Separate Schools Read online

  “You didn’t see me?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You were out there ...”

  He looked over her shoulder to where she pointed behind her. “It must have been someone else.”

  “It wasn’t you? I bared myself to ...” Who had she bared herself to?

  Harrison said, “You had two peeping toms?”

  “Oh my God, no,” she laughed to protect herself from a washing shame. She’d flashed someone she hadn’t intended, and doing it for Harrison had almost wrecked her. And look at her now, all these years later. It paled in comparison.

  “You never told me before.”

  She looked in his eyes, so happy now to see some heaviness lifted from them. “I never wanted to admit I did that ... Isn’t that crazy?”

  He nodded.

  “And then what I did tonight ...” She looked away again.

  “You wanted me to see you naked?”

  When she looked back to him, he blessed her with the slightest of smiles. She nodded and gave him a fragile smile back.

  He said, “We were just friends back then.”

  “I wanted to show myself to you. You made me feel safe, and I knew you watched. I wanted to show somebody maybe, anybody, but I knew I could trust you.”

  “But it wasn’t me,” he laughed.

  “Oh God,” she laughed now, too, and hid her face in her hands.

  “I wish it was me,” he said.

  “Who do you think was out there?” she whispered.

  He shrugged, but his smile faltered. “Am I just safe to you? You wanted to show yourself, but you felt safe with me.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “It’s happening again, isn’t it? I was your safe boyfriend, here until you’re ready for better.”

  “No way, Harrison. You’re for real.”

  He nodded, looked a little sullen and couldn’t hold her gaze for long. He said, “I’m for real. I’ll be here for you when you come back to Michigan.”

  She said, “I like that. I couldn’t stand to lose you as a friend.”

  He made a soft scoff. “I’m your lover.”

  “You’re my lover,” she agreed. “If you’re okay with that.”

  His eyes steadied on her. “I am.”

  “I’ll always be your friend, Harrison. No matter what.”

  He said, “I want more than that.”

  “I do, too.”

  Harrison said in a shaky voice, “Can I come and sit with you?”

  Her sobs came back to threaten her, and she said, “Please, come and sit with me. I need you to, baby, I need you ...”

  Harrison scooted up the bed, getting a hand on her knee and she gripped his arms. He said, “Would it be okay if I held you?”

  “Of course, Harrison. I want you to hold me.”

  Harrison took her in his arms, and she pushed her face into his neck and cried.

  58

  There was no way he thought he would ever recover after the damage done to his heart today, but it was soaring right now and every bit of him tingled with affection and ardor for the fine figure he clutched against him. He couldn’t be without her, couldn’t bear to not have her in his life. They would work this out somehow. He would do whatever it took to make her happy and to make her stay.

  She softly cried against his neck and he consoled her, stroked her hair and squeezed her carefully. Her tears made his shirt go damp and warm. Soft lips kissed at the sensitive skin of his neck, just above his collar and he grunted with boundless pleasure.

  They just stayed connected. Gentle strumming rode a cool lake breeze through the open window and rustled their hair. Laughter and singing picked up, and they could hear the crackle of the fire; all their friends gathered below. He held her in his arms and stroked her hair, and breathed her in, and soon she stopped crying and they both felt at peace.

  Try as he might to push away what she’d done, the images were unshakeable. While he’d held her, he’d been able to suppress them, but what he’d seen—no, what she’d shown him—burned in him now that he thought he had her in his heart again.

  Both hands cupping her cheeks he held her face and looked in her eyes. She closed them and parted her lips, thinking he wanted to kiss. He took her mouth and held her lips with his. When they parted he asked her: “Was it really good with him?”

  She shook her head no, her fine brow lowered over those glowing gray eyes.

  “It wasn’t?” he said, frowning, knowing she was lying. He watched her.

  She said, “No, I mean we’re not doing that, telling you that sort of thing.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “No way, Harrison.”

  “Yes, Taylor. Why not?”

  “I don’t know. To protect you.”

  “I don’t need protecting. I watched with my own eyes. You can tell me the truth. The truth is what I need.”

  She regarded him almost coldly, said, “Well, you watched it.”

  “That’s your answer?”

  “What do you want me to say, Harrison?”

  “Was he better than me?”

  Now she touched his lip with the point of her index finger and he wondered if she picked that up from Colt. The bottom of his stomach fell away and his insides went watery again.

  “Was he?” he whispered.

  “Yes, Harrison,” she said so quietly only the S sounds were audible.

  “That’s okay,” he said, lowering his eyes.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, making him feel very young and left behind.

  He challenged her with an adult idea: “It turned me on to watch you.”

  They held their gaze and his eyes flitted over hers, wondering how he could take back the statement, or how he might temper it somehow. Taylor worried a canine over her lower lip, and her brows lowered. She asked him: “It did?”

  He admitted it. “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “It really did. Bad.”

  She whispered, “Are you serious?”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted? You left the window open for me. Knew I would spy on you. Did you want it to hurt me, or did you want me to watch you and like it?”

  “I don’t really know, Harrison. I hoped, I guess, but I didn’t count on it.”

  “What if I watched, and it hurt me bad?”

  “It’s up to you to watch or look away. I wanted you to see so you would know.”

  “Know what?”

  She shrugged and made a pained, vacillating expression.

  He said, “Know what you’re missing?”

  “No, not like that,” she urged in a soft whisper and stroked his cheek.

  “That’s how it felt,” he said. “I saw what you were missing.”

  “I think I just wanted you to know me.”

  “I know you, Taylor,” he said and squeezed her, hating the thought that she might think there was part of her not shared. “And I saw you together. I saw what you did. It’s not like what we do.”

  “We’re loving.”

  “I know—but I don’t fuck you like that.”

  She studied him gravely. “Did it hurt to watch me?”

  “More than I can even tell you.”

  “It did?”

  “I have a lump in my heart,” he said and closed a fist over his chest.

  “Oh no, baby, don’t ...” She held his wrist and stroked her thumb over his knuckles.

  “Not because of what I watched, but I’m so afraid you’ll leave me, so afraid you won’t want me in your life anymore. I’d do anything to be with you ...”

  “I want you in my life, I swear I do, Harrison. I love you.”

  “Do what you want, Taylor, I want you to, I want you to do it.”

  “Am I bad?” she asked him.

  “We can figure this out.”

  “I don’t want you to hurt. I thought if we were on a break, you wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I want you to have whatever you want.”

  Sh
e paused, asked: “What are we?”

  “Our relationship?” He took her hand and studied it. Taylor was the only girl for him, and he knew it a long, long time ago. What she wanted wounded him deeply, but it wasn’t unreasonable. She didn’t want to only ever be with one boy. It would have been wonderful for her to know in her heart as he did that there was only one other for her, but not everyone was the same. This was Taylor. And he was in love with Taylor. If this is who she was, he would accept her, and love her. “What do you call it ...? I guess ‘open.’ Is it an open relationship?”

  She smiled a little, brought their combined hands closer so she could kiss the heel of his thumb. “At least it has a name.”

  “I want you to be fulfilled, Taylor,” he said, “but I need to have you here,” and now he tugged their hands to his chest and laid them over his heart.

  She blinked rapidly, and he saw her eyes swell with tears. She swiped them away and smiled.

  “You have to do it, too,” she whispered.

  He nodded, but felt nothing in his heart for anyone else.

  While they lay side by side, their heads on the pillows, hands touching each other, his mind stretched over the coming school year, and it spread him thin knowing she would be with other guys. It turned his mind to paper to think she might be intimate with another boy, intimate in the way she’d been with Colt, but it would have to be that way, and the alternative was depthless destruction. Being physically separated from her would be dreadful, being spiritually separated would be impossible.

  Their breaths came loud and slow over the sounds from the campfire beyond the dormer window and he smiled a little and stroked her face, contented knowing for now the pain of separation was staved.

  She smiled and rubbed her cheek against his touch. She said, “Tell me how you liked it.”

  A flash of shame flickered low in his belly. “Watching you?”

  “Yeah ... can you ...?”

  “I did. I liked it,” he admitted but looked away from her. He turned away and lay his shoulders on the pillow so he could watch the ceiling and run his hand through his hair protectively.

  She whispered, “Did you jerk off?—you can tell me.”

  She’d passed it off as a joke, but he knew she wondered. “Ew, no,” he said.

  “It would be okay if you did.”

  He chuckled and stared at the ceiling. When he turned again to regard her he saw her expression was serious. “What ...?”

  “It’s okay,” she said supportively.

  “I didn’t touch myself, but ...”

  She waited. “But what?”

  In his periphery he could see her sweet, tanned face watching him, could sense her curiosity, a certain baseness there, too, lurking, making him think she wanted to hear something dirty like that he did touch himself, but most importantly he saw the face of his longtime friend. One to whom he could tell the truth—she may even get a kick out of it; he sure did for some reason.

  “I ... uh ... came ...”

  “Uh-huh ...”

  “I ... uh ... well, without touching myself ...”

  “You came? ...” she asked incredulously.

  He’d been excited to say it but once the words were out, he felt his cheeks blaze red. “Maybe ...” he said and scrunched up his nose.

  “Oh, shit,” she sighed and gave him an expression that made him believe she liked it.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” he said.

  “No, don’t be,” she said, a breathlessness in her voice.

  The next thing, he’s grunting and buckling as her hand thrusted down the front of his shorts and underwear. Her fingers scratched at his penis and testicles and then she gripped them all in a bunch and held them. He groaned and complained. “Ow, oh, careful, Taylor, careful. I cleaned up, changed my underwear and shorts before I came in here—were you checking?”

  “You really came?” she asked him, her hand coddling his genitals.

  “I did. I hated it, watching you, but I also didn’t, I hurt, but ... I don’t know ... you looked incredible.” Now he traced a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you going to see him again?”

  She sucked her lower lip under her front teeth and shrugged.

  “Do you like him?”

  Still with the lip tucked, she nodded. She let it plop loose and grimaced. “I don’t know if I will. I’m going away, anyway, and ... I’m just a hookup to him.”

  The sound of her voice referencing her activity with Colt as a hookup made his stomach flinch, and she noticed, gave his manhood a squeeze. Were hookups something his lovely Taylor would now become more familiar with? Bouncing from dorm room to dorm room, waking up in some new guy’s bed every Saturday morning, hair tousled and naked?

  She said, “I’ve had a crush on him forever.”

  “I hate that guy.”

  “I know.”

  With her eyes on his and her hand in his pants, the pad of her thumb caressed the head of his cock. He grew hard in her grip and she smiled and narrowed her gaze as her thumb continued to stroke at him.

  His own smile came but then it faltered. “His penis was really big.”

  “It was huge,” she whispered, then smiled as her words made his cock surge in her grip. She squeezed him.

  “Do I feel small now?”

  “You feel the same as ever,” she said.

  “But you’ve been with ... someone else now ... and he was—”

  “Hung?”

  “Hung.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I was.”

  “Did you like it?”

  Her eyes flicked over his, looking to see if he was truthful about wanting her honesty. “I liked it a lot.”

  “Oh God,” he said with a grimace, then chuckled with a funny slippery pain that wiggled through him.

  She said, “It hurt at first and it felt really weird. Like, wrong. I thought Oh, no way, I can’t do this, but then, I don’t know, his body and everything ... I was just so hot for him.”

  He breathed deep. “You were wet.”

  “I was so wet,” she whispered. There was no denying he had grown to full hardness in her hand. They could both feel what was happening.

  “Jesus, Taylor. You’re so bad.”

  “You like this ... You’re the one that’s bad.”

  “I am bad,” he said. “I spied on you while you fucked Colt Briggs.”

  She whispered, “And I was so hot you came in your pants.”

  “I came so hard, Taylor.” Their smiles grew, their eyes darted over one another, and their chests rose and fell heavily.

  “Jesus, Harrison,” she said, beginning to writhe against him, her hand went slick on his cock as he squirted pre-come out his tip. When she swooped it on him he moaned out; the pleasure was too enormous.

  She laughed, looking in his eyes, her legs rubbing together, and breathlessly asked him, “Are we going to do something here?”

  “I think so,” he gasped.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed excitedly, “I think so, too.”

  “Taylor, oh God, you’re so hot, you’re so bad, and I fucking love you ...”

  Now her knee was up on his thigh, just like she’d begun with Colt and he ran his hand up her smooth flawless leg, dipped between her thighs and found she wore no panties. She’d been sitting here naked the whole time under her sweatshirt.

  His finger slipped along her slit and he pushed it into her with no resistance, her hungry furnace swallowed him deep.

  “Oh fuck,” she sighed, and she closed her eyes and began to hump herself against his hand. Soon her pussy was making slick sounds, and he wondered if this was Colt’s semen making its way back out, or if he had somehow turned her on like this all by himself.

  “You’re so fucking wet,” he whispered.

  “Get these shorts off,” she hissed and her hands pushed at the waistband.

  59

  He gasped hopefully, “You’re still horny?”
r />   “Oh fuck, Harrison, yeah,” she said and there was an excited tremble in her voice.

  His shorts were off fast, kicked to the foot of the bed, and he stuck his cock out for her to grab it again. She did, grabbed it hard, and he groaned, put his hand up her sweatshirt and grabbed her breast.

  “Was he twice as big as me?” he asked, then kissed her.

  She kissed him savagely, gasped wetly, “At least.”

  “You came so many times.”

  Her hand stroked his slippery shaft, and he got over top of her on all fours. “He fucked me so good, Harrison.”

  “I know, baby, I saw, he fucked you so good. You were good, too.”

  “Did I look hot?”

  “So hot, Taylor,” he said as she jerked him off and he put both his hands up her shirt. His hips worked down, looking to get his cock inside her. “Are you even going to feel me now?”

  Her hand stopped stroking and his hips humped the air, desperate to feel his cock inside something. “Mm, don’t stop.”

  “Harrison ...” she whispered.

  His balls ached, his stomach felt hard and hurting. His insides were groaning with profound sexual need. “Don’t stop,” he pleaded again.

  Her hands came to his neck, and he looked up, having to raise higher up her body. Their eyes met, and she looked deep into him.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  Her gray eyes darted back and forth. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything. There was a desperation on her face, too.

  “What, Taylor?”

  She whispered, “Would you go down on me?”

  “Go down on you? No, Taylor, he—”

  “Please ...”

  “Taylor, he’s been down there. He came in you ...”

  “Please,” she said again, and without him answering, she was already pushing on his collar to force his body down hers.