Page 69 of One Last Rainy Day
“Don’t underestimate me, Jean Dominic,” she quips, twinkling eyes making it apparent that a plan is already in place.
“Stop saying my name like that. I’m not a French poet.” Brushing the hair away from her shoulders, it’s easy to make out she’s fully relaxed and seemingly...entertained. Something I can’t say I’ve ever really accomplished with another girl outside of the physical.
But for how long? She can’t be happy locked in my room. She needs—
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop. It isn’t true,” she says softly, reading my apprehension. Something she’s getting way too good at. Knowing I’m not going any further with the conversation, she takes the reins. “Spark one up. This time I’m smoking with youandplaying D.J.”
Lifting to sit, I do as ordered as she flips through theextensive digital library open on my desktop. Not a minute later, “Oh No,” by the Commodores, another of Maman’s favorite groups, starts to play.
She shrugs when she sees my surprise. “I loved it when you played it before.” Turning it up on my keypad, she smirks, knowing we’re at full capacity tonight at the townhouse—no doubt pissing the neighbors off. Even with Lionel Richie blasting through my room, I can’t find a fuck to give. Especially when she animatedly leaps back onto the bed, pouncing me. Lowering her head, she runs her lips and tongue along my neck before reaching for a condom from my nightstand.
“I am not fucking you to this,” I announce firmly, “I have my limits,” I mumble against her active lips as she does her best to seduce me. “I’ve already watched one too many teen angst movies against my better fucking judgment.”
“Two,” she draws out as I turn her over and sink between her thighs, discarding the blunt she ordered me to light on my nightstand.
“Yeah, and that’stwotoo many.”
It was another of those rare days spent out of my head. Where we did exactly shit—aside from watching movies on my laptop and fucking—but a day I didn’t feel like my world was coming to an end. She stares up at me, grinning like the romance-drunk fool she is. That look is unmistakable—a look she gives to me in front of everyone, unabashedly, fearlessly, whether we’re at the garage or alone. A look my head and chest can no longer ignore. A look that’s starting to feel like it’s beyond chemistry.
My blissful ignorance stares back at me, her smile fading, that look ever-present.
Ignoring it is fucking torture—so I don’t bother doing it or denying it anymore. I can’t, to the point that I palm her face and lower to kiss her. When I close the kiss, she pulls back, dazed. “What was that for?”
For believing for the both of us that whatever the fuck is happening between us is real, because I can’t.
The throb only increases as I take her mouth again, and she matches me, lick for lick. I’m hard in seconds, and I refuse to ignore it, this thing, this feeling, this state. Lionel serenading us or not, our attraction gets the best of me, and I let it guide me along with her moans. Just as I’m about to take her panties down, a pounding sounds on my bedroom door a second before Tyler’s voice booms from the other side of it.
“Please, for the love of fucking God, no more love ballads tonight. That’s all I’m asking.”
Sean sounds out not even a second later with an “A-fucking-men, brother.”
“First chance I get, I’m moving out of this fucking frat house,” Tyler snaps before slamming his bedroom door.
Cecelia and I break apart, laughing hysterically. She buckles sideways, and when I realize her destination—floor—and manage to get a good grip on her, she takes me down with her.
We stay there, crumpled between her side of the bed and my bookshelf, her cradled in my arm. As the sun sets, the room grows darker, and neither of us moves. Whispers of streetlight stream between my blinds, hitting the wall behind my computer as we smoke a joint while listening to the Commodores. When the record plays out, Cecelia fills the long bouts of silence she knows I won’t by telling me about her life before she was summoned to Triple Falls.
Since this thing between us became regular, I’ve done what I can to avoid this part—knowing the consequences of feeding into it and deciding it’s inevitable.
Because I want to know.Everything.
So, I listen, feigning ignorance about the particulars I do. At the same time, she fills me in on memories—and the people that matter to her. She changes some of the fiction I’ve read about—the girl living in a parallel universe to factual—the beauty of what makes her tick while whispering a new reality between us.
“I’m sorry...I haven’t shut up,” she says sometime later. I don’t even recognize how much time has passed, having sunk deeper into her melodic voice, her history, her antics, smiling or chuckling—even when she’s not funny.
Especially then.
“Must be the weed,” she offers as if her rambling hasn’t been present the whole time we’ve been together. “Am I boring you?” Before I can answer, she’s talking again. “I don’t remember what I was talking about anyway.”
“When you and Christy stole your mom’s car in seventh grade,” I prompt.
“You were listening,” she muses.
“Not like I had much of a choice,” I quip in jest, pulling her tighter to me so she knows it. I feel her smile against my skin as she tilts back, her eyes on what she can make of my profile before she presses a slow, sensual kiss to my neck. She wants me to know she cares and to feel it—and I do.
Stopping this is pointless, but encouraging it is the worst crime I could commit.
Tonight, I do neither.
