He's Come Undone (7 page)

~ Ellie ~

When I’d mentioned being embarrassed, I was talking about having to see my roommates. I knew Julian would be long gone for my walk of shame, and I was right. I heard him get up and heard him get dressed, but I pretended to be asleep. Before he left he whispered my name, and I didn’t budge. Footsteps, followed by the door softy closing, marked his departure from my life.

Later, once the sounds of activity dropped to nothing, I slipped on jeans and a T-shirt and ventured out to find my roommate Carmen on the red couch in front of the window overlooking the Mississippi River, staring at her laptop. She glanced up and said: “That was some performance last night.”

Heat flooded my face.

She had no mercy. “I was really hoping to get up early enough to catch a glimpse of what kind of guy could elicit such noise, but I take it he’s gone.”

“Yeah. Gone.”

I wasn’t a sexual person. Not in comparison to my loft buddies. In the year I’d lived there, I’d spent my share of nights with a pillow wrapped around my head, trying to muffle the sounds coming through the walls, or rather, over the walls. In all that time I’d had one guest, and that had been a disaster.

Before that, a few guys had stirred me up enough to extract a small orgasm, but nothing to really remember once it was over. I’d actually started to think sex really didn’t interest me all that much. Guess I was wrong.

Last night was something I’d probably remember the rest of my life. When I was old and sitting in a nursing home, I’d probably kick back in my rocker and tell the other residents about the night this long-distance runner named Julian fucked my brains out.

I poured myself a glass of orange juice and perched on the bar stool, realized I was sore, so opted to stand.

My whole body tingled. The surface of my skin… it was kinda like it was singing. Like all the capillaries were doing a banana dance. Like, thanks for the sex!

I finished off the orange juice and put my glass in the sink. “I doubt you’ll ever meet him,” I said.

“That’s cool,” Carmen said. “Some of the best sex I’ve ever had was with nameless one-nighters. I think it’s the lack of inhibition that kind of thing brings. Or the booze.”

Carmen was one of those practical earth chicks. She worked at a co-op, was a strict vegan, and sex was natural and didn’t have to take place just within a relationship. I knew that was the way to be, but I couldn’t remove the relationship from the equation. So last night also brought with it a weird sense of guilt since I’d entered into it knowing it would
never
be a relationship.

But there it was. And I was glad it had happened, because I wasn’t even sure I would have ever known what sex was truly about if it hadn’t. And that kind of blew my mind.

Was he just
that good
? Or was it something else? And then I thought of
the girls
, Charlotte and Paige and Beba, and the way they’d giggled and said I’d want to have sex with Julian. Had he blown their minds too? Probably. Most likely. I almost wanted to know. I almost wanted to compare notes.

Like it or not, I was now part of the sisterhood.

“I gotta run,” Carmen said, slipping her laptop into her messenger bag and unfolding herself from the couch. “Glad you finally got some.”

Most people would have said that as a joke, but Carmen was totally serious.

After the door clicked closed, I thought about taking a shower, knowing I should take a shower, but I felt this weird reluctance to wash Julian off my skin. And let’s face it. I was still high from our hours together while at the same time trying not to think about never seeing him again. I didn’t want to dwell on that. And actually what had happened between us gave me some hope that I might be able to have a somewhat normal relationship with somebody someday.

Or not.

The intercom buzzed. I pushed the Talk button. “Yeah?”

“It’s me.”

Me. Me, being him. Me, being Julian.

My heart began to pound, my mouth went dry, and my brain misfired. I took a few steps toward the hall that would lead me to the shower I should have taken. Then I stopped and went back to the intercom on the wall. “Come on up.” I pushed the button that unlocked the entry.

Seconds later I heard footsteps pounding up the metal stairs, then a weird rap on the door, more like someone had kicked it rather than knocked.

I opened it to see Julian standing there with a carryout bag between his teeth, and two coffees, one in each hand.

Stepping inside, he passed one of the coffees to me, then pulled the bag from his mouth and dropped it on the counter. “Breakfast,” he explained.

This was not supposed to happen.

Well, in the original version, in the revenge girls’ version, this was exactly what was supposed to happen. But in my version…no.

“I don’t know how you like your coffee. I have a latte and straight black.”

“Latte,” I said in a baffled voice.

“Ah.” He checked his cup then traded me. “I kinda thought you might be a latte girl.” He set his paper cup aside, and now I could see it came from Espresso Royal, the same place I’d met the girls that first day.

He tore open the bag to reveal two scones.

“That’s a lot of sugar.”

A stupid thing to say. A really stupid thing to say.

I wasn’t prepared for this. Morning after the hot sex thing. I wasn’t prepared to face him. I wasn’t sure I’d
ever
be prepared to face him after the stuff we’d done. Maybe Carmen was onto something when she said one-night stand sex was the best kind. Maybe that’s why I’d been so uninhibited.

“Hey, your eyes. They’re not violet.”

I wasn’t wearing contacts.

I shoved the latte at him. “I have to go do something.” Something being hide, get away, regroup. Which I liked to do in the shower. Alone.

I turned and hurried to the bathroom, locking the door behind me. A minute later, warm water was pouring over my head.

What was he doing here?

Every touch of the washcloth reawakened my already sensitive skin, and by the time I shut off the shower and dried myself, I wasn’t thinking of much else other than Julian.

I tried to tamp down my sex drive as I wrapped a towel around myself and slipped into my bedroom for a pair of yoga pants and a gray T-shirt. Contacts back in.

In the living room, I found him staring out the window. “This is a great view.” He turned. “But this isn’t the same place I dropped you off the night we met.”

“No.” An excuse came easily because it made total sense. “I didn’t think it was a good idea for someone I’d just met to know where I really lived.”

“A girl’s gotta be careful.”

“Right.”

I sipped the latte, but I wasn’t sure my stomach could handle anything else. I was so nervous, and I’d hardly slept—a bad combination.

The distance of the room still separated us. Me, hovering near the kitchen counter, Julian backlit by the window, his body a silhouette. Finally he crossed the space and came to stand in front of me. He wasn’t all that much taller, maybe five inches or so.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” I found myself saying.

His eyes were a little bloodshot, and his hair was a mess, and he needed to shave. His lips…his lips were red, and I wondered if they were as sensitive as mine were this morning. After all the kissing…

“Why’d you think that?” he asked, putting his coffee aside, removing his jacket and tossing it on a chair.

I shook my head, my heart still pounding. I’ve always laughed at the ways people described sex and attraction. It always seemed so corny and melodramatic. And then there was the whole physical response. The body that responded without engaging the brain.

I was experiencing that now. And it was kind of funny, but not funny. I actually felt hot all over, and especially hot and even swollen between my legs. Like if a female could have an erection then I was having one.

We were both thinking about sex—that was obvious.

“I have roommates,” I said.

“Are any of them here?”

“No. But they could come home any time.”

“So we should go someplace private.”

“Yeah. We should.”

I put my hand in his and led him to the bedroom, to the rumpled sheets spilling to the floor, a space that still smelled like warm bodies. As soon as the door clicked shut, we reached for each other, now, in the bright light of day. I tugged my T-shirt over my head, and before he could help me I stripped down to nothing, kicking my yoga pants and panties aside. Still dressed, he pushed me back on the bed, his breathing uneven. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he whispered in an awe-filled voice that made me even hotter.

I let out this low moan and spread my legs for him. He slipped his hands under my buttocks while his fingers dug in. He kissed me and licked me until I was going crazy under him, arching against his mouth, feeling his teeth and his hot breath on me. I moaned and had an orgasm right there with him between my knees. And while the shudders rocked me, he continued to taste me and kiss me, his mouth making sucking sounds against my hot flesh.

I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t.

At one point, he straightened, his knees between mine. I push his hands away and unzipped his jeans, freeing his erection. I cupped him and stroked him. I took him in my mouth and ran my tongue around the tip of him, following the contour and the crease. I raked my teeth against him, and he moaned and thrust himself deeper into my mouth. I sucked him as hard as I could. He trembled and pulled away long enough to strip his jeans completely and drop to his back, his breathing irregular, both of us sweating in a room that wasn’t hot.

I kissed him everywhere, but mostly his penis while he moaned and dug his fingers into my scalp. Finally, I climbed up his body and impaled myself with him, burying him deep. He filled me, and as I moved my body, I ground myself against his pubic bone.

I couldn’t get enough of him. I couldn’t get close enough no matter how deep his penetration.

Later, we showered together. And it was ridiculous, but we couldn’t stop. With the touching, the tasting, the following the shape of him, hearing him pull in a trembling breath, feeling him shudder—it gave me a sense of power. Until he finished it. Until he drove himself into me and I clung to him while moaning and making sounds I swear I’d never made before in my life. This kind of whimpering, this kind of cry.

Back in the bedroom, curled up and temporarily exhausted, we lay in bed, his arm around me, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat while he occasionally kissed my forehead and stroked my face.

His phone rang.

He didn’t answer it.

Then the text messages started coming, and he finally shifted from under me, left the bed and found his jeans, dug in the pocket, and pulled out his cell phone. He read the screen, frowning, all the while standing there nude and beautiful.

“I have to go,” he said. “The call and texts are from my coach. I missed an important meeting, and he’s really pissed. I’ve gotta stop by his office.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” He looked down at me, hair hanging over his forehead. No doubt or hesitation, just the facts. “I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”

His words made me feel wonderful. Even more wonderful than I already felt.

“I’m afraid you might vanish or something,” he said. “It’s like you just appeared in my life when I most needed you, and that makes this not seem real. Does that make any sense?”

He wanted me around. My heart was singing.

“Yeah. It does.” I had to tell him. About the revenge girls. About what I’d done. Would he forgive me? Maybe he’d laugh. Because when I thought about it… We’d never have met if not for the girls. We’d never have met if I hadn’t decided to take the job.

But nobody liked to be tricked. That was the truth. Once he knew what I’d done, he might never forgive me.

I left the bed to stand beside him. He pulled me into his arms, and we clung to each other, just clung to each other, and it was the sweetest, most innocent thing, especially in light of everything that had just happened between us.

“I’ve never met anybody like you,” he whispered, his forehead against mine. “That’s what I do know.”

We finally untangled ourselves and he got dressed, but not without several pauses for more kissing and more touching and more looks of longing.

“I wish we could just keep the door closed and stay in here forever,” I said. “Just the two of us.”

He tugged his T-shirt over his head. “Me too.”

“We’d order food delivered to the door, and we’d listen to music and read books and get old together.”

I’d said too much. I was talking about a life together. What would he think about that? Crazy talk. We hardly knew each other. Correction. He hardly knew Ellie Barlow.

He was in agreement about the lockup. “Just you and me.”

He kissed me again—deep and with so much longing I felt tears spring to my eyes. Was this love? And was this how sex was between two people who were soul mates? Was this the thing I’d never understood until now?

He left, both of us refusing to say the word goodbye.

~ Julian ~

I didn’t remember driving to campus and parking my car, but suddenly I found myself stopped in front of a meter. I swiped a credit card, pocketed my wallet, and headed for Coach Rice’s office. At that point I noticed the day was getting warm, like the kind of day where you can still feel the cold of the night, but the sun is falling on the ground and illuminating the trees.

Under my feet, the fallen leaves were deep in places, and the beauty of the moment suddenly made my heart hurt in a good way, and I knew this fresh awareness came with the arrival of Ellie in my life, because until this moment I hadn’t felt joy at being alive for a long, long time.

As I walked, I wished I’d asked Ellie to come with me because I didn’t want to be away from her for even a few minutes. And in the back of my mind I had this weird feeling, this nagging worry that something bad would happen if I wasn’t careful. That I’d lose her when I’d just found her.

But since my parent’s death, dark and fatalistic thoughts occupied my head, so I tried to tell myself that’s all it was. When bad and horrible shit happens to a person, when bad and horrible shit steps into your life, you can’t think about that pattern ever changing or ever getting better.

Before my parents were killed, I never worried about anything. I never thought about the possibility of bad. But now I found myself worrying about Ellie. Like what if someone killed
her
? What if she left her apartment and got hit by a car? What if she got really sick, like seriously sick?

Stop it.

I paused in the middle of the sidewalk and pulled out my phone. I began typing a text to her, then paused, wondering what to say. I knew damn well what I
wanted
to say, but I knew damn well it was too soon, and I also wondered if I was maybe going a little crazy, or craz
ier.

Because what I wanted to type was
I love you
.

But people didn’t fall in love so fast. That kind of thing didn’t really happen, did it?

What do you really know about her?
I asked myself.

Not that much. She was this person who’d appeared in my life, someone with no past and no future. No past and future yet revealed
to me
. That information was yet to be discovered. All I knew was that I wanted Ellie to be in my future.

I miss you.

That’s what I texted her. So sappy. So true.

It was hard to believe that two weeks ago I hadn’t even known her, and now she filled me up. Just filled me up.

My phone buzzed. I checked it. From Ellie.

Nothing bold or earth shattering. Just a smiley face and
I miss you too.

I have to confess to hoping for more, because
I miss you too
seemed a bit canned, a bit cautious, but how could I blame her? Even though I couldn’t imagine not having her in my life or imagine what my life had been before Ellie, the truth was we’d only just met. I had to be careful. I didn’t want to freak her out.

“You can’t skip any more meetings and practices,” Coach Rice said once I was face-to-face with him in his office.

At the moment I didn’t give a shit about running for the school team, but I had the scholarship. I had an obligation.

“I know,” I said, feeling genuinely contrite. “I won’t. I’ll be here.”

“I want you to live and breathe running for the next three weeks. Nothing else should be on your mind, you understand? No drinking, no late nights, stick to your training diet, and keep your cock in your pants because I can see right now you have sex face. You’ve been drinking and fucking and sniffing around whores, so just stop it. Now.”

“She’s not a whore.” I’d never had a reason to dislike him, but now I wanted to punch him in the face.

“I don’t care what she is. Just cut it out. For a goddamn three weeks, until these big meets are out of they way. Then if you want to fuck like rabbits, have at it. But until then, stay away from her. If I have to have my assistant follow you around and babysit to make sure you stick to the program, I will. Another thing? No marathon. That’s against my rules. No events outside university meets.”

I’d worried that he’d find out about the marathon, but he couldn’t stop me from participating, and my determination must have shown in my face.

He blew up. “You want a marathon? You want a damn marathon?” he demanded, his face red. “Okay, get changed and give me twenty miles today. No argument.”

I’d never run over 10K for him, 10K being the maximum distance in cross-country meets. I could see what he was doing. Trying to break me down so I wouldn’t be able to run the marathon.

“Twenty or I’m writing you up,” he said. “Twenty or your scholarship’s in jeopardy. Get your ass out there.”

I got my ass out there.

There were established running courses in the Twin Cities, and I headed out on the major twenty-mile route that wound along the Mississippi to downtown Saint Paul, through the Saint Paul University of Minnesota campus, a campus I knew little about since its focus was agriculture.

After five miles my legs were weak. I did a mental retread and realized I hadn’t eaten any real food for probably twenty-four hours. After seeing the shrink yesterday I’d gone straight to the bar. No food, then on to Ellie’s where I’d gotten a few hours sleep, but not real sleep. That, along with very little water. Not the way to prep for a short run, let alone twenty miles.

Ten miles in, I got leg cramps from dehydration, and a side ache from who the hell knew what. Hunger, maybe. I spotted a bench and was about to collapse on it when I heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up beside me. The passenger window lowered, and then Coach Rice was looking up at me. “Don’t stop, kid. You got ten more miles.”

Shit.

I liked running because it wasn’t that much of a team sport. You could do it with the team, or you could run alone. And it wasn’t full of the testosterone of things like football. But Coach Asshole was quickly changing my mind about the sport.

I kept going. If I didn’t slow down, I’d be done by evening. Then I could eat and collapse.

Five more miles and I stopped, bent at the waist, hands on my knees, staring at the ground in front of me, ground that slowly tilted until I smacked right into it.