Page 102 of Christmas in Coconut Creek

It’dbeenyears,butmy body never forgot the feeling of a woman wrapped around it. Soft legs, warm skin, flower petal fuzz underneath my wandering fingertips. Not too harsh to wake her up, just enough to keep her blissfully sedated. The metronome of her heart playing against my rib cage, her thigh bent and snug tight over mine.

I was always an early riser. The military further ironed that into me like a cattle brand, making it permanent. And though I’d gotten no more than two hours of sleep between talking to Ophelia and burying myself inside her, rest would remain evasive.

So instead I watched her sleep—as if she could do it for the both of us. Her chest rose and fell, the blue butterfly around her neck the only thing left to be worn on her entire body. For the rest of my life I’d be chasing passion like what I’d experienced with her—I already knew it. But the thought of that with anyone else spun in my stomach like I’d spent the whole night drinking.

This was that attachment I swore I’d never develop coming to collect. Somewhere along this so-called path of self-rediscovery I’d promised to myself, a jumbled bag of feelings got involved. My past got dragged into it, and I was telling this girl I’d known for two weeks shit I didn’t even understand about myself. She fell for the confident, charismatic asshole on the plane, but that’s the act I liked to play while the real me—the understudy, the guy who’d never made the cut—stood behind the curtain.

I’d taken all the best parts of my military buddies' personalities—Mateo’s confidence, Sam’s humor, Tyler’s prowess—and layered it like clay over myself. I built a mask and only removed it when I was alone, like peeling off a second skin. Until that skin couldn’t be peeled away anymore and it just became who I was. Or who I’d tricked myself into believing I was. When you lie enough it starts to sound like the truth.

Ophelia was taking a chisel and a hammer to all of that, uncovering a fossil of a man who didn’t even know he was slowly entombing himself until he couldn’t move.

I looked down at her, counting the points of her eyelashes against her cheek, tracing the button curve of her nose. Her bottom lip was in a permanent state of poutiness, and my fingers ached to pinch it. I couldn’t help myself as a strand of hair fell in front of her face and I swept it away, back into the long mess of it splayed across my shoulder and the pillow.

She stirred and my entire body straightened like a board. If I woke her up I’d feel like a fucking dick, especially after the night we had. We could both use a shower and a few bottles of water, but not until the sun was up first. I was content to lay in it for a while longer. The flowery smell of the perfume she wore to dinner still on my hands, dried sweat like a film across my brow. Not something I wanted washed away.

Greed was a terrible thing but nothing else came close to describing what she did to me. I could be possessive, predatory, addicted, unhinged, but I’d never wanted totakelike I did with Ophelia. I wanted to bleed whatever endorphin this was dry.

When she settled again I wormed my way out from under her, pulling the dead limb of my arm from beneath her heavy head, wiggling my fingers back to life. The mattress creaked as I stood and I froze for a second time, watching her rib cage expand and contract in that same soft rhythm until I was sure she was still asleep. Before I escaped the room I tugged on a pair of sweatpants and pulled the blanket to her shoulders.

The kitchen was dark and stagnant. I kept the lights off and moved around by the soft glow of morning seeping through the living room windows. Over the half wall the tree remained dimly lit. My eyes scoured where O and I had been rolling on the floor and my cock twitched.

I needed a coffee, some fresh air, and time alone to talk myself out of the fantasy that was waking up every morning the way I just had.

After a one-sided argument with the world’s noisiest coffee machine I stepped out onto the patio where the dew wasn’t yet dry and the orange sunrise was peeking over the backyard fence. It was too cold to be shirtless, but the breeze had the perfect amount of bite to wake up the parts of my body the coffee couldn’t reach fast enough.

That early in the morning, I felt like the only person alive. Or so I thought.

“Merry Christmas, Francesco.”

I twitched away from the sound of a voice in the neighbor’s backyard as a pair of garden shears lifted just above the fence and snipped the air. “Shit! Mr. Barry, I didn’t know you were out here.”

Gino’s short frame toddled to the edge of the property line and I looked over as he tended to several buckets of plush red tomato plants. The man was fully dressed and put together. Beige slacks and a red button-down tucked into them. Brown belt, brown shoes, the Catholic cross hanging around his neck.

“Merry Christmas,” I returned. “Going somewhere?”

“Church.”

“Ah, right. My mom will be on her way there soon, too.”

Gino assessed me with squinted eyes. Crow’s feet stretched at the corners and wrinkles ran like crop lines across his forehead. I hadn’t gotten too good a look at myself, but if Gino’s expression were a mirror I’d say I looked fucked. Literally, physically.

I instinctually ran my fingers through my hair to tame it and crossed my arms over my bare chest.

“No church for you?” he asked, continuing to spin and pick the ripe fruit, placing them in a yellow speckled bowl.

I looked back at the house. “I have some company.”

Gino hummed. “You’re in love.”

“I wouldn’t say love.” I quipped.

“What is it then?”

The mug I was holding was scalding my palm, but that was more comfortable than trying to classify my relationship with Ophelia to the prying old man that lived next door.

I’d never had a conversation about relationships with someone outside my buddies. It was easy to talk about sex—locker room shit, the tasteless back and forth I never felt fully comfortable participating in but learned to live with, especially in the Army.

My father passed before I had my first kiss. The one time I got caught with my dick in my hand my mother cried every time she looked at me for three days. When I was fifteen I asked a girl to homecoming and the next day there was a box of Trojans on my nightstand and we never spoke about it again. The familial history I had with intimacy was thereby nonexistent.

---