absolutely do not want to revisit in my thirties. I gently move her off my lap and to my side, keeping her pressed against me as best I can, relishing the soft murmur of protest she offers up in answer.