- -
She tasted like strawberries, from the first moment her lips fell on
his. Tristan could feel the fabric of her Juliet costume; could feel her
boyfriend's eyes on both of them, slowly burning holes in their flesh.
"I might kiss you goodbye
but, uh, your boyfriend's watching," he'd told her, limbs prepared to
leave.
To this day, he doesn't
know why she did it. Why she chose him and fell into that kiss. When she
pulled away, he could see his own reflection in the blue of her eyes. He
barely felt her boyfriend tear him away, and ignored the rough, "Get
away from her! Get off!" He could see nothing but his happiness, and the
goofiest grin came to his face. The boyfriend wanted to talk it out.
Tristan had to go. She said she'd write him.
She did.
--
She smelled like summer --
Happy perfume on her neck and peach essence in her hair. He
inhaled her sweetness as he cuddled her that July 4th. Hartford's
largest park hosted the patriotic festivities, and Rory's breath hitched
under that sycamore tree as he kissed his way along her neck, up to her
earlobe. He sucked the lobe into his mouth, sucked hard, and beneath him
her body shuddered.
The leaves sighed in the
wind as she asked him questions about military school. She wanted to
hear all of the things his letters didn't say. All he wanted to do was
touch her and touch her some more, but instead he lie down beside her
and spread his fingers along the freshly cut grass. And he told her of
six a.m. drills, hours-long chores, "strength and discipline". He told
her of perfect sheet corners on the beds, and learning to finish the
gruel on your plate. He didn't tell her about Justin R.'s dirty
magazines under mattresses.
His stories spread her
expression into smiles that caressed her eyes. She laughed at his antics
with the other "military men in training", quipping a mile a minute at
every aspect of Tristan's life she'd been kept from. She liked listening
about his friends like Tucker and Matt who desperately needed a smack on
the head.
"And I'm guessing you don't
deserve to go without a few punishments, too," Rory said with a giggle.
"I definitely racked up
some smacks of my own." When he thought about it, when he remembered,
the steady rules that never wavered did more to alter his sense of right
and wrong than his father's rules which were carelessly thrown about and
changed on a whim. They broke a known rule, they got caught -- Tristan,
Tucker, and Matt, several times. They learned not to push the same
buttons again.
Her eager questions to spur
him on made him realize things he wouldn't have otherwise.
"A lot of parents pack up
their troubles and send them off to summer camp," Tristan said with a
dry chuckle that meant nothing good. "Summer's the only time mine let me
be around."
--
She looked like a porcelain
doll usually shut behind glass as she rushed into his arms the first day
of their senior year. He was back at Chilton, and it was as though the
king had never left the building. All old friends bent back into place,
and she was his welcome new addition.
He'd kissed many girls in
front of his Mary's locker; now it was her lips that sought his as he
came into view, her arms that snaked around his neck and pulled him
close enough for soft whispers. Her breath, hot in his ear, warmed the
goosebumps into shivers. He wanted her, he wanted this; his happiness
lived in her.
Rory's fingernails were
sometimes purple; he looked at them and thought of bruises he'd keep
from her. He thought of bruises from his father that still left some
scars, and wished he could know for sure he wouldn't be the same way.
She'd thread their hands
together on the way to their shared English and Chemistry classes,
letting go only when it was time to find their separate seats.
--
Her voice sounded like a
goddess' wail as she cried out his name for the first time. His fingers
toyed inside the lace of her panties, where they'd teased her until she
was dripping between the thighs she clamped around his hand. He hooked
his two longest fingers once he'd driven them far up within her, and her
moans excited him to the point where he could holler and wake the dead.
He knew she'd never done
this before, but she was reckless where there used to be hesitation, and
she spurred him on, reaching out her small hand to finger the bulge in
his jeans that grew in magnitude till it filled in her palm. "Oh,
Rory..." he kept saying, over and over. He put on the condom with the
"ribs, for her pleasure". But she wasn't the only one who careened over
the edge. "God, God, God," Tristan gasped into her hair, her neck, her
mouth. "Oh fuck..."
Tantalizing as she was with
her pouted lips, her tight heat, and her squeezing thighs, it was when
she bucked her hips up into his deliciously that she seized his control
and he came with another cry of her name.
--
She felt like satin as he
hugged her closer than could be, and told her to be good. He touched a
finger playfully to her nose, and she took off her tasseled hat to bat
him with it gently. She wasn't the one who needed to behave, was what
she told him, and that much was true. Yale was calling her, and she
insisted they not waste a minute before he was off to Princeton and
everything would be shared in far-away letters again, punctuated by the
occasional weekend rendezvous they'd struggle to make last like slow
melting candy.
The summer was their time.
It was what they had to hold onto. He'd always loved the summer. The
world had grown from catching frogs and splashing in rain puddles to
ignoring all frogs and the rain while he kissed Rory senseless and left
her dizzy afterward. He gave her silly smiles and kissed her closed
eyelids on the lash line. He'd found his paradise partner.
"'Together forever' is a
cliché," she said to him as mid-August climbed onto the calendar. "Let's
call it more... 'hell or high water'."
"Whatever you want to call
it," he told her, "I'm yours." She said she'd miss him.
She did.
--
Freshman year at college
was so different from the high school experience. Popularity shrank in
importance, except at the keggers, but then there was enough beer to
make all things obsolete, anyway. Tristan gulped the beer on Saturdays
and called Rory late in the night, just to hear her voice. She always
said she couldn't imagine being any farther apart than she felt at every
moment without him. He told her that he felt the same; he didn't tell
her that sometimes he felt he needed to be more deserving of her. He
didn't tell her he'd been thinking of ways to improve his pastimes from
playboy digs and smirks.
Summer came again, and as
she writhed beneath him that first night home in his king-sized bed, he
slammed into her hard, wanting to jolt both their bodies, make this
feeling sustain for however long it could. Her voice rose in pitch, the
sound of her pleasure making him groan in ecstasy. He lay beside her
afterwards, as she pulled the cold sheets to her damp skin.
She fished his car keys
from the pocket of discarded jeans on the floor, fingering them as they
clinked together. She set them on the nightstand and asked to stay the
night. His nod came so eagerly they nearly bumped noses.
"I miss your long hair,"
was what he told her before sleep, touching the softness of it and
wanting to be wrapped in its coils.
She said she was thinking
about growing it out again. "Especially if you want me to."
He smiled and didn't know
what else to say.
--
It was warm the next
morning when they stepped into his shower together. His parents hadn't
been home for a month already, and the maid knew not to bother him when
he was "busy".
The hot water scalded them,
fusing their bodies together wherever skin touched skin. He teased with
his fingers, the way she liked best, and her voice raised his bravado
with its every heightened cry. He cupped her sex and dug his teeth just
slightly into her shoulder. She shivered despite the heat.
He chose then, when her
chest was heaving and she was recovering from their against-the-wall
activities, to tell her that he was leaving. That right now, college
wasn't enough. Her smile faded from its schmoopy giddiness until it was
altogether gone.
"I need to prove that I can
be more than I am. Whatever military school did for me, it changed me
for the better. Look what it did, I mean... it gave me you."
He watched droplets form at
the ends of her hair; saw them fall and crash out of shape once hitting
the tub floor.
"The army?" she asked, her
voice choked with disbelief. "You could be killed. Just like that, you
could die. And, what? You're willing to risk never seeing me again so
you can feel like you deserve me?"
"I've been thinking a lot.
It's what I have to do."
She shut the water off and
he heard the drain gulp it all down. He watched her towel dry her hair
and tried to deny the way she was avoiding his eyes.
--
"Do you hate me?" he asked
her, the queen on his Chilton King arm.
"I hate what you're doing.
That's all. And also the purple tie you wear all over the place." He
could sense that she was gritting her teeth.
He tugged the strap of his
heavy bag further up his shoulder. "I'm strong. Don't worry, Ror. I'll
be back, and I'll be everything you need me to be."
"I never asked you to
change."
"I know..." He touched a
finger to her cheek and followed her tear's trail down it. "That's
something I love about you."
She smiled gently, and her
breath was full of strawberries as she leaned in. "I love you, too." His
porcelain doll waved him off, hair releasing peach scent into the wind
that carried him away in his dark blue Lexus. He'd always had so much to
doubt when it came to trusting that anyone meant what they said. He
could see her windswept figure caught up in the rearview mirror, behind
the dust that trailed his tires and gave her a dreamlike quality.
She said she'd wait for
him.
Come hell or high water,
she will.
- -
end
