Summer Sun
Warning: Somewhat smutty
The Summer smells so much like chlorine and burning tar. Each sticky step melts my Docs to the pavement as I make the walk around town with the flicker-filled Betty who bounces with every approaching step that mismatches mine. The odd ball and the Angel.
The Southside was becoming as much her home as it was my welcomed one. Sometimes she stared at the jacket when I wore it. Sometimes I watched her smooth it over her bare skin that was decorated with lace from top to bottom, bare feet on the lino of the trailer that we were supposed to leave alone, but naturally, we didn't.
When Betty came over, the night was dark and didn't feel like the night at all, it was the smell of sweat and leather and pine that moved through the trailer, it was the feeling of sweat on my forehead and damp tank tops and vanilla scented shampoo and a hell of a lot of chlorine that burned my nose. She had opened the door of the trailer somewhat gently and closed the door with her hand cradling the door handle but she was all summer-storm thunders and afternoon lightening. It was the echo of her light steps intertwined with the heavy-deep sighs as she padded through that caught my attention. The summer breeze moving through lifted the smell of her summer-burned skin and coconut moisturiser that seemed unnatural on her skin because she was trade-mark vanilla and light pink lips, she was not summertime coconut. Summertime coconut didn't match the smell of my menthol cigarettes and mint-fresh gum.
I was sitting on the ledge of the window of the trailer with my leg dangling down, kicking the leg of the table and the window was open wide, my head in my hands and the discarded packet of menthols resting by me. The Serpents seemed to have a never ending stash of a lot of things, bags of weed, bags of cash, bottles of Jack and cartons of cigarettes.
They say that smoking is a dirty habit; but that was exactly what it was now. A habit. A brief get-away that keeps my mind clear and keeps me busy. Keeps my hands occupied and makes me a feel a little good.
Some of the ash flicks into the trailer and rolls down my legs, she doesn't miss it, I know she sees it. She eyes the ash that runs down my leg and onto the ground. I keep a smile to myself when I watch her eyes turn beady and her hands find their way to her hips.
She looks like summer-storms and the air she's giving off feels like it too. Like crashing and rolling, like spikes and daggers. I don't know if anyone else sees it but her eyes are deeper than Sweet Water River itself. Her skin is like velvet and burned like crimson.
There's crimson in the sky tonight, it was painted blue and purple and pink and crimson like her skin; twilight screamed at me right now as I took a drag of my cigarette and she fingered the empty packet of menthols on the table. "Is this yours?" she asks, pulling out a blunt from the empty packet.
"No," I lie.
She exhales loudly and starts rolling it around in her hand, feeling it, running her smooth fingers up and down it's length, lifting it up to smell it… "You like this?" she asks, not understanding that blunt in her hands at all.
"It just smells weird," I explain. "Just a little different to what you're used to."
"Jug," she says, eyeing me again like I'm a stranger, "Stop condescending me."
"Are you used to it then?" I ask her, not turning to meet her Sweet Water River eyes. "Or are you not?"
She scowls at me, chucking the packet back on the table where it belongs. Her hair is long, damp and knotty; unbrushed. What I would do to go over there and run my hands through that damp-long hair. To get my hand a little lost in those knots and pull… "Where were you today?"
I laugh to myself and chuck the butt out the window with the rest of the collective, I swing my leg over so I'm sitting on the ledge barely and I look at Betty, smiling at her. "Where were you?" I ask her.
She bites her lip and spins on the balls of her feet and back again, moving through my world to meet me at the ledge, she leans against my knees and wraps her arms around my neck, burying herself in the crook, her lips warming me up as they speak against me. "Swimming. With V and Archie, they wanted to come and get you but I figured you might want a break from them."
"You figured correctly," I mutter against her own neck, tasting all of summer and vanilla and the island like coconut. "You keep getting in my head and reading it."
"Where have you been?" she asks again.
"Gone."
Betty groans and pulls tighter on my neck, paining me but making me feel like I have been completely gone since she's not been here. "Where have you been?"
I pretend to hiss. She will find it a sick, not funny-at-all kind of a joke. "Southside."
"Gone Southside, huh?" she says, I try and block out the malice in her voice, I try and only hear light and summertime. I'm not good at blocking out Betty. I never have been.
I pull away gently from her, kissing the inside of her arms as they move distantly from me. Dots on the white of her wrists and the crimson of her chest by the swell of her breasts, I kiss lightly on her heart and my hands find their home on her hips where they dip and pool. I move her tank a little to show me where her breasts swell the most and where the beat of her heart hides under; I smirk at the mark on her chest that she uselessly tries to hide, I see her blush as she looks down. I run the pad of my thumb over it and look up to her. "You're blushing," I tell her.
She leans down to meet her forehead with mine and she looks into my eyes, the deep blue is more like a deeper black, a yearning, burning black. Her hands have a slight trembling grip on my shoulders still; I couldn't pull away enough. "And you're being vague."
I feel the summer on my cheeks because they're reddening and burning and feel like the sun is on them but it's just her questioning glare on me that's making me feel this way. "Betts…"
"Jughead."
I feel like moving her out of the way to reach for that menthol packet but I try not to, my distraction was right here with me with a warmth against my knees and a rope made of her skin around my neck and shoulders. My distraction needed another distraction for me. "Have you ever smoked a cigarette?" I ask her.
She frowns; I see her forehead wrinkle and her lips pout that I just want to pull between my teeth and pull and pull with my tongue on her tongue and my hands running in-between her roughly and the sticky, sweet-sour taste of her skin in my mouth. "No."
"Do you want to try?" I ask her.
I move her out of the way, shoving her hips from my knees and keeping me from pulling her right down on to the lino floor and running my knuckles up and down her thighs and deeper. I stand up and pull out a stick from the packet, I reach deep into my pocket of my jeans and pull out the small packet of gum I have in them, pulling out a stick from that particular packet and handing it to her, raising an eye brow.
Betty eyes it suspiciously. "What's this for? You trying to tell me my breath stinks?"
I laugh and look down, shaking my head. "It'll make things a little easier."
I hear her say something like; "things can't be harder than this", but I ignore her. She places the gum in her mouth and I move my hands to prompt her to keep chewing. She places the menthol between swollen, rose-pink lips and I reach up with my lighter to light it.
She just stands there, all denim shorts and tank top before me and doesn't do anything, I inhale deeply and move my hands up my body, encouraging her to inhale. "Breathe, Betts."
She does and her eyes squint and her faces contorts and then she places her fingers along it and grabs the cigarette from her mouth and shakes her head; coughing. "I can't," she says through coughs.
I hold back my laugh and take the stick from her, inhaling deeply for real this time, letting the smoke take me. "You get used to it," I say with a shrug.
"I miss you," she says, leaning her head on my shoulder.
"I miss you too, Sunlight."
"Stop calling me that," she whines which just makes me miss her more even though she's right here with me, in my world.
"There's no world if there's no sun, though, Elizabeth. My Sunlight girl," I say quietly, running my free hand under the straps of her tank. She shies away.
"I have tan lines, they're hideous."
"Just proves to me you're born of the sun, Betty."
She moves away, sun light in the dark night moving with her and she goes to sit on the floor in the sitting area in front of the fan that makes the obnoxious noises and pretends to be giving relief during the summer heat. She's criss crossed legs and leaning back on the palms of her hands, letting the breeze pick her. I discard my next cigarette butt to the collective and move to the sitting room, criss crossing my own legs in front of her – my knees to hers.
She sits up and puts her hands on her knees – my eyes to hers, but this time, I lean forward and take both her hands in mine, moving my hands higher to run my thumbs over her wrists, strumming her pulse. She sighs against my touch, she bites her lip as if she's trying to remember every single time I've done this to her and she'd be thinking of ten million different times because I will never, ever have enough time in this world to do it as many times as I want to.
"How's things on the Sunny Side Up, side?" I ask her, smirking.
She laughs, belly shaking, head throwing. "Where do I start?"
"Start by just telling me," I reply.
She animatedly tells me the grand adventures of Veronica and Archie, how Kevin misses Joaquin and how Polly is the greatest mom. All the while I feel her pulse and I listen to the sound of her voice in my head all without really listening to a word. I just needed her here with me, no matter the circumstances.
"I can't lose you," I say without thinking.
Betty is shocked by my comment and her pause and silence is so loud, I can hear it buzzing in my deaf ears. "You won't," she says quietly, moving closer to me, on her knees, shifting between us.
She pushes me down onto the floor, I think she thinks she's moved me softly but my head bangs on the floor and her nails are digging into my skin. "Good."
"I'm here. With you."
"Are you?" I ask her. "I want you with me all the time."
"I'm with you all the time."
"In my mind, you're with me all the time," I reply.
She frowns, she's not happy. This frown makes me sad because I think she feels a little sad. "This is all temporary."
"Until we can skip?"
"Until we've finished school and we can skip."
Reality is harsh and unforgiving and it doesn't care if you're in love with the girl who was the sun. The reality was all laid out in this trailer with the cigarette butts and the leather jacket hanging off a mismatched chair and the dark of my hair against the bright-light pink of her swollen lips.
We're lying on the floor with her on my body and her mouth on my neck and I know she's whispering every single sweet nothing into my ear with her tongue on my lobe and her hands tracing the smallest circles on my skin, my stomach. Her nails digging into my hip bones.
I could roll her over right now, rip that material off her and put my mouth on a thousand different places, suck her skin into my mouth, bite until I drew blood and run my teeth over her nipples until she cried out and arched her back on the floor, move my hands down between her and rub her until she was bucking against me. I could kiss her tenderly, one million tiny butterfly kisses with my lips and my eyelashes, all over her skin and kiss her softly over lace, tongue lapping at the gap filled lace with my fingers dancing at the bands of them. I could fill her with all of me and watch her ride me from above, choosing the rhythm myself and guiding those hips onto mine. I could do a lot of things right now, I just needed to choose.
I decide to shift and I move her onto the floor, her chest rising and falling and her stomach sucking in with anticipation. She's all shaky sighs and trembling hands as I uncover her barely covered skin; no bra. She moves her hands up, smoothing through knotty, vanilla-coconut hair and her arms high above her head.
I move slowly down her skin, kissing her lightly, licking her stomach, dry lips catching on the smooth of her velvet. I move the denim over her knees which she helps with, lifting her hips to meet my dry lips again – I lick my lips before I taste her thighs; I bite a little too hard and she flinches and sucks air through her teeth. I smile against her thighs, outer then inner. Inner thigh twisting between my teeth. She moans for more. She moans my name; "Jughead," she moans.
She tastes like summer and islands and a little bit like cigarette and she's moving herself more into my mouth because hell, she's always loved it. She likes the feeling of my teeth and my tongue and the way I feel when I taste her and her hands get knotted in my hair. I taste the chlorine on her and the water she's been in. She turns a little dirty when she says; "I wish you would fuck me."
She's radiating, she's turning into the sun I know she is and she's shaking and arching and shimmying closer and I continue lapping the gap between her thigh and her folds, I keep licking, I keep biting, shit, I inhale her skin into my mouth.
I can feel the warmth on my face, I can smell her and my mouth is so close to her centre, I reach up to grab one of her breasts in my hands, flicking her nipple and pinching a little to roughly and she sucks that air between her teeth again. "Shit, Jug…" she whispers.
I keep kissing her skin until she's twisting beneath me, making me smile. Making me feel like a god. I notice several marks, ones that she reaches down between us to touch. I move back up her body, being more gentle, kissing softly.
I whisper in her ear how much I love her and I move my nose along her jaw, along her collarbone, back up to move my nose along hers, I lick her neck, I bite behind her ear.
She moves her knees to trap me between them, a vice that I'm not going to fight. Not now, not ever.
It wasn't about how badly I wanted her, because I have always wanted her so badly that it felt somewhat like punishment but it was more about her being here, with me, under me. Around me. I was drowning in her and she was letting me, not giving me a single hand of help. I could feel myself straining against the denim of my own jeans, I moved against her, I push against her a little too roughly but I do it again and again and fuck, it felt so fucking good.
As I moved against her, I kept my mouth on her neck. I moved quickly to take a nipple in my mouth and I bit down and she screamed out. She begged me to do it again. I whisper against her ear, telling her something stupid about how I'd make her come just to see her eyes flicker and grow wide in the dark. I circle my hip against her, kissing and kissing and never stopping kissing her lips until I feel my lips become a mess and I see hers swelling on the right side, "Take your jeans off," she begs me.
I don't hesitate, they're off in a flash and dumped above her head. I move my hand in-between us and separate slick folds, a finger dipping in and coating before I move into her so quickly, she throws her head back.
Her eyes flutter and her hips start circling in time with mine, moving me deeper and deeper until I feel that I'm one with her, I don't think I can get any deeper, I won't stop from trying though because everyone loves a trier. I'm slow. I want to be so much faster than I am but I'm slow, my body is singing, I'm soaking, I'm so soaked in her.
"Do you like it when I touch you like this, Betty?" I ask in sync with my pushing. "I like to touch you like this," I say rolling a nipple between my fingers.
She's humming and I think she's singing too. My eyes roll to close but she grabs my chin, nails in my cheeks. "Look at me."
Goosebumps form on her arms as I go to move her hand from my face, I take the hand and kiss her palm and put it above us once more, a vice of my hand forming on her wrist. She licks over her over-bitten-swelling lips and I take her tongue and lip in my mouth, biting down, tasting her. Sunlight's hair is fanned out above us, creating an aura around her, her head moving up and down with every push, push, push, she's tightening around me. I feel whole.
I keep circling, circling, pushing and pushing and pushing and her eyes are rolling, mine are too. I keep my eyes shut, trying to keep up. She tries to move her hand again but I keep it locked above us, I kiss her neck, I lick the skin where I've marked, I lick it gently, I bite down roughly. "You love me?" I ask her.
She nods; "Fuck yes, I love you, Jughead."
"You love me, Elizabeth?"
"You love me, Jughead?" she challenges breathlessly.
"I love you," I say against her.
Pink is smeared all along her face, down her neck, along her jawline, over me, I am guessing. I feel whole and complete and filled and filling and I keep moving against her, like the river on the banks, like my body on hers all the time. "I'm coming, Jughead," she whispers.
She's tightening and pulsing and her nails dig so deep into my shoulder blades, I feel scratching and knives and daggers and my skin pulling and scratched. She meets my eyes, she digs a little deeper and a little more painfully but how can I feel any of that when I feel the tightening in my stomach and the swirling, deep down in the deepest part of me. My head is throbbing and I become faster, skin slapping against skin and the hot-flushed sweat dripping from me and onto her, a sweat bead running between her breasts, the smell of spit and hot and summer all wrapped into one. "Shit!" I cry.
I collapse on her with my body on her body, my heart on her beating heart, my head on hers and my lips on her jaw, my hands running along her sides and resting in the dips of her hips.
She's smiling against me with her hands wrapped in my hair and the smell of coconut on my lips and in my mind. "I love you, you know that right?" she asks me.
I knew it, right down in the deepest deep of me. I knew it. I felt it. I needed it. "I know it, Juliet sunlight, beauty of the sun."