“Perfect,” she says as she works her arm out of the blanket, and I begin the process of starting the movie.
She snuggles up against me, reaching for a piece of bread and taking a fierce bite of it. “I’m starving,” she says. “Who knew that orgasms burned so many calories?”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Just say you’ll do it again.”
She looks up at me, her eyes hopeful. I hadn’t actually thought about what was going to happen next, but now that she says that, I of course know for sure that there’s no way it won’t happen again. I suddenly feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of her. I have to keep her safe. I can’t hurt her. And I’m… I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to have a relationship like this. The stakes feel so high, it feels so overwhelming.
It’s stupid, because I know without a shadow of a doubt that I would kill for her. I’ve already told her I would. If Chris were here right now, I would take him out. If I thought that he would harm one hair on her head, I would destroy him. I don’t feel overwhelmed by that. I don’t feel uncertain about it.
I would die for her. I feel certain about that too.
But living with her, making a relationship with her,trying to bundle up all this intensity and figure out how to make it something real, something that will last, something that won’t blow up and hurt us both, that feels much more uncertain, and it makes me feel unsteady.
“I’m not letting you go,” I say, touching her hair, brushing it out of her face. There’s a soft smile on her face after that. She leans back against the couch, clutching her bread against her chest like a talisman.
I want to believe that I can fix her. That I can help her be the one to cast the ring into the fire. I guess I do want to be her Samwise Gamgee. I just don’t have any confidence in my ability to do that.
She leans against me, and I run my fingers through her hair, smiling as I do. I remember driving into town and touching her like this while she slept. My heart feels sore.
And then my phone buzzes in my pocket. I reach in and take it out, and see that I have a message from my dad.
Busted on doorbell camera.
“Fuck,” I say.
“What?” She asks, twisting her neck to look over at me.
“We got caught making out on the doorbell camera,” I say.
She blinks, looking shocked for a moment, then a crack of laughter escapes, and she covers her mouth. “Oh. That’s… Oh well, I guess. But is that… Uncomfortable for you?”
“No,” I say.” I try to think about whether or not that changes anything. If that makes a difference. No. It doesn’t. All right, I spent a minute trying to explain to my family that it wasn’t sexual between the two of us, but what does it matter if it is?
My relationship with Sarah is different than any other relationship I’ve ever had. Different from any relationship I will ever have.
It’s fitting, honestly, that we did this.
Because we belong to each other. She’s mine. If she was ever going to work all this out, it was going to be with me. She trusts me. And I felt a lot of guilt about whether or not it was all right for me to want her while protecting her, but she wants me. The minute she changed things, the minute she flipped the script and ran into my arms, it became all right. It became more than all right.
Meant to be, even. Because this is where I need to be, I can feel it. As close to her as possible.
I relate, very suddenly, to the dragon in the movie. Guarding my treasure. Protecting it at all costs, and in order to do that, I need to be as close to her as possible. So no, I don’t care if my family knows. I don’t care if everybody knows.
We’ve never been able to define what we are, so why start now?
She wiggles against me, and I tighten my hold on her, tossing my phone down onto one of the couch cushions that we wiggled onto the floor when we were getting settled. I don’t need to deal with my family right now. I don’t need to deal with anything outside this room.
The movie is still playing, but she angles her head upward, and I can’t resist, so I lean in and kiss her. I kiss her, deep and long, slick as her tongue finds mine and tangles with it.
I push my fingers through her hair, and I drink her in. All that she is. All the desire that I feel for her. Then I lift her up from where I have her wrapped in the blanket, struggling to unwind her as I move her onto my lap. She giggles,freeing herself from the blanket and settling herself so that her thighs are on either side of mine. I’m getting hard, and can’t hide it in these sweats, but I don’t really care.
I need her to know how badly I want her.
She strips my shirt off, quickly, and runs her hands over my chest, down my stomach. “Can I… I want to explore you,” she says, her voice shy, her cheeks pink.
Sarah really isn’t shy, and there’s something so endearing about me being on the receiving end of this bashfulness. That pretty blush.
