9 Letters (25 page)

I let my fingers run up her neck,
gently, up from her shoulder and into her hair. She arced her neck
back in pleasure, so I brought my other hand up to join the first
one.

Then I grasped her hair tight.
Not pulling, just holding, close near her scalp. I held her head in
place as I kissed her neck, letting my tongue trace its way up to her
ear.

She took a deep breath in. “I
feel safe with you,” she said. “I don’t usually.
With men.”

I let go of her head with one
hand, gripped her shoulder.

She leaned back down on the bed,
her legs still dangling off, and I let myself fall into bed next to
her.

She rolled on top of me, kissed
me hard. I kissed her back.

I couldn’t tell you how
long that kiss was. Two lonely people, happy in bed, with all the
night stretched out in front of us. It was a long kiss.

Then I stood up, unbuttoned my
shirt, took it off. The undershirt next. She sat up in bed, put her
arms around my hips, and kissed my hard belly. She let her tongue
drift down toward the top of my pants.

“May I?” she asked. I
nodded.

I undid my belt, and she slipped
my pants down. I was growing huge inside my briefs, and she ran the
tip of her finger along the length of me through the fabric. I could
scarcely stand how much I wanted her. How much I wanted her hands on
me, her mouth on me.

“Talk dirty to me,”
she said. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

I don’t talk dirty. I don’t
talk much at all.

But yesterday I would have told
you I didn’t dance, either.

“I want your hands on me,”
I said. “I want to get hard in your hands, then I want your
mouth on me, your tongue on me.”

She slipped a hand inside my
briefs, up through the leg, and circled around the base of my cock.

“What will you do to me if
I do? What do I get?” She looked up at me, her eyes glinting,
and I knew exactly what she wanted me to say.

I never, not in my life, would
have imagined a girl as sweet as Rae could talk so hot.

“I’ll fuck you,”
I said. She smiled.

“You can do better than
that,” Rae said. Her hand tightened around my cock.

“I’ll hold you down
on your bed, wet you with my tongue, then slide my dick into you.”

“And?”

She took her hand off of me and
it was like the breath left my body. I whimpered, even. I couldn’t
help it. But then she pulled down my briefs, and my dick sprung free,
and her hand was back around it.

“I’ll push deep
inside you,” I said, “and I’ll fuck you like it’s
all I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

She put her mouth on my dick,
then. She went at it with the same playful curiosity she’d
shown when we kissed earlier. But never in my life had anyone done so
well what she was doing. She let spit dribble down my shaft, then
started to slide one hand up and down while the other stayed firmly
at the base, holding me in place. The tip of her tongue lapping my
head in hungry strokes, her eyes on me the whole time.

I let out a moan, a long, loud
moan. I’d always been so quiet.

“Don’t stop talking,
or I’ll stop sucking,” she said, pulling her lips off of
me for just a second, then running her tongue around the edge of the
head of my dick again.

“I’ll hold you by
your hips as I ram into you, deep into you. Strong and hard. Like you
want it.”

She put my cock almost all the
way into her mouth. Just for a second. Just showing off what she
could do. Then she went back at it with her hands, pulled her mouth
off of me, just jerking me off with her lips poised right in front.

“Alright,” she said.

“Alright what?” I
asked.

“Hold me down on the bed.
Wet me with your tongue, then slide your dick into me.”

“I want you,” I said.

She took off her shirt, then her
white bra. Her chest was freckled, her breasts pert and full. Her
nipples were hard and pink. I knelt down in front of where she sat on
the edge of the bed, then kissed her between those breasts, then
cupped one in my hand and sucked her nipple until she cried out in a
mixture of pleasure and pain.

I pulled my hot mouth away from
her, leaned back to unzip her jeans, and helped her slide them down
over her perfect legs. She had soft skin, a lot of curves. I liked
that. I took off her underwear, then grabbed her calves and pulled
her towards the edge of the bed, making her squeal a little. Then I
pushed her thighs wide apart and ran my tongue up the line of her
pussy.

“I’ve been wet for
you since we got out of the truck,” she said.

I could taste it. I started
lapping at her in earnest, and she wrapped her legs around my back,
holding her up against me.

“In a second, I’m
going to let you go,” she panted. “You’re going to
get a condom, and I’m going to watch you put it on. Then you’re
going to hold me down and fuck me gently. I want you to be careful
right now, because I want to fuck you for a long, long time.”

I stroked myself as she talked
like that. Things you never know you want until you have them.

She let me go, and I stood up. I
went to open her bedside table drawer.

“They’re in my
purse,” she said, grinning. “I brought them to the
picnic.”

“You brought them to the
picnic?”

“Well, you’ve got a
pickup, don’t you?”

What a woman.

I got the condom out from her
purse and she stared intently at me as I strode nude across the room
back toward her, my cock hard in front of me.

“Can I trust you?”
she asked.

“You can trust me,” I
said. I meant it. I keep my word.

I slipped the condom on, and she
moved to the center of the bed, her posture suddenly shy.

I climbed on top of her, kissed
her. She let me fall into her, and her legs opened up around me. I
found her opening with my hand, guided the tip of my cock into her,
and watched her face as I slid slowly in.

She opened her mouth, breathless
and voiceless. She didn’t breathe in again until I was all the
way inside her, buried deep. She wrapped her legs around me and I
kissed her hard.

“You want this?” I
asked, my voice gone rough.

“Mmmhmm,” she
whimpered.

I thrust. Slow, hard, deep.

“Mmmhmm,” she
whimpered, harder that time.

I built up speed, just the
slightest bit of speed. But our bodies stayed locked together, and I
fucked her hard and slow like she wanted. Hard and slow. She moaned
the whole time, from someplace deep inside her, like I’d given
her permission to let it out. I told her she was a good girl, that
her pussy was sweet, and I told her what fucking her felt like. I
gave her what she needed, because she’d told me what she wanted
to hear. I could see her defenses falling away one wall at a time
with every whisper, every thrust of my cock. Somewhere in there she
started crying a little, holding me tighter, but I never stopped.

After an eternity, she rolled me
over, too turned on to wait any longer, and she rode me fast and
hard. I clung to the headboard while she rode me, and soon she was
screaming and bucking on top of me, letting go of everything she’d
been holding onto for so long. She leaned down, kissed me, kept
riding me. Then she leaned up again, put two fingers on her clit, and
started touching herself while I fucked her from underneath.

She was moaning louder, and she
moved to meet my thrusts in quick, sudden bursts. Letting me slip
almost out of her, then thrusting me deep inside her again, fast. She
breathed heavy, through her mouth.

“I’m coming,”
she said. “I want you to come too.”

So I started fucking her with
everything I had, and as she crested into orgasm, I kept fucking her
until I could feel myself about to come too. I pulled her down onto
me, put her mouth against mine, and came like I’d never come
before.

It lasted minutes. It must have.
I don’t know. I just laid on the bed, inside her, her naked on
top of me, and both of us were shaking as waves of orgasm rushed
through our bodies like it was one body.

“I’ve never...”
I said.

I didn’t know how to finish
that sentence. Come like that? Come that hard? Come together with
someone on the first date? Watched a girl touch herself on top of me?
Been so completely and utterly sure that sex was the best thing that
ever happened to me?

All of those.

I pulled out of her, my hands on
the base of the condom.

“I felt you even through
the condom,” she said.

She curled up with her head on my
chest, and I pulled the sheets over us.

“I feel safe,” she
said.

She was crying a little bit. I
could hear it in her voice.

“You are,” I said.
“You are.

Sometimes, right before I open my
eyes in the morning, I realize I’ve got no idea where I am.
Today all I knew was that I’d had good dreams, dreams about
running with King, but when I woke up I knew it wasn’t my bed.
It took a minute or so to come to my senses. But when I did, I felt
good. Rae was on one side of me, King on the other. The window was
open a crack, letting in the morning air, and I heard birds in the
distance.

I watched Rae for a little while
as she cuddled Muffin. For a terrier, that dog sure took up a lot of
space. No wonder Rae had such a big bed.

I’d assumed I’d feel
guilty, but I just didn’t. I was getting my life back together.
I was definitely awake, though the sun was barely over the horizon,
so I got myself out of bed. I got sort of dressed, with my jeans and
my undershirt, then went out to the kitchen to start making myself
some coffee.

Make enough for both of us,
actually.

Once she woke up, I’d ask
if I could raid her fridge and make us up some breakfast.

Her kitchen was split off from
her living room by just a counter, and her laptop was sitting on that
counter surrounded by a mess of books and papers. Her work stuff, I’d
assumed.

I couldn’t really imagine
doing work on a computer. I know how important they are, it’s
just hard to wrap my head around doing something for money that
didn’t mean putting my whole body into it.

Seemed to go alright for Rae,
though. But hell, was I going soft? Was I becoming a city guy? Going
from a woman who grew up on the rodeo to a woman who wrote for a
living.

Jesus, I really am an idiot. That
kind of stuff doesn’t matter at all. Hell, I’d grown up
in the city myself. Was still here.

That’s the kind of nonsense
I had running through my head while I was looking through cabinets
for coffee filters. But my elbow hit a wire, and her laptop screen
came to life, and there was her Facebook.

I wasn’t snooping. It was
just, you know, open. I wouldn’t’ve clicked on anything,
looked at her history, none of that—even if I knew how, which I
didn’t. I wouldn’t be able to stand someone doing that to
me, either. But it was open, and I couldn’t help but look.

Because there in the
upper-left-land corner of the screen, there was Emily Cawley’s
smiling face. Her memorial page. Rae had found her memorial page.

I started scrolling through.
Didn’t count as snooping—I knew that page inside and out.

It was skewed more towards her
Kansas City friends than her rodeo friends. Her rodeo friends, it’s
not that they didn’t love her, not that they didn’t miss
her. Just that less of them were on Facebook. And she’d left
their life for a long time.

All those pictures of her, of me,
of us with our friends. Happy at the bar, happy at a concert. That
wedding photo with the slingshot and Emily’s wicked, happy
grin. Happy, happy.

What an evil thing, how we make
ourselves look happy for photos. You don’t realize it at the
time, but when you’re looking back and all you see are smiling
happy faces, you start to wonder what’s wrong with you now.

Happy, smiling faces. Paired with
the worst words anyone would ever have to write:

“We’ll miss you,
Emily.”

“The first day you came
into Pre-Calc I knew we were going to be friends.”

“All those secrets, all
those things we whispered to one another in the fields and parking
lots and everywhere, those will go with me to the grave.”

I found one of Natalie’s
posts, one she’d posted on the anniversary of Emily’s
death. “You never had to say it. We’re not the kind of
family that needs to say it. You loved me. I loved you. I thought
we’d be old cowgirls laughing at the tourists. I miss you.”

It’s like Natalie’s
sister and my wife were two different people. Emily, she’d
never been shy to say she loved me. And I couldn’t, not for the
life of me, imagine her laughing at anyone.

I kept scrolling through it all,
till I found my last post: “Been six months. Not a day’s
gone by that I don’t miss you.” It was simple, and it
said something like what it needed to say, but it hadn’t been
what I’d typed. The first time I’d typed it, I’d
written: “Not a morning’s gone by that I don’t wake
up to think that somehow, you were going to be there next to me.”
I didn’t want to say something that personal, not to the whole
world. So I deleted it, tried again. Took me four tries to say what I
needed to say as simply as that.

It was unsettling, the thought of
Rae going through that page. Like she was looking into a diary of my
pain, of our friends’ pain. Natalie’s pain. All of it. I
hadn’t written what I’d written thinking that one day
some new girl was going to go back through and read it all.

If Rae’d gone back all the
way, she’d have seen where I wrote some stuff a hell of a lot
more personal than just “I think about you every day.”

That’s when I saw the book
next to the computer.
A
Simple Guide to Grief
.
It was dog-eared, highlighted. I started flipping through it.