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Jake and I walked hand in hand along the shore. I was getting used to the way he was always touching me, and I was filled with dread whenever I thought about the time not too far off when I would no longer be able to reach for him in the middle of the night. It had been only days, but already I didn’t know how I would ever sleep alone again.
Had we only known each other for less than two weeks? It seemed like there was never a time when I didn’t know Jake.
The night breeze pricked at my skin through my shirt as I pulled my camera out of the bag and flung it around my neck. I was glad Jake hadn’t gotten me a digital camera. I couldn’t wait to develop the negatives myself in a real dark room. Jake had told me that when he was back from his job, he would set up a makeshift dark room for me wherever we ended up.
I practically just met him and he was making arrangements for me in his life and in his home. I’d never had that before.
Jake was sitting in the sand with his face to the sky, eyes closed. I took the opportunity to get some candid shots of him. “Don’t you have enough pictures of me already?” he asked, without opening his eyes. I had taken a bunch of him this week. My favorite was one of him with a cigarette in his mouth as he pulled up to the apartment on his bike. I couldn’t wait to develop that one. The sight of him made all sorts of crazy shit happen inside of me, which made me both incredibly happy and scared out of my mind.
“Nope,” I answered. I would need to remember what he looked like when he left for good. I needed hundreds more.
Maybe thousands.
I pushed myself between his legs, and he opened his eyes. “Hey babe,” he said, spreading his arms to me.
I sat facing the sunset with my back to him, wrapped up in Jake and the comfort of our silence. His cheek rested on mine as we watched the last of the sun disappear into the horizon.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “I made this for you.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out an ornate metal charm attached to a simple stainless steel chain.
“You made this?” The pendant was a collection of interwoven silver wires. If I looked closely at the middle of the pendant, I could see his initials JFD where the wires connected. “It’s beautiful,” I told him. And it truly was. In fact, it was the most beautiful piece of jewelry I had ever seen.
“I made it for you a while ago, but I was afraid to give it to you.”
“What’s a while ago?”
Jake’s face reddened a little. “Shortly after I met you that night in the yard. I couldn’t get you out of my head. I asked around about you a little bit, too, and before I knew it, I was standing there with a welder in my hand at the shop, making this.”
“Why did you want to make this for me back then? We never even talked that night.” I thought back on the night just two weeks ago that involved me being homeless and Jake threatening me with his gun. “It was more like a fight.”
“It was the best fight I’ve ever had.” Jake opened the clasp and motioned for me to turn around. I lifted my hair so he could put the chain around my neck and close the clasp. His fingers brushed against the back of my neck. Goose bumps popped up all over my legs from the contact, and I shivered at the sensation.
I held my new gift between my fingers and inspected it. I wouldn’t have believed he was so talented. His work was so detailed and delicate. “Thank you,” I said. “For everything. I mean it. You’ve done so much for me.” Jake lifted my chin to him and looked me in my eyes. I continued, “You deserve way more than I could ever give you in return.” I meant it. He deserved more than me, I had nothing to offer him. Nothing he would want anyway.
“Why does this sound sort of like a goodbye?”
“It isn’t... not yet anyway.”
“I’m not leaving until tomorrow, Bee. Let’s save it for then.” Jake didn’t understand that I wasn’t talking about this trip. I was talking about him leaving for good.
Without me.
His beautiful blue eyes sparkled. He looked at me with such intensity, such fire. I wanted to know what he saw in me that made him look that way, because I didn’t see it. Maybe, he was delusional. He turned me to face him, tilted my chin up, and slowly, very slowly, closed his lips over mine.
My very first real kiss.
I didn’t pull away. Instead, I surprised myself and leaned into him. I closed my eyes, the sensation was like nothing I’d expected. The feeling didn’t end where our flesh met. It was so much more than mouth-on-mouth.
It was like our kiss had started a wordless conversation between our bodies.
It turned out that desire was a funny thing for me. In all my seventeen years, I never thought I’d be able to feel it. I always thought it was one of the feelings that’s been dead inside me. It wasn’t that I was searching for it. I didn’t want anything to do with it. But it was within me all along, I guessed. I’d just never met anyone capable of stirring it strongly enough to break through my determination not to feel it at all.
Until Jake.
He kept the kiss soft but short. I had a feeling that was out of consideration for me. I knew he didn’t want to push me, but when he pulled away, I felt the emptiness between us. It was like a crater had been left in the space he just occupied, cold and dark and empty. The rush in my veins was similar to the feeling I got after riding his bike wrapped around the back of him.
I wanted more.
More what? What was I capable of giving him? Could I take it further?
I had no idea. I just knew I wanted more of him.
“Jake, what are we doing?” I asked, breathless from the smallest of kisses.
“I am sitting on a beach, holding a very beautiful girl,” he said. I don’t think I was ever going to get used to him calling me beautiful. I had to remind myself he was only calling me beautiful because he hadn’t seen all of me. “And you?”
“No, really,” I persisted. “What are we doing?”
He was still confused. “Kissing?”
“Jake.”
He smirked. “I like the way you say my name.”
And, I thought I was the President of the United States of Avoidance.
“You know what I mean. With us. What’s going on with us? It’s important. I need to know now because at some point I’m not going to be able to give you what you want. And then what?”
He nuzzled his nose into my neck. “What is it you think I want?”
“Normal boy-girl stuff,” I said throwing my hands in the air. I felt defeated before this line of conversation had even gotten started.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t want normal. I want you.” He smiled down at me. “And we do normal stuff. We kiss.” To prove his point he gave me a quick peck on the lips and smiled.
“What happens when a kiss isn’t enough?”
“Abby, just a few days ago you flinched anytime anyone touched you, and look at us now.”
I did look at us. I was sitting in between his legs, his chin rested on my shoulder, my hands on his thighs. “I still flinch when it comes to other people,” I said. My aversion to Jake may have no longer existed, but I still wanted to stroke-out if anyone else came within my personal space.
“But you don’t flinch when I touch you anymore, and that’s what counts.”
“I like it when you touch me,” I whispered, the very words were hard to say. “But I can’t even…” I pulled at the hem of my sleeves. I didn’t know how to tell him that I didn’t know if I would ever be able to allow him to see under my clothes.
Naked.
Ever.
“You can’t even what?”
“Show you,” I said. “I can’t show you... me.”
“Why don’t you just tell me about it, talk to me? Will that make it easier?” He was so much more understanding than I thought he’d be. “Instead of showing me what you think is so bad, you can just tell me.”
“I can’t,” I said. It was locked so tight in my memory it was a floodgate I wasn’t ready to open. Not just for Jake, but for me. I needed it to stay where I’d stored it for the last eight years.
“You will when you’re ready,” Jake said confidently.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready,” I told him. “There is a possibility that I’ll just be broken forever. I’m not just hiding my body, Jake. I’m pushing the memories out by not showing you what my past has done to me. It’s my way of holding on.” I shivered. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to just let it go.”
Jake smiled like he’d just accepted a challenge. “Bee, if you feel even a tiny bit of the attraction I feel when I’m around you, just a small amount of how bad I want you…” He kissed the spot behind my ear and flicked his tongue on my neck. Tingles traveled through my skin, sending messages to every part of my neglected body. “Then, taking our clothes off in front of each other is inevitable. It’s human nature. It’s us.” Jake seemed so sure of himself, but what he was saying sounded almost impossible to me.
“I think we both know we don’t exactly fit the human nature mold.”
“No, we don’t fit any mold. But, where you are concerned, it’s simple.” He kissed along my jaw line. “I want you, Abby. No bullshit. I want you just the way you are.” He moved his lips to the corner of my mouth and brushed them over my face as he spoke. I closed my eyes and my lips parted in anticipation. “I would very much like to see that body of yours, but there is no rush. We won’t do anything you’re not ready for.” He moved his hands to cup my ass through my shorts. “But damn, baby, waiting will be brutal.” He kissed me again.
