Page 4 of Awakening
“Prove it—make a mess on my dick,” he countered, biting his bottom lip, trying to hold off his forthcoming eruption.
“Cum with me now, pleaseeeeee,” I begged as we tumbled off Pleasure’s cliff together, biting his shoulder, my body arching, vision white-hot. Colson groaned into the crook of my neck as he came, his whole body shaking with it, clinging to each other in the dark, breathless and spent.
Resting his forehead against mine, I murmured, “If this gets us in trouble…”
He smiled, brushing a curl from my face, “It’ll be worth it.”
Lying in the silence of uncertainty, our chests rising and falling together, still tangled under the blanket, Colson kissed my temple and whispered, “You’re dangerous, Airman Jeffries, but you’re mine.”
Looking up at him, “Just don’t hurt me.”
He was still nestled snugly inside me as my body squeezed him. No rushing, just exploration, as we continued our lovemaking like we didn’t have to be up for PT in a few hours. Warm skin against warm skin. Soft gasps. Shared breath. The slow, aching joy of discovering each other in secret. Colson moved with a kind of awe, like every part of me was sacred.
In this moment, I felt safe, I felt like I’d stepped into womanhood. Wanted. Not as a soldier or a trainee or someonetrying to prove herself, but as a woman. As myself.
After another round, silence engulfed us, the world outside the bunk fading to silence.
Colson’s thumb traced circles on my damp stomach. “I don’t know what happens after this. After basic training, but I’m not going anywhere.”
I smiled in the dark, heart whole, “Then neither am I.”
26 Years Earlier
“That sissy ain’t no son of mine,” I heard my father yell with venom in his voice as he and my mother argued back and forth.
I was supposed to be at school, but we had an early dismissal, and usually, I would head to the library to study. Today, I decided to head home, seeing as though I was days away from graduating and mere weeks from heading off to Winston Hills University, where I would chase my dream of becoming a nurse.
The sun blazed brightly through the kitchen window; it was the only warmth I’d experienced in this house. But in this moment, it was only a blazing distraction for the soundtrack to a soul-stirring storm. The low voices drifting through the floorboards had a way of cutting through even the thickest bass line. The mix of warning, anger, and desperation in my mother’s voice made him listen intently, quite the opposite of what was normal, where he talked and steamrolled anyone who had an opinion that differed from his.
"You promised, James,” she hissed, "You promised you wouldn’t bring this shit up again."
His voice rumbled in response, deep and bitter, "I didn’t sign up to raise a little fa—“
“Don’t you fucking fix your mouth to use that word about my son,” Michelle yelled, her voice holding a powerI’d rarely heard when it came to James Sr.
“I didn’t raise some soft ass son who runs from women as if they have cooties, especially when he doesn’t bear my DNA. This ain’t normal, Michelle. That boy has yet to bring home a single girl; he even went to prom by himself, but he can tell us the latest fashion trends like it’s the alphabet.”
Silence. Then a sharp clatter from what sounded like a glass hitting the nightstand too hard.
"You didn’t sign up?" My mother repeated, her voice cracking, "You absolutely signed up when you married me young and already pregnant. The only reason you don’t want to claim him as yours is because of some shit that’s not even our goddamn business!” My mother continued, her voice elevated and filled with rage.
This was the first time I’d heard the woman who was supposed to protect me finally do her job and stand up to the man that I’d just learned wasn’t my father. His words hit me like a punch to the chest, causing me to freeze, my muscles locking in place, heart pounding loud enough to drown out the rest. Still, I forced myself to stay, to listen, even when my lungs begged for air.
"Yeah, well maybe I thought we’d raise a man, not some soft-ass boy crying in his bedroom because the world’s too rough when you can’t kiss another boy out in the open."
Anger filled my chest as my fists balled at my sides. I had never come out to my parents, but I also wasn’t dating or having sex with anyone, male or female. I was focused on school and football, knowing the only way I was going to college was to secure academic or athletic scholarships, hell, maybe even both. My body trembled as I continued to listen to my father hurl insults about my sexuality unprovoked.
So many things clicked into place—the strange silences, theway James always kept me at arm’s length, the way my mother’s eyes seemed to apologize every time James would look at me with a disgusted glare when he saw me dancing in the mirror, or when I dared to speak too passionately about music, and fashion, or when my gaze would linger on another man for too long.
My chest ached, not just from the truth, but from how ugly it had been unwrapped.
I didn’t cry.
Not then.
I just sat there trying to understand how love could come with so many conditions and how biology could be kept from a person like it was an inconvenient detail.
In that moment, I decided that I no longer needed to ask my mother why she looked at me with guilt. I no longer cared to win James’ approval. And, most importantly, I stopped believing that family was defined by blood or name. It was defined by who loved you just as you are.
