Page 15 of Rock Candy

My lips found hers and I kissed her, caressing the side of her face. She smashed her hand between us until she held the steel velvet of my dick in her palm. Her skin was soft, but her touch was firm as she encircled my length and pumped. The man I was disappeared for a second, making room for the childish anxious part of me that was amazed Eddy wanted to get naked with weird and goofy me. Groaning, I bit my lip and said, “You’re touching me.”

Since she couldn’t read my thoughts, she asked, “Is that not okay? Should I stop?”

I shifted my weight, pushing off to the side to give her better access and laughed. “Fuck no. It’s like the best thing ev-er.” I shuddered.

Without letting go, she climbed on top of me, looked down at what she was doing, and licked her lips. My cock jumped in her hand as she repeated the words, “Like ev-er.” I loved how bold she was, how she openly enjoyed being sexy and having sex. She wanted my body like I wanted hers. She wasn’t some placid flower waiting to be taken. Eddy was a beast in her own right. She wanted to please me—not just because she knew my pleasure would make me happy. She wanted to please me because my pleasure turned her on. Her desire was wanting and hungry in a way that made her strong and still she gave me the impression that she was mine for the taking. The contrast of her wanting and her giving made me dizzy.

For a second time, my fingers tickled their way up her thigh. “You know I’m gonna need to fuck you. I have to have you, Eddy. I can’t stop now.” I paused, sucking in a little breath and heaving out a frustrated sigh. “Well, I could if you wanted me to, but please don’t want me to, please.”

She giggled in a deep sultry way before she said, “If you don’t fuck me, I’m never talking to you again.”

That was my woman. Spirited and unflinching.

“Protection?” I asked. I knew there was a condom somewhere in my toiletries, but I was hoping she had other plans. I’d always been careful and I had been tested since my last relationship. I was clean.

“I’m on the pill and I’ve never let anyone…” She trailed off. No man had ever been bare inside of Eddy and she was offering it to me. My fucking heart leaped. It was like she was a virgin, like there was something untouched in her for me to claim. It was absolutely animalistic, but I had to have it. I had to take her bare. There were no more words. I shifted my hips and pushed my cock down between her legs. She adjusted her hips and I entered her, pushing deep inside her core until she was impaled astride my hips. We gasped and our eyes locked.

That was when shit got serious. Being inside Eddy for the first time wasn’t fucking. I didn’t want to plow into her and come with my eyes closed. I wanted to hold her, to have her, to make her mine. I moved slowly, rolling my hips, staying deep inside her, never wanting to leave. We weren’t frantic or heaving. Our lovemaking was quiet and aching. The only sound was our heavy breaths and tiny moans. I kissed her, touched her, moved within her, slow and languid. I made love to Eddy.

It occurred to me that maybe I’d never made love before because what was happening between us felt so different than anything that came before it. It was like fire but not when fire is ravaging. This was fire burning, glowing, all concentrating in one place, so that we seemed to melt into each other. Her hands and lips moved over my body as we joined. It was like she was everywhere, like she was me. It was like being lost but also being found. She was everything. I wanted to taste her soul. I wanted to drink from her. I wanted to be inside and connected to Eddy for all the days of my life.

We came together. And then as I fell asleep with her in my arms, I thought I would always need her, that I loved her and wanted her with me forever, but in the morning when I woke, Eddy was gone.

SPRING

EDDY

“You have two choices,” Ava said. We were lounging on the little couches in her office at LSA Records, supposedly having a breakfast meeting, but so far she’d been taking work calls and I’d been repeatedly watching the video of Henry and me onstage at the Snowbound Festival. I looked up, not sure what she was talking about. She was leaning back into the couch with her arms crossed over her chest, chagrined. “I said, you have two choices.”

“Two choices in regard to what?” We weren’t having a conversation about anything much when she took her last call, so her ‘two choices’ comment seemed to be coming out of left field.

“In regard to the man in that video,” she said smartly.

My jaw tightened. I had no choices when it came to Henry Davis. I was certain he hated me. The morning after he made love to me like my body was his temple, I freaked out and bolted. Then I freaked out some more, like for a solid two weeks. I claimed I had the flu, but I was suspiciously asymptomatic. Even snot-free, it wasn’t pretty. Metaphorically, I stuck my head in the sand in an attempt to drown out my terror. Literally, I spent two weeks in my pajamas, not showering. I filled the time with distractions. Daylight was for playing the originalSuper Mario Brothersfrom the nineties. Evenings were dedicated to eating microwaved mac and cheese and watching old reruns ofThe Golden Girls. I wasn’t really talking much to anyone, but if I did take a call or welcome a visitor, I kept my conversation exclusively on my current state of reclusiveness.

“Did you know that Rue McClanahan auditioned to play Rose?”

“Have you ever added buffalo sauce to mac and cheese? No?Do it.”

“Isn't it funny to think that originally Mario’s appearance was dictated by the graphical limitations of the video games at the time. Like for example, he wore a hat because it was hard to design realistic hair.”

The people in my life were all fairly sympathetic, except Marcus. He didn’t show up until day fourteen, and he made it perfectly clear that he was absolutely having none of my break from reality.

“Fuck Mario and Blanche and Rose and Dorothy,” he said, pulling open the shade in my living room and forcing me to squint as the sun poured in. “You know what,” he growled. “Let’s even go as far as to say fuck Sophia, because even though no one can deny the enjoyment everyone gets out of that tiny Sicilian goddess of snark, you have got to snap out of it, Eddy. You’re a fucking rock star. You can’t just hole up and go all hermit in your apartment. You have obligations.”

I attempted to sidestep him. “Sophia is seriously the best, isn’t she? Did you ever see the one where she says, ‘People waste their time pondering whether a glass is half-empty or half-full. Me, I just drink whatever's in the glass.’”

Marcus stared me dead in the eyes. Then, putting his phone in his back pocket, he came and sat down on the coffee table, directly in front of where I was on the couch. He took my hands in his before he said, “Eddy, we love Sophia because she’s bold. She’s the embodiment of fuck it. Watching a person—a character even—thrive and be loved despite all the mucky ugliness, anger, fear, and sadness that comes with being human is absolutely irresistible. But right now, you’re pretending there aren’t even any glasses to evaluate. You’re not pessimistic or optimistic. You’re nowhere. You’re not grabbing the glass and drinking life. You’re not living at all.”

I looked away because the desperate look in his eyes as he pleaded his case about my mental decline was a lot for me to process. I wanted to cry. I hadn’t done much crying in my life. Crying was one of those luxuries I never afforded myself. Since my mother died, it was my job to buck up and forge ahead. But in that minute on the couch with Marcus begging me to stop acting insane, I missed her as if she’d died days earlier, not years ago. And I missed Henry.

I missed him so much my skin hurt.

I was so busy being sure that loving people deeply was the pits because you could get hurt if you lost them, that I freaked out because I formed an attachment to him. My running away caused the hurt that I was so afraid of from the beginning. I felt stupid and angry and a million things at once and so I let go. I cried.

Marcus spun, taking a seat next to me on the couch so I could lean on his shoulder. He wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type, but he patted my head with his palm and said, “There, there, little emotionally stunted rock star.” I laughed. He was a good friend and I was happy I knew him. Less than fifteen minutes later he was talking to me about work, but I totally got that work was his love language.

After Marcus’s intervention, I got my shit together. I stopped obsessing overThe Golden Girlsand the Mario brothers and went back to work, but I still didn’t call Henry because I just didn’t know what to say. He was always so honest with me, and I ran from him like a child. It was embarrassing.

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