Filed to story: If He Had Been With Me Book PDF Free
“Some guys got a hold of my phone—I’m at a party—I guess they called you because you’re first in my phone—“
“I’m first in your phone?” I feel the corners of my mouth turn up and hope he cannot hear my surprised pleasure.
“Well, yeah. Alphabetical order. You know.” His voice trails off at the end.
“Oh, right.” I rub my eyes and sigh. “I’m still half asleep.”
“I’m sorry,” Finny says.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Really.”
“They’re drunk and being stupid. It won’t happen again.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No, I’m driving.”
“That’s good,” I say. I don’t know what I mean by that, but it feels true, so it’s what I say.
“Hey, hold on,” he says. And then quietly, not to me, “Is she sick again?” Another voice, female, answers him. “Okay,” he says. “Hey, Autumn?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m gonna let you get back to sleep, okay? Sorry about before.”
“It’s fine. Good night.”
“Good night.”
I wait for him to hang up first. I can hear the noise of the party in the background. I count to three slowly, and I can still hear him breathing.
He hangs up.
The phone drops to the floor and I roll over and bury my face in my pillow. The ache in my chest pounds and hums with my heart. When was the last time his voice was in this room with me, in the dark? A deluge of memories hits me. Us, such small children, sleeping curled together like baby rabbits. Older, we whisper secrets to each other at night. We place fingers over each other’s lips to stifle our giggles. Our despair when The Mothers said we were too old to sleep in the same bed. Finny signaling me with a flashlight from his window, and me taking the cup and string to my ear, “Can you hear me?”
The love I’ve tried to hold back breaks its dam and flows over me, curling my toes and making fists of my hands as I breathe his name into my pillow.
“Finny,” I say to the lonely dark. “Finny. My Finny.” My breath shudders and my eyelids close against the pain of loving him. Finny. My Finny.
On the last day of school, Jamie and I make out in his pool after the others have gone. The concrete rim digs into my back when he presses into me. My hand is down the back of his trunks and I can feel his muscles clenching. I want to bite his shoulder but he wouldn’t like it. Instead, I draw my lips back to his and he slides his tongue inside. His groan vibrates in my mouth.
“Jamie, I love you,” I say.
“How much?” he says. He presses into me again.
“So much,” I say. The urge comes over me again and I kiss his shoulder instead.
“Please?” he says, and as he presses, my skin scrapes against the concrete.
“Ow,” I say.
“Do you want to go inside?”
“Yeah.”
We pad barefoot across the patio and inside. It feels as if my heart is beating between my legs. The scrape on my back aches as my skins tightens with goose bumps. Chilled from the walk through the air-conditioning, I start to crawl under his covers when we reach his room.
“Don’t,” he says. “You’ll get my sheets wet.”
“I’m cold.”
“Then take off your swim suit.”
“Yeah, right,” I say. He slides in next to me, holding my eyes in his. We lie on our sides facing each other.
“Autumn,” he says. He has the look in his eye that tells me what he is going to say before he says it.
“Jamie, I—“
“This is ridiculous,” he says. “Look at us.”
“Can’t you just kiss me?”
“I want to make love to you,” Jamie says.
I cannot say anything in reply. I cannot say that I want to make love to him. I cannot say that I do not want to make love to him. He says nothing. I wonder what he thinks I’m thinking about as we gaze at each other. Perhaps he thinks that I am considering the idea, deciding if I’m ready or not.
He could have just asked me if I wanted to go on the roof and try to fly. He could have suggested that we drive to the airport, right now, and buy two tickets to Paris. It’s not that I don’t like the idea; it’s just not possible.
“We can’t just have sex,” I say.
“Why not?”
“Because,” I say, but I cannot find the words to explain what is so obvious to me.
“What can I do to make it right for you?” Jamie says.
“I need—” I don’t know what I need, so I hazard a guess. “I need time.”
“How much time?”
We look at each other. His gaze is intent, calculating. He studies my face.
“A year,” I say.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“After graduation.”
“Okay.”
Jamie kisses me.
Perhaps in a year, I will have found out what it is I really need. Perhaps if I can’t find it in a year, then I will never find it. Perhaps it will be better then to just give in.
Jamie kisses me. I close my eyes and lose myself in the pure physical sensation of it, the warmth and the skin and our breath. We’re barely clothed, in bed, and in love, and this is almost sex. And it’s almost right.