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My dick twitches, her mouth is something else, gets me every time.
“Touché, Arrow.” The corner on my lip pulls into a small, sad smile. She is always right, always quietly reading me and it doesn’t bother me, not as much as it should.
The bed dips behind me. “So, what are you really doing here?”
Moving up the bed, I turn to her, she’s just inches away, her back against the pillowed headboard, legs crossed under her. I want to touch her, open her legs and taste every inch, making her say my name, but I can’t, not yet.
“I promised you a fact every session,” I start. “Let’s be honest, you only ever got one.”
Bliss smiles and nods her head.
I stare down at my hands, I didn’t come here to spill my guts, I don’t know why I came here. I just know that she cut me off with some bullshit text and it didn’t set right for me. I don’t want to overthink the feeling, but it can’t stay there.
“I’m sure you heard Jackson’s name thrown around, seen it around my place. He was my best friend.” I pause. “More like a brother. We grew up together, we were two and barely walking.” Smiling, the memories move to the front of my brain. “We did everything together, especially basketball. We had dreams, Arrow. We almost got there, we were NBA bound.” My smile fades, and I manage to meet her stormy eyes. “It happened so fast, you know. One minute we were playing a pick-up game and the next he was on the ground struggling to breath. Six months later, he was gone. I watched my brother die at the hands of some rare fucking cancer.” Tears form in my eyes, and I quickly start blinking and look away.
Her warm hands grab mine, threading her fingers through my own and squeezing. “I’m so sorry.”
I’ve heard a lot of people say I’m sorry, got a lot of cards, texts, and voicemails but none affected me like those three words from her mouth. They feel real, because other than Jackson, I’d let her in a little. She has seen flashes of me, not the basketball star, but just me.
My thumb rubs the back of her hand. “But that’s not it,” I continue. “After he died, I couldn’t handle it. I lost myself in drugs and alcohol, I didn’t even make it to his funeral, I was so fucked up. That’s not even the worst, one night I broke down.” I start to remember. “It was the night of the final four, a big deal, last game before the championship. We we’re supposed to be there, playing, and our team didn’t make it with Jackson and I gone. I abandoned them, my team, when they needed me. So, I popped more Xanax pills then I should have, tossed them back with a bottle Hennessy, and snorted a few lines of coke. I woke up in the hospital with a fucking tube down my throat. If it weren’t for my mom checking in on me, I would have died. I was gone for a while because I was in rehab for a few months, then I did outpatient, and I see a therapist now.” Shit, there it is. Now she’ll see I’m a total fuck up and be glad that it’s over.
Bliss leans over toward me, and her lips inches from me. She shouldn’t want to kiss me, but her lips press against mine anyway. Her hand caresses my face as her tongue slips between my lips, and I slowly suck on it, breathing in her lavender scent. I could pick her out anywhere just on her scent alone.
“I just need one more night with you,” I say against her lips, softly kissing her back.
Bliss pulls back slightly, her grey eyes searching, wanting, and I know what she wants, but I don’t know why. “This is all I can give you.” I answer her silent question.
She slowly nods, biting her lip, and sits back on her legs. “Tell me about him?” she asks.
Sitting up, I lean my back against the headboard. “Jackson?” She nods and moves to sit between my legs, laying her head on my chest. “He was a really cool guy, you would have liked him, and he was the charmer.”
She smiles up at me. “I prefer the asshole.”
Shaking my head, I fight a smile. I really need to get out of here or I'll never quit her. This has to be the last night.
“So, you stopped playing after,” she says, it's not a question. “Would he have wanted that for you?”
I know the answer to that, I’ve always known the answer. “No.” I shake my head. “He wanted me to play, follow our dream and shit.” I can feel the bitterness rising. “I mean, how can I do that when it was our thing? We were like Kobe and Shaq, Curry and Thompson, Dewayne and LeBron, Jordan and Pippen. We were a big deal. I can’t be Jordan alone.”
Bliss narrows her eyes as if she’s thinking, she probably has no idea who I just named off. “I know Curry, Golden State is my dad’s team.” She shrugs.
Of course, it is, they’re a hot team right now.
“I know it seems hard, or maybe impossible, but you can do it, you know?” She sits up to face me, crossing her legs under her, I already hate that I’m not touching her in some way.
She continues, “Have you ever thought that if you start playing again you might feel closer to him?”
I think back to all my sessions with Oliver, and not once has he made me see it that way, and it’s such a simple question. “Actually, I haven’t,” I admit. “I’ve built this wall up where I don’t think about it. I miss basketball, I miss my team, but I miss him too, and he’s connected to those, so I just put it in my ‘it’s not happening’ box.”
She nods, understanding before getting up and walking over to her dresser, my eyes go right to her ass in those little shorts before she turns back, climbing on the bed with a picture frame in her hand. It’s the one of her and the older man.
“This is my grandpa Eddie.” She shows me when she’s settled again. “He passed last year.” Her voice cracks and she has to blink a few times. “He was my best friend, we were always together, until I started college, and I would go back home every weekend to spend time with him. He’s the reason I’m majoring in history. It was our thing, you could say.” She smiles at the picture fondly. “We would read old history books and watch documentaries, we even planned a trip to Greece and the Middle East.” Her smile fades. “Then he started to forget things, important things. He was diagnosed with stage five Alzheimer’s the end of my freshman year. So that summer I doubled up on classes and took a break for a semester to be with him. I would read to him and watch all our favorite documentaries. He had no idea who I was by the end of the summer.” A tear escapes her eye, and I quickly wipe it away, and she gives me a sad smile. “He died a year later.” Bliss takes a deep breath. “What I’m trying to say is that he was my connection to my passion, studying makes me feel closer to him. I know everyone grieves differently, but your other methods haven’t seemed to work. Maybe this will, stop running from him and run to him.”
I pull Bliss into my arms because I can’t form the words to say to her, she always catches me off guard with the way she thinks and acts. She has the kindest heart, but she also doesn’t let me slide. Bliss deserves better than my broken soul and me, but I kiss her anyway, I caress her bare legs anyway, and I breathe in her goodness, anyway. She moves to straddle me as our kiss deepens, my fingers tangling in her hair, her soft hands cradling my face.
“I’m sorry about your grandpa, he would be proud of you.” I pull my mouth away. “You amaze me, Arrow.”
Her eyes shine, and she smiles. “Thank you, baby,” she says leaning back in, reclaiming my mouth, and I waste no time biting at her lip.
