Craving Ch. 04

The hours crawled by and my nerves made me restless. I moped around the apartment tidying the odd mess and pacing in circles. I checked the clock every three to five minutes and it aggravated my impatience. As it rolled closer to 11:00 PM, I was highly agitated and somewhat worried. It was uncharacteristic of Renee to be out later than 10:00 PM on a week night. I flopped down on the sofa and my heel began to tap impatiently against the floor, I closed my eyes shook my head.

When I opened them the apartment was dark, only the flicker from the TV lighting the objects in the living room. I looked at my watch, 02:47 AM. I looked at the door and strained my eyes to make out the shape of Renee's jacket hanging next to mine. "Shit!" I exclaimed and dropped my head into my hands. Sighing in surrender, I turned off the TV and went to bed.

The next morning every trace of determination had dissipated from my body and I ran out before Renee woke up. Saturday proceeded in a similar fashion but was spent doing research in the library.

The library was closed on Sundays and so I spent the morning and early afternoon in my room working on an assignment that was due in a week's time. I looked over at my alarm clock when my throat began to ache for hydration. 03:14 PM. I got up from my desk and headed to the kitchen. As I came around the corner Renee's form could be seen at the counter closest to me, her side facing me. I saw the flash of the stainless steel knife as it sliced through the crisp skin of a green pepper and moved the fragment across the board to join the pile of red and green wedges. I stopped in my tracks and spun on my heels to dart back to my room.

"Stop it!" Her voice took the place of the sharp clicking of the knife against the cutting board. I hesitated a moment and turned slowly on my toes, trying to casually stick my head into view around the kitchen cupboard.

"Hmm?" I sounded as Renee's eyes fixed to the cupboard door in front of her.

"Just stop it!" She repeated as she slammed the knife down and turned to look at me, left hand holding the counter and right hand on her hip.

"Stop what?" I tried to give a convincing confused smile.

"Stop avoiding me, Lia."

"Renee, I'm not avoiding you."

"What did you come to the kitchen for?" She said with strict conviction, knowing my answer would be insufficient.

"Huh?" I babbled as my mind reeled for an answer.

"You were walking into the kitchen and turned around when you saw me. What were you coming to the kitchen for?" She asked with all the confidence of a predator that had its prey cornered.

"I... I was just gonna get something to drink." I dropped my hands into my back pockets and lowered my eyes to the floor, following the random white clumps in the grey grout between the tiles. My concentration followed a straight line up nine tiles before it was snatched by a different shade of grey. I studied the grey cotton tightly encompassing Renee's feet and again my mind warred in attempt to pin point when she might have gotten them.

"Why'd you turn around?" Her voice brought me back from the infinity of searching thoughts.

"I... I, you were busy. I didn't wanna..." The uncontrolled stammer in my voice made my answer never-ending.

"I'm working at the stove. Thirteen feet away from the fridge." She interrupted, turning to the side and swaying her hand downward and toward the far end of the kitchen to gesture the distance.

"Eleven feet."

"Amelia!" She shrieked, turning towards me and taking two steps before spinning around and running her fingers over her forehead. She sighed heavily, "Lia, I have tried to be patient, I really have. But I need to talk to you." She turned to look at me, her fingers now combing her hair backwards over her head. "Please."

Renee brought her hands down, the right stopping on her chest and the left continuing to her stomach. Her eyes were once again filled with a sense of pleading that tugged at every dash of resistance I had. I slowly nodded my head and crossed my arms in front of me. My fists gripped the sides of my shirt as I prepared for the conversation I'd been dreading.

"How are you?"

"I..." Her question sank in and stunned every part of my consciousness. "I'm fine. How are you?"

"I'm okay." She said as she rested against the counter.

"That's good." I answered, at a loss for any other words. Renee took a slow breath and blinked in my direction, her eyes opting for the scenic route to my own.

"I missed you." Again, her statement stunned all sense from me and my body froze as the conversation moved in the direction I both hoped it wouldn't and most feared. In an instant my heart was hammering and my emotions spiralling. My feet began to involuntarily slide backwards.

"Renee, look I..."

"Wait!" She leapt forward and grasped my arms, pulling me around and nudging me backwards until I was cornered in the opposite end of the kitchen. "Just wait." She let my arms go and raised her hands in front of me. She began to pace in front of me and started to nervously rub her forehead again. I wondered why I had never noticed her do that before. My mind made the connection to the grey socks and again I wracked my brain thinking whether she always had them or when had she bought them.

"You know, we've lived in the same apartment for almost two years and I know basically nothing about you." She glanced at me. "The only things you have ever told me about yourself are your name, where you were born and that you hated high school.

"Two years and that's all you've ever told me about yourself. At first, I didn't... I didn't care. I figured we're so different, what we would have to talk about anyway. We didn't clash over anything. We respected each others' privacy, so why mess with a good thing." She carried on pacing, not looking at me, as though she were rehearsing a speech.

"Then everything changed. Everything changed the first time we... the first time you..." She faced me, her mouth frozen open and her tongue curled up on her right canine. Her eyes suddenly darted to both sides of the kitchen and then down to the floor as she exhaled hard and gave a small giggle. "God, those last few weeks before it started you were so edgy, so tense. Do you remember that night I touched you on the shoulder and asked if you wanted a soda?" A wide grin spread across her face and she bit her lower lip as she smiled. The memory flashed through my mind and my own smile broke through the concentration that was holding all the muscles in my face purposefully relaxed.

"You almost jumped out of your skin. You got goosebumps from head to toe and three minutes later you were speeding out the door to go for a run that lasted like two hours. When you got back I thought you were gonna have a heart attack." Her mocking smile and raised eyebrows made me laugh deeply but silently. Renee's smile began to slowly shrink and she folded her arms over her stomach.

"I remember the exact moment I realised that what was happening between us was starting to escalate." I swallowed the remnants of my smile along with the fresh brew of nervous tension. "It was that Monday night after your calculus paper last year. You came into my bedroom and you stood at the foot of my bed and you waited." In that moment I realized that Renee had done the same thing barely two months ago. My body trembled at the notion that she could possibly have felt even a fraction of the burning need that tore apart my logic on those nights. "It was the first time you did that. I mean the first time you waited. You waited for me to look at you before you yanked me across my bed. Before that, it was almost like you were afraid to look at me." Afraid, I thought, I wished it were fear. Instead, I remembered being consumed with desperation and clouded under shame. A shame which I began to feel clawing its way up my chilling skin.

"It was also the first time that I felt that... need, to look at you." She pulled me back to the moment. "I was lying there and I just felt like I HAD to open my eyes. When I did," She slowly stepped toward me "I looked straight into yours and my body just... exploded. I wasn't even close but when I saw you looking at me..."

"Listen, Renee it's not..." I tried to stop her approach as something else began to claw at my skin.

"Don't! Don't try and tell me it's not what it seems." Her expression was adamant. "I have spent the last eight weeks dissecting every thought, action and feeling I've had. One of the first things I thought was maybe that you were just really good at what you do and my mind was telling me I was feeling things that weren't there." She smiled and shook her head as her hazel eyes softened. "Something just kept telling me that what I was feeling wasn't wrong. I'm not wrong."

"Renee, do you have the slightest idea what you're trying to say to me? Because I do. And you ARE wrong. Renee, you're straight!"

"I know that."

"Then why are we having this conversation?" I was honestly dumbstruck as the conviction in her words sent the direction I thought the conversation was heading hurling out of my mind. "What happened last time messed things up, I get it." I was almost yelling.

"We're talking about this because I need to talk about it, Amelia." Her voice remained calm. "Just because you're scared doesn't mean you get to ignore my feelings in this."

"Feelings? What feelings? You just said that..."

"If you would shut up and listen to me, I'll tell you what feelings." Her serene tone was beginning to frustrate me as I felt myself become less and less able to match her calm.

"Renee, look. If this stuff has made you curious, I need you to know that I never intended for that to happen." She moved closer to me again and smiled, tilting her head.

"Well it did happen." Relief swept through me.

"Okay, so you're curious. There's nothing wrong with that. You wanna experiment, I get it. But I don't do the guineapig thing." My shoulders relaxed as I entered a conversation I had had several times.

"The guineapig thing? What's that supposed to mean?" Renee squinted in confusion.

"I don't sleep with straight girls so that they can figure out if they're gay." Renee's eyes shot open and her jaw dropped in instant shock. It disappeared as quickly as it formed and was replaced with a type of indignant anger that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

"This isn't about figuring out my sexuality, Amelia!" I swallowed hard.

"Then what is this all about?" I growled in a surge of frustration.

"It's about you, you stupid bitch!" She screamed at me, exclaiming her point with a sudden thrust of her hands in my direction. My mind went blank.

"Wh... What?" I stuttered

"If you would give me half a damn chance here." She was still yelling, "Lia, this isn't about me figuring out if I can be with women. I've thought about kissing and touching other women. I've been to bars and clubs and seen beautiful women but when I think about being with them... I just don't want to." She stood still and stared at me. I couldn't move. Renee closed her eyes and took a deep breathe, releasing it slowly as she ran her fingers back through her hair. She looked at me with earnest eyes. "But Lia, when I think about kissing you... about touching you, not only do I want to but my heart races, my palms get sweaty, my body tingles and it hurts to think that I can't." She spoke slower.

"Renee..." I searched my vocabulary and found it drained.

"Do you know that you don't roll your eyes at me anymore?" My thoughts joined my vocabulary. She smiled. "Whenever I used to say something stupid or misinformed, you used to roll your eyes at me. Now you just smile, you smile like you think it's actually cute. The same way you've always smiled at me when I'm running around like a chicken without a head in the mornings." I searched for a word, a thought, a feeling.

"I started noticing all the things you do for me as well. You make coffee for me almost every morning even though you can't stand the way it smells. You started hanging my keys by the door because I have to hunt for them every morning. You do it even though you have to look for them yourself at night."

"I do that because you're always late if I don't." As I spoke I realized it wasn't much of a mitigating point.

"I know, but it's not all you do for me. Whenever you go to the store, you buy those little marshmallows I like because I always forget them. You always hold the door open for me, even when you're mad at me." She reached forward and took my wrist, sliding her fingers over the side and into my palm. My body fought my minds instruction to pull my hand away. "I also know that you threatened to chemically castrate Timothy if he ever so much as looked in my direction again." She smiled coyly and I smiled a sigh. I wondered how long she had known about that. "I believe you told him that you have access to drugs that would make it so slow that he would have to watch it shrivel up and rot, and he wouldn't be able to do a thing about it." She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

"Well, he asked for it." I shrugged my shoulders and felt the sparks of embarrassment warming my cheeks. "Besides, you had conversations with him... It would be criminally negligent for him to procreate." Renee erupted in laughter and squeezed my hand.

"You still didn't have to do what you did." She said, moving closer. Her voice was soft and low. "You try so hard to hide yourself away from everything. In these last few months I've learned so much about you, just because I was paying attention. I've learned that you are one of the kindest people I will ever meet. I've learned that you love music so much that you kill the batteries of both your phone and ipod every day. You play music every night when you go to bed, but only piano or violin solos. I've learned that no matter what you're doing or how late you are, you will always stop and listen to a street musician who catches your attention. When you do, you get this serene look on your face, like the world could burn around you and you would die happy." My eyebrows furrowed deeply on my forehead as an echo of 'disturbing' rang through the surprise.

"How do you know that?" I asked. Her response was only to move closer and take my other hand in hers.

"And when they're done playing, you always take out twenty dollars and you don't just toss it into their bins or cases. You always place it directly in their hands, you thank them and give them this smile... It's like some kind of secret message to them." Her eyes discretely twitched side to side as she looked from my right eye to my left and back again. "Sometimes you smile at me that way. When you think I won't notice it, when I'm turning away or distracted.

"Amelia, all I'm asking for is a chance. I need to know why you're constantly on my mind. I need to know why I get butterflies, of all things, in my stomach when you smile at me. I need to know why I feel like my heart has been broken for the last eight weeks." Renee closed the distance between us and pulled my arms around her back and held them there. With her hips and breasts pressed to mine, my thoughts descended into a dark space with flashing pictures of Renee towering above my face. Pictures of the smooth lines of her body as her back arched and her hips rolled against my tongue. Pictures which left her scent in my nose and her flavor on my lips. I clenched my eyes shut.

"I need to know why when I kissed you, I didn't wanna let you go. More than anything, I need to know why when you're inside me, I feel like I'm not even in this galaxy." Renee leaned forward and brought her lips close to mine. Close enough for me to taste the green peppers on her breath.

I felt the pool of saliva underneath my tongue swell and grow. Renee pressed my hands against her back and ran her fingers up my arms and over my shoulders, gathering the shoulders of my shirt and bunching them against my neck. Her fingertips played over my collar bone and neck, the cotton-blend material interrupting the contact between her palms and my awakening skin. My fingers began to shake on her back and Renee reached behind her to take my hands and slide them under her tank top, the heat of her velvety skin soldering my hands to her. As she grazed my lips with her own, they screamed in rebellion of my restraint and I turned my head to the side. My eyes snapped shut as her wet lips crashed against my cheek, Renee hesitated for a moment before placing another kiss on my cheek followed by another on my jaw bone. Her harsh kisses left a tingling path of sensation as the air cooled the moisture left by her lips.

Renee's lips moved to my neck as her hands clutched and squeezed at my hip bones, her body pressing harder into me. Her tongue slid up my neck and she sank her teeth into the muscle on the left side of my neck as her nails dug into my hips. Every muscle in my body tensed and my mind whirled. My breath fled from my body to be replaced by the fierceness of weakness.

"Renee!" I pushed her backwards, desperate for reprieve.

"I want you!" Renee growled and forcefully pushed her way through my arms, smacking against me and my lower back throbbed from being pounded into the counter top. Her lips crushed the corner of my mouth. I tried to push her away.

"Amelia!" She breathed loudly, her brown eyes consumed and dark, pleading. She swallowed hard as she looked into my eyes, her body restless and her hands massaging my wrists as they held her. She sucked her bottom lip, "Amelia," her lips twitched as she grappled for words. The twitches pulled at a heart-string inside me and unravelled the whole ball. I leaned forward and claimed her succulent lower lip, Renee moaned deeply as her top lip encompassed my own and left it slick. She pushed against my arms and they meekly gave way to her intoxicating presence. She pressed against my body as her hands pulled at my shoulders. My tongue flicked against her lips and was immediately greeted with her opening mouth. I placed my hands on her neck and slowly offered her my tongue which was violently sucked deep into her mouth as she leaned backwards and pulled me with her. She wrapped her arms around my neck to steady herself, sliding her hands under and out of the neck of my shirt. The tip of her tongue slowly but strongly toyed over the surface of mine and she sucked harshly on my lips. The half moan, half growl sounds vibrated through her lips and onto my skin, travelling south and growing in intensity.

Before I could stop myself, my teeth nipped her lip and held it. Renee's nails burrowed into the skin between my shoulder blades, laying bear my depravity in their flaming red tracks. My hands dashed to take hold of her forearms and pull them out to the sides, sliding down to take a firmer grip on her wrists. She looked at me with wild eyes as she struggled against my hands. She leaned forward and dizzied me in a frenzy of quick and sharp kisses before devastating me with a hard crush of her lips, her tongue pushing its way into my mouth. Her tongue danced around my mouth, her hands continued to twist and push against me. I tried to pull back from Renee's kiss only to have my own lip captured between unforgiving teeth. The more I pulled back the harder she bit, groaning her disapproval until a sharp pain in my lip made me cry out. She released my lip and looked at me in frustrated shock.

Her eyes darted between my own and she swallowed. Suddenly her attention was drawn lower on my face. I felt a distinct weight appear on my lip and for a moment wondered if I were feeling the weight of her gaze. A moment which ended when the weight began to roll over my lip and slowly down my chin. Renee's eyes fluttered as she watched and tears began to well in her eyes. Her hands stopped struggling and her jaw quivered. I brought our hands to my mouth and wiped my chin over the back of my hand, watching the thick red smear grow across my skin.