AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m not sure how to answer that. I think I know what he’s talking about—that feeling in my gut telling me to run—but I still can’t quite touch it, so I stuff it down, ignore it.
“I’m not sure what I feel anymore,” I tell him honestly. “I’m not sure about anything except you.”
“Come here,” he says.
I climb into his lap, straddling his waist, and he runs his hand up my back and into my hair before bringing his lips to mine. He kisses me hard, in a way that I haven’t been able to give into since it all happened, but I do now. I wrap my arms tightly around him and part my lips, granting his tongue entrance. I breathe him in as his tongue circles my own; his hands running over my chest. I gasp as his thumbs run over nipples through my shirt.
“You okay?” he asks. “I just want to feel you. You can tell me no.”
I realize he’s just as nervous about how to navigate this as I am.
I nod and dive back in, and one hand slips under my shirt.
Then the door flies open.
“Oh,” the girl says. “You must be Amelia. I’m Ashley. You know, we should probably work out a system of some kind for times like these. I do kind of need to change my clothes, though.”
A horn blares from the parking lot below the window in two long pulses. I don’t need to look to know it’s coming from my mom’s old Cutlass.
“It’s fine,” Ty says. “I have to leave anyway.”
“I’ll walk you to the elevator,” I tell him.
I straighten my shirt before he takes his hand in mine, and we walk out the door together.
“I love you, Mel,” Ty says once we reach the elevator. “You can always come home.”
I think of the house I grew up in—the place that made me, the woman who hardened me, the bullet hole in the wall next to the shelves that used to display our school pictures before I swept them all onto the floor and lit them on fire in our backyard. I think of that spot at the top of the staircase, and my jaw clenches.
“I don’t know if I can,” I say softly.
“I’m not talking about that house, Mel,” he says knowingly. “I’m your home. And you’re mine.”
He turns and hits the ‘G’ button, and we wait. I hear the blood pumping in my ears as my heart pounds voraciously in my chest, the reality of watching him go finally settling in. I wonder if it will just break through my ribcage and fall at his feet right here in the hallway.
I almost wish it would. ‘Take it,’ I’d tell him. ‘It’s yours; it’s always been yours.’
Then, he’d pick it up, kiss me on the forehead, promise to keep it safe for me like he always has, and I’d be better for it. It’d be easier to live without it than it would be to live without him.
And in a way, that’s what happens.
Technically, what happens is the elevator doors open, and we step aside to let a father and his daughter with a dolly stacked with boxes pass. Then, he kisses me and tells me he loves me one last time before stepping inside. My eyes stay locked on his until the doors close completely.
I don’t realize I haven’t moved until the same doors in front of me open again. I don’t realize I was hoping he’d come back until I’m staring down a couple of my peers, likely with notable disappointment on my face while they wait for me to move.
“Um, can you let us through, please?” the girl says. Her friend leans down into her shoulder and buries a laugh.
“Oh…yeah. Sorry.”
I take a deep breath, shake it off, and return to my room.
“So, where are you from?” Ashley asks as I close the door behind me.
“Um…Oregon,” I tell her.
“Oh, that’s awesome! I was almost an Oregon Duck, actually,” she laughs. “I chickened out—no pun intended—and decided to stay closer to home. But I love Oregon; it’s so beautiful there.”
“Yeah, well…that makes one of us,” I say.
