Instead of You (23 page)

   “Well, we had
some
classes with Hayes, but he took them so damn fast that after sophomore year he’d already passed us.  But we’d claimed him by then, and we’ve just never really let him make any other friends,” David said with a laugh.

   “No joke,” Bryan added, “Hayes kicked our asses at learning.”  Both guys laughed and I found myself laughing too.

   “And you two are together?” I pointed between David and Kristen.  She immediately held out her left hand and wiggled her fingers at me, one of which held a very pretty diamond engagement ring. 

   “We’re getting married after graduation,” Kristen practically squealed.

   “Congratulations,” I said, with genuine enthusiasm.

   “So, what do you do?” Alice asked.  My blood froze in my veins.  Hayes and I hadn’t really discussed what we were going to tell his friends about me, my age, or that I was his student.  So, I decided to be vague.

   “I’m in school.”

   “Oh, yeah?  What’s your major?” she asked, leaning in, truly interested in my answer.

   “Uh, I’m undeclared still.  I have a few years left.”  I wanted desperately to get the focus off me and my age.  “Are you in school? What’s your major?”

   “I’m going for my BFA—fine arts.”  She shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, brushing it off like it meant nothing.

   “What does that entail?”

   “I’m focused on the visual arts, so painting, ceramics, photography, stuff like that.”

   “That’s so amazing.  I’m so not creative in any way.”  I shook my head, wishing there was something I was good at.

   “She’s being modest.  She’s amazing.  Her paintings are going for a grand at a studio downtown.”  Kristen was obviously very proud of her friend.

   “That’s amazing,” I replied, honestly impressed.  I’d never met a painter before.

   “See?” Kristen said, bumping her shoulder into Alice’s.  “It’s amazing.”

   “Shut up.”  Alice smiled then took a sip of her drink.

   “So you guys have known Hayes for a few years, then, right?”  I asked.

   “Pretty much since the beginning,” David said.

   “He left for college and I never really saw him much.  There’s a whole side of him I don’t really even know.”  I found myself leaning forward toward Hayes’s friends, feeling comfortable, wanting them to give me a little tiny piece of him I could tuck away, something new and special.

   “I guess you could say the same thing about us.  He never talks about home, and even though he only lived two hours away, he never took any of us there to meet his family,” Bryan said, all this while spinning his empty beer bottle on the table.  “But that never really bothered us because Hayes is pretty much the best guy we’d ever met.  He’s loyal, smart, fun, but he’s also the one person you know you can always count on.  He’d sacrifice everything for someone he cared about.”

  
That
I knew.  I loved that about him.  I nodded, giving them a smile that probably said, “Gosh, what a nice thing to say about my boyfriend.”  But I felt more like,
his greatest attribute might be his downfall
.  He’d sacrificed so much already.

   As if on cue, Hayes returned to our table with three beer bottles and my water.  He handed them out, took a pull off his own, then sat down next to me, and took my hand in his again.  This time it was I who leaned over and kissed him.  I was the one who showed him, in front of his friends and the whole world, that I had him, finally.

   A few hours later when we made it to his apartment, I was incredibly nervous.  We’d spent two nights together, but I knew that night was going to be different.  In the timeline of our relationship, a big fat circle would mark this night as important, and I was trying to prepare myself for that. 

   He held my hand as we walked through the parking lot of his apartment complex, and something about being there with him made him seem older, or me younger.  I couldn’t quite figure it out, but I definitely felt a shift in the dynamic between us.  I was letting him lead, letting him be the one to teach me something new.

   “So, you share this apartment with David?”

   “Yeah.  We moved here last year after a horrible apartment on the other side of town the year before.  This place is cool, though.  A little far from campus, but that also means there’s less loud college students out here.” 

   “And you guys aren’t loud college students?” I asked, bumping my shoulder against his.

   “Not really anymore.  I mean, sure, freshman and sophomore year we might have been a little reckless and rowdy, but that gets old after a while.  David calmed down a lot when he and Kristen got together, and I was happy to leave the party life behind.”  I thought immediately about how he was a whole year ahead in his schooling, how he was focused and driven, which probably left little time for cutting loose and getting loud.

   He led me up a staircase to the second floor and stopped at a door toward the back of the building.  He let go of my hand to unlock his door, then when it opened he motioned for me to enter first.  I dropped my overnight bag inside the door and when he flipped on the light I was instantly transported into a weird alternate reality where Hayes Wallace was an actual adult, with couches and dining room tables and big-screen TVs.  I’d never really tried to imagine where he lived because, in truth, I tried not to think much about him at all for self-preservation purposes, but the living space I was looking at in that moment was not how I would have pictured his apartment.

   The living room, dining room, and kitchen could all be seen from the doorway, and all three rooms were tidy and clean.  The furniture was used but nice looking, it all matched, and there was that same feeling of adultness.  I turned to him.

   “You’re like a real-life grown-up.”

   He shrugged and gave a shy smile, shutting the door behind him, and turning the lock.  He took my hand again as he walked past me, taking me on a grand tour.

   “This is the living room, dining room, and kitchen, although I’m not sure how stocked the fridge is, so don’t yell at me if I’m out of everything.  We’ll probably have to go out for breakfast tomorrow.”  He led me down the short hallway, motioning to the first door on the right.  “This is David’s room.  He’s staying with Kristen tonight, so we probably won’t see him again before we go back.”

   He let the words hang in the air and I immediately grabbed hold of them, turning them around in my mind and realizing what he was saying: we were alone for the night.

   “Oh,” was my incredibly adult response.

   His hand squeezed mine, but then he tugged gently and led me to the next door, opening it, and again motioning me in before him.  When I walked through the door I knew I was entering Hayes’s room immediately because the smell of him moved over me.  It was his own scent, nothing I’d ever smelled before, something dark and spicy, but not heavy.  Just Hayes.  The light came on and I took my time looking around, taking in this new Hayes’s room.

   There was a desk in the corner that looked a little cluttered, but only because it appeared to be frequently used.  There was a bookshelf that held what looked like a mix of textbooks and also books he might read for pleasure in his spare time.  There was a closet I imagined you could just barely walk into and turn in a circle, and another door that I could see led to a bathroom.

   And then there was his bed.

   His headboard was made of wooden slats and they stretched horizontally along the entire king-sized frame.  It was a dark mahogany color with a solid footboard that matched.  He had a dark gray blanket with the fluffiest pillows I’d ever seen.  It looked manly and comfortable all at the same time.  I wanted to climb atop it and snuggle down, but I also knew I would have a hard time sleeping a wink in Hayes’s bed.

   He pressed his body into mine—his front against my back—and rested his chin on my shoulder, his hands on my waist.  His words were whispered next to my ear, the breath of them caressing me and making the hairs on my arm stand on end and the swallows in my stomach take flight.

   “We don’t have to both sleep in my bed, Kenz.  I can sleep in David’s room if you’re uncomfortable.  There’s no rush or expectation here.”

   His offer, to sleep away from me, made my heart hurt.  The very last thing I wanted was to be apart from him, especially during this one night where we had, what seemed like, a finite amount of time to pretend like we were carefree, like we were normal.  I was definitely some messed-up version of Cinderella, and sooner or later, my coach was going to turn back into a pumpkin.

   I turned slowly in his arms, my hands automatically coming to his chest, and I looked up at him.

   “I would be uncomfortable if you were anywhere but next to me.”

   He leaned down and I was expecting a kiss, but his mouth went directly to where my neck met my shoulder and he breathed me in.  It was a tender moment, a moment in which I felt as though he was treasuring me, committing the two of us together in his room to memory.  A moment in which, possibly, he was memorizing what it was like to hold me because he was afraid one day he wouldn’t be able to.  Or maybe it was me who was doing that.

   He walked me backward slowly until the back of my thighs ran into the mattress.  He pulled his mouth from me, only to bring his hands to my face, eyes peering into mine.

   “You’re in charge, Kenzie.  We’ll take this as far as you want to go.  You tell me if you want me to stop.”

   “I won’t want you to stop,” I whispered, pressing up on my toes to capture his mouth.  He groaned against my lips as soon as our mouths met, and I reached down to pull his shirt over his head.  I didn’t necessarily want the experience to happen quickly, but I did want to feel his skin pressed against mine as soon as possible.  He apparently shared my view on the matter because my shirt was being lifted over my head next.  My skirt was pulled down my legs, his pants were kicked off his feet, and we were tumbling together onto his monstrous bed.  He was kissing me and I was scooting back, trying to reach the head of the bed, when I suddenly started laughing.

   “Your bed is enormous.”  I finally gave up and flopped down right where I lay.  He was leaning over me, hands on either side of my head, holding himself up, gazing down at me.  And he was smiling at me as if I were his whole world.

   “I love you,” I blurted out, the words rising up in me like lava, spilling out, sprouting wings and flying away.  “I love you more than anything.”

   His smile softened, almost disappeared, only to be replaced with the most intense expression of love.  I knew how much I loved him, could feel it in every cell of my body, but I also realized his love for me went even deeper.  No matter how hard I tried, I’d never be able to love him as much as he loved me.

   His elbows bent slightly, and his forehead rested against mine as he let out a soft sigh.  “I’ve always loved you,” he said, then pressed a kiss to my throat right below my ear.  “I love you now.”  His next kiss landed just below my other ear.  My body arched up into his, just the sensation of his lips on me making all my synapses fire.  “And I’ll love you forever,” he said just before his lips met mine.

   Oh, God.  He was so much better at love than I was.

   He kissed me just as his arm wrapped around my waist, picked me up, and pulled me until my head rested against his fluffy pillows.  My knees parted and he settled between them, one hand holding him above me, while the other took its time grazing over my bare skin.

   I reached around him, my hands splayed wide over his shoulder blades, moving down, my fingers trailing through the valley of his spine, feeling all the contour of the muscles, the map of his body, until I came to his narrow waist.  The elastic band of his boxer briefs slipped easily over my fingers as I explored lower.  Both of my hands gripped his rear and he reacted by grinding into me.

   “Hayes,” I panted between kisses.  I’d gone from nervous to completely lovesick to downright needy in the span of minutes.  I was reeling from all the emotions.  He pressed his hardness into me again, the ridge of him grinding into the most sensitive part of me, and I nearly lost my composure at that very moment. 

   His mouth moved from mine, down my throat, over my collarbone to the swell of my breast.  I lifted up, unhooked my bra, and threw it across the room faster than I ever had before.  He didn’t waste any time either, as his mouth immediately found my breast.  I gasped, lost in the sensation, only spurred on when his hand palmed the other.  Everything I was feeling I was familiar with, it was just more intense than ever before. The pulsing, the hot and constant throbbing between my legs, the feeling of stretched-tight rubber bands from my nipples to my core, the way my breasts felt hot and heavy.  It was the perfect storm of lust.

   His mouth moved from my nipple, kissing down the center of my stomach, looking to me for permission when his lips met the top of my underwear.  I nodded and rolled my hips toward him, catching a glimpse of a smile as he pulled my underwear down my thighs.

   Hayes pulled the last article of clothing off me and I resisted the urge to cover myself, to hide the parts of me no one had seen before, the parts I was most self-conscious about, but the expression on his face was one of awe and adoration.  I realized then, Hayes was the very first person to see me that way; laid bare and completely naked in every way.

   “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, his eyes moving slowly over the expanse of my pale skin that never got any sunlight, a drastic contrast to the parts of me that were tanned from days on the beach.  When his mouth landed just below my belly button, my breath caught in my throat and my whole body shuddered.  “I want to do so many things to you, McKenzie.  But this has to be slow and gentle.  I don’t want to hurt you any more than necessary.”  He moved north a smidge and kissed me again, repeating the pattern until his mouth was back to mine.

   When his face was back up to mine, my hand reached out for him.

   “You’re shaking,” he observed, taking my hand in his own and bringing it to his mouth, kissing my fingers.  “We don’t have to do this.”