Story: The Beautiful and Damned, Epilogue, after Sadie's Graduation
Couple: Sadie & Asher
Sadie
The door to my apartment shuts behind the two of us, soft like a gunshot.
Asher wheels his suitcase by my kitchenette, dropping his backpack on one of two chairs.
My graduation gown is slung over my arm, my cap gripped tightly in one hand and an admittedly lackluster bouquet of sunflowers in the other. On the way here, Asher said it was either those or yellow roses, and he was pretty sure the roses had been dyed with piss. Or at least they smelled like they were.
Asher has stayed with me, on my couch, whenever he comes to Seattle. For a few nights, anyway, before he makes the four-hour drive home to see his mother. Sometimes she'll just meet him in the city, holing up in a hotel for a long weekend so she can see as much of her only son as possible.
What I'm trying to say is, this is not a new scenario, us alone together.
What is new—the new variable to this elephant-sized equation—is the kiss from three hours ago, the one I can still taste beneath my celebratory ice cream.
"Vase," I mumble, moving toward a cabinet I know for certain does not contain a vase. I know because I don't actually own a vase.
I eye my options and settle on a mason jar on the top shelf, in the very back. I stand on my tiptoes, but it's just barely not enough.
Warmth meets the back of my thin linen dress, and a hand settles on my hip. "Need some help?"
His tone is normal enough, except I know him. Asher's breath moves the hairs by my neck, and it occurs to me, where that subtle difference is coming from.
This is the first time we've both been alone and single and ready. Finally ready for each other, to explore whatever this may be. The potential fills the room as much as our hope does.
Featherlight fingers sweep hair from my neck, and a kiss is ghosted across my nape. I shiver.
"Sadie," Asher whispers, kissing my neck again. He sucks lightly, not enough to give me a hickey but just enough to make me ache.
I turn on the spot, finding his lips with mine. The bouquet falls… somewhere. The cap and gown are pulled from my grasp, landing… somewhere else.
But Asher? Asher is here, now, with his tongue on mine. His hands on my body. Pieces of me feel fifteen again, watching him grow into his body. Noticing everything, from the way his blonde lashes hit his glasses when they're pushed too far up to how his hips move when he walks.
And other parts of me feel older, more experienced, ready to put all those skills to good use. Really good use, my racing pulse tells me.
He kisses me in smooth waves, hot velvet and lovely pressure. One of his hands sinks into my hair, cradling my neck through my mess of curls. His other slides back and forth between my waist and my hip, the fabric bunching under his grip. My dress gets shorter and shorter, and then my hips hit the counter.
"Sadie," he whispers again, against my mouth this time. Just my name over and over. Each times makes my heart beat faster. My legs won't hold me up much longer.
I've been in love before—or so I thought. But all the people I've kissed before… I've never felt like this. Like just kissing is too much, the finale instead of the introduction. Kissing Asher is new and comfortable at the same time. In some world, we've been doing this since that first time at thirteen.
With sudden clarity, I know the first boy I ever kissed will be the last man I ever love.
I gasp at the revelation. "Ash."
He grips my waist, hoisting me to the counter and gripping my thighs open. I squeeze my knees to his waist, and I'm sure he can feel the heat of me. I can feel it. Everything, I feel everything.
Asher kisses a line down my jaw, the cords in my neck. When he touches his tongue to the strap of my dress, I moan. "More."
"Sadie," he groans, his hips grinding forward into mine. His want is hard there, brushing up against me, that goes a long way to drive me crazy. And then his hands are pushing my dress up, up, up, exposing more of the skin of my thighs. "Is this okay?"
But then he sucks the skin as I'm answering, and I lose the ability to speak English. But my body is aching, and I find it soon enough. "Kiss me lower."
His mouth trails the boning of my dress, pulls at the fabric bunched around my hips. "Lift your hips for me, love," Asher murmurs on my thigh, looking up at me, and I can see from here that his glasses are smudged, maybe a little foggy. He fingers the hem of my underwear and my heart skip-stutters through a few beats. "Can I take these off?"
"Please," I moan. "God, please, take everything off."
He curls both index fingers into my panties, right over my heat, and his fingernails just barely scrape. It's enough to make me buck and whimper.
And judging by the look on his face, he did that on purpose.
The fabric joins my gown and the sunflowers adorning the floor, and Asher's jaw falls open as he studies me.
"Sadie," he says, breathless, like he's the one splayed out to consume. And I hope he does exactly that. Consume me.
"Ash, please." I grope for his hair and give him a tug.
He grins, lowering himself down to line up with me. The heat in his eyes blazes so bright it could set me on fire. His breath is hot as he places kisses along my thighs, the juncture of my hip and leg. He's so close. I can feel him. He's almost—
Knock knock knock.
He jolts away from me, his eyes locking with him.
"No, no, come here," I groan, giving his hair another little tug. "They've got the wrong door. Happens all the time."
"Sadie! Open up!" someone yells from the other side. "Easton just tried to knock with a bottle of liquor."
"That he's already drank," someone else adds. "Come on, Call! I gotta piss!"
Asher looks up at me, his grip on my knees lightening. "They've now said your first and last name. Still think they've got the wrong door?"
"I—" But Asher's smiling, and I realize he's only teasing. "Unfair."
He grins again before straightening, and as I shimmy off the counter, I see Asher swipe my panties off the floor, shoving them into his back pocket as he turns toward the door.
I give him a half nod, still shocked the same Asher who once argued with me that bones couldn't break through skin just shoved my panties into his back pocket.
He winks as he unlatches the door, and my friends spill through, shattering our bubble.
Easton, clearly already day-drunk, gives me a funny-fuzzy look as he spills through. "You're all red."
Which only makes me blush harder. Of course I'm red.
Asher just gives me another wink as he greets our friends. I have a feeling I won't be seeing those undies any time soon.
I wake to sunlight in my eyes. Maybe that's why my skulls feel like the next Grand Canyon. I groan.
The mattress shifts next to me, and a hot flash of unadulterated fear grips my body. I have no idea who would be next to me. No memory of much at all, after Easton and the rest of my friends started plying me with shots last night.
Oh, God. It wasn't even last night. The drinking had started at four in the afternoon. No wonder I've got a hangover from hell.
"Good morning, Aurora," a familiar voice says.
It's funny, how that voice can both make me calmer and more frantic. Make my heart steadier and unsteadier. My blood is warm like a blanket and hot like a sunburn.
"Aurora?" I question, turning to face Asher.
Wouldn't it be so funny? If I finally had sex with the man of my dreams and I was too far gone to remember it?
He reaches over, pulls the covers—the covers he's laying on top of — up over my goose-fleshed arm, and brushes a kink of hair from my face. "Sleeping Beauty."
"Har, har," I say, my jab sputtering out as his hand cups my cheek. "Can I ask you something embarrassing?"
"Of course," he murmurs, shifting his body to face mine. He smells different here, in my bed, in the morning light.
"Did we…" I trail off, and although I can tell based on the soft smile that pulls at his dry lips—he really needs some lip balm—he already knows what I'm going for but is going to make me ask it anyway. "Asher, did we sleep together?"
His eyes sparkle behind his glasses. I wonder when he put them back on this morning. How long he's been awake. If he slept well. If he dreamt of me too. "Where does last night go fuzzy for you?"
"To be honest, I'm not sure how we got to the first bar." I wince. "Easton is a pusher."
He grins. "Well, after Easton pushed you to take four shots in twenty minutes, we went to dinner, where you and Layla split a pitcher of margs. Then we went to about, three bars? One of them was karaoke."
"Oh God," I murmur, pulling the comforter over my head. "Did I rap 'Ice, Ice, Baby?' I rapped it, didn't I?"
His thumb takes to tracing my cheekbone through the fabric, and the skin heats beneath his touch. "You may have. But I didn't let you do it alone."
Of course he didn't. My heart flutters. "What next?"
"We went to that dance club, the one with the glow sticks?" I peek out in a slit of fabric. His grin turns even more amused. "I think you threw up the first time there."
I groan and retreat again, burrowing deeper under the covers. "You still haven't answered my question."
"Sadie," he says. "Look at me, please." I look through my peek-a-boo hole again. He takes the inch and runs a mile, pulling my head free. His eye contact is direct and heated and honest. "We did not sleep together."
Somehow, I'm both relieved and disappointed.
"And I've been thinking," he continues.
His tone makes me sit up, clutching the blanket to my chest. "I don't know if I want to know," I say.
"I think we should wait. Until I move to Seattle. I want to take you to dinner. I want to do this right and take it slow. This is too important to rush."
Heat blooms in my heart. "Asher, you told me you loved me yesterday. You kissed me in front of my family. That is not slow."
His cheeks go bright red, and he breaks eye contact for the first time. "I thought about that, too. It wasn't fair of me to say that in front of so many people. I feel like I forced you into it. And even though I—" He huffs. "I'm screwing this up."
"You're doing great," I say, leaning forward to kiss him on the shoulder. He nearly melts into me before freezing.
"I won't say it again until you're ready."
"I've already told you," I remind him. "I think I said it first, if you recall."
His gaze drops to my mouth. "Sadie," he murmurs. "The truth is, if you say it again, if we do any of the things written on your face right now, I'll never go back to Boston. I'll never leave this bed. And I have loose ends to tie up. A job to leave. An apartment to break a lease on. A car to sell."
"Oh." If I sound disappointed, it's because I am. What good is living by yourself if you can't have hot morning sex on every available surface whenever you damn well please?
He leans forward, brushing his lips across my forehead. "It will be worth the wait. I promise."
He winds his arm around my back, and he tucks me neatly into his side. It's my new favorite place.
"What are we going to do with you in Boston?" I ask the ceiling.
"Aside from all that adulting stuff? I'm going to miss you a whole, whole lot. And I'm going to get tested. Just to be safe."
"I should do that, too. I'm not sure Ella and I managed to have that talk before we slept together. And then after I got out of dodge I forgot to ask," I say.
He shifts beneath me. "I thought you didn't sleep with her," he says.
"I mean, I guess that depends on your definition," I say. "I didn't sleep over, but we did both orgasm."
He pulls back farther, just the slightest bit and I catch his eyes. "Asher Louis Monroe, I swear, if you are going to be bothered or made insecure by my sexuality, this won't work."
He does the stupidest thing. He laughs. "I am absolutely not bothered by the fact that you sleep with women, Sadie." No argument that because there wasn't penetration, it didn't count. And just like that, my alarms quiet. "I am trying to keep from showing you just how not bothered I am."
"Asher," I say suspiciously, glancing at his lap. "Asher, are you hard right now?"
"For the record, I get hard basically every time you say the word 'orgasm.' I've just had to hide it before now." His cheeks turn burgundy, following the curve of his lenses, and I spare him.
"I guess I thought I'd wake up after I graduated and feel different," I say to change the subject, tucking an errant curl behind my ear. "More adult."
"You don't feel like an adult? We just had a very tame conversation about STI testing and past sexual experiences, and nobody got upset or stormed out. But hey, you know what else would feel adult?"
I look up at him, to find him already looking down at me. "Going to brunch hungover?"
His grin makes the sun shine brighter. "Going to brunch hungover."
Asher
It's been a week since Sadie's graduation, a week where we both desperately wanted more but know the cost of our actions will exceed what we can pay right now. I'm leaving today, going back to Boston for a month while I sort out moving cross-country for the second time in five years.
Knowing Sadie will be here to pick me up in twenty-six days doesn't make it any easier to take the final few steps toward goodbye. Also known as TSA.
"You'll call me when you get in, right?" she says, and I can tell she's trying for unaffected.
I know her too well for that, though. I know the way her voice sounds when she's hoping not to cry, her excited, real laugh versus her fake one. I know how she looks, fresh from waking with sleep-softened skin.
There are twenty-six days between me filling in the rest of the spaces: how far down her flush travels when she's aroused. The feel of her breasts against my palms. The taste of her. What she likes, how she likes it, which way she likes it…
"Yeah," I gruff, wishing I'd worn some stiffer pants instead of these joggers. She'll feel my thoughts when we hug goodbye.
"Well, if you need to ship anything, just send it to my place," she says for the hundredth time since we started our drive to the airport.
"Sadie," I say, when I think I want to go home with you. I don't want to leave. I just got you.
She snorts. "I know, I know. I just—" She turns to me, clutching my upper arm. "Asher."
Her blue-green eyes are clear, like looking through a glass-bottom boat to the wonder below. I can see everything she's thinking.
"I know. Come here, love," I murmur, tucking her into my chest. We'd decided it's probably not a good idea for us to kiss goodbye. It would feel too much like something ending, when really, something is just beginning.
This is the next chapter of my life, and I intend for her to be on every page. Sadie Evelyn Call: my very best friend.
We stand, my fingers tangling in her hair, her hands slipping under my backpack to clutch my hoodie. Around us, summer travelers bustle and buzz.
My phone dings with an alert from the airline, and she pulls back.
"I'll call you as soon as I land," I say, blinking down at her before I press a soft kiss to her forehead. Why did I agree we wouldn't kiss? That was dumb.
She steps back and stands, hands at her sides, and watches me go.
I'm almost to the front of the line when I hear her. She's running and breathless as she screams, "Asher!"
Thank God.
I slip under the rope.
We say goodbye and hello and I miss you already, all without speaking a word.
Twenty-Seven Days Later
Asher
I'd be lying if I said I knew Sadie Call was the one at the end of our first date.
Technically, I knew at the beginning.
Our month apart—the month I used to get tested for STIs and also quit my first post-college job and sell my car to a junior who would probably try and fail to pick up chicks in it—only served to add more fuel to our fire, the fire that's been smoldering since her graduation day. Maybe since we were teenagers.
At dinner, we talked our way through a bottle of wine and delicious Italian and made our way to the bar across the street afterward.
"To us," I said as we clinked our first tequila shot.
"To best friends with benefits," Sadie had said as she downed her second tequila shot, and then laughed so hard some of it came out her nose.
"To the bartender who gave you the napkins," I said with the third, feeling warm and loopy and more than a little love drunk.
Now we're tripping our way through her apartment halls, tumbling through her door, and her back is against it.
Two breaths, two too-fast heartbeats, as our eyes lock. The moment hangs thick between us, a precipice of will they, won't they. Two beats. That's all I'll allow.
And then.
And then.
And then we are blazing. Everywhere we touch burns, but my mouth—my mouth is on hers and she is flaming. She is fire, her hands tangling in my hair, nails scraping scalp. And my fingers dig into her hips, my knee slotting in between her thighs.
She pulls away to gasp, and I take the chance to drag my teeth down the line of her throat. Bite her. She's salty here, the summer air having warmed her skin on the walk home.
"Ash," she moans, and God, I want her.
Maybe it's too fast. Maybe I've never slept with someone on the first date before.
But maybe I've been waiting to love Sadie for longer than I realized. Maybe she's not the exception. Maybe she's the rule.
"Can I have you?" I press the words into her collarbone.
"Please, yes, now." When I glance up at her, her head is thrown back on the door, her gaze on the ceiling, her lip caught by her teeth. She's beautiful.
Clothes are ripped from bodies, feet trip on shoes that don't belong to us. We tumble over the arm of the couch, Sadie fumbling for the clasp of her bra behind her. Her underwear isn't down yet but I can't wait, palming her over her hot center. I shudder.
"Clean," I groan as she gives up on the bra, somehow freeing me instead from my boxer briefs and my glasses at the same time. Everything is moving in flashes. "You?"
"Yes, and I'm on the pill." We are all fumbling hands. "God, please fuck me."
I check her, and she isn't crazy wet, but she guides me in anyway, pausing to spit on her hand and run it along her slit.
"God, that was hot," I groan, grunting as I slide the first inch. She's so tight. She's so… right.
"Sadie," I groan, and she nods, her eyes hazy and unfocused as I work myself into her body.
Every time I have a thought that is too much, too soon, I say her name. I love you, I think. Marry me tomorrow, I think. "Sadie," I say.
"I know," she gasps, her fingernails raking down the length of my spine and digging into my ass. "Harder. More, Asher. More."
I fight through the alcohol fog to grab her thigh, hoisting it by her shoulder to change the angle. "You're so good, love. So fucking tight."
Our movements turn frantic, limbs getting in the way everywhere. At some point I, too, get fed up with her bra, and pull it overhead without unclasping it. Her nipples are dark pink, pebbled, little beads I roll with my tongue and suck with my lips and pull with my teeth.
It's unclear who makes the move that tumbles us to the floor, but we don't let it stop us. Sadie quickly repositions, gripping me tight as she guides me back in, leaving her hand there to feel us, feel me in her, feel everything she does to me.
And then those delicious hips get to work. Her dark curls bounce around her face, contrasting her milky skin and flushed cheeks. Her hand works furiously between her thighs. The freckles on her nose pop. I lean up to kiss them.
"Sadie," I huff. I feel a familiar tightening at the base of my spine. My grip on her grows desperate. "I'm so close."
The craziest thing happens – my words seem to tip her over the cliff of her own desire. Her body tightens, mouth opening on a silent scream as her arms give out. Her chest comes tumbling down to mine.
And, like I'd imagined since puberty, if I ever got the chance to be balls-deep inside Sadie Evelyn Call while she orgasmed around me, there would be no hope for me. I have no choice but to follow.
"Sadie," I say.
