The Leftover Club Page 14

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, mortified that he had been turned off by my inexperience.

  I really was a loser.

  “Your first time is not going to be in some cold-ass river,” he announced. “You deserve more than that.”

  We climbed onto the shore and wiggled back into our clothes without even drying off. He was quiet as he took my hand and led me back up the trail toward the cabins. We snuck past our moms, who sat together on one deck, reading silently as they listened to some oldies on the radio while meat smoked in the smoker for dinner.

  We got to my cabin first. He pulled me back into his arms to deliver another scorching kiss. I swooned against him, unable to fight the current any longer. I spent almost ten years molding Dylan Fenn into my dream lover, and now here he was offering to be my first.

  Who was I to argue?

  I knew I couldn’t want anything more, especially since he would soon walk right out of my life. Sleeping with him was the bookend to our relationship, no one knew that more than me. To give in to him was to accept that inevitable reality.

  But he was leaving anyway.

  This way… maybe this way… I could know what it felt like to be wanted by Dylan Fenn for once. It was only for a moment… for an hour… for a day… but it was more than I’d ever thought I’d have.

  Maybe that was enough.

  Our kiss broke and he framed my face with his hand as he stared down at me. “Tonight,” he promised in a low voice that danced all over my overwrought nerves. “Leave your door unlocked for me. And then you’ll have everything you want.”

  He kissed me again, as if he hungered deep in his soul to do so. My mouth was swollen when he finally pulled away. I was struck mute as I watched him amble down the steps and venture down the trail that would lead him to his nearby cabin.

  I naïvely thought that putting space between us would cool me down. But his last muttered promise played in a loop in my ear, setting me ablaze over and over again.

  Tonight. Tonight. I could have everything I always wanted tonight.

  After years of yearning, the temptation was too much to bear. There was no way I could refuse. I didn’t even want to.

  I could still feel him in the palm of my hand, pulsating and arching toward me. Any one of the Leftovers would have shit a brick over what I was being offered, and probably slap me silly if I refused it.

  It didn’t have to mean anything other than what it was: two young adult humans indulging a brief but intense sexual attraction.

  I thought about Bryan, who wasn’t looking for love or marriage when he was out cruising the bars. He was happily sowing his wild oats while he was young enough to sow them. If he had been in that river with Dylan, he wouldn’t have even thought twice. He’d have sucked his bones clean and picked his own teeth with any splinters that were left before Dylan even knew what hit him.

  I wished I could call him. He would tell me what to do.

  Instead I just gnawed my fingernails to the quick as I waited for night to fall.

  We ate dinner outside again, under the shadow of the mountains we could only see by their slightly darker outline. I caught Dylan staring at me several times, which made me flush deep. Fortunately, thanks to a mild sunburn from our outdoor activities all day, no one could really tell.

  No one questioned me about my trembling hand or my stammering speech, or the way I felt when a simple breeze dared brush against me. I was strung so tight I thought I might shatter into a million pieces before I got back to my cabin.

  I could practically feel his mouth on mine. My palm tingled to once again feel him hard in my hand. I was flushed and aroused and confused and excited and terrified.

  The Moms turned in first, completely worn out after their first day. Dylan stayed behind to clean up, so I helped. We said nothing. We stole silent glances that only served to make me even hotter. When we finished putting away the last dish and letting ourselves back out of his mom’s cabin, he swung me around for a ferocious kiss that backed me right up against the wall.

  “Ten minutes,” he promised, and like a crazy person I nodded.

  When I got to my cabin, I took a quick shower before I crawled, naked, into my bed. A sumptuous down comforter provided some warmth against the cool mountain air, but I knew this night I wouldn’t need it.

  The sheets felt cool and smooth against my skin. It was a sensual feeling as I lay there waiting for him to come through that door. And I didn’t believe that he would until he did, mere seconds later than he had promised, though it felt like an eternity.

  I watched his silhouette lock the door behind him. He untied the sash around the robe he was wearing, revealing his perfect body under the moonlight as he approached the bed. I shivered so hard my teeth chattered as he lifted up the comforter and slid into bed next to me.

  “You okay?” he asked softly as he studied my face.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Scared?” he asked in that same low voice.

  “Terrified,” I admitted. There was no reason to lie. He could probably feel the bed shake from my nerves.

  “It’s okay to be scared,” he said as he brushed my hair from my face. “But you don’t need to be scared of me, Roni. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

  I nodded, though his promises rang hollow. How could he promise not to hurt me when his leaving me was inevitable?

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t even want to think about that.

  He kissed me, but a soft and tender peck. “If at any point you want to stop, just say so, okay? I won’t be mad.” His eyes bore into mine. “Do you want to stop?”

  I shook my head. From the moment I felt his body warm and solid next to mine, I knew that I would never be satisfied if I sent him away.

  This was our time. Everything was perfect. And I knew it.

  “Truth or dare?” he asked, almost hypnotically.

  My voice was hoarse as I responded. “Truth.”

  “Do you want me to be your first?”

  I felt every nerve ending go up in flames. It was all I ever wanted, I knew that now. I had been saving myself for him without even knowing that was what I was doing. “Yes,” I said at last.

  He leaned in for another kiss, a deeper, probing kiss that had me arching my back to respond. When his hand slipped below the covers to cup my bare breast, I moaned in his mouth. I could feel his cock jump against me.

  He kissed his way down my chest until he caught one pert nipple in between his teeth. Color and light exploded in my brain as I cried out loud, unable to withhold it. I stuffed my knuckles in my mouth as he sucked my breast deep into his mouth, his tongue lapping against me until I thought I might literally burst into flames.

  My hand sank lower to grasp him. He felt warm and familiar in my hand. Gently I stroked him like he had guided me to do before. “God, Roni,” he muttered against my flesh and I trembled violently against him.

  I tried to register this in my brain, that I had made him do that. But it was useless. I could no longer think. All I could do was feel. My breath caught in my throat as his strong fingers slid down my body and parted my legs gently. He touched me where no other person had ever touched me before. I was wet and slippery as his fingers explored me intimately, swirling around my aching clit until I was practically humping his hand. I had discovered masturbation several years before, so I knew how close I was getting to the edge as he swirled that magical, tender finger into a bunch of tiny, titillating circles. He watched my face. “That’s it, baby,” he said softly. “Let yourself go.”

  I clutched his shoulder with my hand as I bucked against him. When he slipped a finger inside, I couldn’t help but cry out. “Please,” I begged as I gripped him in my hand.

  “Are you sure?” he asked again.

  I think I nodded, but I couldn’t say for sure. I was incoherent with need. I could barely make it out what he was doing with his hand until I heard the wrapper tear.

  Thank God he was thinking about
protection, but of course, he would. It really didn’t even shock me that he had a supply on hand. Aside from Amber, every single girl he had wanted had wanted him in return. It made sense to be prepared.

  He parted my legs further with his knee as he slipped between my thighs. Moonlight cast a shaft of light across his face and those eyes left me speechless. When he asked if I was ready, I could only nod. His fingers withdrew from me so that he could position himself against me. He felt enormous and suddenly I remembered that I was terrified. There was no going back from this. This could not be undone. I was going to be changed forever… a new person, a woman.

  Dylan’s woman, if only for one night.

  “Wait,” I said before I could stop myself.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I nodded, and then I shook my head. “I’m scared.” I was scared of the pain. I was scared of being different. I was scared of what I would do with myself after this dream was finally realized.

  I was about to make love to Dylan Fenn. Where does one go from there?

  His eyes were dark as he stared into my face. “Me, too,” he finally admitted. He dipped his head for another kiss, probing the dark recesses of my mouth with his tongue while he ground himself against me. He felt enormous and hard as a steel rod.

  It only made me panic more. I pulled away. “Dylan.”

  “Roni,” he replied as his hand slipped between our bodies. The minute his fingertip touched my clit I vaulted somewhere around Pluto. He caught my cry in yet another kiss. There were tears in my eyes as he pulled away. “What’s wrong?”

  Everything. “Nothing,” I finally said.

  “Truth?” he asked, and I nodded. But I was crying in earnest now, so he was less than convinced. He brushed my hair from my face with his hand. He took me into his arms as I sobbed like an idiot.

  Here was everything I wanted, and I was too afraid to grab it.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed softly and I felt him shrivel against me. It only made me feel worse. Here he was kind enough to give me a mercy fuck, and I acted like a two-year-old.

  “I’m sorry,” I said with a pitiful sniffle.

  “It’s okay,” he repeated. He lifted himself from between my legs to cuddle at my side. His eyes never left my face, which made me feel even more exposed than being naked beside him. “It’s a big step,” he continued.

  I nodded.

  His voice was soft. “You need someone you can truly trust. I get that.”

  I swallowed and turned my head. That was the crux of it. I didn’t trust Dylan Fenn to do anything more than use me and go on his merry way when he was done.

  The best I could hope for was to remain somewhat intact by the time he rode out of my life like the desperado he was.

  “I suppose I’m the first who has chickened out of sleeping with you,” I murmured, feeling like a dumbass.

  He lifted up on one elbow. “What makes you say that?”

  I shrugged and looked away. “You know. Your reputation.”

  He nodded. “I guess that bothers you.”

  Yes. “No.”

  He traced my face. “I guess you’re the kind of girl who needs more.”

  My eyes met his. “All girls need more.”

  Again, he nodded. “I hope you get it,” he finally said. My heart broke. He wasn’t offering a happily ever after, despite what my stupid childhood fantasies might have led me to believe. Sex was all he could give. And I knew it would never be enough. I shivered and he pulled the blankets over me. “I guess I’ll go back to my cabin,” he said in that same soft voice with those same unreadable eyes.

  I merely nodded that it was probably a good idea. He offered a slight peck on my mouth as a consolation prize before he inched out of the bed and walked over to his discarded robe on the floor. I wanted to say a million things but my throat was closed tight in a vice of humiliation, regret and stark terror.

  He left my cabin without another word and made no move towards me the rest of the weekend.

  Two weeks later he had loaded his car with every possession that would fit and headed across country to New York. And as much as I thought I had prepared for it, I cried for almost a week solid. I turned him away that night in some boneheaded attempt to steel my heart against Dylan Fenn, but he’d run off with it anyway.

  I was still, and possibly forever, hopelessly in love with him. The only way to move on was to close that door on my past and allow that crush to suffocate and die at last from neglect, just like it deserved.

  I had been an idiot to spend so much of my adolescence pinning every hope and disappointment on the elusive boy no girl could ever win. From my schoolgirl crush to my misguided Leftovers Club, my whole life had been about Dylan Fenn in one way or the other.

  Clearly that had been my mistake.

  By the time I moved in with Bryan, I had closed each and every chapter of my life that included Dylan. I never told my best friend about my week in the mountains. I was too embarrassed. I had walked right into the fire, believing that I wouldn’t get burned.

  I let him go, thinking that if I said goodbye first it would hurt less.

  Now he was gone and it still hurt like a bitch.

  Therefore it was my humiliating secret to hide, and I had every intention of taking it to my grave.

  18: Naughty Girl

  September 29, 2007

  I truly had no idea what Olive had up her sleeve when we rolled into the parking lot of the Karaoke Klubhouse, a popular bar that kept the art of making a fool of oneself in public alive in well in Orange County.

  She had dressed me, which had been a huge mistake. She found a boutique store at the Galleria to transform me into some teen wannabe with a plunging lowcut halter top and designer jeans that rode way too low for a mom butt the size of mine. I felt utterly ridiculous as she fitted me with studded shoes and chain and Gothic jewelry and makeup I had stopped wearing by the time I was seventeen.

  “It’s a little early for Halloween, isn’t it?” I asked when I looked in the mirror.

  “When you go into war, you don’t sit on your most effective weapons,” she said with a shrug. “God gave you natural gifts, Roni. Bout time you used them.”

  She meant my boobs, which were more on display than they had been when they were far jauntier. I kept suppressing the urge to cover my five-acre cleavage, which I was reasonably sure was so pale it might actually send folks to the ER for seizures by causing a strobe effect under black light. She only made matters worse dusting a shimmery powder on me that made my cleavage sparkle.

  “Long live Glitter Boobs,” I muttered and she tweaked my breast in response.

  “You are the epitome of a late bloomer, my friend. You may be thirty-whatever, but emotionally you’re still sweet sixteen and never been kissed.”

  “So I’m an immature mutant. Fabulous.”

  She glared at me through the mirror as she fussed with my hair. “I was there when you were sixteen, remember? You’ve never truly blossomed out of that awkward outcast, even when you were married to whatshisname. I assume that is because he was a raging, controlling dickweed.”

  “You assume correctly.”

  “Well, you’re free now. You’re your own boss. You get to call the shots. And there’s no time limit on owning all your awesome.” I scoffed, so she continued. “There are two types of women in this world,” Olive told me. “Divas and understudies. The only difference between the two is that the understudy is just as prepared to be a diva, but just hasn’t had the opportunity to act on it yet. This is your opportunity.”

  “What if I’m just a ticket taker who wants to sit back and enjoy the show? Or I could be that guy who scrapes gum off the bottom of the theater seats.”

  “You’re hopeless,” she sighed. “The sooner you fuck Mr. Wonderful, the better.”

  “Or he’ll just gallop on down the road to the next chick in line and I’ll feel even worse. Sometimes getting what we want is a double-edged sword.”

  �
�True,” she conceded. “But I honestly can’t think of another way to knock him off this pedestal that you’ve had him on for so many years. Sleep with him. Get that monkey off your back for fuck’s sake.”

  “I don’t have him on a pedestal. If anything, I see him more realistically than any other woman he’s ever known. I see his limitations and recognize his flaws, which is why I never seriously pursued him. I know sleeping with him is a huge mistake.”

  She placed one hand on her hip. “Then why do you still want to do it?” I had no answer for her. “Face it, girl. You’re in love with this image of him that you’ve built up in your mind over thirty years. Maybe if you actually get to know the real guy, you’ll see he’s just a guy like any other. Then you’ll be able to move on.”

  I was still skeptical as I stepped out of the car and followed my hip and wonderful posse into the darkened club where amateurs wailed familiar tunes from a tiny stage. We found a booth to share, and gave our orders to a perky waitress.

  We were early, which gave me plenty of time to panic. I shredded napkin after napkin as I killed two beers waiting for Dylan to show up. Or not, I kept telling myself. Being overtly rejected was definitely a possibility as well. Frankly, that was the scenario I was rooting for.

  My stomach dropped when I watched him approach in a familiar gait I could have picked out of a lineup. He wore a big smile as spotted us, and Olive was out of the booth like a shot to give him a big hug. He lifted her high in the air effortlessly as she kissed him loudly on the cheek.

  “Olive!” he greeted with a charming smile just for her. “You look fantastic.”

  “So do you, you movie star,” she winked. “I’m so glad you could join us.”

  He slid into the booth after her. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s just like old times,” he grinned.

  “Not really,” I muttered. “You never hung out with us in the old times, remember?”

  He laughed. “Then that was my loss.” The waitress stopped by to take his order, so he ordered two drinks to catch up with all of us. He turned his attention back to Olive. “So what have you been up to? Tell me everything.”