The Other Way : Twenty Three

If I Stay Here, You'll Regret It

-

I woke up in Edward’s bed.

Which meant that last night was not actually a dream. I had gotten up out of my own bed and wandered into the ocean before I even woke up. Found myself on his beach before I even decided to. His tongue in my mouth and fingers between my legs before I even began paying attention.

Set on fire and feeling rather like a phoenix this morning, half expecting to wake up in a puddle of ashes.

Edward was on his back beside me, soundly asleep. Sleep does something intriguingly truthful to people, catching them off guard and allowing unfettered glimpses at the person they hide away. Edward’s particular brand of truth was especially interesting, an innocence pushing up from underneath all his armor, both ink and metal, that completely belied his appearance.

Face soft, mouth finally relaxed.

His abs were dominated by an enormous dot-work design that began at the bottoms of his ribs and met up just below his navel, mirrored in meticulous detail and full of interesting shapes. It reminded me vaguely of the mosaic tiled floors of ancient temples, elaborate geometric patterns that disappeared beneath a faint trail of hair and then the cotton sheet. I lifted it gently, peering underneath at the rest of the tattoo and noticed the giant bulge nestled in the front of his briefs too late to fully appreciate it.

“What are you doing?” he mumbled sleepily, eyes barely open and his mouth curling at the corner, watching me in sleepy amusement. I dropped the sheet and shrugged.

Looking at your dick, obviously.

“Looking for your bell.”

“You’re gonna have to look harder than that.” He arched his brows suggestively. “Besides, I’ve already told you it’s not down there.”

“I don’t believe you.” I tried not to get distracted by the way he was tonguing his lip rings, the metal moving as he probed them from the inside of his mouth. He just smiled secretively at me and pulled himself from the bed, carelessly picking clothing up off the floor, fumbling with a pair of worn-out jeans.

“Where are you going?” I tried not to sound whiney but he grinned to himself as he buttoned the pants and shoved his hands into the pockets to adjust them.

“My presence has been requested at the dock today. Lord knows for what,” he huffed. “I guess the common folk aren’t as offended by my appearance as the bourgeois.” I watched his mouth curl around the word, fully understanding why he told me that my use of pavlovian was sexy. I still hadn’t gotten a chance to ask him if he’d overheard the way his mother so delicately explained the situation he was in and hated that he had to face such a thing from the people who were supposed to accept him no matter what.

“You don’t have to go.” I resisted the urge to reach out and grab him before he put any more clothing on, not entirely sure if I was urging him to stop subjecting himself to their judgement, or asking him to stay here with me.

Both. Definitely both.

“I do,” he chuckled, face disappearing in a t-shirt speckled around the neck with wash-worn holes. He obviously didn’t care about making an impression this morning. He eyed me pointedly as his face reappeared. “If I stay here, you’ll regret it.”

“I don’t think I will.” I squirmed in the middle of his giant white bed, his connotation slinking up between my legs and lapping at everything it could reach. He’d picked me up out of the sand and brought me to bed last night but we’d only laid there while I listened to his heart thump through his rib cage. The next thing I knew it was morning and I’d lost my robe sometime in the middle of the night.

I was naked and still smoldering and he was leaving.

Edward toed into his sandals and pushed his sunglasses onto his face, slipping his key card and cigarettes into his back pocket before putting his fists to the mattress and leaning in close to my face. He sucked on the lip rings, pulling on them to the point it almost looked painful and furrowed his eyebrows at me.

“What are you doing to me?” he asked seriously, sounding thoroughly perplexed.

I gulped. “I haven’t done anything to you.”

“Yet,” he quipped and fell onto my mouth while I reminded myself not to blink.

He kissed me with his eyes open.

---

I stayed in his bed for hours.

Pressed between pillows that smelled like him and sheets just as salty-sweet. Unwilling to leave just yet, half dreaming of mermaids and an octopus and what it would be like to roll around all day in this big empty bed with him. He’d gotten me off twice now and I was a damned junkie, fantasizing about his face between my legs and his fingers in my mouth. About all the places his lip rings could leave a bruise and what I’d only seen a hint of underneath the sheets this morning.

Ugh

I pried myself reluctantly from the bed, too curious to lie there anymore. His ipod was plugged into the sound system and I blindly pressed the play button, wondering what he had been listening to last. Something soft and desperate tumbled from the hidden speakers, flooding the villa with a heavy beat that felt urgent and ridden with longing. I pulled one of his giant button-downs over my head in lieu of my saltwater robe, which was crumpled in a damp and smelly pile at the foot of the bed, taking hold of my bearings.

Edward’s villa was all grey and red and black. More of the low, sleek sofas and giant bed draped in mosquito netting but for all the white and cream of my villa and Alice’s, his was peacefully dark. Red upholstery, curtains the color of hurricane skies. Only a few splatters of light were scattered around the room, a glowing paper orb suspended above the living area and a pale ivory coffee table. The granite in the kitchen was obsidian black and floors the polished grey of driftwood.

I spent the next hour wandering. Or snooping. Depending on how you interpreted it.

There was a photograph of his mother in his wallet.

A soft blue t-shirt with a little league logo fading slowly from the front discarded on the bathroom floor. Shampoo that smelled like peppermint. Six empty beer bottles clustered near the sink. A Chomsky on the floor by the bed bookmarked at page 147 and a pair of glasses on the nightstand with thick black frames. A tie slung carelessly over a doorknob and another tossed on the floor near the sofa. A shiny shoe on its side near the front door and the twin clear across the room, a scuff mark smeared across the dove grey wall above it where it had hit. Alice’s dress, the one she’d been wearing the night she showed up drunk and he told me about the dandelions, was folded over the back of a barstool. I stood there for a while fingering the fabric, coming to terms with the fact that he hadn’t actually taken her home that night.

He brought her here.

A collection of lighters and coins and a pack of cigarettes was abandoned on the coffee table, a single stick left in the pack. I tucked it behind my ear, tossing the empty pack aside when I spotted a crumpled piece of paper, a scant trace of handwriting peeking from one corner. Just as I was about to talk myself into unfolding it to peek inside, she busted me.

“Well, hi.” Alice was standing in the doorway, looking as though I was the last person she expected to find here. “I heard Sigur Ros and thought Edward was home. Is he here?” She glanced around and I blushed, pulling in my lips.

“He left. Something about the boat dock.”

Alice eyed my ensemble and arched an eyebrow at me. “Did you stay here last night?”

I nodded, biting my cheek to keep from grinning too big, still blushing atomic shades of crimson. Trying not let visions of last night make their way into my head.

“He said you make the most beautiful face when you cum.” Damn her, I was certain by now that she could actually read my mind. I reddened even further, still unused to how honest they were with one another. I felt like I hadn’t been honest with anyone in a long time, including myself, and was a little jealous of both of them. For all these two were giving, they weren’t allowing me to offer up much in return and I was sure Alice had seen just such a face on him.

“Does he?” I asked, chock full of wicked curiosity.

“Of course.” Alice nearly rolled her eyes. “You should keep your eyes open next time.”

I shook my head, chewing on my lips, suddenly worried about what that might mean. “We haven’t . . .”

“But you stayed here last night.” Alice’s face smashed together in the middle, just as confused as I was.

“Yes, but nothing happened.” Aside from my burning, midnight orgasm. “He hasn’t let me, or . . .” I could come up with any number of colorful possibilities but it was the most likely one that bottomed out my stomach.

He doesn’t want me to.

---

Jasper was in bed when I got home.

Succumbing to the overwhelming heat of the afternoon, curled up in the sheets and so heartachingly familiar that I let all my instincts take over and crawled right into bed with him. He was scalding hot, scorching my skin, and dewey to the touch. I had always been the cold up against all his warm and nuzzled up into him, my bones finally solidifying for the first time in days when he wrapped his arms around me.

“God, I’ve missed you.” He palmed the back of my head, pressing my face to his chest.

“Where have you been?”

“You know,” I whispered, breathing into his skin.

“Is it Alice? Or Edward?” He flopped onto his back, letting me settle in the curve of his arm and I had to think hard about that one before I answered him.

“Both, I think.”

“Edward, I can understand. Alice though . . .” Jasper trailed off. “She comes as a complete surprise.”

“I’m sorry about that. In the bathroom the other night.”

“I’m not,” Jasper said sleepily and I wrinkled my face in confusion. “There’s something to be said for it . . . kissing a woman, that I didn’t understand before that.” He shifted beneath me, gazing down at me as though he had a lot to think about.

“You liked it?” I asked, still wrinkle-faced.

He blinked and swallowed something. “It makes me regret all the time I wasted with you.”

He tugged me close and put his mouth down over mine, the beginnings of it familiar before it veered inexplicably into unmarked territory, his tongue between my lips and his hand clutching my face. He sighed into my mouth, licking my teeth and fondling my tongue, and I was too surprised to even respond before he was pulling away, heavy-eyed and wet-mouthed.

“I’ve got to go to the mainland again tomorrow. Spend a couple of days there. Will you come with me?” He looked hopeful, sounded even more so. I dropped my eyes and tried to think coherently, caught up in a whirlwind too chaotic to stay grounded in. A hurricane of kisses and promises and agreements. Jasper’s newfound tolerance for the fairer sex and how I’d spent years of my life hoping for just this moment. Alice’s mouth. Edward’s hands.

His big empty bed and the elusive bell.

“I think I want to stay. You should take Jacob.”

“I don’t know that he’ll agree. He’s not nearly comfortable with any of this.”

I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was with all of it either, but the poor boy had gotten caught up in something far grander than I’m sure he’d ever stumbled across before in his short, secluded life. I knew that he was probably feeling overwhelmed and unsure of everything right about now. I also knew that Jasper was the very best of all the options Jacob could subject himself to, the cream of the crop so to speak, and that he would treat Jacob just as well as he treated me. Full of respect and unyielding devotion.

The kid could do far worse.

“He seems completely enamored with you,” I mumbled. The searching eyes and that full-blown grin that stretched across his face when he realized Jasper was his for the night were enough to confirm that fact for me.

“Yes, but I think he might be falling a little too hard. I should back off. Stay away.” Jasper sounded as though that was the very last thing he wanted to do.

“It might not be such a bad thing, if he does . . .”

“He’s just a boy. On some island,” Jasper shook his head before gripping my chin firmly in his fingers, making sure I was paying attention. “You are my everything.”

“I don’t want to make you choose.”

“I won’t have to. I’ve already picked.”

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