Broken and Screwed 2 (BS #2)

Jesse pressed me into him. He had hardened again and he slid into me. He rocked against me, this time slow and tender. He went deep and touched the bottom of my core. Tears fell free from me as he showed me his love. I gasped as I felt it.

We never said the words. There had been no discussions about us, but Jesse loved me. It reached inside of me and took root where the bad emotions had been. He made love to me and afterwards I felt scraped raw on the inside. Everything hidden and stored away was now on the outside.

He cupped my cheek and whispered as he curled on his side beside me, “I know what day it is.”

Ethan was there. He was beside us. I could feel his presence.

Jesse spoke again, “Do you want to go somewhere?”

I nodded. I couldn’t talk anymore.

He pressed a kiss to my forehead and then got up from the bed. We dressed in silence. My eyes were trained down. I couldn’t see into him. New dams would break free again, but Jesse didn’t seem to mind. He packed a light bag for us, disappearing upstairs. He came back with two bottles of liquor and put it into the bag. Then he drove us to a hotel. It was a ritzy place and as he checked us in, I realized he had already made the reservation ahead of time. When? My eyes shot to his, but he only held them in a long drawn-out gaze. He was going inside again. I felt him seeping into me and I turned away. The wall had fallen down between us. I knew that we would be changed after this night.

We had always come together, but this was different. It was on different ground. The rules had changed. I no longer knew the expectations, but then I needed to admit to myself, I hadn’t known for a while now. The rules had started to change, to blur together, when I moved in with him. No, even before that. It had started to change when Jesse called me on the first day I moved into my dorm. I heard it in his voice, but I hadn’t accepted it, not fully. I couldn’t hide from it any longer.

Getting into the elevator, Jesse swiped the card for our floor. The access was otherwise restricted. And then we went to a larger suite. We stepped inside the door to a large apartment structure, but Jesse went into the back bedroom. He put our bags on the couch and pulled out the bottles of liquor. One was put in the refrigerator and he poured the other into two glasses. Handing me one, his eyes held mine captive again. I flinched under the weight but held firm after that. He could see all he wanted. I knew it was the same inside of him.

My chest lifted with a deep breath.

It rattled inside of me.

We spent the day and night in that hotel room. We did what we always did on Ethan’s birthday. We drank and we had sex. Unlike the time in his bathroom, this wasn’t romantic. There was nothing sweet about it. It was what we did on those two days of the year, except we had missed Ethan’s anniversary the summer before. We made up for it this time. We pushed all the demons at bay, all the emotions of missing him, and we used each other to fill that void.

It wasn’t until after another coupling and on my third glass of liquor when I looked over. Jesse was frowning to himself. I recognized the look from our first year and my gut kicked. That look wasn’t good. It meant there was more. Jesse was keeping something else from me. I sighed. I thought we had gotten all of it out, but that nagging voice in my head chimed up again. You have a secret too.

Ignoring it, I sat up and pulled the sheet to cover me.

Jesse rolled his head against the headboard to look at me. “Hmmm?”

I put my glass on the bedside stand. I was already drunk. I didn’t need to spill the booze.

“Alex?” He sat up as well. “What?”

“You said some things before.” Frowning, I tried to remember what they were. Tapping my finger on my forehead, I searched and searched. “You said…what did you say?”

“If he were alive now, he’d know he was wrong. I mean, hell, he knew firsthand that being perfect wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. He tried to do everything your parents wanted and when he messed that up—” Another one plagued me; he thought I hadn’t noticed. “Him and me. That was it. He was supposed to have my back, not go off and get killed going to— He was supposed to be here.”

He got killed going to…to where? I wanted to ask Jesse that. I wanted to know what Ethan did, how did he know firsthand that being perfect wasn’t what it was cracked up to be? Those questions were burning in me, but I knew Jesse wouldn’t tell me. He hadn’t before, and he had distracted me successfully.

“What did I say?”