Annie woke Sunday morning after the sun had risen — after the dark, the ache, and the realizations — and sat up in the bed.
After glancing over at Cal’s empty place next to her, she turned and reached for her phone. Underneath it, something caught her attention — a piece of copy paper folded in half with her name neatly written on the outside.
Annie’s heart sank, slithered off the bed, and fell flat on the floor as she rubbed her eyes, scooted to the edge, and planted her feet on something solid.
Was there such a thing as solid?
She opened the note. Short, sweet, to the point, but it confirmed what she knew in her heart.
Annie blinked back tears.
Seeing those words written right there in pen...
Sure, they weren't I love you, and God save the man who proclaimed his love on a sheet of copy paper, but still, the words, I care about you … well, this made it a fact. Right?
It was true.
It wasn’t just sex.
They had feelings for each other.
Real feelings.
The ones she usually heard in his tone and always saw in his eyes.
The note solidified it. The note poured concrete into the cracks of her doubt.
He did care. Deeply, monumentally, wholly. He cared more than he could bring himself to speak. The pen had done the talking for him. The pen had spoken what he could never seem to say.
But he had said it. She had felt it in his eyes and lips and hands. In his actions since the beginning.
God. What were they doing? It was still just the summer. But it never was.
This note didn’t change anything. She was still leaving, and she couldn’t tell him she loved him. Because in a few more weeks, they would move on. She would start over, lost or stronger or sick to her stomach. She would keep going.
It was fine.
Fine, fine, fine.
"Good morning." Rosa chirped her way into the bedroom, passing Annie, who, by the way, jumped out of her skin. She knew Rosa had a way of coming and going as she pleased, but still, she’d startled her. Thank God for the lock on the door.
"I scared you," she called out from the bathroom, where she must’ve been retrieving the dirty laundry. Laughter sprinkled her tone.
Annie's mind remained on the note, the words, the man who was... Where is he?
"Where are you, mi amor?” Rosa took a seat next to Annie. “You are awake dreaming, soñar despierto."
Annie smiled a little, finally greeting Rosa with a, "Hi,” as she folded the note and set it on the table. Letting out a nervous breath, she began to twirl her hair.
Rosa waited.
She waited longer.
"What’s wrong, love?" Rosa tried to meet Annie’s eyes, but Annie only replied with a sigh and a drop of her chin.
"Cal is not here. He’s on his run. If you want to talk to me, now is the time, mi querida."
Shifting her body toward Rosa, bending her left leg on the bed, Annie fiddled with her fingers, making a string decet or, you know, the these are my hands and the steeple and the church full of people or whatever the hell it was.
She dropped her chin again, but this time, Rosa lifted it. "What is it, child?"
"I told him I’m leaving in a week to go home, to schedule work.” Annie forever fidgeted with her church full of people. “But I may move back home. I miss it. We fought. He won't tell me how he feels about me."
But he had. Not out loud. Not on her terms. Accept him.
Rosa put a stop to Annie's busy hands and cupped them. "And you, did you tell him how you feel about him?"
"I can't." She looked away. "I need to hear it from him."
"Maybe he needs to hear it from you,” Rosa said, stroking Annie’s cheek and making a clicking sound with her mouth. “You’re both foolish in love. You are so young, and he’s so scared.”
"Of what, Rosa? I've given him all of me." Annie believed the lie.
"All of you?" Rosa’s brows knitted. "Did you tell him you love him?"
The answer spread across Annie’s face.
"No," Rosa said with a tender bark. "No, then you have not given him everything."
"I'm scared.”
"No, you're not. You’re strong." Rosa squeezed Annie’s thigh. "You can risk giving your love to him without expectation. You’ve made this risk, so tell him so. He needs your love."
The two women heard the front door open and close. Annie appeared as a child who had done wrong, terrified.
“Don’t worry." Rosa stood, placing a firm hand on Annie’s shoulder. "I will not tell him we spoke of such things. You think about what I said. El tiempo es precioso."
As Annie walked out of the bathroom, Cal stepped into the bedroom, swinging the door almost shut as he held onto its edge and slipped off his sneakers and socks. Still donning her sleeveless nightgown and sleepy expression — despite the morning's sobering conversation with Rosa — she watched him from a few feet away.
Lifting his head, Cal stood tall, and met Annie’s eyes. The sorry he’d written in his note was scribbled in his gaze. His I care for you was in ballpoint pen — no, Sharpie — across his face.
Smiling, she made her way toward him, and upon reaching him, she buried her face in his chest.
They apologized in the silence, in their embrace, and through the magnets of their skin.
Flashes of relief pulsed through her body. She let go and relaxed. Hurt found remedy. Annie found Cal.
It is love.
It would be a quiet love, though, an unspoken love, and it would be displayed in the way Cal preferred — through the coming together of their physical bodies.
Annie lifted his shirt over his head, tossed it aside, put her hands on his waist, and pressed her fingers into his skin. It felt and smelled destined, meant to collide with hers, the way it always had.
Moving her hands up the front of his body, taking her time, she smoothed her fingers through the hair on his chest.
"I'm sweaty," he said, exhaling, his eyes closing.
She continued kissing his stomach, sides, and chest, running her lips over him, up and down, tasting his salty skin, piercing her nails into him, turning her head side to side, aching, needing, wanting the man inside the body.
"Annie..."
"What?" she whispered against his chest.
"Let me take a shower first." Cal hadn’t spoken with much insistence, though. He was aroused, spellbound, and practically unsteady on his feet.
Annie stopped caressing him, kissing and nibbling him, and she straightened up and met his eyes with rapid-fire energy. Tucking her fingers into the elastic of his shorts, she pulled them down while keeping her eyes centered on his, making sure he heard what the green of her irises spoke:
Love.
"No shower." Annie’s voice was a promise, a whispered breath, her desire for him full, cresting. "I want you now. Like this. Just as you are." She choked out the last words and the next. "Make love to me."
Cal slammed the door shut with the back of his hand and locked it without even looking. His eyes remained fixed on Annie, and his hands were now tangled in her hair.
She used her toes to finish removing his shorts, and then, the moment she pulled her gown over her head and dropped it, Cal turned her around, pushed her body against the door, and kissed her.
She started to cry. Her chest shook because she fought it. Not the kiss, but the weeping. Disavowing sound, she let the sobbing get swallowed up with his mouth, his tongue … his love. He ate it. Gobbled it. He took it.
She risked. He devoured.
She needed him. He needed her.
Time was precious. Time was now.
Holding her hand, he walked her to the bed. He pushed her hair back behind her ears, stared into her eyes, and cradled her face.
There. He said it. Now. Quiet and in his breath, in his eyes. Without words. Annie said it in return.
I love you.
After putting on a condom from the bedside drawer, he lay down first and tugged her hand.
"You want me on top?" She arched a brow.
"Are you wet?"
"Yes."
He tugged her hand again. "Show me."
She straddled him.
"I want to see you." He lifted her hips so she stood on her knees. As she spread her folds, she watched his eyes darken, his chest constrict.
"Touch yourself," he said, a gruff strain in his voice.
Sliding a hand down her torso, she palmed herself, letting her middle finger slip between the seam while listening to Cal make sounds. Mostly vowels and breaths.
The single finger trailed up and down her slit, stopping at her clit each time to circle it while trying to take him inside her body, but he wouldn't allow it. "Not yet," he would say, moan, and breathe. "Not yet."
"I need you.”
He groaned, pushing the tip of his cock into the places her fingers hadn’t roamed.
"Yes," Annie gasped. The fondling from her palm, finger, and his dick increased. "Yes." She tried to sit on him, but he took his dick from her grasp. She gritted her teeth. "Let me have you."
They both knew what her pleading meant. Her I need you was always about true need, a partner, a best friend, a bagel with cream cheese, a cowboy on his horse, you can't have one without the other — never just the sex.
"Cal..." She slid her slippery fingers toward his neck, up his chin, and shoved her middle finger into his mouth. "Now."
He gripped her hips and buried himself inside her warmth.
Head back, she took him, rode him. The love she made wasn't gentle. It was harsh. Not angry, but harsh. Needy. Necessary. Insistent.
She passed the need to him where they were joined as he dug his fingers into her waist and met her motion with repeated thrusts, holding her in place while she palmed his cheek.
"You have all of me,” he said in response to her previous request.
"No." She shook her head, denying what she knew to be true.
"Yes." He thumped her womb. God… It bloomed with fresh pain, and she wanted it to.
"Please … hurt me," she pleaded as she writhed on top of him, her upper body and hair moving like those of a woman at a rock concert.
"Make love or hurt you?"
"We do both." Dropping her head to his chest, she grabbed onto his biceps. "It. Isn't. Just. Fucking,” she panted into his ear.
He flipped her over with the speed of Mario Andretti, stood, and pulled her to the edge of the bed. Her shins dangled off the mattress, feet not touching the floor.
"Arms up,” he said. “Hands above your head."
She submitted. Loved it. Needed it.
His lips trailed from her shoulder to her waist, kissing and biting, softly at first, and on the return trip, he bit harder and harder, until she squirmed and wailed.
He did the same to her breasts. He nibbled, licked, bit, and twisted her nipples until tears slid down her cheeks and she begged him to take her to the place where she could erase pain with pain, like with like — the place where she could see the love in his eyes, feel it in his thrusts, and own it with each cell in her body.
"Open.” He bumped her entrance with his cock. “Show me your cunt.”
Knees taut, stretching her legs, she made garbled sounds and said yes and please with her eyes.
"Wider." He spread her knees without courtesy. An inimitable sweet pain filled all the available space inside her brain, muscles, thighs. She cried out in broken syllables the second he thrust into her body — three times — to the hilt, then out.
"Say my name," he said through gritted teeth.
"Cal," she whispered, throat bare, cut and dry, past words and sense.
He entered her slowly, torturing her with the lack of movement. He flicked her nipple. "Louder."
Keeping her arms and hands above her head — she winced in the special way that told Cal she liked it, wanted it — she arched into him, offering her body to him to use and abuse, to make love to.
He flicked the other nipple, and still she couldn't speak, not his name, not anything. She wrapped her legs behind his hips, only moaning, as she tried to impale herself against his cock. She thrust her hips off the bed, devouring the fuck, the love, the slow, slow sex. The making love.
She found words, not what he’d asked for, but what she needed. They must've been there all along, waiting … for weeks.
"Say my name," she said, a bare honesty in her eyes.
He stopped, didn't move, but he kept the full length of his dick inside her pussy. He pinioned her hips to the bed. Neither of them moved. He hung his head.
"Do you know what you have?" He glanced up into her eyes. "What you give? Do you know your strength?"
"Not now." She tried not to sob, not to lose the moment.
"Yes, now," he growled as he flung one of her legs over his shoulder.
She bit her bottom lip. "Say ... my ... name," she said as her breath shook and eyes begged.
"Come for me first." He touched her clit. "Are you close?"
"Uh-huh."
He began to move his thumb and dick faster and with the perfect pressure. The assurance in his eyes an agreement. A shake of the hands.
She would come. He would chant.
As she released, her jaw tightened, and her toes — one second tightening, the next, jelly. Thighs trembling, and her eyes … God, her eyes, exorcising.
"Annie, Annie, Annie," he whispered, pleaded, vowed.
He pushed forward: one, two, several more times into her warmth, each push carrying her name. A whisper, a prayer. Until the last one. The final thrust hit her cervix, and he cried, "Annie," as the last two vowels morphed into a long, satisfied groan.
He collapsed onto her chest, buried his face into her neck, and strummed her nipple. "What do you do to me?" He bit her neck, trailed a thumb across her cheek. She couldn't see his face, but she knew what he meant. She understood.
"What do you do?" he repeated.
What do I do? It's called loving you. For one more week, at least, you fucking bastard.
Words she couldn’t express formed in her head the way they usually did…
I love you.
I want to collapse into his chest
Breathe his every breath
I want to die a million deaths
with him
Resurrect me
Save me
Pull me back
when I try to escape
Keep me
from the nothing
Hold me
inside the wordless silent void
where passion
is center stage
where love speaks silently through our bodies
where our lives
Come together
Like two vines
Twisting
Wrapping
Climbing
A tree
A sequoia
We'll lie on the branches
We'll dream
We'll sleep
We'll harness a supreme energy
We'll lie awake
dreaming of a place
where
—the bitch—
time
doesn't exist