~~~
“Andrew, what was that all about?” she asks before I even get my car door shut.
I sigh and turn the key in the ignition. “It’s just sibling rivalry stuff,” I say, trying not to look at her next to me. I start the car and put the gear in reverse. “Mom gets upset when Aidan and I are fighting.”
“You’re lying.”
I am and I’ll continue to.
I look over at her briefly and back the car out onto the street.
“She just didn’t want to drag you into it,” I begin and the rest of the lie just starts to fall into place. “But it has everything to do with my father’s funeral. Notice she didn’t bring it up in front of you. Taking me into the back room to talk about it was her way of sparing you.”
She still doesn’t believe me, but I can tell she’s starting to.
“So, then what was this news about a family member?”
“There wasn’t any,” I say. “She just wanted to talk to me and I told her about the argument I had with Aidan on the phone before we left my apartment and it upset her.”
Camryn sighs and faces her window.
“My mom really likes you.”
She looks over. At first I get the feeling she wants to further the conversation about Aidan, but she drops it.
“Well she’s a very sweet woman,” Camryn says. “Maybe you and
Aidan
(she puts emphasis on his name as if she still doesn’t fully believe my lie) should try to get along better so you two don’t upset her so much.”
Although misplaced, it’s still not bad advice.
“Baby, look, I’m sorry; maybe I should’ve waited to bring you to meet her.”
“It’s OK,” she says and scoots over to sit next to me. “I’m glad you did. It made me feel…special.”
I think she believes me now, or maybe she’s just trying to push her gut feeling into the back of her mind because she realizes I’m not going to crack the truth anytime soon.
I slip my arm around her.
“Well you
are
special.”
She lays her head on my chest. “You didn’t tell her about leaving tomorrow.”
“I know, but I will. I might call her later tonight and fill her in.” I squeeze her gently. “Now that she’s met you and definitely loves you, I think she won’t be as worried about me doing something so
ab
normal.”
Camryn slips her hand in-between my thighs and smiles up at me. “Yeah, now I just have to tell
my
mom.” She lifts up suddenly like a thought just dawned on her. “I could just wait to tell her when we drive through North Carolina and drop in so you can meet her.”
That beautiful blue-eyed smile of hers is beaming.
I smile back and nod. “You want to take someone like me home to meet your mom? What if she takes one look at my tats and steals you away from me?” I joke.
“No way,” she says, laughing lightly. “If anything, she’ll be enamored by you.”
“Uh oh, gonna get me some cougar action!”
Her eyes bug out of her head and I throw my head back and laugh.
“Baby, I’m kidding!”
She snarls at me and takes a deep, aggravated breath, but she’s not hiding the humor from her face very well, either.
“Hey, have you ever…you know…?”
She can’t say it out loud and I think it’s hilarious.
“Been with an older woman?” I say, smirking.
This topic is clearly uncomfortable for her, but she’s the one that asked and so I’m at complete liberty to torture her with it as much as possible.
“Yeah, I have.”
Her head snaps around and her eyes are even wider than before. “You have
not
!”
I laugh while at the same time saying, “Yes, I have.”
“How old was she? Or…
they
?” Her head turns at an angle, but her eyes never move.
The plural version looks like dangerous territory all of a sudden, but I do want to be completely honest with her. Well, about this sort of thing, anyway….
I put my hand on her leg. “A couple of times. One was only about thirty-eight which to me is not much different from twenty-eight. But I also slept with a woman who was around forty-three.”
Camryn’s face is hot from blushing, but she’s not jealous or pissed off in any way. Though I think she might be a little…worried.
“What do you like better?” she asks very cautiously.
I try not to grin.
“Baby, it’s not about age,” I admit. “I mean, I’m not into grannies or anything and I think any woman, no matter how old she is, who keeps herself lookin’ hot is totally fuckable.”
“Oh my
God
!” Camryn laughs. “Talk about the dirty mouth on
me
!”
She shakes off the stun of my words and then says, “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Technically I did,” I mess with her some more. “You asked what I like better and there’s really not a solid answer to your question, just a generality.”
I know exactly what her question really meant and I’m sure she knows as much. But I never pass up an opportunity to make her squirm.
She narrows her eyes at me.
I laugh and finally give in.
“Baby, you are the best sex I have ever had,” I say and she purses her lips as if to say: Yeah, right, you’re just saying that because you’re currently biased. “And I
mean
that, Camryn. I’m not just filling your head with shit because you’re sitting in front of me and because I cherish my nutsack.”
She smiles and rolls her eyes, but believes my words now. I pull her closer to me again and she’s happy to lay her head back on my chest.
“You’re the best sex I’ve ever had because I got something out of you I’ve never gotten out of a girl before.”
She tilts her head upward to look at me, waiting to hear what exactly that might be.
I smile back down at her and say, “I de-virginized your innocence, made you more comfortable with yourself sexually. And that is so hot to me.”
Camryn leans up and kisses my jawline.
“You just like me for that head-job on the highway.”
I look upward and grin. “Well, I did really, really,
really
love that, but no, babe, that’s not what I like you for.”
I think she finally feels validated again. She nuzzles her head against my chest and grabs me tight with her right arm across my stomach.
We ride the rest of the way back to my apartment without saying anything. I sense that her silence is less grim than my own. But I don’t want her to worry or to be brokenhearted. Not right now. Not ever. It’s inevitable, but I want to hold it back for as long as I can.
We spend four hours watching movies in the living room, both of us sprawled out across the couch. I hold her in my arms and kiss her when she’s trying to pay attention to an important scene and I stick my tongue in her ear just to make her scream about how gross it is. She’s so cute when she’s ‘grossed out’, so it’s her own damn fault that I enjoy doing it so much. We throw popcorn into each other’s mouths and take score. She won, six to my four, before we gave up and actually started eating the popcorn instead of playing with it. And I introduced her to my plant, Georgia, who didn’t die while I was gone. Camryn told me about a mix-breed dog she adopted from an animal shelter that she named BeeBop, and I told her how sorry I felt for that dog to have been given such a fucked up name. Coincidently, BeeBop died of congestive heart failure just like my dog and best friend, Maximus. I showed her pictures of him and she happened to have one of BeeBop with her, too. It was so ugly, it was cute.
We talk for hours and hours until she crawls onto my lap on the couch, straddling me. She lays her body against mine and says so softly that it makes my insides shiver, “Let’s go to bed….”
I stand up with her legs still wrapped around my waist, her ass propped within my hands and I carry her to the bedroom. I slip out of my clothes, all of them, and lay down in the center of the bed. I was rock-hard before I brought her in here. And I watch her as she slowly undresses in front of me, stripping not only her clothes but her usual shy demeanor. She crawls on top of me from the foot of the bed and positions herself on my lap so that I feel myself pressing in-between her warm lips below. She never takes her eyes off mine as she leans her body over to bring her mouth closer to mine, kissing my chest and circling my nipples with the tip of her tongue. I keep the heat of her thighs underneath my hands until she kisses me and I reach up and fill them with her breasts.
“You feel so good,” I whisper against her mouth just before she steals my breath with her kiss.
I press gently into her below and she presses back a little harder, teasing me and making me want to shove myself deep inside of her. But right now, she’s the one in control and I’ll gladly let her have it.
She breaks the kiss and then she kisses one side of my neck and then the other, always moving her hips so slowly that it makes me want her that much more.
“Let me get you wet first,” I whisper up at her, my hands locked around her little hips. She’s already wet, but that’s beside the point. “Crawl up here, baby,” I say, lifting my chin to indicate my face.
She licks my lips first and then when she starts to move up, I push myself down a little further upon the bed to give her room.
I waste no time when her thighs press down around my head and I start to lick her furiously, sucking on her clit so hard that she begins to grind her hips against my face, her fingers clutched around the top of the headboard. She’s so fucking wet. When she starts to moan and whimper, I stop. And she knows why. She knows I want her to get off with me.
She crawls back down over the length of my body and sits on my lap, rubbing herself across my cock before reaching down and taking it into her hand.
When she slides herself down over me slowly, we both gasp and shudder.
After a night of making love, she passes out in my arms and I hold her here, never wanting to let her go. I cry quietly into the softness of her hair until eventually I fall asleep, too.
CAMRYN
37
“ANDREW?” I SAY, ROLLING over onto his side of the bed. Waking myself up further, I lift my head slowly to see that he isn’t there.
I smell bacon.
I think about the night we had and can’t wipe the obvious smile off my face. I untangle myself from the sheets and get out of bed and slip on my panties and t-shirt.
Andrew is standing at the stove when I walk into the kitchen.
“Baby, why are you up so early?”
I walk over to the fridge and open it, searching for anything to wet my mouth. I need to brush my teeth, but if he’s cooking breakfast I don’t want to make it taste funky mixed with toothpaste.
“Thought I’d bring you breakfast in bed.”
It took him a few seconds longer to answer than I feel like it should have and his voice sounded off. I look up from the fridge and over at him. He’s just standing there, staring into the grease.
“Baby, are you alright?”
I let the fridge door close without getting anything from it.
He barely lifts his head to glance at me.
“Andrew?”
My heart is beating faster and faster, though I’m not sure why.
I move over next to him and put my hand on his arm. He lifts his gaze from the grease and looks at me slowly.
“Andrew….”
In a sort of cruel slow motion, Andrew’s legs give way and his body crashes against the white tile floor, the spatula he had in his hand hits the floor with him, splattering hot grease. I reach out to grab him but I can’t keep him on his feet. Everything is still moving in slow motion: my scream, my hands as they grab at his shoulders, his head as it bounces against the tile. But then when his body begins to shake and convulse uncontrollably, slow motion becomes fast and terrifying.
“ANDREW! OH MY GOD,
ANDREW
!”
I want to help him up but his body won’t stop shaking. I see the whites of his eyes and his jaw clenched in a horrific display. His limbs have locked up stiffly.
I scream out again, tears barreling from my eyes. “Somebody help me!” And then I snap into my senses and run for the nearest phone. His cell phone is on the nearby counter. I dial 911 and in the two seconds it takes for them to answer, I’m turning the fire off from the stove.
“Please! He’s having a seizure!
Please
, someone help me!”
“Ma’am, the first thing you need to do is calm down. Is he still seizing?”
“Yes!”
I watch in horror as Andrew’s body shakes against the floor. I’m so scared I feel like throwing up.
“Ma’am, I want you to move anything nearby that could hurt him. Is he wearing glasses? Is his head in danger of hitting furniture or any other objects?”
“No! B-But he hit his head when he fell!”
“OK, now find something to put under his head, a pillow, something to protect it from hitting anything else.”
I look around the kitchen first but see nothing and then I run frantically into the living room and grab a small couch pillow and bring it back. I set the phone down long enough to slide the pillow underneath his jerking head.
Oh no….oh my God, what’s happening to him?!
I put the phone back to my ear.
“OK, I put the pillow under his head!”
“Alright ma’am,” the 911 operator says calmly, “how long has he been seizing? Does he have a known condition that causes seizures?”
“I-I d-don’t know, about…maybe two minutes, three at the most. And no, I’ve never seen him do this before. He’s never told me about any….” It starts to dawn on me: he never told me. All sorts of things start attacking my mind, only causing me to lose my calm again. “Please send an ambulance! Please! Hurry!” I’m choking on my own tears.
Andrew’s body stops jerking.
Before the 911 operator has a chance to respond, I say, “He’s stopped! W-What do I do?”
“OK, ma’am I need you to help roll him over onto his side—we’re going to send an ambulance. What is your address?”