Page 36 of Not Catching Love

The memory of me and Derek dancing switches from the room full of people to the middle of my bedroom. His hand moves from my waist and slides down, down until it settles on my lower back. He pulls me closer, firmer against him, and I chance a quick stroke over my cock. It’s nowhere near enough, butfuck, it feels good.

I sink into the memory, morphing it and twisting it to be everything my dreams are made of. Derek’s hands dipping under my shirt, pressing it up over my head. I shiver at how his hands would feel on me. Soft? Scratchy? I can’t decide, but it doesn’t matter either way as long as it’s Derek. I remove his shirt next, exposing that body I drooled over at the club. The body I never would have been able to imagine myself.

The memory makes me shivery. What would it have felt like if we’d danced then? Pressed together. Overheated bodieswith no space between them. His chest hair tickling my skin, our sweat slick together, hot, heavy breaths by my ear.

A soft sigh falls from my lips as I scramble for the lube in my bedside table and finally give in to the urges. My hand slips up and down my shaft, bringing out the deep kind of ache that only Derek can give me. I’ve tried too many times, with so many men, and no one gets me hard the way he does.

Maybe I should get myself tested for impotence?

But there’s none of that going on now. The angry vein along the underside of my dick is stark against my pale skin, and what feels like all the blood in my body is pooling in my reddened tip.

It’s not often I get to experience being this worked up, and I love the addictive, overwhelming desperation. The way my brain empties of everything except images that make me feel good. Wanted. Needed.

I want this feeling to last forever. I’ll never understand how guys with dicks that work properly don’t become sex addicts. If I could get horny like this, every day, I’d never leave my bed.

Dream Derek shoves down my pants, then lifts me into his beefy arms before stalking closer to my bed. He sets me on the edge of it. I imagine him kneeling between my legs, firmly pushing my thighs open, while his kind eyes look deep into mine.

Nerves rattle around deep in my stomach, and my hand moves faster over my shaft. In my mind, Derek dips his head and presses his lips to mine. Soft, sweet, an electrifying ghost of skin on skin.

Then, he bends down and wraps his mouth around my cock.

I don’t get further than that before I shoot. My balls tighten as I throb out ropes of cum onto my stomach and sink into that mind-spinning high where nothing else can touch me.

But the high never lasts. Bit by bit, it slips away, and as Iglance down at the mess, as I catch sight of my hip bones and lack of abs, something deep in my chest twists.

I pant as I catch my breath, gaze redirected to the ceiling, reminding myself to appreciate these moments because they sure as hell will never be real.

The few timesI see him at the pharmacy, Derek is the same as he’s always been, and I hate it. Now that I’ve seen him without the professional mask on, I want more of that, but he refuses to budge. Just gently inspects me, then softly talks me down.

I want to kick him. Or throw something.

Anything to startle him out of this bland version of who he really is.

It makes me even more grateful for our time together at the nursing home.

I’m way too excited to get to the painting classes that week that I’m snappish and impatient, waiting for Seven to get his shit together to drive me. He’d tried to teach me how to drive once, but the first time I got behind the wheel, this immense responsibility pressed down on me, and I couldn’t even bring myself to turn the car on. What if I fell asleep randomly on a busy highway? Hit ice? Experienced a mechanical failure that sent me careening into a tree?

Not to mention that these days, it feels like if Seven’s not driving me somewhere, I don’t get to spend time with him. I hate having to fight for people’s attention. Hate having to remind them I exist too.

“Back in two hours?” he checks.

I nod and climb out, throat too sticky to answer him. The whole time I’m stomping across the grass to the entrance, I’m torn between trying to be happy for him that he has Molly inhis life and angry that he only has time for Molly in his life. Seven was supposed to be the one person who was all mine, and I love him so much that I want him to be happy, but since he started therapy, something’s changed. That person has been messing with his brain.

Seven was perfect exactly how he was, and now he’s becoming a different person. A grown-up person.

And grown-ups have never had time for me.

I need Derek more than ever today. I need his distraction and his time and his attention and his terrible art.

Maybe Carla will help me dance with him again.

Maybe I can convince him to hang out after this, just the two of us.

The nerves are bubbling happily in my gut as I check in and head down to the room. He’s not here yet, which isn’t unusual, but I know it won’t be long. He always shows up before the others so we can sneak a couple of moments together.

Until he doesn’t.

During the whole class, I’m watching the door, waiting, growing slowly more confused as time creeps on. It’s moments like these where I wish I had his number and could check he’s all right, but it’s always felt weird to ask. We’re not technically friends.

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