CHAPTER SEVEN
It’s Just Pain
“Hey, neighbor.” Chris smiles up at me. He’s sitting at his desk with a book in one hand and a pencil in the other.
“Hi.” Of course, now that I’m here, I feel like an asshole, hit with the clear understanding that my showing up in this frazzled state is totally inappropriate. Yet I do not turn and run. The fact that he is using a pencil distracts me for second, because I find it totally adorable that in this technological age, he is still a pencil kind of a guy. “Sorry, you’re obviously studying. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. It’s just …” I struggle to catch my breath, partially from taking the stairs so fast and partially from my emotion. I put my hands on my hips and look down.
“What is it?” he asks softly. His voice is calm and patient.
“I tried to go running, and my playlist sucks, and it didn’t go well. Every song felt wrong and stupid. I felt wrong and stupid. And my aunt is just horrible. And …” I look straight into those intoxicating green eyes. “And why can’t I get over everything? My parents died four years ago, not a month ago, but it infiltrates my entire life. I can’t make it stop. I can’t be happy. I didn’t used to be like this. I used to be vivacious and fun. I used to be me. Your mother died, so you know what it’s like, yet you manage to have a life. I want a life, too. How do you have that? And … and … and my playlist sucks.”
He waves me into his room. “Sit.” Chris points at the bed, so I sit and watch as he gets up from his desk smoothly, despite the cramped quarters of his single room, and moves his chair so he can face me. “Give me your phone.”
“What?”
“Give me your phone. Let’s see this ineffective playlist of yours.”
“Oh. Okay.” I pass it over. The back of my hand brushes against his as I slide my phone to him. Some people describe certain physical connections as being like electricity. Sparks flying. When Chris and I touch, it’s different. I think of the feel of water. The way it is when you wade into the ocean and a small wave cascades against you, swirling sand over you and awakening every pore.
Slow motion, I think decidedly. He can make things happen in slow motion. The rest of the room grows blurry while Chris stays sharply in focus, and I watch him silently as he taps the screen. He has beautiful hands. Strong, deft, exacting.
Suddenly I notice that he’s been talking. “… impossible to run to this shit. You need an entirely different tone.”
“Hair metal? Oldies? Orchestral?” I suggest with a smile.
“Funny, funny. You’re trying to run at the same pace as these songs, I bet.”
“Well, yeah.”
“You’re competing. Don’t compete. The music has its own pace, and you have to make yours. Be in charge. Find a zone. A holding space.”
“Holding space?”
“Give me a few minutes. I’ll show you.” Chris pushes some papers around on his cluttered desk until he finds a set of earphones to put on. He stays fixed on the screen as he starts scrolling through options, only occasionally pausing to look out the small basement-level window behind me.
I lean back on my hands and wait. Save for the hint of sound that comes from the earphones that Chris has in, it is quiet. He swivels lazily back and forth in the chair, and I like that he is so engaged in whatever music he is listening to because it allows me to look at him closely. To take him in. I try not to squirm. He hasn’t shaved in a few days, and it’s a good look for him. For me. Since he keeps brushing soft waves from his face, he could probably stand to get a haircut, but I like his gently scruffy look. And the way his hair falls against the back of his neck… . God, I find the tanned skin between his shirt and his hair almost intoxicating. What would it be like to have that skin under my lips, to slowly inch my mouth across his shoulders, to touch him lightly with my tongue… .
I’ve gone insane. At least I am not drooling, though. Or moaning.
“The music has to be the background, the mood. Once you’re in that safe place, then you run, push your body. You need songs with meaning, and mood, and heart. Not this pop crap.”
He has brought me back to the real world, and I shake my head. “I don’t know. I don’t like meaning. Or mood or heart.”
Chris kneels in front of me as he takes one earbud out and moves his hand to my ear. I place my hand under his to adjust the fit in my ear, and he brushes back my hair for me. His hand stays on the side of my head as he tilts my face so that I am looking into his eyes. “You need songs that make you feel. Some make you strong, some make you weak. Some build determination, some tear you apart. But you need all of those.” Music begins to play. Slow music. Soft and rhythmic, layered. “Run through the pain.”
I shake my head again and look past him. “No.” I want to concentrate on the tan on the back of his neck instead.
He nods. “Yes. Run through it, feel it, let it happen.”
“No,” I say more adamantly. “I do that too much already.”
“I don’t think you do. I think that you dwell on parts of things and then brush them away. Stop fighting it.”
“How do you know that?” Damn it. I can feel that familiar sting in my eyes again. It’s so easy for my emotions to be played with, flipping erratically from one extreme to the next. Lust, then anger, then pain… . It is never ending.
And Chris seems to make the extremes much worse. Why can’t I stay away?
“You scream it in everything you do. You’re holding on to what happened because you think that’s all you have.”
“It is all I have.”
“Find more.”
I shake my head. I don’t know how to do this.
“Look.” Chris looks around the room as if trying to find a way to convince me. He thinks for a minute. “Your parents died. Your world fell apart.”
I nod.
He puts his hand on my cheek. “You were left drowning.”
I nod again.
“And you’re struggling to breathe.”
I am. It’s a constant struggle to stay near the surface. I have just enough air to stop me from totally going under, but not enough to thrive.
“So do it. Breathe. Just breathe.” He turns up the volume and strokes my hair.
I want to tell him that the pain of the last four years has taken a toll and that I’m not sure I can breathe on my own.
“You have the here and now,” Chris says. “You have a future. Deal with the past so you can stop looking back. It’s just pain.”
I sigh heavily and look at him again. “It’s just pain,” I repeat.
“Yes.” He tucks my hair back, and I catch my breath as heat sears through my body. His touch is incomparable to anything that I have felt before, and this mix of my personal anguish with the intensity of his touch is messing with my head. “Yes, Blythe.”
“Just breathe?” I manage with a laugh.
“Pretty much.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Yes. I got myself out of hell. I dealt with it and moved on. You can, too.”
There is no way to stop myself. I grab the front of his shirt and pull him in until my lips are just before the point of touching his. I want his mouth, I want his taste, and I want to breathe him in. I feel his body tense, but he doesn’t pull away.
Neither of us moves.
There is heat here, of that I am sure.
Finally, I lean in a bit closer so that my mouth is barely against his. I soften the hand I have on his chest and move my fingertips up and over his shirt, over the collar, until I’m finally touching the back of his neck. His skin is warm and perfect, just as I knew it would be. Chris starts to move his lips against mine, ever so softly, and so I ease in more. His tongue meets mine, and I shiver. The atmosphere in the room is loaded: loaded with my emotion and my fervent, raw, inescapable lust for this person.
I never knew that slow kissing could be so passionate. His tongue isn’t halfway down my throat, nor is he clawing at me with his hands. I cannot be wrong in imagining that he’s feeling the same way I am. Can I?
I’m not, because Chris moves his hand to mine and starts inching his fingertips across the top of my hand and up my arm. He takes out our earphones, quieting the music and leaving only us. The touch of his hand is intense, and I have to pull my mouth from his to catch my breath. My fingers begin digging into his skin as I watch him touch me, look at me, take me in. I try not to flinch as his fingers travel over the scar on my forearm. I’ve forgotten that I’m only wearing a T-shirt. This is definitely a first, because I never, ever forget. And now he is touching my arm as if he doesn’t even see it, making that visible reminder of my past and my guilt about it temporarily invisible.
When his hand reaches my shoulder, he doesn’t stop. I close my eyes as he moves to the top of my chest. When he first grazes my breast, I audibly inhale. Chris lowers his hand and slides it under my shirt, then under my bra, until his warm hand is on me. Now his breathing becomes ragged.
Oh God, I’m going to scream.
The way he skims the fingers of his other hand over my lower back is making me crazy. So deliberate and steady. He is so controlled. With the hand that’s just under my breast, he pushes against me slightly until I pull back enough for him to look me in the eyes. Every part of my body is burning for him. I love the way that his eyes pierce me as his hand moves against me. His face has just the hint of a smile and … surprise? I see a touch of confusion, as though he hadn’t been expecting this. If he didn’t before, I can tell that now he feels the same connection that I felt out by the lake. An all-consuming clarity that there is a magnetic pull between us. At least, I want him to be feeling that.
With both hands, I push his black hair from his face and run my fingers through it and then down his shoulders. I take my time because I want to take in everything that I can about him and absorb all the details of his face. How the curve of his eyebrows is so beautifully arched, how the hint of a sideburn blends into his unshaven cheek, and how he bites his lip as I study him. And more than that, I see both our kinship and our differences: how we both have pasts full of pain and how he emanates survival in the way that I want to. Right now, I embody failure and surrender, but I see in him the possibility of what I could have.
So his touch is more than just physical touch.
Under my bra, Chris covers my breast with his hand and strokes me slowly with his thumb. I’m not prepared for the powerful ache that surges between my legs as he tightens his fingers around my nipple, and I drop my head back slightly. I arch my back some, pushing my breast against him, wanting more. For a second more, he pinches my nipple, but then moves his hand away. I nearly whimper, but then he leans into me and kisses me again. Harder this time. He tastes like eternity, and healing, and completion.
No one else could ever kiss me like this, of that I am positive.
I could breathe him in forever.
I could fall in love forever.
It is impossible to deny that I am clearly starved for physical contact, for sexual contact, but that still doesn’t entirely explain how desperately I want to tear off this boy’s clothes after I’ve shied away from everyone else. Never have I been so turned on. I move to the very edge of the bed and drop my hands to Chris’s lower back, bringing him against me. He wraps his arms around me and holds me tightly as he presses his waist between my legs. His lips are sealed against mine, his tongue perfect. I cannot get close enough to him, and I want more. I want everything. It doesn’t make sense. I barely know him, and it isn’t as though I’ve been whoring around campus for the past three years. This is the most intimate that I have ever been with anyone, physically or emotionally.
Right now, I know that this is right, even though it’s baffling. Chris has tapped into the small part of me that still seeks hope. And pleasure.
His mouth moves to my neck, his lips grazing against my skin and his breath heated. The only downside to lifting the back of his shirt is that he has to take his lips from my skin so that I can pull it over his head.
Holy hell, he’s gorgeous.
I touch his chest. As I’d seen when we were by the lake, he is all muscle. Lean, and defined, and utterly incomparable. And now I get to have my hands on him. Mesmerized by his body, I follow the lines of his chest muscles with my hand, tracing my fingers across his nipples, down to his abs, and still to the faint trail of hair that leads into his jeans. Then I work my way back up again, aware that I could do this for hours. Chris groans softly. There is no insecurity about what I am doing nagging at me, no doubt about how to touch him. Feeling his body, exploring him, is intuitive. Just having my hands on this boy seems like it could fulfill any lustful craving I have. He is absolutely captivating.
As he kneels in front of me, I lean in and sweep my lips over his chest, kissing and touching my tongue to him every now and then. His hands are in my hair, cradling me while I taste his body. Later, when my mouth knows every inch of his muscled chest, I lift my mouth to his. He does not hesitate and kisses me again. I lean back onto the bed, and he crawls into me, resting his weight against me. My hips press up into him as he kisses his way from my mouth to my breasts, over my shirt and down my stomach.
“Christopher.” I can’t help murmuring his name, and I have to stop myself from saying it over and over. I feel such relief to have found him.
Then his weight is on me again, and he kisses me deeply as he presses his body between my legs. I feel how hard he is, how much he wants me.
But then, without warning, he pushes up on his arms, panting a bit. He touches his cheek to mine, and I can feel that I’ve lost him. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, but he is clearly stopping this before it goes any further. The sudden distance between us, the wall, threatens to wreck me. Whatever was there a few seconds ago is gone.
Chris kisses me lightly on the cheek and whispers, “I don’t … I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Oh. Okay.” I have no idea what to say or what has happened. And I don’t know why he hasn’t moved away from me or why he is trembling. So I ask. “Chris. Why are you shaking?”
“I’m not,” he says. But he totally is.
I brush my hands up and down his arms, wanting to touch him for as long he’ll let me. He drops his head into the crook of my neck as his breathing eases. I am so confused.
He lifts up on his arms. “I’m really supposed to be studying. Whopper geology test on Monday.”
I turn to the side and face away from him. “Of course. I’ve got tons to do, also.”
The next few minutes are awful. A horribly awkward scene while we extricate ourselves from each other’s hold; me, muttering an idiotic “thank you” for the help with my playlist, and Chris looking apologetic as he yanks on his shirt, only making me feel worse.
After a stupidly casual good-bye, I rush from his room before he can say anything else. The walk from his room up to mine is unforgivingly long. Talk about a walk of shame. I slam the door to my room and fling myself onto the bed.
I sniff. Well, fuck, I certainly don’t smell great. That’s one problem. Perhaps my stench drove him away? It’s not like I planned on stripping off his shirt when I went to his room. I roll over and drop one hand to the floor. A few flights down, Christopher is probably now studying the boring layers of the earth or something, and here I am, all sorts of bewildered.
But, damn, that was hot. Even though I don’t know why Chris pulled away or what I did wrong, that was still been hot.
And that is enough to make me smile.