Falling

I clenched my jaw and looked away from her. My eyes settled on the falling snow outside the window. My mind felt like those flakes, drifting in the wind, pushed this way and that. No focus, no thought, just white serenity.

Who was I? Why was it important? Suddenly I knew that this moment was important. This moment would be one that I'd look back on and realize that it made or broke my entire life. It seemed so petty but I sensed it.

It had always meant so much to me to be the kind of person that was loyal... to never have to worry about my changing mercurial feelings.

I never thought of myself as weak. Karly was making me weak though. I had starting feeling and now those feelings were starting to break through cracks in my armor...

I realized then that I had suppressed a lot of myself in anger. It was a realization that rocked me to my core. The person I was, was shifting very quickly and I was having trouble keeping up with that person.

Her voice cut through my thoughts, "Do I have to apologize for not noticing you? I do. Do I have to apologize for choosing Mike over you? I do. I wish that I had done what my heart told me the first time I saw you, that I really saw you."

She looked at me again, something between anger and sorrow on her face, "That first glance at the man you are, the strength and the sadness. I saw how lonely you were, and how strong you were while you stood looking into the darkness. I walked away from you then because I was scared and I'm sorry. I've known that person since I was a freshman and I kept turning away from him. I know I don't deserve you but now I'm scared that I won't ever get to see the rest of you and I feel like I'll die if I don't." Tears rolled down her cheeks.

What brought this on? Why did she feel so strongly about this?

I mean I had noticed her, but I had never felt strongly about her. Maybe a slight crush emotionally, a larger lust for her beautiful form but not this deep emotional connection. Was I broken? Did I just not feel like everyone else did?

Could I not form an emotional connection to anyone?

Was she was just crazy?

I rolled my feelings around and examined them. This felt very right. So much more than it ever had with Jacky... I felt a connection with Karly that I had never felt with anyone before in my life...

"So what do I have to do?" Her voice cut into my thoughts and brought me back to the moment. She looked into my eyes again and I felt our souls lock again. Her jaw set and she seemed to push her will onto me. Her eyes returned to the road, her grip tightened on the wheel. "Do I have to have sex with you? 'Cause if that is all it is, just say it."

'Holy shit!' my brain suddenly threw a breaker. 'Where did that come from?'

"You want to fuck me?" Again she pinned me down with that stare, and I felt so helpless. I was the deer again, the wolf tightened its jaws around my throat and I thrashed helplessly. I pressed myself to the ice holding me under the water and felt the cool texture of it against my hands; the small imperfections as I thrashed against it, the last things my fingers would ever feel...

"You can. Just say the word. My parents are gone until next Tuesday on a ski retreat. Just say it. I'll take you back to my place and I'll fuck your brains out all night long. Hell, I'll fuck your brains out all day tomorrow too. You can have me any way you want. Anything you can think of. Any way you can think of. All I ask in return is that you hold me in between. That you let me believe you care about me the way I care about you. And Monday morning you end it with her. I won't be anyone's side bitch and I won't share you with anyone else. And you try. You try to learn to love me."

'We should take that option' my brain, and my cock screamed out to me. I might have said yes right then... but I saw the tear drop down her face. I was breaking her. She wanted so desperately to not be dependent on anyone... to not need anyone. To be beautiful and confident and I was taking that from her just by being quiet. I didn't have a good answer for her. I couldn't think. We started to come up to my house...

I had to buy some time to think. Not speaking right now was tearing her apart at the seams. I reached my hand out to her, held it open and hoped she would take it. She looked at it like a snake that would bite her. "Drive around the block please," I found myself saying to her. Her hand slipped into mine and she nodded her head, the car speeding back up. Her hand was cold in mine. She squeezed it so hard! I returned the pressure hoping it would help ground her.

I looked forward into the snowy night. Watched the rhythmic pulsing of the windshield wipers. The regularity of them seemed like a life preserver in the water for me. Shwish, shwish they went, focusing my thoughts.

What did I want? Tear it down to the foundation and really look at it... not what Karly wanted. Not what my friends thought. Not what my dad thought about me. What did I want?

I want to be someone. I want to be someone to someone. Someone that turns the gears of someone else's world. I didn't need much. Not a whole host of friends and family that loved me. Not adoring fans, or a screaming stadium full of people.

Just one person. One person that truly saw me... for me. One person I couldn't hide from no matter how hard I tried. And I wanted to be good... to be the person that person deserved.

My thoughts drifted to carnal thoughts of Karly...

In my mind I pictured her naked. My hands tangled in hers as I kissed her deeply. The feeling of sliding deep into her. The feeling of her thighs against my hips as I drove into her. Her lips on mine as I kissed her deeply...

In my mind there was a little yellow light shining on her face from my left side, bathing that side of her beautiful face as I pulled away from our kiss and stared at her. Her eyes closed in ecstasy as I drove into her again and again...

My heart swelled as I thought about it and I wondered what that meant. Normally when I thought about this it was all centered on the sensations of the flesh, the feeling of her body on my cock, the tightness there, the sensation of driving in and out of someone, but this was so much different; this was all about my feelings for her, the feelings in my heart and my mind; not the feeling of my body and hers.

'Stop it!' my brain shouted to me!

I couldn't stop thinking about it though...

This was so much different than any other fantasy I had ever had.

It felt like I was there... like a dream in real life.

In my mind, I closed my eyes and felt her all around me. I couldn't see her, but I could hear her moans, feel her hands clenched tight in mine. I could smell her hair as I leaned back into a kiss with her. I could taste her perfect lips and her perfect tongue as it crawled into my mouth.

I could feel her body trembling. I could feel the blankets rub against our legs as I pushed into her over and over. I could feel the urgency of her voice as she whispered for me to go faster and harder. I pushed my face into the hollow of her neck again and tasted her sweat.

I could feel my breath on her face as I whispered into her ear... "Karly."

I could feel her hand untangling from mine. I could feel her nails scratch at my ass and she put her hand there to pull me into her harder. My hand was on her breast then and she moaned in ecstasy through the combination of sensations.

Our eyes met and her hand snapped up to my head and pulled me back into a deep kiss. She threw her head back and screamed as she crested beneath me, a scream of raw sensual bliss and I knew pride in knowing that I had given this to her...

To be the person they deserved...

The thought of it crashed into me and pulled me out of the fantasy, or vision, whatever it was. My eyes snapped open and I didn't even realize that I'd closed them. We were closing in on my house for the second time. How was that so short a time? It felt like I'd been inside her for hours...

Be the person someone deserves.

The thought was like a mantra in my mind.

It gave me strength I didn't know I had. I looked at her again, 'God she was so beautiful!' I again thought. I could see something like panic in her eyes, no longer was she the wolf, now she was the deer. The car stopped in front of my house.

"I can't go home with you" I whispered to her.

The tears threatening her eyes suddenly spilled over the edges. I brought her hand up to my lips and kissed it. "It's not about you. It's about me. I can't be the person you are asking me to be."

I considered what I was about to say, "I won't be the person you are asking me to be."

I felt steel grow inside myself and I knew in that moment that I was right before when I thought this moment would be one of those that would define the man that I would one day be.

"No woman that ever loves me will share me with another. I won't do that to you and I won't do that to Jacky. I don't know what I want, but I do know that if I went home with you right now the person that you woke up with tomorrow morning wouldn't be the same person you went to bed with tonight."

I raised my hand and brushed the tear away from her face. "Don't cry about me. I'm not worth it. I'm not the person you think I am. For everything that I am I want to go home with you. I want to feel every inch of you... to know every inch of you. That is selfish of me and you shouldn't cry for that piece of shit. I'll try to be better. I'm sorry." I pulled my hand away from hers and started to turn to the door.

"Kiss me?" I turned back to her. Her eyes were locked on me again. The hardness in her edges was back and my heart soared to see it. She had been tempered by this moment and had come out somehow stronger... I wanted her even more...

I didn't respond I just leaned in and kissed her with every fiber of my being. Maybe it was the dry winter air, maybe I had just shuffled my feet too much on the carpet while I sat there, but I could feel a small jump of electric current as our lips touched.

The kiss started off slowly. Small, chaste even, and then built like an avalanche. I found my hands tangled in her hair. My nose filled with that vanilla scent again, tinged with just the slightest hint of the bitter smoke of her cigarette. Her mouth opened beneath mine and I couldn't help but respond in kind. Her tongue probed into my mouth and her tongue tasted just the way that it did in my vision of her.

My hand found its way around her breast. Fuller than Jacky's. Firmer. She moaned into my mouth. This is so much better than Jacky...

That thought snapped me back to reality. I pulled away from her. 'God, she almost pulled me in' I thought to myself. 'I was almost helpless.' And I wouldn't have cared either... the thought scared me a little.

"Please don't..." I whispered to her. It was a plea from me to her. She had me right there. She had me pinned to the wall and all she had to do was lean in and kiss me one more time and the last vestiges of whatever man I was would be blown away like snow in the wind. I wasn't sure that I would like the man that would be left after that wind...

"Go if you're going to. I can't control myself much longer." she whispered.

I fled her car. Just grabbing my stuff at my feet and diving out into the snow. I fled from her. I didn't look back.

I couldn't... I made it as far as the gate in front of the house. I wanted to go in. I really did. I closed my eyes and tried to focus my thoughts...

The cold. The snow falling in the night. I felt and saw it all. I knew it then. If I walked away. I would lose her. I couldn't do that. I turned back and looked at the car. Still sitting there idling. She was just a dark form inside. My feet carried me back. I don't remember making the decision. I just remember them carrying me through the snow. I went around the front of the car and pulled the door open.

She looked up at me in shock. Her face was wet from her tears. I had never seen a woman more beautiful in my life. I reached in and took her hand. It was like she floated out of the car and like that she was in my arms. I kissed her like my life depended on it. She clung to me like a lifeboat in freezing water.

"Come inside?" I whispered to her when I finally managed to break away from her lips.

Her head nodded weakly. Her eyes lost all focus and she was breathing fast. "What about your parents?" she asked me breathlessly.

I smiled at her and was suddenly very grateful for those lonely nights... "Not a problem."

We ran in the snow, hand in hand around the back of the house. I opened the door and let her run up the stairs ahead of me.

My apartment was less an apartment and just a small loft about an old house. It looked like a converted attic that someone had made a studio apartment out of. It was small, but it was mine. She reached the top of the stairs and stopped at the door. I had to press her back and reach past her and put my keys in the lock.

Her lips were like a siren's call to me... I pressed myself up against her and kissed her deeply again. Our tongues mingling. I found her hand and held it tightly. Our kiss broke and I found myself kissing down the side of her neck... her arm was wrapped around me, her breaths came in ragged gasps...

I suddenly wanted her inside. I broke away from kissing her and pushed the door open. It stuck a little, but pushed open without too much trouble. Still holding her hand I pulled her in after me... I barely got the door closed before I was kissing her again. I pressed her back against the door and kissed her with every fiber of my being. My hands tangled in hers as I raised her hands above her head and pressed her flat to the wall.

She broke our kiss and offered me her neck again. An offer I took her up on all too eagerly. My breath was hot and shallow. That smell of vanilla crashed over me once again... I traced my kisses up the side of her neck, finally settling into the hollow of her jaw and her ear.

"Stop, stop..." She whispered breathlessly, "I don't want your parents to catch us like this..."

Her comment made me stop and laugh. I pulled back from her and took a step back. I still held her hands in mine as I looked deep into those green eyes and pulled her deeper into my apartment. I flipped the light to the kitchen, which was on my right, on, bathing the room in light. I smiled at her and said, "It's just you and me here. I live here alone. This is my house."

Confusion crossed her face as she tried to wrap her mind around what I had just told her. She looked around dumbly trying to understand.

Her eyes once again locked onto mine and I found myself pulled into their depths once again, 'I could stare into those eyes forever' I thought to myself...

"How do you live by yourself?" she finally asked me.

I shrugged at her. "It's complicated. This used to be my mom's apartment and I took it over when she went to live with her boyfriend." I stepped back and gestured for her to look around. She took her coat off and looked around, I finally picked up the queue that she was looking for a place to put it...

Embarrassed I stepped forward and took it from her. I neatly hung it on a little hook that was next to the front the door. Deciding that the house was too warm I pulled my warmup sweatshirt off and hung it over the top of her coat. 'Need to put up a few more hooks' I thought to myself, 'not really set up for company here...'

I turned back to her and saw her kind of peeking around, curious about my little place but too polite to just make her way around. I waved my hand dumbly, "Go ahead, look around!" I told her.

It hit me then. How shabby this little place was. Three small rooms and a closet for my clothes. I didn't know everything about her, but I figured considering how nice her car was, she came from money. I was proud of my little house, but she was not going to be impressed with my shabby furniture and my bachelor's style.

'At least it's clean for once...' I thought to myself dimly.

She stepped forward and looked into my kitchen, a small smile of wonder on her face.

She took in the range, the small counter. The old fridge that still had the old style pull open handle that went the way of the dinosaurs when people starting worrying about stupid kids locking themselves in them. She looked over at the old battered Formica table that did double duty as my desk.

She turned and went into the room to the right of the front door, my bathroom. Looking intently at the small walk in shower, the toilet and the sink...

She smiled at me as she went into my front room which doubled as my bedroom. She looked at the twin sized bed I slept in each night. 'Thank god I made the bed this morning.' I thought to myself as she walked into the room. She examined the small television on the stand on the opposite side of the room, so I could watch it from the bed. Looked at my big comfy chair...

And then she was down to the details. She took in that I had no pictures on the walls. No family or friends. Not even some little trinket to brighten the room... There was a bookcase made of boards and cinder block bricks but other than that the room was nearly empty. The only other furniture in the room was a little table that I had built out of scrap lumber that held the alarm clock next to my bed.

She went to the bookcase and looked over my books. Most of them salvaged from a used bookstore or a second hand shop. Her fingers tracing along the books as she read along the titles. Mostly fantasy and sci-fi titles.

I looked around the room and realized how pathetic I must seem to her. I looked at my little twin bed. My pitiful little table with the battered, second hand alarm clock. Handed down sheets and blankets. My one tired looking pillow. Not one ounce of personality to the room... it was like a monk's cell, I finally realized... 'How was I so proud of all this one minute ago?' I asked myself.

I noticed then her fingers tracing over the small leather bound book on top of the book shelf. She picked it up and started to open it. I jumped forward and snatched it from her fingers.

She looked up at me in shock...

I fumbled to explain, "My journal... sorry. Private." I looked at the floor. Ashamed of my little house now. I threw my journal on the bed and started to walk away. Defeated...

She caught my hand and pulled me to face her. Her hands set on each side of my face and she smiled at me, that infectious smile that pulled me in each time. She ran her fingers under my eyes, wiping away tears that weren't there. "I love it." She whispered to me. "It's perfect."

And with that she kissed my lips so tenderly. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her into me. Our kiss was less passionate this time. Tender and without the animalistic need our previous kisses had shared. Her arms wrapped around my neck and I thought how lovely it would be... to kiss those lips like this every morning before we headed off to work...

I broke it off and looked at her. "I'm embarrassed." I confessed to her. I looked around the room and realized how small I was. How pathetic I looked. This girl was high class. She had dated a guy that obviously had money, who most likely spoiled the shit out of her. I couldn't compete with that. I had no car. I had no beautiful house. I had no family that took care of me and cared about me. Hell, I didn't even have internet here! 'No Netflix and chill for you' I thought sarcastically to myself.

I found myself trying to look at my feet. She stopped my gaze and pulled it back up to meet hers. Her eyes flitted around on my face, as if she was looking for some answer there... "Why are you embarrassed?" she asked me.

I couldn't explain it to her. How would I tell her I wasn't good enough for her? How would I tell her that without making her seem like a materialistic bitch? "Look at this place... I was so proud of it and then I look at it through your eyes and I see how pathetic it is."