Page 7 of All for You

I cut her off the only way I know how. With my mouth. Once our lips touch, I forgot what I should be doing. I forget that I’m older and wiser and should know better. All I can think about is the soft heaven she’s allowed me to enter. I pull her closer to me and thankfully her seatbelt catches her and yanks us both out of the moment.

“You’re going to kill me. That’s what you're trying to do, isn’t it? You want me dead?”

She giggles as a smile replaces her look of astonishment from before.

“We have to go slow. You’re young. You need to graduate first. I want that for you.”

“That was my first kiss.”

“I know.”

She pulls back and stares at me with her question in her eyes. “How did you know?”

“I can tell.” She sits back, letting the reason behind my knowledge go. “Wait until you graduate and then…then you’re mine.”

I trace the curve of her jaw softly with my fingertips. She’s so soft and perfect that it seems almost obscene that I should even be allowed to touch her. I dip my head to trace the curve my hand explored with my mouth.

When I pull back, my eyes fall to her legs where her skirt has risen up around the tops of her thighs. My mind wants to go higher but I shut it down fast. v “Then you’re mine,” I say it more for myself than for her this time.

She gives me a flirty grin before pulling back, unlatching her seat belt, and opening her door. Only then does she turn back to me and say the three words that could rock my foundation quicker and truer than anything else she could have said.

“I’m already yours.”

Chapter Seven

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Rani

After the night of my first kiss, something had changed in our relationship. Instead of trying to stay hidden, Charlie started leaving messages on my door when he was sure I would be the only one home or little presents at school and home. He even went so far as to order pizza for me and Milly one night when we decided to stay in and veg in front of the tv.

Flowers and sweet notes telling me I look nice aside, he still hasn’t come right out and made any claims on me yet. No words of love just small tokens of affection. It’s apparently enough because I’m not looking at other guys at all, I’ve not been back to the cop bar and I don’t go to college parties anymore. I’m content to stay home and wait if that is what he wants to do.

At least I was until everything stops. Two weeks after school finished for the year and not one note, a pizza, or anything. I can’t help but wonder if he got tired of waiting for me. Maybe he didn’t understand it was going to take another whole year for me to graduate. Maybe he thought it would only be months but when he found out differently, he decided against waiting.

Maybe I was too hasty when I agreed to wait. Maybe I should have done more, been more …something. Ugh! I hate this stupid feeling and I hate all the maybe’s and if’s only. The thing that makes me the saddest is thinking he might have found someone else. Someone he didn’t have to wait on, someone who understands what they are doing and isn’t so obnoxiously naive as I am.

But even worse than that is the thing I refuse to put into words. That’s the thought that has me up at night pacing the floor. It’s this dark nameless thought that makes me feel like I’m slowly dying inside every day that goes by that I don’t hear from him. That fear, that thought, of him being gone forever and not just with another woman tears me apart.

My mom has noticed that something isn’t right apparently, because she stops me one morning on my way to Milly’s.

“You okay, Sweetie?” It’s not like I’ve kept it secret very well, not eating or sleeping, but I don’t want to tell my mom about Charlie just yet. What if she tells me she thinks it is wrong? What if she tries to tell me I can’t be with him? Then I would have to choose between my parents and Charlie. “You look like something might be on your mind…. something like a certain boy, maybe.”

I turn worried eyes her way never meaning to tell her a thing, but then all this worry bubbles up inside of me and the taste of fear swamps my mouth until I am certain I am going to throw up.

Mom runs her hand over to cover mine. “You know you can tell me anything, right? Anything at all.”

I break. All of it comes spewing out. The entire story. How Ashely snuck me into the bar with her boyfriend mom didn’t know anything about, how she left me there and Charlie found me, how he brought me home and was so sweet and kind to a kid that could have gone to jail, then how he saved me from that bozo from the party and how he kissed me but told me he wanted to wait until I graduated high school and maybe he didn’t realize it was going to take a full year and now I think he might be dead.

By the time I’m done, I’m exhausted and closer to being sick than ever before. So exhausted. She comes around the island and gives me a hug that makes me feel better while at the same time killing me because it’s like she might also think…he’s gone.

“Sweetheart, I don’t think you have to worry about him finding someone new and leaving you. A man who is that serious about you wouldn’t be that fickle in his interest.”

“Great! That means he’s dead.” I lose it, totally crying myself out and Mom has to help me to my room.

I guess all that crying was good for something because I finally sleep after days of not being able to. When I wake back up again it’s to a peal of thunder and the sound of heavy rain hitting the roof. Was it the thunder or the sound of the rain that woke me up? I try to listen harder but all I hear is the rain.

A shadow moves in the room causing my heart to jump. I sit up quickly and grow kind of lightheaded. Probably from the lack of sleep and not eating very well. Of course, it could also be because of how hard I cried when I broke down in front of my mom.

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