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Caroline
I had him for one more week while they got some legal stuff sorted out.
Seven days.
He tried to pull away from me, but no way was I letting that happen. I slept in his bed. I kissed him and licked him, bit him and scratched him, put my tongue on every single spot on his body it wanted to be.
He was mine. Mine, and I knew I had to give him back, but I didn’t have to do it yet. I refused to cry over losing him when he wasn’t gone.
I helped him pack. I helped him sell his car to Quinn.
I took him to bed.
I walked him to Student Affairs and forced him to formally withdraw. Not because I thought he might come back, but because that was the right way to leave. With deliberation. With care.
I deliberately, carefully, slowly drew his cock into my mouth and sucked it until he stopped saying my name and started bucking off the mattress, his heels catching the fitted sheet so it rucked up underneath him and he came with his hands tangled in my hair, his fingertips gentle behind my ears.
I held him.
I touched him.
That last night, I stroked his back and his shoulders, his hips and his ass, his arms, his neck, his face.
For as long as he was still mine to love, I loved him.
Then I let him go.
At the airport, I don’t know what to say.
We hold hands on the walk from the parking lot to the check-in counter.
We hold hands on the walk from the check-in counter to the security line.
We hold hands until the moment is finally here when he has to go and I have to stay and we can’t hold hands anymore.
He drops his backpack on the ground and pulls me into his arms.
I can’t think of words to tell him that mean anything. It’s easy, with my body, to press up against him. To rub my damp eyelashes against his shirt, feel his lips on the crown of my head, his arms so tight around me.
I won’t tell him I wish he didn’t have to go. There’s a little girl on the other side of the country who needs him. There’s a place he fits into, a life that’s not this life, and I can’t question the claim it has on him. I don’t have the right.
I can wish things were different. I’ve wished it a thousand times. But as long as they’re not different, this is the way it is, and I won’t tell him I wish he would stay.
“Hey,” he says.
I look up at his face. I push my hands up his neck, cover his ears where they stick out because he’s wearing his black baseball cap. He’ll get on a plane next to some lady who thinks he’s an anonymous college dude, nobody important. She won’t know that he’s everything.
“I’ll miss your ears,” I tell him.
“I’ll miss that gap in your teeth. ”
“I never did show you how I could spit through it. ”
“That’s all right. We found some other stuff to do with our time. ”
That makes me smile, which makes him smile, and we just look at each other. I study how his eyes crinkle at the corners, how deep the lines sink in around his lips, how nice his teeth are. His slightly crooked nose. The smile fades away, leaves his mouth so serious, as serious as his eyes.
