The Girl He Used to Know(34)
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The bathroom was across the hall. I listened to the water running, thinking about the fact that Jonathan was naked. I felt the same way about his body that I did about his face: I knew there would be angles and planes I’d find pleasing there, too. He was also strong, and I liked watching his biceps flex when he lifted something heavy.
I was sitting cross-legged on his bed when he walked back into the room. He was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and he rubbed at his wet hair with a towel. He sat down on the bed and leaned over and kissed me. The taste of beer had been replaced by toothpaste, and he smelled so good.
“Are you tired?” I asked.
“I’m not tired at all. Are you tired?”
“I’ve been sleeping for the last three hours.”
“What do you want to do?” he asked, nuzzling my neck in a way that felt different, but different good. Not different bad.
“We could play chess.”
“You want to play chess?”
“Maybe for just a little while.” The last few times Jonathan and I had kissed, his hands had roamed to places they hadn’t before, and our bodies were pressed so tightly together that nothing would have fit between them. I felt things I’d never felt with anyone. I knew what was coming and I wanted it to happen. I just didn’t want to do it wrong. Chess would calm my nerves the way it always did.
“It’s okay. We can play chess.” He’d been leaning toward me, one arm slung over my lap, but he sat up quickly. I watched as he left the room and returned with his chessboard, and we set it up between us on the bed. The only light in the room came from the lamp on the nightstand and I felt soothed by the atmosphere. The sound of the wind rattling the windows seemed to have disappeared now that Jonathan was home, and the other occupants of the house must have been asleep, because there were no sounds coming from above. Some of my nervousness dissipated, replaced by happiness and a feeling of closeness toward Jonathan.
He’d given me white, so I made the first move. It wasn’t until years later that I figured it out, but chess had become our foreplay, and we’d started that enticing dance the first time we played together in the student union. Watching him concentrate thrilled me, because he wanted to win every bit as badly as I did. There was a ruthlessness about both of us when we played, and it translated into something that put us on an equal playing field. I never had to worry about saying the wrong thing when we played. Chess, I knew.
I made a careless error, one I’d still be beating myself up over days later, and Jonathan picked up my rook and set it down next to his side of the board.
Jonathan had started leaning over and kissing me every time he captured one of my pieces, and this time, he pulled the collar of my sweater aside and kissed his way from my mouth, down the side of my neck, and finally to my collarbone.
“Is that okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Every time you lose a turn, I’m going to do it again.”
“I won’t lose,” I said, because I believed it. But then I realized I wanted Jonathan to keep doing it. Not enough to lose on purpose, because the concept of intentional deception wasn’t something that would have occurred to me. It was only the next day when I recounted the whole thing for Janice and she asked me if I was tempted to lose on purpose that I realized I could have pretended.
He made a careless mistake that was uncharacteristic of him, and when I placed his bishop next to my board, he said, “Now you kiss me.”
I leaned toward him, placing my lips softly on his. It felt so good that, emboldened by the sensations, I kissed him harder. His hair felt damp and cold under my fingers as I ran them through his hair, but his mouth felt warm.
The next time he captured one of my pieces, he kissed his way down my neck again. Then he sucked on it. It felt electric and I gasped. I wanted more but didn’t know how to tell him. Somehow he knew because he sucked harder and pulled my oversized sweater over my head. I was wearing a baggy long-sleeved T-shirt underneath it, and he took that off, too. Janice had helped me pick out the bra. It was made of cotton, with no underwire or uncomfortable pattern, but it was light pink with demi cups, and Janice said Jonathan would probably like it a lot. I couldn’t read Jonathan’s expression, because he appeared to be in some kind of trance.
“Will you … Can you stand up next to the bed?”
I did as he asked. I was wearing my favorite item of Janice-approved clothing that wasn’t a skirt, a pair of thin baggy cotton pants with a drawstring I could cinch to exactly the right tightness, which for me wasn’t very tight at all. I’d tied the drawstring in a bow, and he grabbed the end and pulled gently. Immediately, the pants slid down my hips a few inches, and when he untied them the rest of the way, they fell down and pooled at my feet. My pink underwear matched the bra. Jonathan stared. “I had no idea this was what your body looked like. I really want to take off the rest of your clothes.”
“Are we going to finish our game?”
“We will if you want to finish it. Absolutely. Do you?”
I did want to finish, because I found it difficult to abandon any match that hadn’t been played to the end, but the sensations coursing through my body were slightly stronger than my desire to return to the board. “We can finish the game tomorrow.”
He put his hands on my hips and looked into my eyes, and for the first time I looked into his for a few moments before shifting my gaze to his nose. “So it’s okay if I take them off?”