excellent question but I don’t have an answer for him. The same, I think. I want it to be the same as it’s always been because it’s been so good. But I don’t say this because it’s in direct conflict with something else I want. Namely, to take the stairs three at a time and jump right into bed with him.
Travis reaches for me, tugging on the sleeve of my jacket, and pulls me into him. His arms are around me and I lay my head on his shoulder.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” I say, and I run the tip of my nose along his neck which has the Travis cold-mountain, hot-sheets scent in spades, and I seem unable to keep my lips off of him and now I’m back in the place where I’m not able to think about the ramifications, the fallout. He exhales and his arms tighten around me. I feel his hand at the base of my neck, his fingers threading into my hair, spread out and strong and careful on my skull like he’s holding a giant, priceless glass egg and it’s about to crack. This is basically how my head feels. Like it’s about to split open from the pressure of holding my dire need to keep everything the same between us and my intense desire to get Travis back into my pants.
In spite of myself I kiss him, and his lips are that amazingly odd guy-lip combination of strong and soft all at once. I remember learning in eighth grade band that there are twenty-one different muscles in your lips and I think Travis is using them all right now. He kisses my upper lip, then my lower lip. He runs his tongue along my teeth and when I open my mouth a little wider he gives it to me and I suck it lightly, wanting some part of him inside of me. He groans like he’s trying to hold himself back and I’m sure I don’t want him to. I run my hands under his shirt and feel the muscles in his back all tightly wound. I want to pull his shirt right off him. I want to tongue him all over. I want to touch him and make him come in my hand. I put my hand over him and he’s hard, fully hard, and oh, God, I don’t care, I want this again. I’m seconds from unbuttoning his pants and getting on my knees when he hesitates.
“Wait . . .” he says.
The front door slams open and George barges right in on us, with eight sweaty, muddy, drunken rugby players stampeding in after him.
“Get a room, horndogs,” George says, blowing by us on the way to the kitchen. Molly the hooker, who we’re pretty sure is banging George these days, flips on the TV and plops down on the couch, and the rest arrange themselves like drunk furniture around the living room. George comes back out with two six-packs of beer and tosses them to everyone around the room.
“Cheers!” Molly says as George tosses her a can.
“You want?” he asks me, shaking a beer can.
Travis glares at him. He shrugs his shoulders and pops the top off a can and sprays that shit right into his own mouth before perching himself on the arm of the sofa. “We won!” he says, and the entire room breaks out into a rowdy cheer.
Travis takes both my hands in his. His eyes are heavy as he looks at me.
“Come upstairs,” he says.
“Actually, I really do have a paper due,” I say, which is true but that’s not why I’m saying it. “I should go.”
Travis makes a face and he doesn’t let go. I am beginning to squirm from the way he gazes at me.
“Call me later,” he says, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear.
But I don’t.
Chapter Three
It’s Tuesday-night rehearsal in the beat brothers’ basement, and I haven’t had the ovaries to talk to Travis since I almost blew him in the foyer on Sunday. I should have called him, but I’m a baby so I didn’t. I didn’t call because I didn’t know what to say because I don’t know how I should feel. It’s too many competing things all at the same time and I know I’m fucking with his head and I’m terrified he’s going to hate me. This is exactly why I never should have had sex with him in the first place, never mind mauling