Like Gravity(53)

I’d never been this out of control before; sex had always been a well-choreographed dance, a predetermined sequence of actions with an established conclusion. This was different – it was wild, spontaneous. Finn wasn’t playing by any of my rules; he’d abandoned the steps altogether.

And I loved it.

My hands trembled as I reached for the button of his jeans, and he captured them within his own, halting their progress.

“Hey,” he whispered, using his nose to nudge my face up so we were looking into each other’s eyes. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

I waited a beat, seeing the sincerity radiating from his gaze and knowing that if I asked, he would wait as long as it took for me to be ready.

“We really do,” I said resolutely, reaching for the zipper of his jeans again.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he grinned against my mouth; I couldn’t respond because he was kissing me again.

Within seconds, he’d rid me of my shorts and panties, and I was struggling to pull his jeans and boxers down his legs. He kicked them off impatiently, and then he was on top of me again, his mouth fused to mine. With one knee, he gently nudged my legs apart and settled in the space between them.

I knew, at that moment, that my life was about to change irrevocably. I saw the change coming – I was standing in the middle of the tracks watching as the train bore down on me. I could’ve jumped the track. I even could’ve tried to outrun the damn thing, knowing it was futile but still intent on making an attempt at escape.

I did none of those things.

I looked at Finn and I knew that this would change everything, not just between us, but for me as a person. For years, I’d used sex as nothing more than an avoidance tactic – a way to shut out my grief and bury the hurt. It was an escape; with my body engaged, my mind was, for once, at rest.

This was different – I knew it in my soul, deep in the marrow of my bones, in the essence of my very self.

Finn’s words from earlier came back to me.

At some point, you have to let the life you should’ve had go, and start living the one you’ve got.

He was right.

Now, as he gently traced my face with his fingertips – no doubt leaving blue streaks along my cheekbones – I realized I was ready to start living.

I leaned up and kissed him, trying to tell him this with my lips.

He’d always been good at reading my mind.

I gasped as he slid inside me, all thoughts fleeing as I tried to acclimate to the feeling of him. As he rocked into me, eyes locked on mine, I met him thrust for thrust and spiraled slowly toward oblivion, my world going fuzzy around the edges. The only thing in focus was the paint-covered man above me, who was staring into my emerald eyes with a look of rapturous incredulity, as if he couldn’t quite believe this was happening.

My own mind swirled with the same turbulent ecstasy, reeling at the utter intimacy of the moment. I almost wanted to look away from his eyes, to break the emotional connection between us, to go back to pretending that this didn’t mean anything. But I couldn’t – Finn wouldn’t let me. And more importantly, I wouldn’t let myself.

With our eyes mirroring thoughts neither of us had ever voiced, we let the world disappear and fell utterly into one other.

We were covered in paint – a living, breathing form of art – entwined and breathless and caught up in each other. Spackled in blue from head to toe, a masterpiece of limbs, we lay tangled together on my floor and for a single moment in time, the individual creatures called Finn and Brooklyn ceased to exist. We simply weren’t them anymore – we were one form, one being, connected in the most primitive of dances. Our defenses obliterated in an elegant give and take, an equal exchange of breaths and caresses and thoughts and vulnerabilities, that would alter everything.

Afterward, we stayed wrapped around each other without speaking – as if we both feared what might come next and didn’t quite know how to break the silence. It had been intimate – shockingly so. I’d never experienced anything like this before, so I didn’t really understand the protocol. Typically by this point, my clothes would be halfway back on and I’d be edging slowly toward the door, preparing for a swift departure and leaving no forwarding address in my wake. But for now, I just let Finn hold me in the circle of his arms and tried not to tense up or bolt.

I’d never cared much about what a guy might be thinking after sex – usually, I’d simply assumed he was happy to have gotten some action and didn’t want to talk any more than I did. But in that moment, I’d have given up caffeine for a month – okay, not a month, that would be torturous… maybe a week – to know what was running through Finn’s mind.

I really didn’t want to be that girl – you know, the one who can’t even enjoy her post-orgasmic bliss because she’s so busy dissecting what the sex means, or how this changes things? The post-coital, overanalyzing, neurotic mess?

Crap. I am so becoming that girl.

And what were we supposed to do now? Cuddle? The thought was so incomprehensible, so foreign, that I didn’t know what to do with it. So, per usual, I pushed it from my mind and decided not to think anymore. I tried to force my body to relax into Finn’s chest and let my eyes drift closed.

They quickly shot back open when I felt Finn’s chest rumbling beneath my cheek. Was he laughing?