The Girl He Used to Know(44)

“Absolutely,” Jonathan said.

“Absolutely,” I parroted. I often formulated the answers to questions mentally before I said them out loud, but it was hard for me to come up with something on the fly, which is why I preferred, if at all possible, not to say anything at all for fear it wasn’t the right thing. No one seemed to be paying much attention to the responses Jonathan and I had given, and I realized later that the question had been mostly rhetorical. Assembled in that hotel room were the best chess players the University of Illinois had to offer. Of course we were ready.

“Do you want some pizza? We have plenty.”

“Sure,” Jonathan said. “Thanks.”

“Thanks,” I said.

We sat down on the only remaining space on one of the beds to eat our pizza. It was pepperoni and I didn’t like toppings on my pizza, only cheese, but I hid the pepperoni in my napkin and when I was done eating, I balled it up and threw it away.

Eric went over the information for the next day’s tournament play. “So let’s meet downstairs first thing in the morning,” Eric said.

“Sounds good,” Jonathan said. He stood up, so I did, too. “See you tomorrow.”

“We’re going down the hall to meet with some guys from Nebraska. Do you and Annika want to come?”

“Thanks, but we’re gonna take off. I’m really tired.” It wasn’t very late, but maybe the driving had tired Jonathan out.

We walked hand in hand back to our room. It felt so strange to be staying in a hotel room with Jonathan, like we were playing some kind of college version of house. I spent a lot of nights at Jonathan’s apart ment at school, but this was different. It was our bed and our dresser. We could take a shower together in our bathroom every morning if we wanted to, and I knew from experience that we would.

“I didn’t know you were so tired. Do you need to go to sleep?” I asked as Jonathan stuck the key card in the door.

“I’m not tired.”

“But you told Eric you were.”

Jonathan opened the door and then locked it behind us and slid the chain into place. He responded to my statement with a long, deep kiss that sort of caught me off guard. “I didn’t want to announce to everyone that I wanted to be alone with you. It’s been almost four weeks. I’ve missed you. Have you missed me?”

“Oh,” I said, finally realizing where he was going with this. “Yes!” There had been so many nights I’d lain in bed thinking about how much I missed being kissed and touched by him. I threw myself into his arms, which made him laugh. He lifted me and I wrapped my legs around his waist and kissed him as he walked toward the bed. We fell onto it, and I didn’t mind that he landed on me because the mattress absorbed some of his weight and kept him from crushing me. We kissed for a few minutes and then he took off my clothes.

Jonathan knew exactly how to touch me. He ran the palms of his hands over my skin with a firm touch, because anything lighter tickled me, which was a sensation I couldn’t handle. His fingers were bold, searching out my innermost spots. Jonathan always made me come with his fingers, then he entered me and he came, then we cuddled. So it alarmed and confused me when he pulled his hand away, took off all his clothes but his underwear, and said, “Touch me, Annika.”

“I don’t know how.” I’d come to rely on the exact, predictable pattern we had always followed, and I did not want or need variety.

“I’ll teach you.” He reached for my hand and placed it between his legs, and I could feel how hard he was already. He swallowed. “Please.”

It’s not like I wasn’t used to Jonathan’s penis by then. He was every bit as comfortable with nudity as I was, and I knew the size and shape of it well enough to draw it if I’d wanted to. It had been inside of me plenty of times. I’d watched him roll on condoms and I’d watched him dispose of them. He seemed to be always, effortlessly hard and since I never had to touch him to get him that way, it had never occurred to me that he’d want me to. “What do I do now?”

“Rub up and down with the palm of your hand.”

I rubbed him gently, the fabric providing a thin barrier to my touch that helped ease my progress on this next step. “Like this?”

“A little bit harder.” When I complied he said, “Yeah. Just like that.”

“What should I do next?”

“Take off my underwear.”

I should have known that, because Jonathan was always taking off mine. I pulled down his black boxer briefs, and as soon as they’d cleared his hips Jonathan reached for my hand and wrapped my fingers around the base of his penis. He put his hand over mine and showed me what to do. Though his penis was rock-hard, the skin covering it felt soft and much silkier than any other part of his body that I’d touched.

He put his hand between my legs again and it felt so good that I stopped touching him, not because I didn’t want him to feel good, too, but because it was too much like trying to pat my head while rubbing circles on my belly: I could really only do one of those things at a time. He pressed my hand down on him again and I resumed stroking him, trying as hard as I could to please him and enjoy the way he was trying to please me.

But then he stopped touching me when I was very close. “What’s happening?” I said, opening my eyes and looking around to see what had made him stop.