Leap (25 page)

Even in my dreams escaping Mack doesn’t exist. I can hear him in them. I’ll go crazy if I can’t wake up. If every single time I sleep I dream of him or his voice. All I can hear is him. And I listen because no matter what I tell myself, I’ll never be able to forget.

I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but I can’t help it. I watch him when he thinks I’m not looking. Even when he catches me, I act like a fool, and I give him the finger or stick my tongue out at him. What happened a few months ago between us has changed me. I’m in love with him, and I’m sure of it. I think I always have been, but being who I am is the reason he can never know. I’m just Rinny. I belch in front of him. I dig out my wedgies in front of him. I chew with my mouth open when I eat around him. I know what he thinks of me. As a sister. Just as Rinny. That’s all I’ll ever be to him. I know it, and that’s how it’ll have to be. Nothing will change that. He’ll never love me or feel the same way I do. He’ll never get butterflies when he sits next to me to watch a movie. He’ll never get goose bumps like I do when he scratches my back. He’ll never know that just him being around makes me the happiest I think I could ever be in my entire life. He’s everything. Everything I want and need and dream of. I know it has to be wrong to feel this way about him. I’ll always be just Rinny.

And in the quiet of my sleep I think I can feel. I can feel a hand stroke my face and warm breath in my ear. I want to open my eyes, but I’m so afraid to wake up.

“How could you ever think that you’re just Rinny? I never thought of you that way.”

Startled by the sound of the voice, I scatter across the bed and curl up, shaking and afraid. Suddenly awake and feeling my heart beating out of my chest, I pull the chain on the lamp beside me and rub my eyes quickly, not sure if I should be wishing that this is just a dream or hoping that it’s not.

It’s no use trying to catch my breath because just seeing Mack in front of me steals my breath.

“What . . . what are you doing here?”

I can’t look him in the eyes so my head bends to my chest, and I cross my arms in front of me.

“Explain how you got into this house, how you knew I was here, and why you have that copybook in your hands. That’s mine, and I haven’t seen it in years.”

Mack stands up and tosses my old journal on my bed in front of me.

“I have a few things to say to you, Corrine.” He paces at the foot of my bed.

“Spit it out, Mack, or leave.”

“One, I’ve lived next to you my whole life. Do you really think I, or my mother wouldn’t have a spare key around? Second, I went to look for you after you left the reception. I went to your new apartment and you weren't there. You didn't answer your phone either. I went home because I thought maybe you went to see Haven, and when I got there my mom said that your mom called because that nosy as fuck neighbor, Mr. Jennings, said lights were going on and off in your parent's house. Mae was going to call the cops but I told my mom that I would head to Long Beach and check it out. So I knew you were here.”

I pick up the tossed journal and hug it to my chest. Rubbing my eyes from my sudden wakeup call and the confusion, I’m mad as hell because he’s not answering the most important questions.

“Mack, it still doesn’t explain why you would give a shit if I’m here or not. You couldn’t even look me in the eye tonight. And why do you have my journal from freshman year in college? That’s an invasion of my privacy.”

He stops short and places the palms of his beautiful hands on the foot of my bed and leans over.

“When I helped you move home from school at the end of that semester, somehow this wound up in with my things since everything was in the trunk of my car.”

I chuckle sarcastically. “And when you realized it wasn’t yours, you kept it and read it anyway? Who does that?”

I throw back my covers and hop out of the bed angrily. I make my way to my bathroom, but Mack grabs onto my elbow before I have the chance to reach it. His touch stills me, and I don’t want it to make me feel the way it does. He read it. He knows how I felt back then. Maybe he knows how I still feel. I don’t want to feel anything for him. I don’t want to love him. I can’t love him because he doesn’t love me back. If he did he wouldn’t be treating me the way he’s been treating me.

“I don’t know why I read it. I was wrong for doing that and I’m sorry. I just . . . well I just thought I knew everything there was to know about you. You’d never know I read it. I’m sorry, Rinny. I . . . I didn’t know.” I pull out of his grasp and again attempt to walk away and escape this total and absolutely embarrassing moment, but with my body is against his in a second. Our eyes are fixated on one another, and then stillness is in the air. I feel the palm of his hand grow damp as it's clasped on my wrist. I only hear the sound of deeply growing breaths. I know he can feel how rapid my pulse is beneath his fingertips. Inches only separate our faces.

And then I feel his lips. His lips burn mine like fire and his fingertips are boldly holding onto my face. The action of him kissing the life out of me is not only surprising but something I longed for. I let that longing take hold of me, and all my fears and inhibitions are thrown out the door. With just a single demanding kiss.

Just one kiss.

My arms fly to his neck and my legs around his waist. We kiss in a frenzied state full of passion and exuberance. Hands roaming and touching. His hands firmly hold on to my ass and lift me higher to his face. Our kissing goes on and on and we breathe the same breaths every time our lips reach, then it begins again when they fall apart. As beautifully fucked up as this is right now, there’s something in these kisses from Mack. They speak the truth without any words actually being spoken. And so I wait until the validation. The words. The trust.

When he says them, I feel like I’m in the most beautiful dream I could ever be a part of. The sweetest words spoken from the tongue of the person I adore and love and cherish

“I love you so much, Corrine. I love you. I love you. I love you,” he says this to me while still attached to my lips.

I cry. The tears run down my face like I’ve been saving them up for years. And I have. I really have.

“Mack, I love you. It’s always been you. I didn’t want to love you like that, but I couldn't help it.” A sigh of relief comes from him, and any tension I felt from his body withers away.

We kiss and hold each other, and it feels so good and it feels so right. Nothing has ever felt so complete.

“When, Mack?” I whisper to him, still clinging onto his neck.

“When what, Rinny?” he whispers back and kisses the shell of my ear.

“When did you love me?”

“Always, Rinny. I’ve loved you always.”

I pull away slightly so I can see him. He moves his hands up my body to hold my face in his hands, smiling at me and rubbing the tip of his nose to mine.

“Always? I don’t understand, Mack. When did always begin?”

His hands cup my face, and his legs widen their stance. He is so focused on my eyes that when I stare right back at him, I’m not sure if this is a dream, or if I’m actually here and he’s really looking at me like this.

“I loved you like I was supposed to at first. Like family, but that night when we had sex, afterwards I was confused. I wasn’t sure I did the right thing, but what was so confusing was it felt right. We went to school. I saw other girls. You saw other guys, and it drove me crazy.” I let out a laugh and the side of Mack’s mouth rises up. Almost in a smile but not exactly.

I kiss his cheek, then his chin, then his other cheek.

“And then what?”

He returns the favor and does the same. Pausing his kisses in between his words.

“I was jealous. I was scared to
be
jealous. I didn’t think it was right for me to be that way. Owen had a crush on you so I couldn’t tell him how I was feeling. Then I found your journal after Veronica and me . . . well. And I was going to talk to you about it but then . . .”

“We all know how that turned out.”

A soft kiss is placed on my lips. “Yes, we do. But look what we got out of it.”

I hug him so tightly because if it weren’t for that night, Haven wouldn’t be here.

“I wish you would have told me. I wish I had told you sooner. Things are a mess, Mack.”

“No, baby, they’re not. We can fix anything. I know I screwed things up by keeping in my feelings. I hated you with anyone and when I saw you and Justin together, just knowing what you guys were going to be doing, I couldn’t stand it. I’ve hated myself these past few months. I’ll never forgive myself for treating you the way I did. I miss you so much. Haven misses you. I just . . . I can’t live without you, Rinny.”

He could say those words a thousand times, and I would never grow tired of hearing them.

When a fire ignites inside you and a desire for more is overwhelming, you do what comes naturally. You take the hem of the man's shirt with whom you want to make love to and lift it up not ever-so-gently either and you pant when you see his body in the glow of light coming from your childhood bedroom lamp. You stand there like I am and you take in the sight of him. Every hard plain of muscle and flesh and smooth taut skin. You allow your hands to travel over those plains and explore. You remember that right here in this very room, he took your virginity out of pity, but nonetheless, you fell in love with him that day. And those years ago he was a boy turning into a man, but looking at him now with very adult eyes, he is a man.

And he loves me.

I wait for Mack to make the next move. I silently beg him to touch me, but he stands like a scared schoolboy, so I take matters into my own hands. I lift off his old BU shirt over my head, revealing my bare chest to him. It’s kind of funny how a man can go from looking so lovingly into your eyes, to straight towards your naked chest. But that’s okay. I take his hands and place them on me. The tips of his fingers touch my nipples and Mack lets out a sigh. Gooseflesh prickles onto my skin, and I drop my head back as I feel the warmth of his mouth and tongue on them. My chest heaves up and down. His hands find my neck and reach up to grab the back of it. He lifts up his head and kisses me. Our flesh collides and sparks ignite.

There's no time to waste. I whisper to him, “Be inside me. Need you inside me, Mack.”

When Mack is inside me, and I feel every inch of him buried there, I know without a shadow of a doubt that the moon is where it’s supposed to be.

He pushes in and pulls out easily. Mack clasps our hands together so our fingers connect, and every moan of pleasure is never too much or too little. It’s so different when it’s love. It’s real.

I switch things up and roll us over and I ride him. I’m the one in control now. I hold onto his chest and feel every inch of him, deeply. I go from kissing him, to tickling his face and neck with the strands of my hair. He takes a handful and grips it.

He speaks softly in my ear about how he loves me. I’m the love of his life. He’ll never let me go again. He’ll always be here. He’ll always be mine.

When I let go, and he follows behind me, the world tilts, and something pulls my focus. I collapse on him and just let him hold me and love me. I never want to move. I don’t want to disconnect our bodies. I want to stay in this spot forever.

I lie here naked with Mack. The boy from next door. My best friend. Now what’s better than that? Falling in love with your best friend and him falling in love with you.

Nothing.

After a few more times of expressing how much we love each other, we figured out all the logistics. I move back in the apartment. We tell Haven we’re in love. We tell our parents we’re in love. Maybe we get married someday. Maybe we live like this for a while. Maybe we have more kids. I adopt Haven if her grandmother allows it. We work. We play. We laugh, and we vacation. We raise Haven and live in peace and happiness. We live in love with each other, building a good life. We tackle any problems that may arise. We get through the hard stuff.