They were the longest two weeks of his life, but everything ends. That was the lesson Zack learned when he returned from his suspension.
Now he sat in the break room in somber silence psyching up for the day, and resolved to make one more phonecall, one last time. He dialed the number and listened to the message that he'd heard a hundred times over, the last time he'd ever hear it again.
"Aerith, it's Zack. I'm just…calling to say goodbye. I know I did wrong, and I learned a valuable lesson the hard way. I've learned so much from you Aerith, you taught me so much about myself, and I'll never forget you. But wherever you go, whatever you do, forget me not. Goodbye Aerith."
And he hung up.
A sense of finality befell him, completion. With calm acceptance, he stood up to leave the break room when…
His phone rang, and all the accepting and meditating and stages of grief he'd overcome went straight out the window.
"Aerith? Aerith!..." But there was no answer. A redialer, he thought, until he heard breathing. He threw himself against the wall, hiding his face in his hands. "Please Aerith, I'm crying at work, I just want to hear your voice one last time. Please talk to me. Please."
And silence. The ripping pain returned in full brunt force like everything had happened all over again. Then, her voice came through the receiver in a low monotone.
"…You can come see me now."
*Click*
A whirl of emotion overwhelmed him, filled with anxious awe. He swayed a little from the high, and took off for the train station, hurrying as fast as he could considering he was probably about to have his balls torn off by someone who was good with a pair of gardening sheers.
He reached the steps and his body made him woozy again, remembering the trauma from the last time he was here. He entered like a scared animal.
The old cathedral seemed more beautiful than he remembered it, the low echoes of his footsteps reverberating in the vast space like pipe organs. He saw her leaning against the front pew in the aisle, her flowerlace skirt and summer top peeking from under a jean jacket overthrow. Seeing her sent a gasp through his lungs, sucked the air right out of his body, a ring of light that wrapped around his heart.
Like an altar boy, he approached her with slow, deliberate steps, hanging his head low in humbled shame. He stopped before her, six feet of distance that stretched like eternal oceans. Unable to meet her gaze, unable to find words to defend himself, he braced for a soft lashing.
"One of the Turks came and talked to me about you," she spoke at last.
He hesitated before answering. "Um…which one?"
"Reno."
He cringed. This was going to be bad.
"He said they had you targeted, and when the Turks pick a target, they get their target. To be fair, he said you held out a lot longer than they expected…Plus coming off the Clonipin was a little rough on you."
"What? No I wasn't!"
"He said something about lemonade?"
Those bastards!
A mottled silence fell over them as Zack stood shifting with his hands in his pockets. Aerith sighed with a subtle glare at the ceiling.
"What a jerk, he said if I'd been doing my job then they wouldn't have to do theirs."
Zack winced at that. "What did you say to him?"
"…I called him a few choice things you would have been proud of me for."
A slight smile, he was proud of her. "Did he tell you anything else?"
And a long silence. "…He told me about Costa del Sol."
His heart sank, remembering the time that Aerith had picked him up off the floor. She hadn't just saved his sanity the night he'd returned from Modeoheim, she'd saved his life.
Her eyes weren't angry anymore. They were past being angry. They'd been doing as much crying as he had. Her trust in him lay shattered on the floor like pieces of a stained glass window, and Zack knew that he'd done that. There was only one thing left to do, pick up the pieces, if she'd let him.
He clutched at his heart with a fist, trying beyond hope to hold everything in that threatened to spill out at her feet.
"Aerith, I don't know who I am anymore. If I could take everything back, everything in my life, go back to when we first met, I'd stay there forever. I'd—"
"—Shh." She crossed the endless space between them to place two fingers on his lips. "Zack, we can never go back, only forward."
Worlds swirled in her haloed irises, calm serenity in the wake of magnolian skies. She replaced her fingertips with her lips on his, taking his head in her hands. The oceans between them fell away in enflowering crystallis. That first kiss in forever was like the first kiss all over again.
He fell onto her then, dizzy as the day he'd met her. She caught him with arms around his back, and took him to the pew. She brought him tea in a styrofoam cup. This time her hands shook. "Let me try this again."
But he dropped the cup to throw his arms around her, and they clutched each other for dear life in the ageless solitude of the church.
"I've been keeping things from you too," she sobbed. "There's so much I need to tell you."
"You don't have to tell me anything Aerith."
"No, no, you should know—"
"—I don't want to know." And he took her hands, a firm resolve in his gaze. "There's things we share with each other, and there's things we keep for ourselves. Some things that are sacred, that I want you to keep for you. You don't bare yourself to anyone because you think you have to, not for me, not for anyone. And that's how this relationship is going to be from now on. Understand?"
He bore into her eyes, putting his foot down with his girlfriend, and her steady gaze let him know that she accepted him.
"Zack, I don't not sleep with you because I don't care about you, it's—"
"No, no, none of that, you don't worry about any of that."
She pulled away from him, sitting with hands folded in nervous tangles.
"No. I want to talk about it. It's hard for me. I'm uncomfortable with my body, like I want to jump out of my skin. How can I share myself with someone when I don't even feel human?"
"Aerith, it's alright. If you want to wait until we get married, I completely support you."
She gasped, her eyes shooting to his. He stared back at her trying to stay strong, giving her all the confirmation she needed—he was trembling. He'd said it, and he was scared, but he wasn't taking it back.
She leapt upon his lips, showering him in fiery evanauric kisses, and he pulled her into his lap like he had on the day they'd first become lovers, surrendering possession of his soul. The sunlamp rays flowed in half-light hailing the oncoming twilight and still he kissed her wildly, holding her fast against the oncoming night.
They lit candles in mason jars that Aerith kept for her tomatoes and hung them from the rafters with twine. Wrapped in an old picnic blanket, they laid together in the flowerbed stargazing. The tealight candles flickered in the glass jars above them like constellations, beading fireflies that cast a soft amber glow in the darkness of the old church. It was a new moon cycle above the Plate, so the moonlamps below remained dark, leaving Zack and Aerith staring up at an evangelic candlelight sky.
His fingers interlaced with hers as they traced the lines of their stars, leaning over to whisper something silly in her ear that made her giggle. The flowers brushed their swaying stems around them like little hands clinging to their legs, grabbing at the fibers of the checkered blanket as if they wanted in. Their kisses seemed more sacred tonight, softer than ever before, longing and lonely from missing each other's taste. Hands too, brushing each other's sides like sculptors shaping the fine lines of their curves, and their subtle presses, legs intertwined to be closer, so they could hold each other beyond the boundaries of their skin. This was all Zack wanted, closeness, nothing more tonight. Lying with his girl in his arms under a sky that shone only for them was more than he could ever want right now.
But her hands roamed, running up and down his chest and obliques to feel the rolling hills of his musculature. On their next pass down, they didn't stop, exploring the space between his stomach and belt. He took that hand and kissed it, he didn't want her to feel as if she had to. But when her other hand moved to replace it at his belt, he kissed that one too, and since he could only control one hand at a time as her other hand resumed its exploration, he arched his hips away from her with crossed legs.
And she squinted.
Now a subtle sense of mischievousness invaded their lulling calm, like a sprite that snuck its way into their private precession. She tried one more time, and he turned on his stomach with a puckish smile. Her eyes flew wide.
Now she knew what he was doing, this sly trickster. She knew very well that she was playing right into a little game of his. But Aerith reached into her own bag of tricks and went to war.
Her lips brushed against his ear, breathing a soft warmth into him that swept through his whole body. He went limp as she turned him back over. Her hand brazed the valleys of his stomach, tasting the sweet thrill of victory over his inseam, to find his hand covering himself.
Grrrrr.
She climbed on top of him, straddling him, her hands supporting her weight on the sides of his hips. But he pushed her arms out, a wrestling move that made her topple flat onto him. Now he was in trouble. Her chest hovered over his face, dangling locks of auburn hair bristling against his cheeks. This was a good position, he could get used to this, but he wiped the smile off his face when he realized he'd shown weakness to the enemy.
She arched her back over him, accentuating her chest down to his face, and he became dizzy. Her cotton top whisked his nose, perky pinnacles dragging up his chin, and his world went hazy in a helpless fog. Cloth-covered nipples teased the corners of his mouth as they continued up his cheeks and down again. He searched for them with probing lips, trying to clasp the tips of her outline between tongue and teeth, but she evaded him.
Nibbling at her shirt in powerless desperation, he felt the soft fabric where skin should have been and cried, frustrated gasps of excitement racing through his body, reaching for her with his tongue. When hers met his, a surge of electric-edged energy oscillated from head to limbs, to every part of his body, bloodflow increasing in exponential waves of static inflation. As his mind whirled distracted, her hand slid covertly down the side of his body. Nope.
He rolled her over and laid into her, pressing the indentation of himself between her legs to make her gasp. Guys who didn't do a dry-run like this with their virgin girlfriends were asking for a sexual fiasco. He gauged her reactions to see if she'd freak out. It would stretch her inner thigh more than she thought it would. This wasn't like how girls imagine it to be. How would she handle all of his weight on her, would she get claustrophobic? He kissed her neck in luscious sweeps of his tongue, but then stopped, remembering what happened the first time he'd overstimulated her. Besides, he knew he wasn't getting any cake tonight no matter how many goods her hands kneaded. So when she reached down to unbutton his fatigues, he reached down to button them back up.
DAMMIT!
That's it. She'd had enough. She hauled them both upright, threw the blanket over their heads and took her shirt off. He froze.
A fulminating fluorescence coalesced in the confines of their darkness, a sacral sensuality that thickened with their nervous breaths. They felt the space between them as a finite entity, flowing water that connected them, brushing every part of them, sweeping delicate tendrils of skin and soul in tenuous waves of sexuality. The blanket walled them in, careening energy crammed into the confines of calico plaid, catalytic chemical reactions causing muscle contractions in the sensitive parts of their innermost beings. Their soft breaths sweeping the fibers of their world, shooting the temperature to celestial levels that left sweat beading on their necklines. A fluttering in her stomach brined in a smug satisfaction. She was winning, but at the same time, she crinkled her nose, knowing somewhere in the back of her mind that she was losing. Oh, this guy was something else.
Clasping her hands over her unveiled chest, she pleaded up at him with eyes he couldn't see, fragile illusive shadows dancing delicately behind dark lashes. With trembling breaths she brought her lips to his ear, reaching for him like a little girl, her soft, helpless sigh.
"Touch me."
She commanded, he obeyed.
Subtle fingertips swept up the soft lines of her stomach, running over the xylophonic fence of her ribcage, wisping the tender mound of breast to circle a neat areola. Her firming nipple, crimped between thumb and forefinger, subtle pressure in gentle twists that sent signals to her labia. His head fell low on her shoulder, bowing to nip at her collar line, dying to nibble lower. She pulled him down with her, side by side, giving him permission to kiss. With a blank subconscious, a lusting blindness, he moved down the line of her pale breast and took her into his mouth.
Tingling sensations ignited her, she let out a little gasp. His impassioned kiss, worshipping her body in soft tantalizing suction, he pressed her deeper into himself as his purest form of expression. Milky skin, smooth as salted-caramel sweeping his tongue in white chocolate succor, enflaming him with succulent ether. Then, in a final effort, she got him.
She brought him out with no resistance on his end, and with luring curiosity, she grasped his identity. She gripped him with tentative clutches and subtle brushes, comprehending his shape, his mass, exploring him. Her conservative upbringing had forbidden her from even thinking about this, but now that it was happening, nothing felt more right. She wrapped thumb and forefinger like she wrapped her mind around him, demystifying the idea. This was going to go inside her, and it was going to hurt, but she was going to love it.
Her hand traveled all along the circumcised sculpture of his member, brazing certain glands that made him gasp, sensitive spots that made his entire body tighten. He adjusted her grip, showing her how he liked it, and together they floated off to aphelionic heights of pure liquefying electricity. As she intensified her motion below, he intensified his above, getting his teeth involved in ways that made her squeak. Like a joystick to control her own pleasure, she learned with delight how women have been controlling men since the dawn of time.
Now an interconnecting flow bound their bodies, melding them in a singular linear goal, a steady rhythm that sent them careening toward higher awareness. Pearlescent umbra, engulfing his genitals in white light, ribbons of neon ascension lulling him into a trance. Now she sensed his essence and drew in closer, taking possession of him. She pressed against him as if guarding him, and with aural warmth caressing him, he felt safe.
Then, a mental shift, a paralyzing high swept him to Valhalla. A wet nipple slid out from between his lips, dragging down the side of his face. He shot his hand out from under the blanket, feeling around behind him for something, anything, slapping the ground in desperation—he found a gardening glove. He gripped it around himself ironically like the thing it was. A low moan, and he was a mess.
A tidal calm…and a mental note to burn those gloves in the morning.
With his fatigues shoved down around his thighs, his shirt crumpled up under his sword harness, and his underwear not even doing what they were supposed to be doing, he fell asleep with his face pressed against hot, sticky skin.
.
[Received Hyper Wrist]