Our parents busy themselves complimenting the meal and the wine and the deck, but Harper is silent.
“Yes,” she says simply. She looks away, focusing on the conversations happening around us.
I nod. It’s been years of this. Since that first kiss. Since my pulse started hammering jaggedly anytime she came into view, since my whole heart was taken by a woman I’d never fully have. We finish dinner and move into the house for drinks. Harper pulls me aside in the kitchen. “Maybe I should stay here tonight?”
She should, my God, she should, but I’m greedy. If this is all I’m getting of her, then I’m taking every single second. “No. We have cake plans. No drama. Promise.”
Harper looks hesitant, but agrees. I have to listen to our parents praise her accomplishments and all her future holds. When they speak of me, their voices change. It is worry and uncertainty. They fear for my life and for my sanity given the circumstances our world is in. It doesn’t matter how much I assure, I’ll always be the reckless child with a pension for adventure instead of stability. Everyone respects my decision to become a SEAL and will regale my military accomplishments to anyone who will listen, but it’s understated bragging.
Harper doesn’t smile for the rest of the visit with our parents. That fact makes me happy.
++++
We read comic books and eat vanilla cake straight from the bakery box. It’s both of our favorite and I couldn’t help the falling, dying feeling settling in my stomach as we finished up. I promised no drama, but all the words I should be saying are eating at me. We’re analyzing a scene from one of our favorite comedy movies when she finally breaks our mundane conversation streak. “Our timing will never work out, you know? This newest blunder is evidence. Me moving back, you moving to where I just was. I think we need to let go of the pipe dream of forever after, Benny.” Her eyes glass over.
“Yeah?” I ask.
She turns away and her long ponytail swings, brushing an exposed shoulder. When her hair is up and she turns her head just so, a muscle moves in her neck. It’s long and elegant and it reminds me of a swan. I’ve come to realize it’s because she wore her hair up for an entire year while she waited for it to grow out. Ugly duckling. Swan. Yeah, really deep. It’s not the same as the haphazard blow job ponytails and tight neck muscles I see in the women I’m with these days. They don’t have swan necks that make me stare. They have nothing. In their defense, Harper already has everything.
“You’re right,” I say, pulling her against me on the sofa.
She leans her head against my shoulder and I wonder what her neck looks like right now.
“I need to get to bed. Your flight is early.”
She sniffles and I feel her nod against me. “I’ll miss you.”
If I hadn’t just promised to keep things simple, I’d tell her how I feel dead when I’m not with her. How inconsequential life seems without her to share it with. No one understands me, knows that weird, quirky person buried deep inside. Instead, I kiss her head, “I’ll miss you too, Harps. I’ll see you soon, though. Graduation or bust, you nerdy, awesome person.”
A quiet laugh rolls through her. “You know I don’t want it to be like this, right? I’d fix everything and make life simpler, the way it used to be, if I could.”
“Who is saying we can’t fix it now? It’s never too late. Kiss me. Kiss me and tell me you feel nothing.” My heart is hammering. I’m asking something of Harper I know is a hard limit, but sometimes you have to push limits to know you’re wrong. “If you feel nothing, then that’s it. I’ll let you go this time and I won’t look at you this way again.” As if it were an option. I won’t let her know, though. The innuendo, the thinly veiled propositions will be gone for good. I will be only her friend.
She scoots to face me, her knees folded underneath her small body. My heart might explode—the percussion hammering against every pulse point in my body, the whooshing of every beat in my ears. The look on her face tells me she’s willing to break moral code and I hope I can stop myself—can hold off from taking everything I want from her, because as much as I’d like it, I know she won’t recover from something like that. Harper is fragile. I’m asking too much already.
Before I can say another word, or tell her she doesn’t have to because my idea is idiotic, she wraps her arms around my neck and leans in to kiss me, her lips opening immediately. She straddles my lap and I forget what to do. Like I’m sixteen again and I have some untouchable Playboy model splayed on my lap.What do I do?Grinning against her teeth, I remember. I remember everything. Her kiss is like coming home after a really long trip in a cold, cold climate when I’ve had zero human contact and haven’t spoken a word. Now, my lips finally get to say everything by not uttering a word. The kiss feels like fire, warming me in record time. I touch the sides of her face with my fingertips, and she slides her hands in my hair. Little gestures that happen on their own, but feel grand in the scheme of things. What would sex with her feel like now that we’re not clumsy teenagers? Some out of body experience I could never erase. My subconscious answers the question for me.
Slanting my mouth over hers, I take control. I remind myself to keep my hands above her waist. She’s wearing a pair of jean shorts that leave little to the imagination. Her tan thighs are on either side of my legs and from my peripheral vision she looks naked and my cock hardens further. Harper leans into my body until there’s no space between us, her chest rising and falling against mine.
Try as I might, I can’t keep my eyes open another second. My eyes flutter closed and I’m lost to a landslide of emotions. The overwhelming sense that I need to keep this. Keep her. Hold onto this feeling and never let it go. Some proverbial tapping on my shoulder, as if to remind me that this electric current streaming from her body to mine can’t be duplicated. All things that are deeply hidden are forced to light by a mere kiss from her lips.
Harper’s hands become more frantic as she tugs at my shirt and my breathing speeds even as the warning bells start ringing in my head. Even as I envision us going too far, her small, creamy pale body underneath mine as I enter her in a swift, soul searing thrust, I know I won’t do it.
“Hey,” I say, breaking the kiss. She’s inhaling and exhaling at warp speed and her eyelashes are lowered. I push a tangle of long hair out of her face. “Hey,” I repeat.
She swallows, and wetness shines in her eyes. She’ll blink in a couple seconds and the first tears will fall down her round, perfect cheeks.Three. Two. One.“I’m not even sorry! I kissed you like that, and I can’t even be sorry about it!” Harper wails.
I wince, because her voice is loud and screeching as her crying becomes more jagged.
I hear the guilt in her voice. I could tell her that it was just a kiss and that kisses only mean things to teenagers and actors on sitcoms, but we both know I’d be lying. That kiss left a black mark on my soul. With one arm, I pull her against my chest and cradle her head with the other. “It was just an act. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
She calms under my touch, as she mentally sifts for the rightness in my words. “Regardless of what you want it to be, I think we have an answer to our age old question.”
She sniffles into the crook of my neck and my cock jerks. Harper shifts, moving her knees so we aren’t lined up anymore. “What question?”
“You didn’t feel anything abnormal in that kiss, did you?”
She shakes her head. “Of course. I felteverything! It still doesn’t matter.”
