Page 72 of Make It Without You

I suck her clit into my mouth and push two fingers inside her channel. Curling as I pump them in and out. Adding a third until she’s deliciously full of me. I flutter my tongue against her clit and alternate with stiff swipes. My fingers curl and rub against her g spot. Her body stiffens and I look up to see her jaw slack with a silent scream.

Her inner walls spasm as she floods my hand with her release. I lap up every drop of her cum and work her through until she’s completely spent.

Pulling my fingers out of her I suck them into my mouth to clean them off. I crawl up her body, placing open mouth kisses on her chest and neck. Before pushing the hair off of her face andfalling to the side of her body. I could look at her content gaze all day long if it meant the outside world didn’t exist.

“You’re good,” Emily says when she finally comes to.

“You taste pretty good too,” I tell her even though it’s far from what she was getting at.

I reach down and pull her bottoms back up her body. She looks at me like she sees more than a summer with me. Like what we’ve been doing the past few months has the possibility to be a permanent thing between us. And as I unflinchingly gaze back at her I realize the permanence doesn’t terrify me.

She’s the first to make my heart stutter when she enters a room. As long as it’s taken us to get to this place, I realize I never want to leave it.

Emily

“Some days I miss playing the violin,” I tell him.

My head is resting in Adam’s lap and I feel so content and relaxed around him that it sort of terrifies me. That orgasm loosened something in my brain and has me wanting to tell Adam everything.

He links our hands together and studies my fingers and nails as if it’ll clue him into teenage me. “Why did you stop?”

“Because I didn’t reach a goal I had set for myself.”

My need for perfection had to have stemmed from the lack of attention from my parents. I’d have to ask Kamryn about that, but along the way with me playing, I fell in love with the instrument. But when the emails and calls never rolled in after that final showcase I knew I needed to let that dream go. Maybe it was a way of letting that part of my parents go as well. As sad as I was to not become employed playing professionally, I love that my job now allows me to shape young minds in an influential and direct way.

“And what goal was that?”

I hold his hand, palm side up, and trace the lines in an effort to gather my thoughts. “I wanted to play in the Philadelphia Orchestra. I had this big recital my senior year of high school.Professors from different colleges were invited along with conductors from the Big Five.”

“What’s the Big Five?”

“Have you heard of the New York Philharmonic?”

Adam nods his head. “Of course I have.”

“They’re one of the five. Along with Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and Philadelphia.”

“Sounds like a gang.”

Laughing at the observation, because I had that thought more than once. “It does. But the term isn’t used as much anymore. Anyway, I wanted Philadelphia because it was close to home.”

I realize now I was living in a world that was created by a child. I was living in a world where I thought if I could just shine brighter, my parents would notice. That world was created from pure innocence. No pain had reached her or affected the trajectory of her life. She lived in a fairytale. I lived in a fairytale.

“And you haven’t played since?”

I shake my head as best as I can while still lying in his lap. “No. I want to though. It was a big part of my life. It taught me discipline and poise. Patience was also a big learning lesson. Rhythm and keeping the beat for a song is also something that’ll never leave me.”

“Would you ever play again?”

I look up into Adam’s eyes and don’t detect a lick of judgment, just curiosity. “Is it strange if I say I’m scared? Because I spent years loving something only for me to be fine without it.”

The first time I picked up the violin, this nervous-anticipation feeling flowed through my body at an electric speed. It was a new experience. And as I got older that nervous-anticipation feeling morphed into breathing. I could place my violin in the playing position and my breath would follow thebeat of playing. When I closed my violin case for the final time, I had no idea that the spring concert at school wouldbemy final time.

A warm breeze ruffles my hair around my face and Adam tames it as best as he can. “I think it’s normal to be scared.”

“Yeah,” I muse thoughtfully. “I’m wondering if our pasts will always be this thing that’s in our relationship with us.”

“So we’re in a relationship?” Adam asks with a barely contained smile.

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