“I love you,” I wept into his shirt.
“. . . since before I even knew what it was.” His voice shook as it struggled to convey strength.
But I couldn't just leap. I needed to think. This was too sudden. I had a mother and father who were still alive. Bobby didn't have to worry about shaming his parents. I had an entire life, albeit an unsatisfactory one, I had built here. I needed some time alone to think about how I could unfasten myself from the invisible anchor that held me to my station.
“You just come over. You call the motel. However you want to do it. And I will be here in a heartbeat. But I've said my piece. I won't come back and beg anymore. This is something you need to decide for yourself. If you want to come, use today to get your affairs in order. Just come or call before noon.”
I nodded as Bobby wiped a tear from my cheekbone.
“Lil, if you want to make this work, you will. It's as simple as that.”
I gripped his hand. “Please don't go,” I wept frantically. Though I had the choice, something in my gut told me I might never see him again. “Please,” I begged shamelessly.
“Lil, I'm just down the road. We both have some things we need to get in order. No matter what, this isn't goodbye forever.”
“Kiss me.”
Bobby grimaced as if it took every fiber of his being. “Not until you're done with Rory.”
Salty tears ran over my lips. There was a lot I could accept, but I couldn't accept Bobby not kissing me at this moment.
“Kiss me.”
“Lil, don't do this. It's not fair,” he begged.
I looked into his eyes, the color of the lake on a late afternoon, when the sun's reflection would dance along the ridges of water. His eyes always took me to place of warmth and comfort. I could look into his eyes, no matter where I was, and be home. But I needed more. I needed to taste his lips. I needed his strength if I was going to shed my old life like dead, useless skin.
Bobby brushed back a sweaty lock of hair that had stuck to my temple, and relented. He softly placed his lips on my mouth, sliding his tongue against mine. I peppered his full pout with kisses and gentle tugs. Then his fingers wove into my hair, balling his hand fiercely as we tasted the bittersweet of years of unspoken words from each other's lips.
“No, Lil,” he grumbled, pushing me onto the kitchen table. “We can't keep caving.” A traitor to his words, he grazed his teeth along my collarbone, then up the long curve of my neck.
“I need you,” I cooed. “I need to feel you.” To be reminded of what it was like to just be us again. Without rules.
“I can't,” he heaved as he pulled my legs apart. Bobby ran his hands up my thighs and along my nightgown, pulling up the gauzy fabric. His thumbs stopped at the crease of my thighs.
“No underwear?” he muttered.
“For you. Only for you.”
I couldn't bear Rory's touch and hadn't let him lay his hands on me since Bobby's arrival, besides the disastrous incident in the backseat of our car.
Bobby tensed up, as if he had found a new well of strength to resist me, but I needed to steal that strength. My heart needed it to coerce my mind, strong with thoughts of doubt, fear, and misguided loyalties.
I slid down the straps of my nightgown, exposing my tight breasts to him. “Suck on them, Bobby.”
He bit his own lip so hard, trying to hold back, I thought it might bleed. I reached up, and with a gentle tug against the lip with my thumb, I freed it from the battle. He closed his eyes and sighed as I glided my thumb back against his lips, coaxing it into their soft grip. The fleshiness of his pout was contrasted by the sharpness of his bite clasping the edge of my thumb, sinking his teeth into the fruit of temptation.
I pulled my hand back, luring him closer, like a snake charmer. “Use those teeth on
me . . . those lips . . . that tongue,” I barely rasped into his ear.
He ran a thumb over one of the nipples, hardening it. But just before he placed his lips on it, he rested his forehead against my chest. “Lil, I promised myself, not here anymore. Not until you came with me.”
“It's just us,” I begged. “This is just a place.”
He let out a massive sigh, kissing my breastbone, the plump paleness of my breast, and working his way to the peak, where he used the tip of his tongue to draw out a careless moan from my lips. Flaxen rays of light snuck through the window, onto my exposed skin, illuminating the tiny goosebumps his mouth cajoled. I arched my spine towards Bobby, begging him with my body to make the doubt and fear disappear.
“I'd do anything for you, Lil,” Bobby murmured into my neck.
I braced his face so that his eyes would meet mine and I kissed him everywhere my lips could land, spreading the taste of my tears across his face.
He pulled my hips to the edge of the table, reaching in his pants to pull himself out. A pleasant, anxious fluttering surged in my stomach at the sight of his throbbing phallus, gripped in his thick fingers. My dewy opening blossomed like a morning flower at the promise of Bobby boring into me. When he did, I wrapped my legs around his hips as I drew out a cry into his neck. Rory's discarded breakfast plate and my battered toast clattered on the table, skittering little by little with each thrust, until one of the plates crashed to the floor. But it didn't matter. This place was an artifact. My heart was already imagining a new future.
Bobby's girth inside of me, so tight that I could hardly breathe, took my focus. It dampened the screaming voices of trepidation. It dulled the sharp stabbing of fear.
“I can't live without you,” I gasped into Bobby's lips. “I can't go back.”
“You're my goddamned heartbeat,” he answered against mine.
Our bodies melted into each other, like hot caramel, so that we could no longer tell where one person ended and the other began. Just a messy haze of sweat, tears, and skin. We were linked in ways that we could never break. That distance, time, and duty could not separate.
My hips thrusted up to meet Bobby's and we crested against each other like waves against a bluff, the table barely needing to support me as I clung to him. His shirt stuck to the sweaty knolls of his chest and arms as he grunted savagely, coming closer to his climax.
“Come with me,” he groaned into my neck.
I braced Bobby's torso against mine as I convulsed against him, biting down onto his shoulder as an intense stampede of pleasure rolled over me. I held on as tightly as I could, feeling like if I let go, I would drift away and never be able to hold him again. That I would lose him in this helpless abyss of rules and unfairness we call life. Bobby tensed against me, his groans as gritty as mud and earth as he released inside of me.
I kept my embrace firm around Bobby, hoping we would freeze in time like the images I had seen in textbooks about Pompeii. Or that we would burst into trillions of stars, so that we could live in the heavens for eternity like the constellations we admired on moonless nights. So that one day, other weary lovers could look to us in the sky for hope.
But we were still here. Pieces of flesh and bone, desperately clinging to each other.
“I have to go, Lil,” Bobby said somberly. “I'll see you tomorrow.” It seemed he was trying to convince himself more than me this time.
I let my arms go limp as Bobby slid away from me, collected himself, grabbed his bag, and left.
I mindlessly collected the dish fragments from the floor trying to decipher what was holding me back from going with Bobby. This was the life I had dreamt of. But I had made vows. I had chosen my path. Somehow I felt like packing my bags and leaving was cheating.
Maybe it was the guilt I carried from being with Bobby the night before the wedding. That the rest of my life was penance for that one act. Or maybe I cared more about what other people thought than I had realized.