Page 53 of The Sun
It was just us in that tiny kitchen with the linoleum peeling up at the baseboards. Us and the sound of Judah’s TV and the random sputter of a car passing on the highway. It’s funny how awkward it can be when the moments you spend your time daydreaming about become reality.
Sunny rubbed a hand over her arm, her teeth going to town on her lip. Even though I didn’t bring her here with bad intentions, I worried that’s what she’d think. After all, I heard the rumors. Rumors I did little to stop since I had found that usually works in my favor. When people never know the truth, they never know what to believe. People generally don’t mess with someone whose actions they have no way to anticipate.
“You know, if you changed your mind about staying, you don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“Okay.” I started through the living room, and she followed without question.
I flipped the switch to my bedroom, suddenly all too aware of the Sports Illustrated and Call of Duty posters that decorated my walls when I kicked off my boots. Sunny stood in the doorway, one hand rested on the frame like she wasn’t sure whether it was safe to enter or not. Even though tension had my muscles coiled tight like springs ready to pop, I had to act normal. Unaffected. The way girls expected guys like me to act.
My hands had a slight tremor when I peeled off my shirt. “You gonna come in?” I asked when I laid back on the bed still in my jeans.
“Yeah. . .”
My heart nearly shot clean out of my chest when she crawled across the end of the bed and laid down beside me so close we were almost touching. That candy and vanilla scent that seemed to emanate from her enveloped me, lighting up every hormone in my teenage body like the Las Vegas strip.
I rolled onto my stomach to hide the hard-on developing against my will, and she glanced at me with those doe-like, blue eyes that begged me to love her.But she was too good for that.
“I like your room,” she said.
“It’s pretty boring.”
“But it’s yours.”
I folded an arm underneath my head, then took the tiny, blond wisps of hair that framed her face and twirled them around one of my fingers. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to have sex with Sunny. I sat in Miss Weaver’s class, shifting in my seat more times than I could count, thinking about this very situation. It always started with her in my bed, and me slowly taking her clothes off, running my hands over her waist and tits. Really making her mine. But the truth was, as I studied her face, the slight slope of her nose, the perfect bow of her lips, every curve and angle of her face, the random freckle that dotted her cheek, I understood, for a fleeting, rational moment, that with some girls there’s so much more than sex. Everything about Sunny was soft and peaceful. Like standing alone on a shore and watching the sunrise over the water, and it almost felt wrong to taint that.
So there was the dilemma. My brain and dick begged me to screw her, but my heart didn’t want to ruin her, and I was fucking terrified there was no differentiating between the two.
I wet my lips, trying my damnedest not to kiss her, because although she was mine—she belonged to someone else.
“I really have missed you,” I said.
“You promise?”
“Yes.” It was then that I decided I’d allow myself one night. One night to hold her, to pretend this was right. One night to let myself grieve, and let her go. So I kissed her, slow and soft so I could memorize how full her lips were against mine.
Her hand went to the back of my neck, and she tugged me closer. Closer until I had caged her in with my arms. She kissed me deeper until the natural progression of teenage hormones had led me to shift most of my weight between her thighs.
One more minute, I thought. Just a few more seconds and I would push myself away. Everything in my life had been shit before Sunny. Shit after her. But when I was with her, it was always perfect and calm. She was my peace, a home for a boy who never really understood what that word meant until her. How the hell was I supposed to stop that?
My muscles went lax, and I kissed her harder until there was no her mouth or my mouth, just our mouths. She felt too right even though every bit of us together like this was wrong.
I took her bottom lip between my teeth before slamming my mouth back over hers. Her hands moved down my back to my hips before sliding around to my fly. She fumbled with the button, and I could hardly breathe at that point. She was a good girl, I thought. She deserved better than this, so I placed my hand over hers.
She froze, and I said every curse word known to man plus a few new ones.
“I just— I—I—just.” Exhaling, she shoved me away, then sat up fast, and moved to the edge of the bed. “I just, um. I need to go.”
When she went to stand, I caught her arm and pulled her back. “Wait.”
“What? I need to go.”
“Just wait a second, okay?” I sat up and moved across the bed until I was next to her. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sunny?”
