Page 58 of Life, Love, and Other Messes

We didn’t end up leaving, but we did keep flirting through another game. We brushed arms, teased one another, and when I made a particularly good shot, Lisa pulled her arm around me and stayed there until both of us got nervous someone unsavory would look. Then, another couple named Raptor and Domino joined us for a game of doubles, which we won handily. When those two hung it up for the night, we closed out our tab and headed back to the car.

We bumped shoulders walking; it could have been because it was dark in a slightly sketchy neighborhood or that it was getting chilly and smelling like rain, but I sensed that she was feeling as cuddly as I was. She took my hand in the car. “I guess some of this isn’t too bad.”

Def Leppard was playing. “Are you kidding? This is classic. This is great music.”

“I wouldn’t call it classic…”

“Well, it’s on. When you drive we can listen to Nirvana or whatever shit you like.”

“Ah, or we could listen to it now.” With a snarky grin, she brought my hand up to the radio and nudged it up to the nineties station. Sheryl Crow was on. “See, this isn’t so bad.”

“Okay, I’ll go with it.”

We were quiet for a while, but Lisa kept my hand. Her thumb stroked gently, absently. It made me crazy. I finally leaned over to kiss her at a stoplight.

“Green,” she said lightly. I figured she was messing with me again, but we kissed again at the next stoplight, and she even snuck one at a stop sign once we got into our neighborhood. A misty suggestion of rain was falling, not enough to deploy windshield wipers, but not enough to let it go. I reached over the steering wheel to hit the lever from time to time so I could keep Lisa’s hand.

When I pulled into her driveway, Whitney Houston was just starting. A thought popped into my mind, a tiny flicker of an idea, a rudimentary sketch in black ink on white paper. “Can I pull all the way in?”

Lisa’s driveway ran past the side of the house to where her garage sat. “I guess. I mean, you can stop by the walk.”

I nudged past that, stopping the car right in front of the garage door. I could tell she recognized the song, “I’ll Always Love You,” and I saw a little smirk, as if she knew I couldn’t help but like that one. I shut off the lights but left the car running. “Do you like to dance?”

Lisa looked at me, looked deeply into my eyes as if searching not just for what I was thinking but reading my soul. It ignited a tiny spark in my stomach and the flame began to spread. She gave just a tiny nod.

I jumped out of the car and dashed around to her side, where I opened her door. Real rain had started falling, just enough to catch my cheeks from time to time. I reached out my hand and she took it, understanding the idea. Just a tiny bit of color began to seep in from the edges of the drawing in my head. I left her door open and led her toward the front of the car, between the garage and the neighbor’s fence. It was dark there, just a bit removed from the streetlamps, the moon obscured with clouds.

Lisa wrapped her arms around me, and I brought mine around her waist. We held one another delicately, and barely moved to the music. This wasn’t actual steps like Veronica knew how to do, more like swaying just a little as if we were in high school. To my complete shock, heat traveled south quickly, so quickly my face flushed with it. The rain was chilly against my skin, and I could picture it sizzling when it landed. I had not seen this coming; I’d just wanted to enjoy the moment, Lisa’s gentle touch, the soft patter of the rain. Slow down already.

Lisa looked straight into my eyes again, that warm half smile on her face, and the color burst forth, turning what started out as such a rudimentary idea into glorious, brilliant everything. My brain caught up with the rest of my body. She was everything there. We were everything.

As the rain began to pick up a little, Lisa lay her cheek on my shoulder, and I took the opportunity to close the distance between us. I could feel her breasts meld into mine and longed to experience that moment skin-to-skin. It was always one of my favorite things, but it felt different this time, like we were long-lost fragments fitting together to finally create a beautiful scene. The rain continued in a steady ostinato on our shoulders, soaked my hair, ran down my face. I imagined sliding my hand down around her ass, but I swallowed hard and kept it where it was. After a moment of hugging into me, Lisa pulled back just the tiniest bit, just enough for her lips to find mine.

Oh God. This brilliant picture had just filled itself in like a crazy-ass paint-by-number and I could barely appreciate it. Her tongue touched mine just a bit, just a tease, and I felt my heart thump hard against her chest. There was fire, raging fire now, everywhere.

I had words for what was going on, words I might have dared put on paper, but my brain shut them out, leaving me only with sensation. Her hand worked its way beneath my sodden shirt, and we kissed with a driving intensity. I finally let mine move down past the top of her jeans, along the curve of her ass. Somewhere in the periphery I noticed that we’d moved on to a new song, but the neighbors’ house remained quiet and dark. Lisa let go with her other hand to pull my T-shirt over my head and I could feel her fingers working hurriedly at the clasp on my bra. As her mouth moved over my breast, I found hers, felt the gorgeous roundness I’d never dared to imagine touching. We jockeyed for position for a moment, finally ending up with me pressed against the quarter panel of my car. Lisa moved her thigh between my legs, first tentatively, then tighter, tighter. It wasn’t enough. We kissed again, and so gently, I bit her bottom lip.

Things became a blur of impatience. Lisa reached between us to undo my jeans, pressing hard against my thigh at the same time. I grabbed her ass harder as her hand slid into my underwear and her fingers began to find what they were searching for. I was choking on my breath by then, almost there from the beginning, and my left arm was caught on her other side so I struggled with her zipper one-handed. When she fought to slide my jeans down, I almost said I was good with what she had been doing, but the craving won out. I let go to help her.

As her tongue came against me, I slid my hands along the slick metal of the car, grabbing for something, anything to hold onto. I gave up and ran them through her wet hair, feeling her push at least a couple fingers in, her tongue working until it sent me over the edge. I let go of her and tried again to claw holes through my car’s hood as everything tensed, finally giving in. I gasped for breath, felt the rain fall against my face as my heart pounded out of my chest. Lisa backed away and found one of my hands with hers.

I pulled her up, wondering if I could possibly do the same to her before I caught my breath. She pressed hard into my thigh again, though, and barely gave me clearance to finish sliding down her zipper. I moved to lower her pants, but she shook her head. “There’s no time.”

Jesus. The only thing better than the previous few minutes were the next ones. I reached into her jeans and found such amazing warm wetness that it made my knees weak again. There wasn’t room to get inside her, so I focused on the front until her grip tightened on my shoulders and she stopped kissing. “Oh my fucking God, Sam. God, I…”

She’d just let go when a light flicked on at the neighbors’. The fence was right there, six feet of wooden slats the only thing between us and whatever was about to happen. Lisa slapped her hand over her mouth, and I could see her chest heaving as she tried to silently gasp for breath. I prayed for the light to go back off, but a screen door creaked open, then the slow closing mechanism hissed. We stared at one another, eyes wide, then down, where my hand was still in her jeans. Mine were around my ankles. I slid my hand out as silently as I could and searched desperately for my shirt. Lisa scrambled to zip up again.

“Is that you, Lisa?”

I thought that she was going to pretend she wasn’t there, but she cleared her throat and responded in a pleasant, matter-of-fact tone. “Yeah, Leonard, it’s just me. Getting some stuff out of the car. What’re you doing out in the rain?”

“The old lady needed the trash out right now. I says it’s raining, I’ll do it later. But she says oh no, you’ll do it now.” The top of a garbage bin smacked down and I could hear footfalls going back up the stairs to the door. “Have a good night now.”

“You too.” Lisa’s forehead came down on my shoulder. “I didn’t yell, did I? He’s deaf as a post, but please tell me I didn’t yell? I couldn’t stop—”

“You did not yell. Tell me he didn’t see—”

“He’s pretty much blind too. He just must’ve noticed the day runners.”