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Chapter Twenty-Nine / 2013


Abbey

Nick was watching Rudolph still when I came back from Matty's room. His eyes sparkled like a little kid's as Herbie took out the Abominable's teeth. I stood in the doorway for several long moments, just watching him stare at the TV, before he even realized I'd returned. Then I moved and he caught sight of me and he blushed, shifting his weight and tried to seem disengaged from the movie, but it was too late, I'd already seen the childlike excitement he'd had when I'd first walked in the room. I smirked and crawled onto the couch beside him, tucking my legs beneath me. "Aww," I cooed, "You like Rudolph."

"Yeah so?" Nick flushed.

Rather than answering him directly, I leaned closer and pressed my lips against his cheek softly. I did it before I could really analyze what I was doing, before I could change my mind.

We'd gone an entire day without saying a word about the last time we'd done this. I was tired of sitting and wondering if he was thinking about it, too. Tired of waiting for him to do it again.

His cheek felt rough from lack of shaving under my lips.

Nick turned toward me as I kissed his skin and the next thing I knew our lips were against each other. My heart raced. What if he didn't want to kiss me, I wondered. Would he still kiss me out of obligation? Would he let something happen between us he knew was wrong? He snaked his arms around me and pulled me closer. I fell into him, literally almost tumbling into his lap, all my wonderings turning to an explosion of words in my head, falling out of place and losing sense.

My weight pushed him backwards to the cushions and I fell with him. He moved one leg to the floor, my body pressing against his from pelvis to chest, his wide palms on my back. I slid my hands into his hair, cupping his head and holding him close to me, my mouth not finished the relish of tasting his. I could feel him getting more and more aroused by the moment, pressing against me. He put his hands on my hips... and then slid them softly beneath my shirt and ran them over the smooth material of my bra. I moaned into his mouth as his hands softly squeezed my breasts, finding my nipples beneath the fabric and running his thumb across them.

I realized suddenly that this was everything -- everything -- that I had dreamed about for the last seven years, since November 1, 2006, when I'd woken up beside him. It was happening. I felt dizzy with desire.

It took every ounce of willpower in my body to pull away. I stared at him in the eyes as I sat up, his hands slipping out from beneath my shirt as I stood. Without a word, I walked down the hallway to my bedroom, purposely leaving the light in the hall on and the bedroom door open. I didn't know if I wanted him to think I was running away again or to come after me, I couldn't tell. I just knew the beat of my heart was about seven times its usual pace. I pulled my shirt off of my body and slid my pants down, abandoning them in a corner. I laid down on the bed. And I waited.

The light in the hallway turned off, and for a moment I thought he thought I'd run off and I felt disappointed... and then, then there he was. I could see him in the doorway, his shape only just barely visible against the darkness. He closed the door behind him as he stepped into the room. I watched him come closer until he was close enough I could see his features lit up in the glowing red of the bedside alarm clock. He crawled onto the bed, leaning over me, staring down into my eyes, and he kissed me again, his hands roaming over my bare skin, his breathing becoming more and more ragged. I could almost feel his heart beating through his chest.

At least I wasn't the only one who was colossally nervous, I thought, laying my hand against the spot where his skin radiated with the pulse of blood pumping through him.

He reached behind me and unsnapped my bra. Together, we slid it off and he put it on the floor beside the bed, his mouth already descending upon my breasts, my nipples standing on full alert as his lips moved across them. Then he landed on the nipple and my body seemed to scream with pleasure as my nerve endings fired. He wrapped his lips around it, sucked it gently, and rubbed the other with his fingers, grinning as my mouth formed an O, my mind rushing like a blur of color. "Oh my God," I whispered, my fingers curling around the sheets and pillows as he worked, his tongue massaging me as he sucked softly against my skin.

I arched my back, pushing my boobs closer to him, offering them up like sacrifices to the god of sex. He laughed and the feeling of his breath against my just-licked skin felt cold and hot at the same time. Tingles shot up and down my spine like electric energy.

Then he started kissing a trail across my stomach, lower and lower.

"Please," I whispered.

Nick dipped his tongue into my belly button.

"Oh God."

Then he continued kissing his trail... lower and lower... He was kneeling between my legs, and I felt his hands land on my knees and slowly slide up along my legs to my thighs, which he pressed his palms against and slowly, gently spread them apart. I was gasping for breath just from the anticipation. I could feel I was already wet down there, my heart slamming around inside of me. I clutched the pillow, bit my lip, and waited... waited... waited... He was just laying there, building the pressure of the anticipation. Then he kissed the inside of my thigh and I felt like I'd been electrocuted, my entire body reacted to the shock of the touch, my spine went rigid, my legs stretched out, my toes pointing. He laughed and he softly kissed a little closer to the apex of me. Slowly.. one kiss at a time... inching closer and closer... I had all I could do not to shriek and scream from the anticipation alone...

The world seemed to rush past me at full speed. Colors, lights, sounds, shapes. Obscurity. Stars. I was shaking. But then one solitary thought came into my head - and it was enough to bring it all to a screeching halt.

"Wait," I choked.

He looked up at me. I struggled against my own senses to get away from him. I crawled backwards, grabbed a pillow, shoved it between me and him, blocking his view of me, tucking my legs up close to me. My body was screaming in defiance against my brain, shaking it's fist in anger, swearing revenge upon me.

I stared at him over the pillow as my hormones raged, rallying for full out war against my mind. "We can't do this," I whispered.

He stared back. His mind was already down and out of the battle, a confused, almost dumbfounded expression hung on his face, like I was speaking in a completely different language. My hormones cried out to his, trying to form some kind of union that could overthrow the power of my brain. "What?" he stammered.

"We can't. I don't want to be a rebound. I don't wanna be that girl you hooked up with when you were sad about Lauren."

Nick looked surprised. "Rebound? You're not a rebound."

"How could I not be?" I asked, "It's been like two days."

Nick stared into my eyes, and his eyebrows cinched together in concern. "I've had your phone number memorized for seven years," he whispered thickly. "This is the opposite of a rebound."

"You memorized it?" I asked.

Nick rattled off the phone number without a blink.

My mouth went dry.

"But what if - what if something happens? What if we do this and, and - and Matty?" I asked.

"What about Matty?"

"Matty needs you. I haven't seen him this happy in... in years. What if we break up and it's weird between us?"

"It won't be weird."

"But what if?"

Nick shrugged. "It doesn't matter because if isn't going to happen."

"It does matter, it does. I can't let that happen to Matty." I hugged the pillow tighter, trying to suffocate the hormone army fighting for presidency.

Nick stared at me. "Abbey, I'm not ever gonna let anything hurt Matty," he said thickly.

I stared into his eyes. Those beautiful blue eyes. His hair was longish and strands of it hung down over his forehead... He lay there, breathing, his chest moving up and down, his jaw just a little slack... And there was something in that voice... a sincerity... maybe it was my hormones winning the battle, or maybe my mind conceded because of those words... because I threw the pillow to the side and said, "Let's do this."




Nick

"Nick. Nick we forgot to move Jeraldo... Nick, wake up."

My eyes felt pasted together. It was four hours later. I realized my face was smooshed into a pillow with a sweet, flowery scent and I moved to find myself curled up in Abbey's bed, her limbs tangled around me from behind, her mouth against the ridge of my ear as she whispered into it. "Nick."

"Hmmm?"

"Jeraldo. We forgot to move him."

I groaned.

"Nick. We gotta move the elf."

I forced myself to move. Every muscle in my body had been turned to gelatin, it seemed. I swear I'd never been so entirely satisfied in my entire life. It was like she'd managed to reach down to the very bone structure of me and recode even my DNA. I rolled to look up at her. She was kneeling there beside me, her hair all messed up, the blanket pulled up 'round her chest, a look of borderline panic in her eyes.

"Okay let's go move that elf," I said. My voice was low and rumbly from the sleep and the sex.

We got up and I pulled my boxers on and she tugged a sweatshirt around her that hung down to her thighs, effectively covering everything up. We went out to the kitchen and got Jeraldo from his place in the fridge and looked around for a new place to put the elf. After some elaborate finagling, we got him all set up and stood awkwardly staring at him.

Abbey looked at me. "Matty's gonna be up soon," she commented, her eyes darting to the clock.

I looked at the clock too, then glanced back down the hallway to the kid's bedroom door. "I should probably stay out here then," I said.

Abbey looked disappointed. "I guess," she replied.

I wanted to tell her that she'd blown my mind, that she'd been the best I'd ever had, that I wanted to do it again, that nobody had ever made me feel like I felt because of her. But the words wouldn't come and I felt the moment to tell her passing.

"Get some sleep, Nick," Abbey whispered, and she turned down the hallway, hands clutching at her sweatshirt's waist band, keeping it down, like she suddenly felt like she needed to be covered up more. I opened my mouth to say all that I wanted to, but she got into her room before I could speak and closed the door behind her. I stood there in only my boxers, realizing all my clothes were in her room, and realized how fucking cold it was outside and in the apartment, the air like little needles against my bare skin.

I wanted to go knock on the door and get my clothes and tell her words - so many words - but I didn't dare to because I heard Nacho jump down from the bed in Matty's room and that could only mean one thing. So I scrambled into the living room and grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt from my duffle bag, shimmied them onto my body and slid under the blanket on the couch, rolling to face the back cushions and closed my eyes to pretend to be asleep.

And I got there only just in time.