I was still a bit shaky from my own words. For the first time in a long time, a single sentence had waged war against my better judgment and won. For better or for worse, though? Had that ridiculous thought, which I hadn't been able to confine to my mouth, ruined this new beginning with Carly?
Maybe I wanted it to, though. It isn't like things haven't been all tense, and moments haven't been stuffed with friction, up to this point. We've both been trying so hard to pretend like we are teenagers again, and the break in our relationship never happened. Like I had skipped down to the Groovy Smoothie for a quick pick-me-up before heading upstairs to film iCarly. All the while, Spencer is hanging out downstairs, creating the latest and greatest work of art while lovingly carving a ham.
But that isn't how things are. We did take our separate ways and disappear from each other's lives. I did kiss her so many years ago on Valentine's Day Freshman year, and we did stop talking. Maybe that's why all of this felt so off from the beginning. We were trying to create a gap in time that neither of us possessed the power to create. And now I'm just rambling, going off over nothing. I'm not even rambling out loud! What the hell is wrong with me?
She said she wanted to forget about the kiss. She said it had scared her and she just wanted to start over. How can that be when she kissed me the night before? Besides the terrible pain in my gums from my teeth being forced backwards, it wasn't a bad kiss either. And sure, I hadn't let her know I was awake, but that was purely out of curiosity. She had just stood there staring at me for so long, I had been wondering what was going on in her head. And, of course, the only way to find that out was to let her do whatever she had in mind. At the time, I'll admit, I hadn't realized she would kiss me.
How could she, anyway? She's the one who had wanted to move on! She's the one who claimed she had shoved me out of her life and was hoping I wouldn't remember! What kind of screwed up thinking was she doing when she thought it was okay to kiss me?
And yet, somehow, I was so happy she did.
"Sam? Are you even listening to me?"
I jumped, startled. "What?"
It was Kelli, a coworker of mine who seemed to pass by my desk more than necessary. She had one of those sweet faces, but was actually incredibly judgmental to the core. Her eyes smiled lovingly as she jabbered on about how pissed she was at her husband for his latest misdoing. People like her kind of scare me.
"You spaced out? And that was the good part too!" She pouted for several moments as if I'd known her long enough to care.
"Sorry." I rubbed at my eyes and glanced at my watch. "Shit! Five-thirty! Why didn't you tell me?"
I hopped to my feet and yanked my coat-sleeves over my jittery limbs while she frowned disapprovingly at me. "I would have said something if I hadn't been trying to tell you about my sister's wedding shower for the last forty-five minutes without any attention from you, thank you very much!"
I smiled apologetically at her. Unlike when I was younger, I now felt the need not to burn bridges unnecessarily. "I'm sorry. I really am. I'm just tired. It was really hard for me to get to sleep last night. I promise to listen to every detail tomorrow and possibly, if you're good, provide feedback."
I checked my hair in the mirror to make sure I looked okay before I headed out. I don't know why it felt so wrong of me to be a little late coming home. Carly was never late. Maybe that's why. She was never late, so I had to be prompt too. Only that was kind of a problem since my body slouches and my eyes become slits and my brain shuts down a little whenever someone talks to me for an extended period of time without requiring a reply. Like Kelli.
Carly was in the kitchen when I arrived back, a little more than fifteen minutes later. Her eyes were focused into a steaming pot that had promising smells drifting from it.
"Hey!" She called, using a large wooden spoon to stir the contents of the pot.
"Hi." I responded, following my nose to stand by her side. "Smells delicious. Sorry I'm late."
"It's no problem." She bobbed a shoulder and offered me a smile.
In that split second that her eyes met mine, I was hurtled back into last night before she collided with the bookshelf and attempted to break my teeth. Back to when it was just a gentle kiss and the tip of her tongue tested the boundaries by entering my mouth.
"Okay." My voice was annoyingly breathless, like some kind of schoolgirl, and I quite nearly scolded myself.
She only returned to the pot. "I'm not sure the consistency is right. But I've never made Borscht before, so I don't actually know what I'm looking for."
A smile slipped onto my face before I could take action against it. "Why did you make Borscht?"
She threw a grin my way before stirring the pot again. "I don't know. I told the guy who fixed my coffee this morning that I had nothing to make for dinner."
"And?"
"And first he looked at me like I was a freak, seeing as how we'd never met before and the first thing I said to him was 'I have nothing to make for dinner.' But then he shrugged and said 'make borscht.' So I am." She sighed after her overly long explanation for what was supposed to be a short answer question.
I grinned subconsciously at her because nothing makes me happier on most nights than a rambling Carly. Only that night felt weird. You know, the kiss and everything.
I cleared my throat loudly, backing up to sit at the table. "So how was your day?"
She nodded, her finger scanning down the recipe. "Fine. Yours?"
"Fine." Could I have started a more pointless topic of conversation?
"Well, that's good." She sniffed the air. "How would you like to taste my Borscht? Just a quick little taste to make sure... The seasonings are good! Yes, the seasonings are good."
I raised my eyebrows at her. "Is there something wrong with your Borscht?"
Her eyes drifted lazily across the ceiling. "Not that I'm aware of."
"Something that you're not aware of?"
"I guess that's possible." She shrugged, biting her lip.
"You could always ditch the Borscht and order Chinese food." I suggested, trying to appeal to her taste buds.
She frowned sadly at her boiling pot of what now smelled like rotting beets. "But I worked so hard on this."
And that look with the big eyes and puffed out lower lip, I couldn't resist. Before my brain had time to send its messages, I was on my feet and back by her side.
"I'll try it if you really want me to."
She smiled hopefully at me. "Really? You'd do that?"
"Of course," I choked out, "I would. I was late and you made me dinner. If that's what you want, I'll try the uh…"
"Soup."
"Right, the soup."
She chuckled and turned off the burner. "Thanks, but that's okay. Really. I won't force my soup on you."
"You couldn't force it on me if I wasn't a willing participant, trust me. Sometimes, I can be just downright stubborn."
Our eyes met then and somehow we'd backed away from the stove and over to the wall. She kept looking down at my lips and I only knew that because suddenly we were so close our eyelashes were mingling and for some reason I took notice of that.
"Sam…" Her voice was small and I wasn't entirely sure she had said anything at all.
I was going to respond too, I really was, but her chin tipped up and suddenly our lips were touching, and thoughts could no longer form in my head or control my actions. Her arms curled around my waist and lugged me closer until only Quantum Physics would try and say we weren't touching. I could feel every stiffened muscle and jagged breath. Her tongue met mine somewhere near my left canine and I was lost to her taste.
So many thoughts flooded my head like the short break from reality had caused some kind of traffic jam. My head went from Kelli and her marital problems to the Borscht to Carly's tongue and all the way back to that Christmas Eve ten years ago when I had thought Carly might kiss me under the mistletoe, even though she hadn't, and that had spurred my need to find out if she would kiss me back. Only now her fingers had found their way up under my shirt and my own hands were well on their way to having her pants unbuttoned.
I've felt like I needed people before, that passionate, purely physical, need, but this is so much more intense and focused and I can't control my body with the most basic of commands. Take your hand out of her jeans, I told myself over and over only to find my hand dip further in and this incredible sound escaped from her lips. Her left hand left my shirt and slid up my neck to pull my lips back to her. The trail it took tingled. But I needed that sound again, so I let her taste fill my mouth once more and inched my hand further in.
"Carly! You home?"
Either her knees collapsed or mine did because suddenly we were a tangled jumble on the floor with hands still in compromising places and lips still touching. I wanted to laugh or scream or something angrily, or maybe a little neurotically, at the door for interrupting that moment because we both recognized the voice.
"Freddie?" Carly's voice was thick and raspy with need and lust, but she pulled my hand from her jeans, used the wall for support, and climbed to her feet.
"Carly?" He questioned again as if it was actually Morgan Freeman's voice drifting out to him.
"Yeah, um, just a minute." She re-buttoned her pants and straightened her clothes before helping me with mine.
When Carly finally yanked open the door, Freddie stared at me with a mix of horror and wonder. It kind of resembles the expression of a kid watching a frog bubble in the sun.
I hadn't seen him since iCarly ended, that last summer before college. He looked good, you know, for a guy. His hair was short and neat; he dressed the same as when his mom picked out his clothes. The only new thing was a single gold band on his left ring finger.
"Hi." I greeted. I do that now. I'm a salutations-giver.
"Sam?" He muttered as if I had had years of facial reconstruction and he was just now seeing the end product.
"Yeah." I nodded. Then I threw "Hi," out there again in hopes he might return it and we could move on.
But he only stepped uneasily into Carly's house, staring at me cautiously. "Is she armed?" He asked Carly from the side of his mouth.
"No," She responded, holding the door open for him.
"How positive are you?"
"I think its safe to say that she isn't hiding anything underneath her clothes." And she would know.
"What is she doing here?" He finally straightened up, glancing back and forth between Carly and me.
"She's living with me. Didn't I tell you?" Carly smiled politely, clicking the door back into place.
"Um, let me think. No!"
"Okay. Sam is living with me." She stated calmly.
"Why are you freaking out over this?" I finally asked, giving him the weirdest expression I could muster.
His muscles finally relaxed and he shrugged. "I don't know. You and Carly haven't seen each other in years. I just kind of figured you did something terrible to her."
"Like I would ever hurt Carly." The words left my mouth and my body language snapped back to the old before I could stop it.
Freddie studied me critically. "Oh really? Than why do you guys look like you've been wrestling?"
"We weren't." Carly and I had a silent fight with our eyes to make a decision on how to handle this.
"I was trying to make her eat borscht." Carly jumped in.
Freddie laughed. "Of course you were."
We trailed after him into the living room.
He grinned at us after plopping down on the couch. "It would have to be that. Or you guys were making out in the foyer. But that would never happen."