He reached out and pushed the string of my tank top off my shoulder. His touch made my body shudder. He pushed off the other strap and then tugged at the hem of my shirt. “Please,” he begged softly, but there was nothing sexual about what he was asking. There was no desire in his eyes. Only pain.
I slowly undressed, pulling down my panties and stepping out of them before kneeling down before him. “Come here,” he whispered, tugging me by the shoulders until I was straddling him. He was partially hard, just feeling him against me made me want to throw caution to the wind and put him inside of my body but this wasn’t about me.
I wasn’t even really sure what it was really about but whatever it was, he needed it so I was going to do my best to give it to him.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his head against my naked chest. He breathed in and out slowly like he was trying to steady himself and then I realized he was trying not to cry. A few moments later his shoulders shook.
“Let go,” I whispered, holding him tighter against me. “Let it all go,”
Preppy’s shoulders shook harder and I felt his warm tears against my skin. I felt my own tears start and once they did I couldn’t stop them.
So there we sat. In the backyard. Naked. Wrapped in each other’s arms until the sun came up.
I woke up in the grass, covered by a blanket.
Preppy was gone.
I trudged back up to the house and thought back to when I first met Preppy. I was vulnerable. Weak. Everyone in my life had tried to tip-toe around me while they worked their asses off to save me.
Not Preppy.
It pained me that I had to leave Logan’s Beach when the house sold. It broke my heart that Preppy and I could never have a shot at anything real, not once he learned about the secret I was keeping from him. But I smiled to myself anyway, because when I was weak Preppy saved me by giving me his strength.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PREPPY
“Did we fuck?” I asked Dre who dropped a fork. I knew we didn’t but I loved getting a reaction out of her. “I mean I don’t think we did. But I woke up naked on the porch. Wasn’t the first time I’ve slept outside, but I don’t remember actually going out there.”
“No we didn’t fuck,” Dre said. My dick twitched when she said FUCK and I made a note to make her swear more at me from now on because it was the first sign that my cock wasn’t useless after all. “I think you were sleepwalking.” She was irritated which made me believe that me naked on the porch was more than a simple case of sleepwalking.
“You have to be nice to me, Doc,” I said, scraping a chair against the tile as I pulled it out from the table. I pulled the other one out as well. I sat on one, propping my legs up on the other, crossing my feet at the ankles. I opened her laptop and pulled up the page she had bookmarked and pointed to it. “I have post pardum depression.”
Dre snorted through a burst of laughter, wrinkling her nose. I’m instantly hit with an ache to my balls but it’s not an ache I mind. Not at all. Actually it’s the first even remotely pleasurable sensation in that region of my body I’d had since I came back from the brink. “Um...Preppy?” she asked, not waiting for me to answer. “Postpartum depression is what happens to some women after...after having babies. What I think you mean is something called post traumatic stress disorder.”
I waved her off. “Listen just because I call you Doc doesn’t mean you’re a medical expert,” I said, eliciting another small burst of laughter as she rolled and uncovered a ball of dough that had been rising in a bowl on the counter. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what the fuck it’s called, what matters is that I have it, so what I’m saying is that I’ll need to be taken care of. WELL taken care of. Mmmmmmkay?” I asked and when she flashed me a ‘what the fuck ever’ look I stuck out my lower lip in an exaggerated and what I could only imagine was a very pathetic looking pout.
“Oh yeah? Is that so?” Dre asked, turning around with one hand on her jutted out hip, one perfectly arched eyebrow craning upward toward her hairline, and her deep red fuckable lips quirked to the side. “And what kind of HELP is it that you’re in so much desperate need of?”
I opened my mouth to say my usual something sarcastic but at the last second I cleared my throat and even I didn’t expect what poured from my lips. My voice was much lower and raspier than a moment before. An almost-whisper. “All of it. I need all of the help.” There was no trace of any kind of humor in my words. What was I even trying to tell her?
Dre seemed to be mulling over what I’d just said. Her lips flattening into a straight line. She looked over the sink through the window into the neglected back yard. The sun shifted out from behind a cloud and her face brightened instantly, illuminated by the early morning rays. She paused there for what seemed like a motherfucking eternity, closing her eyes and soaking up the warm light.
The clock above the stove ticked louder and louder as it announced each passing second until it turned into tick-ticking insanity pounding within my ear drums. TICK-TOCK TICK-TOCK.
Finally, Dre broke through my impatience when she turned to me again and wiped her flowery hands on her apron. Her lips turned upward in a bright white, full-toothed smile that covered her entire face. My heart sped up like it had been hit with electric paddles, so much so it skipped a beat and I coughed into the crook of my elbow. “Okay, then.”
“Okay then...what?” I asked, casually looking down at my hands and turning them over as if I was inspecting my own tattoos.
“Okay then if you need help, I’ll give it to you.” She paused and I hadn’t realized she’d crossed the kitchen until I looked up from my hands and found her standing over me, so close her knee was pressed against my thigh. I craned my neck to look up at her face. “But my help is conditional.”
“What kind of conditions?” I asked, she stepped away.
“Why are you pushing me away, Doc?” I asked, hating the feeling of space between us.
She turned suddenly, her face serious. “Because you hurt me! Because you fucking destroyed me! Because when you pushed me away last time I might as well have died with you. And I went to rehab and school and there were a million times when I wanted to call you and talk to you and tell you about my day and I couldn’t because you decided that we shouldn’t be together. YOU. Not us, YOU. Then you fucking died on me and I fucking hated you for it. All of it!”
“You’re mad at me because...I died?”
“Yes, and because you never knew the truth. There are so many things you need to know that I never told you.”
“So tell me, Doc,” I said. She shook her head.
“Please, everyone else spares me from the truth because they’re afraid I’ll fall apart. That’s what’s driving me more crazy than any of the other shit. Just tell me the fucking truth!”
“You might hate me.”
“I might.”
“Okay,” she agreed, with a small nod. She straightened her spine. “Then come on,” she said, checking the clock on the stove. “We have time to make it.”