Benevolence

Chapter 14: Stripped

My father once said that the sun doesn't wait on anyone, not the birds, not the clouds, and certainly not us...that all who spent their lives chasing it, would learn to live in its shadow.

He was right.

The sun falls short today, the overcast of clouds is still hovering gloomily over the tirade of upstate New York. No one knows when light will be found, and the darkness that it preserves seemed endless behind the thick blue blinds of the room I currently lay in.

It makes it easier for me to avoid looking at him. Him... as in Drew. The same Drew that had held me, kissed me, stole me from my troubles— even if it was for a few hours; I'm afraid to confront him. I'm afraid of vulnerability and in exchange for my strength the remnants of liquor that courses through my veins leave me hopelessly wrung out: Numb.

I've spent the latter part of my morning recollecting the images of our night together; how his hands gripped at my naked waist; how his warm lips moved against mine; how our legs fittingly intertwined...I can still picture the lust in his eyes when his head journeyed between my legs, feel his fingers digging into my inner thighs, hear his name springing from my very own lips. 

Drew.

In these same midnight blue sheets that cover us now, had made me tremble under his warm grasp. He'd touched me in places, where nobody else but him has gone, and I cherished every moment of it; how we so easily lost ourselves, drunkenly rolling around, laughing, playing, exploring...forgetting.

My lip twitches up into an almost smile just thinking back on it. He managed to make the pain go away, no matter what that meant sacrificing. And all of the comforting words, all of the brief touches that left me in longing, it's imprinted, right in the front of my mind. Like a lingering kiss upon maiden lips, it just won't go away. And... I want more. I want to go back to the way things were before school started back, down in David's old basement where the heavy thump of music gyrated against the rickety floors, and the smell of weed screeched louder than the moaning music. That was our oasis; that was our home-base.

Yet, reality is impenetrable and whether or not we want it to— no matter how much I crave to drink my life away and keep all there is to run from at bay— it somehow always finds a way to anchor us back down, right where we started.

I awaken to a canvas of scattered pillows and wrinkled sheets, to the sound of his steadily beating heart pressed against my ear, and to the feel of his smooth bronze skin under the pads of my fingers as I trail the creases and dips along his abdomen. He's sound asleep, his soft breaths cascading down my face, and my head going along with each rise and fall of his chest...

I've been trying my hardest to detach myself from him ever since, to find my way home to be alone with my thoughts, but he isn't having it. Each time I raise my leg, he groans and pulls me in closer. And each time I try to wake him up or say his name— he shuffles and utters an almost incoherent "don't go."

It's as if he knows I'm trying to leave; as if he's convinced himself that he'll never let that happen, and I know it has everything to do with yesterday's scare.

He's afraid of losing me.

No matter the situation, everyone around me always ends up picking up that habit: Of protecting me. And I despise it. I hate that for Drew, of all people, it can't be the other way around.