J

Christmas

We open presents. Juni and Zach got me new luggage for my new adventure—and clothes.

"I couldn't resist." Juni shrugs, knowing that our tastes in fashion are not the same.

"I love them." I fold the last item and set it next to me on the floor by the mammoth tree filling the spacious room with the scent of pine. "A new adventure calls for a new look. I'm sure you know what's trendy around the world more than I do."

"They're just clothes. You'll find your own international style as you make your way through new-to-you countries. God … the handmade items you'll find are just extraordinary. Nothing like you'd ever find off a rack here in the U.S." Juni gives me the best smile. Her excitement for me bleeds through every word.

We enjoy a small family dinner. It's the first year in nearly a decade that it's just been the three of us at the table on Christmas. It's usually filled with grandparents and close friends. This year everyone else had other plans, and while it's kind of a bummer that I won't get to say as many goodbyes, I find it perfect that it's just the three of us.

"We're going to watch a movie. Care to join us?" Zach asks as my mom makes hot chocolate.

"I'm going to watch something in my room if that's okay?" I slip on my boots, coat, hat, and gloves.

"Sure." Zach gives me a big hug and kiss on the forehead. "Merry Christmas, darling."

"Merry Christmas." I close my eyes for a second and just enjoy his embrace.

"Sweet dreams." Juni leans in while holding two mugs and kisses my cheek. "See you in the morning."

I nod and smile while closing the door. The snow crunches under my boots when I step off the last porch step. "What are you doing?" I whisper to the wind, to Lisa a mile down the mountain from me. Is she with her family? Is she watching an old movie? Is she …

Sliding my phone out of my pocket, I do something I haven't done in a long time. I message her because I'm leaving, and I don't give a shit about traceable calls and messages. I'm not her student. I'm not sure I'm her anything.

Me: I only wanted one thing for Christmas, but I didn't get it. Hope you got everything you wanted. Merry Christmas.

Just as I start to slip my phone back into my pocket, assuming she won't respond, it chimes.

Lisa: I'm parked at the end of your drive. I've been here for over an hour, trying to get the nerve to ask permission to enter the gates.

I look up. The end of the lane is way too far and twisty to see from here, but it doesn't stop me from running toward it anyway. With shaky hands from my body jerking to keep its balance in the snow, I bring up the gate app and open the gate for her. Within seconds, headlights appear in the distance.

I keep running.

The van stops.

The second Lisa steps out, I tackle her to the ground.

She grunts from the impact. My hair falls around our faces. I inhale her addictive wood and citrus scent and the warmth of her mouth so close to mine. Lemons. Her breath smells like lemons.

"I opened a hundred gifts today, but none of them were you. I was looking for you."

"Me?" She grins.

"You." I kiss her.

She threads her fingers through my hair and slides her tongue against mine. I don't care if it sounds immature or ridiculous—we belonged to each other before we ever met.

"It's cold." She breaks our kiss.

"My bed is warm." I rub my nose against hers.

"So is mine." She sits up, taking me with her so I'm straddling her legs.

"Mine's closer." I bite her bottom lip and drag it through my teeth.

"I disagree."

"Uh …" I give her my best confused look.

"Up." She lifts my hips and I plant my boots in the snow as she stands and brushes the snow off herself.

She opens the side door to Alice and flicks a switch.

"Oh my god …" I hold my gloved hand over my mouth.

Battery-operated LED lights line the back of the van, illuminating the mattress, pillows, and fluffy blankets that have replaced the backseats.

"Get in before all the heat escapes." Lisa pushes me in onto the mattress with my boots hanging out the door.

I giggle as she slips off my boots and plops down on the mattress next to me to take off her boots as well with quick moves before slamming the door shut.

My eyes dance with delight at this. She did this for us—for me.

"I can't believe—"

Lisa kisses me with urgency, covering my body with hers. Our fingers intertwine above my head as her body settles perfectly between my legs like God made that space just for her. The mattress allows us one good roll in each direction, and we work the entire space to rid each other of our clothes without missing a single kiss, a single grin, or a single touch.

"Lock in the heat." She pulls the sheet and approximately ten flannel blankets over our heads.

As I giggle, I feel her grin along my skin a split second before her tongue teases my nipple, hands squeezing my breasts while she hums her pleasure.

A heavy ache builds between my legs, longing for her, even if I know it's going to hurt. And I just know it will. Maybe not as bad as the first time, but it's going to hurt. Still, I'm turned on, desperate to feel her all over me and completely inside of me. It's like getting a massage and the therapist hits a tight knot. It hurts in a good way. You want to scream no and YES at the same time.

I leave for California in a few days. And after New Years, I leave for … indefinitely. The unsettled part of my mind and my soul needs to do this. Traveling the world is all I've been able to think about for years. This is not an opportunity everyone gets. I've told my friends and family this is what I'm doing, garnering both reactions of envy and judgments of insanity—both drive my need to do this. Somi didn't get the chance to do this. She died. The pilot with a wife and three children died. Settling for anything less than living an extraordinary life and seizing every moment feels like I'm failing them too, not just myself.

"Merry Christmas to me," Lisa murmurs, taking her kisses down my body. She camps out between my legs, grinding her pelvis into the mattress at the same rhythm her tongue and fingers bring me to orgasm.

"Lisa!" I wrap my legs around her head as my whole body convulses.

She throws the covers off and reaches between the two front seats, returning with a condom, like it's a race. Once she's fitted with the rubber, she crashes her mouth to mine, balancing on one arm while her other hand positions her cock at my entrance, making a few circles—spreading my arousal around.

"You're so fucking tight." She pushes into me one slow inch at a time, face strained.

I am tight. Apparently once isn't enough to get everything broken in.

Lisa moves slow at first then speeds up. Harder. Faster. I claw into her back, wanting so desperately to build up another orgasm, wanting so desperately to be her every dream. When I realize that's not happening, I kiss her. This I can do. This I love. It takes my mind off the discomfort of feeling overfilled with Lisa.

"Jennie …" She grunts my name, slamming into me one last time before finishing with a few short jerks. Collapsing onto me, she buries her face in my neck. "I love you. I love you so fucking much."

"I love you too," I whisper, feeling a terrible ache in my chest.

I'm leaving and she's staying.

She slides out slowly, sitting up on her knees to remove the condom. After disposing of it in a napkin from her console, she settles next to me, spooning her front to my back. Our arms tangle as we sigh.

"What did you do?" I ask because I have to ask. If I'm going to leave my greatest love behind to follow dreams that are starting to feel hollow … I have to know why.

"What do you mean?" She buries her nose into my hair and inhales.

Closing my eyes, I imagine a life where I can be nothing but the next breath in her lungs, the metronome to her heart, the blood in her veins.

"Your dad."

She stiffens. I lace our fingers together, squeezing tightly.

"You can tell me anything. You know that, right?"

Lisa hums her acknowledgment.

I want to crawl inside of her and pluck every ounce of pain from her heart like removing needles from a pin pad.

"I had some issues with addiction shortly after our band started getting some seriously respectable gigs. A year. That's it. After playing out of a basement while in high school, we got our chance. I got to play to real audiences, for a year. And then I fucked up. Hell … we all did.

"I was drunk or high, usually a toxic mix of both. We went to this party. Ty was supposed to be the responsible one that night, but he ended up in worse shape than the rest of us. I remember feeling so fucking sick, I just wanted to go home. At the time, home was with my parents when the band wasn't traveling. Some girl found me vomiting all over myself. She offered to get help. I gave her my phone, and she called my parents. My dad came to rescue me."

She clears her throat. I squeeze her hand tighter, like the way her voice constricts each word, stealing all the oxygen around us.

"I couldn't even walk, and I only know this because the girl later gave a firsthand account of what happened. My dad tried to help me out of the house, but I passed out. And seeing as I was nearly as tall as him, when I went down, he went down—a whole damn flight of marble stairs. I landed on him with not so much as a scratch. He … never walked again."

"Lisa …" The world spinning in my head, my hopes and dreams, they slow like they're dying as a heaviness suffocates everything inside of me. My tragedy was different. It wasn't my fault. My guilt is different. Everything is different.

"And as if that's not enough, my sister hates me. She not only blames me for what happened to our dad, she believes the stress of it all eventually lead to my mom's heart attack."

I turn in her arms, clutching her face in my hands. "I don't know what to say," I whisper.

She blinks a few times, a lifeless expression stuck to her handsome face. "There's nothing to say. I fucked up. I can't change it. Now, this is my life, and I have no reason to ever complain. I'm not in the wheelchair. I don't have cancer—"

"Wait…" I pull my head back "…cancer?"

Lisa nods slowly. "He didn't tell you?" She grunts a laugh. "Of course he didn't tell you. He most likely had it before the accident, but they didn't discover it until the accident. He went through treatment … Jesus …" She closes her eyes briefly. "As if the paralysis wasn't enough, he's had to deal with feeling like shit while strapped to a fucking wheelchair."

Still, I have no idea what to say, so I let her have her moment, the one where she imposes more self-hatred upon herself.

"Anyway…" she blows out a slow breath "…he went into remission. A year ago they discovered it was back and spreading. Did you not wonder about his liberal use of marijuana?"

I shrug. "It's legal here. No big deal. I just thought he was the coolest guy in a wheelchair I'd ever met."

Lisa grunts a painful laugh. "I love your innocence."

"You should since you took it." I try a small smile to lighten the mood, tempting her to step away from the gates of purgatory.

It doesn't work. She winces. "Jennie, I …"

"No. No …" I roll on top of her. "Don't go there. Don't do it. No regrets. YOLO. Man up and show some pride for taking my virginity. So many men before you have tried and failed. You should get a prize or at least a bumper sticker that says I was in Hell and never wanted to leave."

The most intoxicating laugh breaks from her chest, and in the dim lighting her perfect smile beams. My grin matches hers. I love us so much it's hard to find a complete breath when I think about leaving.

"I don't want to go."

Her smile dissolves into a frown, and the same regret she had for her dad reappears, but this time it's for me. I hate being her regret.

"Tell me you want me to stay."

Her head eases side to side as her hands feather down my back to my bare ass. "I want you, but I don't want you to stay."

"What if I want to stay?"

Lisa shakes her head some more. "You don't. We feel the same, and you know it. You want me, but you don't want to stay."

"You're right. I want to go. I want you to come with me. And I know it's selfish. And maybe nineteen is too old to play the young and selfish card, but even if it is, I can't help how I feel."

She presses her lips to mine, unmoving. It feels like she's stopped time. I want her to stop time. I want to live with Lisa forever without taking a single blink.