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I feel every noise he makes between my legs—and I imagine that the thickness in my throat is driving deep inside me.
My jaw aches and my eyes water, but it’s worth it. When I think I might taste something salty down my throat, when his abs and thighs tighten, I feel a swell of heat between my legs and draw him slowly out of my mouth.
As his body tenses and he makes a low sound off loss in his throat, I crawl up his body, rubbing up against him until my pussy glides over his dick.
I get a flash of his dark eyes. Then Barrett fli
ps me over on my back, positions his head at my wet entrance, and, with his eyes shut tightly, surges into me.
I hold onto his forearms as he pounds me fast and hard and we both pant and moan, and he says, “You’re so…fucking perfect.”
That’s it for me.
He follows me a second later.
Barrett cleans us up, then disappears into the bathroom. I watch his tall shadow move through the room, and feel him crawl back into bed. He lies on his back and folds his arms behind his head.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
He laughs, a low, smoky sound. I wait for words, and when none find me, I scoot over closer to him. I snuggle up against his chest and Barrett wraps his arm around me.
I watch him until his eyes shut and his body twitches. At that cue, his eyes shoot open, wide and alarmed.
I stroke his hair and hold him tighter. “It’s okay…”
After a few minutes, his breathing has gone steady.
* * *
Barrett
December 29, 2011
Being back stateside is always fucking strange. The smell of soil and moisture in the air. The way every surface—floors, counters, walls—looks like it’s just been spit-shined. The roads are smooth and wide and quiet. The cars look pristine. Everyone wears pants, carries an iPhone, wears sunglasses.
I catch a hop to Stewart, arriving at the base at 7:35 a.m. New York time. I grab the keys to a Chevy Suburban at the Enterprise desk and have to sit in it a minute before revving up. It smells new. Odometer says 10,000 miles. The car feels large and quiet with only me inside.
My first stop is a gas station. The number of food options inside overwhelms me. I don’t recognize half the brands. Caramel apple bubble gum, blackberry-flavored water. The price of cigarettes is high. I buy some Marlboros, just to have them in my pocket.
Stewart is a little west of Newburgh, only 19 miles north of the family cabin at Iona Island. The drive is lined with trees and packed with big cars filled with unassuming Americans fiddling with earbuds, reapplying lipstick, talking on their smart phones at red lights.
I try to assess myself. And try to plan.
I’m told Kelly has his phone, but the two times I’ve called, he hasn’t answered. I don’t even bother to call my father. Haven’t in years. The few times I did, after shipping out, he didn’t answer. I wouldn’t know where Kellan was were it not for my aunt. She told me Kellan bolted right after Lyon died. Ly was playing chess in Kellan’s room. He’d been discharged. They thought he was doing better than Kellan. Anyway, Kelly took New York public transport from Sloan-Kettering Memorial to some hotel and passed the fuck out. Poor kid. When I think about him by himself—just one blond, blue-eyed, dimpled kid—my stomach feels like it’s full of Jell-O.
I try to steel myself, but as the river weaves between the dense trees on my left and the roads narrow toward Iona, I feel sick. I have this bizarrely clear memory, which thereafter runs like a film reel in my mind. I’m in my parents’ room, in that awful pale peach wing-backed chair. It must be sometime in the afternoon because the curtains are half-shut the way I did them when the sun got very bright. I can see Mom’s hair in that braid over her left shoulder. The nurse, Odessa, showed me how to do it one day. I’m sitting there by Mom carving a squirrel. Just turned sixteen or about to. Regardless, spending all my days driving Mom to appointments. Except in this memory she’s not going anywhere. The bandages are still around her upper torso, and her skin is angel pale. I sit the squirrel and my knife down and lay my head there on her mattress, just beside her hip. I remember a sharp ache in my chest when her hand didn’t come to rest in my hair. Then Lyon and Kellan are coming through the doorway. A nurse—Charlene—is smiling when I lift my head. My stomach flips because they’ve never seen Mom this way. Until a day or two ago, she hadn’t been unconscious like this. Charlene shrugs and smiles. Lyon pulls a plastic dinosaur from his pocket.
“Look Barrett! I got a dinosaur for you!”
“Cool. Where’d you get that, buddy?”
He comes over to me. Kellan too. “Lisa took us to Target!”
Kellan looks from me to Mom as Ly hands me the dinosaur. Lyon blinks his blue eyes. “I have one too.” He pulls his own brown dinosaur from another pocket. “Mine is triceratops.” His little eyes peer up at me. “Barrett, are you sad?”
My heart misses a beat. “No. Why?” My jaw tightens and I want to look at Lisa, though I don’t. What has she told them?
“Mommy told me if you’re sad that we should cheer you up.”
