I Still Remember (3 page)

“Oh god,” I groan as she pinches my nipple and leaves me with no choice at all.

“Don’t move,” she says, her voice hoarse and throaty above my head.

And I stay still but I have to open my eyes. I have to see her. Just as our gazes lock, her hands squeeze my breasts.
 

I could cry for the teenager I was once was. A young body filled to the brim with an inexplicable burgeoning lust for Amy. If time is supposed to heal all wounds, what is it doing now? Coming home is always a fleeting exercise in dredging up the past, no matter who you see or don’t see. But then you leave and forget about it all over again, a bit more with every departure. How will I ever leave this behind?

Amy’s eyes seem to tell me everything I need to know—in this moment, anyway. Because what really happened to us are the things that didn’t happen. The conversation we never had. The feelings I never shared. If this is her way of saying we’re okay, then I’m fine with that.

She gives my breasts one last gentle squeeze before abandoning them. Her left hand trails downward along my chest as she walks to the side of the table. She leans her hip against it and I follow her with my eyes. Her face is tanned, but I can easily spot the blush below her cheekbones.

She searches for my eyes again, and arches up her eyebrows a fraction, as if asking for permission. It’s a little late for that, I think to myself, but I know what she means. The time for foreplay has ended.

I want what’s going to happen next so much, my body breaks out into a shiver. She puts her hand on my belly to calm me down, but it hardly has the required effect. Her fingers already point south, to that moist mess of a pussy of mine.
 

Shouldn’t it have been the other way around, I wonder? Should I not have been the one seducing her? But this role reversal—if you will—turns me on more than the prospect of Amy’s fingers inside of me.
 

It reminds me of hot summer nights alone in my bed. I left the curtains open to see the last of the light fade away, while I dreamed of Amy’s face before she kissed me and told me it was all real.
 

It can’t be more real now. Amy’s one hand travels lower, while her other one stays on my belly, driving her nails into my skin. I spread wider, because it’s all I ever wanted to do for Amy.

Her eyes are on mine when the first fingertip enters me. Something shimmers in the chocolate brown of them. As her finger slips all the way in, I realise it’s lust. The same lust shaking my bones.
 

It’s more shock than anything else rattling through me as Amy starts to fuck me slowly, almost leisurely. A hint of a smile plays on her lips, as if this was the only possible outcome of us running into each other the way we have.

All the years of friendship we shared flash through my mind in that moment. The time I almost kissed her. The day we took dozens of pictures at a photo booth, my face drawn into a serious frown in all of them because Amy was sitting on my lap.

But Amy has her finger inside of me and, as she slides it back, I feel the tip of another one getting ready to slip in. And yes, this is sex—unmistakably so—but it’s also much more than that. My pelvis bucks upward to meet Amy’s thrusts. Her gaze doesn’t waver and I feel moisture build behind my eyes. Because this is too much. The essence of what is happening right now has been with me as a fantasy for more than twenty years.

In the silence between two Counting Crows songs, I can make out the sucking noise Amy’s fingers produce between my legs. It stokes the fire in my belly even more, and when her other hand starts to travel south as well, her fingers tickling the trimmed hair down there, I’m about to spontaneously combust.

I know she’s going for my clit and I know that when she reaches it, I’ll be lost. The moment will pass forever. Confusion, nostalgia and years of pent-up lust descend from my mind into my blood.

Amy thrusts deep with the two fingers of her left hand as her right index finger brushes the side of my clit. My muscles contract at the touch of her finger against my swollen bud. I want to pull her close and kiss her, but Amy is calling the shots, and I don’t want to break the spell she’s under.

She finds a rhythm with her hands. A deep stroke with one hand, while the fingers of the other circle my clit. It’s more than enough to send me on my way to the deliverance I’ve been waiting for what feels like forever.

Amy in her mum’s high heels. Amy in boxer shorts and a tank top at her cousin’s sleep over. Amy by the pond, careless and with the promise of everything shimmering in the darkness of her eyes. Amy right here, right now. Eyes blazing and fingers on fire inside of me. Her muscles working underneath her skin as she takes me.

I throw my head back because her glance is too much for me to take in that moment when my body surrenders. It all crashes through me, lightning quick fireballs reaching the end of my fingers and my toes at the same time. The walls of my pussy clamping tightly around her fingers. The pleasure that shoots up inside of me through her hands, which are, in the end, mere extensions of her eyes and what I’ve seen pool in them. I had to wait twenty years and maybe that’s why it feels so good, life-changing even, but definitely shattering the world as I know it for a brief instant.

Amy doesn’t slide her fingers out of me immediately. She leaves them inside to linger for a few seconds as I find her eyes again. I know that mine are filled with tears of release and a slew of other emotions I don’t have the presence of mind to identify.
 

“Jesus,” I say, because, at times like this, it always seems like the only appropriate thing to say.

Amy looks at me in disbelief, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted. As if she’s just slipped back into her skin after an out-of-body experience. Gently, her fingers leave me and I have as much a clue of what to say as she has.

Mute, she stares at her hands and I know, despite being the one naked on a massage table, I have to step in.
 

My muscles are weak and soft from the massage and the climax, but I pull myself together. “Hey,” I say, while I push myself up. I shoot her a reassuring smile. “You really do give a mean massage.”

She seems to snap out of her trance and starts looking around the room. I hope for the towel she took off me at the beginning of our session. I’m not sure if it’s possible to feel more naked than I am, but I do.

Thankfully, Amy locates the towel on a chair behind her and, instead of simply handing it to me, she steps toward me and wraps it around my bare skin.

“I wish I knew what to say,” she whispers in my ear as her arms fold around me.

For all the intimacy we just shared, this unexpected hug touches me more than Amy’s fingers inside of me.

In response, I curl my arms around her waist and hold her. I realise this is the first time I’ve intently touched her this way.

“Whatever it was you wanted to say, you’ve said it loud and clear.” My cheek is pressed against Amy’s chest and I can hear her heart hammer away at a ridiculous pace.

I can’t help myself, because the next thing I know, my fingers snake down her back, finding the hem of her tank top, wanting desperately to feel the skin underneath.

She gives me one last squeeze before freeing herself from our hug. She doesn’t pull completely away though, and in the motion, my fingers wander to her sides. I look up at her and I can’t shake the feeling there’s something more going on here than two old friends reconnecting in an unexpectedly physical way.

“Eli, I…” she starts. Her fingers play with the white towel that’s slung around my body. “I really don’t know what came over me.”

“I’m not complaining.” I slip off the table so I can stand tall and face her properly. The towel starts sliding down, but Amy catches it and fastens it with a tight fold above my breasts.

Again, it’s an intimate gesture. There’s only one way I know how to acknowledge it. My hands are back on her waist and I pull her close. The short, ragged puffs of her breath travel across my cheeks. Slowly, I slant my head to the side and lean in for that kiss I should have gone for years ago.

Amy doesn’t display any signs of hesitation as our lips meet. I figure it’s a little late for doubts after her fingers brought me to orgasm mere minutes ago.

My fingers travel the length of her arms, all the way to her face, where I cup her chin. The towel slips off me anyway—and Amy lets it—but I’m past caring. I’m ready to be naked with Amy again.

Amy’s nails trail along the skin of my back as our tongues dance with one another. The kiss seems to freeze time and I have no idea how long we’ve been at it when we finally break apart.

“We should talk,” Amy says, but her breath comes out in chopped puffs and her body language doesn’t exactly signal a talking mood.

But I probably need this conversation more than Amy, and I’m dying to hear what she has to say, so I nod before ducking down to grab the towel again.

“That thing obviously does not want to stay on your body,” she jokes. “I can see why.”

For an instant, I’m flabbergasted, and a flush rises to my cheeks. While I’m still grappling to come up with a response, Amy moves in again and pecks me on my burning cheek. “There’s a shower through there.” She points to a door behind me. “Take your time. I’ll wait for you at reception.”

I grab my belongings from the dressing room and head for the shower, all the while wondering if I’m not trapped in a dream. I don’t want to wash away the oil Amy rubbed into my skin, but as I do and my hands caress the spots she just did, my mind already wanders to the next step. I’m not leaving town until I’ve touched Amy the way she has touched me.

After I’ve put myself together as best as I can, smelling of lavender and satisfaction, I find my way to the reception area. My legs are still a bit shaky and my cheek still tingles where Amy kissed it last. I half-expect reception to not be there and wake up in my old bedroom in my parents’ house, sweaty from a passionate dream. But there’s Amy, leaning against the reception desk, one ankle crossed over the other. She looks so different from when I first walked in. A lot has changed since then.

“I presume you have a party to go to tonight.” Amy’s voice is playful, almost seductive.

I remember the reason why I’m in town and all the prying questions on my relationship status I have to look forward to. “Yes. Oh, joy.” I check my watch. “But it only starts at seven.”

Amy draws her lips into a pensive pout. “Let me check with the boss if I can take the rest of the day off.” She tucks her chin in and looks at her own chest. “Great. She agrees.” She sends me a wide smile and I’m sixteen again.

We exit The Body Spa together and I wait for her initiative as we stand around on the parking lot in front.

“Did you know I live in my parents’ old house now?”

Due to the fact I appear on TV five times a week, Amy probably has a lot more superficial knowledge of me than I of her. I realise I know nothing about her life. “Really?” But, oh gosh, the memories that place holds.

“Yep. Do you still know the way?”

I nod. I could never forget. “See you there in ten minutes.”

I step into my rental and notice my hand is shaking when I put the key in the ignition. I’m going to Amy Waters’s house. It’s the only thought occupying my mind as I drive the route I could take blindfolded—still, after all these years.

I used to ride my bike to Amy’s house. An old beat-up BMX I inherited from my older brother. I’d attach cards from a deck to the spokes with clothespins and pretend it was the scooter my parents would never allow me to have.

The Waters house is still in the same spot in the same street, but that’s about all that still resembles the memory I have of it. The bricks are no longer red and the roof is flat instead of slated.

I sit staring at the sleek, whitewashed walls of the rectangular shape in front of me, when a knock on my car window wakes me from my daze.

“Coming?” Amy’s arched-up eyebrows ask—just like they’ve always done.

I get out of the car and, apparently, I can’t hide the look of bewilderment on my face.

“If this surprises you, wait until you see the inside,” Amy teases. But I’m not really interested in the inside of her house—not for now, anyway. I want to go round the back and see if the pond is still there. That pond where we passed hours of our youth just lying around and dreaming out loud of the kind of life I knew I would never lead.

Amy catches my glance and it’s as if she can read my mind. “Come on.” She curls her fingers around my wrist and drags me to the path circling around the house. “You can admire my flair for interior design later.”

My pace quickens as we approach the backyard. To my surprise, not a lot has changed. The pine trees are still there, and so is the pond. I can see its surface flicker through the spaces between the trees.

A rush of tears pricks behind my eyes. I have to breathe in deeply to stop them from crashing through.

“I’ve spent a fortune redoing the house, but this is still my favourite spot.” Amy stands behind me and her voice sounds exactly the same as then, except, everything is different now. I turn around to face her.

“Did you know?” I ask, the words coming out a bit shaken.

Her face mellows into a soft expression foreign to me. Is this how she looked at her husbands when they proposed? How did she regard them when the divorces came through? But I’m no different, not having had a romantic relationship last longer than a few years. I broke my record with Celia, who, in the end, I also successfully managed to chase away. I blame the job. Presenting the morning news doesn’t make for a lot of date nights. Or maybe the right woman simply hasn’t come along yet.

“How could I not?” Her fingers intertwine with mine. “You were my best friend, Eli. Of course I knew.”

My heart beats in my throat. Why did I never say anything? What if our years of friendship turned out to be one big missed opportunity? What if it could have been so much more than me sneaking glances and pining for her secretly?

In my teenage mind, Amy was the cruel one for, supposedly, never being able to return my affections. But in the end, I was the one who left without looking back.