Let Me In (9 page)

              When we get back to her house that night, Kori grabs a couple drinks for both of us and we make our way into the backyard.  I lie in the lounge chair and pull her down beside me.  I look down at her and notice she is chewing on her lip.  I wait patiently for what I know she is working up the nerve to say.  I am not certain what she wants to talk about, but I know she is nervous and uncertain about it. 
              “Tuck,” she begins uneasily.
              “What, Kor?”
                “I don’t know how to ask this, so I’m just going to jump in with it.  How many girls have you had sex with?”
              I freeze beside her.  That is not what I had been expecting, and it is in no way a question that I want to answer.  “Um, I’m not certain, Kori.  I’ve had a lot of meaningless sex with a lot of different girls.”
              “Do you not know an exact number?”
              “No,” I quietly answer, “I don’t.”
              “Oh.  Does it bother you that I’ve slept with a lot of guys?”
              I let out a short laugh.  “No, it doesn’t, Kori.  That would be mighty hypocritical of me.  I don’t care about a number, just as long as I know you’re with me now.”
              “Well, I’m not
with
you
with you.  Just that one day.”  She looks at me out of the corner of her eye.  “Is everything okay with that?  Did I do something wrong?”
              My hearts aches that she thinks she has done something wrong to make me not want to have sex with her.  If the girl only knew how crazy she drove me, she would not question her ability to drive me wild in every sense of the word.  “What?  No, Kori.  I swear you haven’t.  I just haven’t ever had a real relationship, and I don’t want to fuck this up.  We’ll get there, I promise you.  And it will be even better than that one day.”
              She squeezes me tight to her and kisses my chin.  “You set the bar pretty high there, Tucky.  You’re going to have to pull out the big guns to live up to that one day.”
              “Don’t worry about that, Kori.  I definitely have the big guns.”
              She laughs and winks at me.  “Yep, that you do.”

              The next few weeks pass in a beautiful blur for me.  As sappy as it sounds, I feel as if I’m walking on the clouds.  I would never tell Chase any of this since I know he would make me hand in my man card, but it’s the truth.  Everything is so easy with Kori.  We find ourselves texting all throughout the day and hanging out together until late at night.  We talk about useless nonsense and about things that matter.  However, we haven’t had sex since the day we worked on her Bronco, and I can admit that it’s mostly my fault.  I’m sure that many people would find it amusing that the great man-whore Tuck Hayes is holding out on his girlfriend.  Truthfully, I’m afraid that if we take that step back into bed, Kori will run.  She’s admitted that she did no-strings hookups so that she didn’t have to commit and open herself up to other people.  Even though so much is effortless with Kori, a part of me feels like I’m always trying to rope the wind.  I know she said that she was willing to take a chance on us, but I feel like part of her is still skittish.  I know that she’s getting frustrated with me, and I can’t blame her for it.  Hell, I’m getting frustrated with myself.  If I have to take jerk off in one more cold shower, my dick is going to revolt on me.  He knows that he’s close to a beautiful woman who can make him very happy, and I need to quit being such a prissy little bitch about it. 

10

Kori

             
“Ugh!” I grumble to myself as I slam my dresser drawer shut and turn to survey the mess of clothes that are strewn all about my room.  Tuck and I have been seeing each other for a few weeks now, and I am beginning to get frustrated.  Our friendship has morphed into an easy relationship.  I am still painfully aware that I’m not good enough for him, but he is so caring and attentive that I have easily pushed it to the back of my mind.  I am growing increasingly perturbed that Tuck puts on the brakes every time our relationship veers toward the physical route.  While it is true that we have gotten pretty hot and heavy, he always manages to put a halt to it before it goes too far (his words, not mine).  Deep down I am aware that he doesn’t want to sleep with me because he is afraid I will run, but his constant mixed signals are confusing the hell out of me.  I am convinced that tonight will be the night.  My body tingles remembering how great we were together the day he helped me with my Bronco; I find myself more than ready to experience that again. 
              “Problems?” Avery asks as she sticks her head in my bedroom door.
              I glower at her.  “Yes!  I don’t know what to wear tonight.  I need something that will make Tuck want to throw me down and have his way with me.”
              “Have his way with you?” Avery giggles.  “Who talks like that?  What is your deal, Kor?  You’ve never been one to stress about how you look or to stress out about convincing a guy to have his way with you.”
              “My deal is that I’m sexually frustrated.  I haven’t had sex in almost two months, and Tuck is driving me insane!”
              “Wait a minute.  Almost two months?  So who was the last person?”
             
Shit. 
I hadn’t meant to let that slip out.  “Um, Tuck was.”
              “What?!” Avery shrieks.  I cringe as I envision every window in the house busting from her ear-splitting decibel.  “I’m your best friend.  How have you not told me about this?  I need details right now.  Spill it.”
              I sigh as I realize there would be no avoiding my annoying friend.  “Chelsea!” Avery screams out.  “Get in here now.  Kori has something to tell us.”
              I grab a shirt off my bed and throw it at her.  “I hate you, Avery.  This is why I didn’t tell you about it.  I knew you would make a huge deal out of it.”
              “Huge deal out of what?” Chelsea asks as she throws her perfect statuesque body onto my bed.
              “Kori and Tuck fucked before they started dating,” Avery spits out before I can respond to Chelsea’s question.
              “God, Avery, do you have to be so crude about it?”  I look back and forth between my two best friends.  Their faces hold identical expectant looks; I know I will not get out of this room without revealing all my Tuck secrets.  I let out a groan.  “Fine, I’ll tell you.  But it isn’t that big of a deal.”  I then proceed to fill them in on the particulars that occurred the day that Tuck helped me fix my Bronco.  I hold back some of the finer points, though.  There is absolutely no point in them knowing that we did it three times that afternoon or that being with Tuck was the greatest sexual experience that I had ever had.  I also didn’t go into details about how spectacular he looked underneath his clothes or how hot his tattoos looked as they trailed all the way down his pecs.  I didn’t go into detail about how talented his tongue was or how he made me feel things that I had never felt before.  No, I certainly didn’t go into all of those details.  I wanted to keep those things to myself.  I had been savoring them for the past two months, and they had quickly become some of my favorite memories. 
              As I finish my sexually charged monologue, I look at my two friends, both of whom are grinning at me in a way that I can’t comprehend.
              “Oh, Kori, I’m so happy for you guys,” gushes Chelsea.
              Apparently my face gives away my confusion because Chelsea hastens to explain herself.  “You’re in love with him.”
              I let out a short laugh.  “No, Chels, I’m not.  I don’t do love.  You know that.”
              “No, but you do Tuck.”  Leave it to Avery to insert her crude humor into the situation. 
              “That’s the whole point of this mess in my room, guys.  I haven’t been with Tuck like that since that one day.  Every time we get close to it, he pulls back.  What the hell is wrong with me?  I know I’m kind of a relationship retard, but don’t guys typically want to have sex with their girlfriends?”  I gasp with a new thought.  “Oh my gosh.  He thinks I’m a slut.  That’s why he doesn’t want me.”
              “Hold on there, you crazy girl.  Nobody thinks you’re a slut, least of all Tuck.  Have you heard his reputation around here?”  I throw a dirty look at Avery for stating this.  She has the good sense to at least look slightly apologetic.  “You both talked about your pasts before you ever got together.  He knows you, Kori.  Hell, he is the male version of you.  That’s why you guys work so well together.”
              Chelsea gives her advice also.  “Kori, give him a chance.  You’re a different person since you’ve met him.  You’re less angry and intense.  I’m not saying that you’re all rainbows and unicorns, but you’re not thunderclouds and black trench coats either.  He mellows you out, and what’s even more important is that you really like him.  And he really likes you.”
              I open my mouth to argue, but Avery interrupts me.  “Don’t start with that bullshit about you not being good enough for him.  I know you are, Kori.  You always sell yourself short and think the worst of yourself.  There’s nothing wrong with you.  Quit trying to judge yourself because of who your asshole of a father was.  Get over it.”
              I gape at her in amazement and anger.  “Get over it?  He killed my mother and shot me!  How the fuck do you expect me to get over it, Avery?  Please let me know what you think.  Because I guess for the past six years I’ve just been wallowing in my own self-pity.  Don’t tell me to get over it.  I’m the one who has spent the past six years trying to ignore the whispers around town.  I’m the one who spent days in the hospital from a gunshot wound.  I’m the one who had to impose on her grandparents when they took her in to raise her.  So who the fuck do you think you are to tell me to get over it?”  I propel myself forward in my anger.  I have to get out of this house before I say or do something that I will regret. 
              A part of me understands where Avery is coming from.  She and Chelsea know what I have been through; they were there with me to help pick up the pieces of my life.  But the majority of myself is beyond pissed that she would throw my past in my face like that.  The past six years, make that the past twenty-two years, haven’t exactly been carefree for me.  I’m doing the best I can. 
              I grab my keys and guitar and fly out of the front door.  I slam the door behind me and storm up the driveway to my Bronco.  I’m fighting back tears of anger and hurt as I speed down the road out of town.  There is only one place that I can go when I feel like this.
              I brush the tears out of my eyes as I park in front of the gated cemetery.  I grab my guitar out of its case and make my way through the haphazard rows of the tranquil cemetery that is my mother’s home. I loathe the fact that other people, like Avery and Chelsea, are able to go visit their mom in person.  They can wrap their arms around them and pour out all of their troubles, and their moms can talk to them and bake them birthday cakes and fix them soup when they’re sick.  My father robbed me of that, and for that I will always despise him.  I will never get over what he did to me.
              I stop in underneath a willow tree and sink to my knees onto the manicured grass.  I brush away the loose grass and leaves that litter my mother’s headstone and plot.  I place my guitar, that was once hers, on top of the soft grass, and I bury my face in my hands and burst into tears.
              “Hey, Mama.  How are you?”  I find myself pausing as if to wait for her response.  “I wish you were still here.  I’m so confused, and I really need your advice right now.  I met this guy, Mama, and I really like him.  He’s so sexy and smart and frustrating and funny.  He gets me, and he doesn’t force me to be somebody that I’m not.”  I smile through my tears as I think of Tuck’s beautiful face.  “But I’m scared.  I’m scared of how I feel about him, because I really think that I love him.  And if I admit that I love him, then I’m giving him power over me.  I don’t want to wind up like you, Mama.”  The tears are now running freely down my face, but I don’t make a move to wipe them away. 
              “Why did you stay with him for so long?  If you had just told somebody, they could have helped us.  He beat the shit out of you, Mama, and you let him hit me.  Why?  How could you do that?  For so long, I thought you were the greatest person alive, but I’m not so sure anymore.  You could have saved yourself, and you could have saved me.” 
              All of the hurt that I’ve felt for the past six years is flowing forth as if it’s lava that cannot be contained.  I sit there in silence and let the tears continue to stream down my face.  My mind is drifting back to all the years that I watched my mom pretend that everything was okay with my father.  She always told me not to tell anybody when he got mad; she said that we would get in trouble if people found out.  Guess she never realized how much trouble it would be if people didn’t find out.  For years, I felt that it was my fault that she died.  If I had just told somebody what my dad was like, I could have saved my mom.  I finally packed most of that guilt away and reconciled myself to the fact that I was just a kid when everything happened.  I trusted my mom the way that most kids do.  I trusted her to do what was best for us as a family, and she let me down.  I place some of the blame on her, but most of the blame lies solely on my dad.  Ultimately, he was the one who raised his fist all those times, and he was the one who pulled the trigger.  My hatred for him is eternal.
              As I sit there in the stillness of the cemetery, I begin to have an epiphany.  This is what Avery was talking about.  I realize that I overreacted to her words when she told me to get over it.  I think what she was trying to say was to allow myself to let go of the hold that the past has on me.  I’m a big enough person to admit that I’ve held myself at a distance from the rest of society for the past six years because I didn’t want to let people in.  I’ve been afraid of people finding out that my father is a murderer and that my mother was a weak woman who stayed with him after all of his years of abuse.  I’ve been afraid that a part of me is like my father; what if I could become violent like him?  I know alcoholism is genetic, but what about violence? Is it something I could inherit?  I’ve been afraid that I wasn’t good enough to be friends with anybody else.  Most of the people that you come in contact with aren’t the offspring of a murderer, and I’ve always placed my own self-worth well below other people.
              My epiphany is life-changing, as all good epiphanies should be.  I feel a cool, gentle breeze brush through the cemetery, and I feel as if it’s telling me
Let go
.  I make a conscious decision right there that I will no longer be weighed down by my past.  I will be the author of my future, and I decide to write my dad out of it completely.  There will be no more of me being afraid to let people in, and there will be no more thinking I’m not good enough for Tuck.  If I want people to believe in me, I must first believe in myself. 
              I smile to myself as I dry my face and wipe my nose.  I feel like I should be getting an affirmation chip or something such as that.  I pat the ground at my mom’s feet.  “I forgive you, Mama.  I’m letting it go.”  I kiss my fingertips and press them into the warmth of her headstone as I grab my guitar and leave the cemetery.  I feel like a new woman as I leave the shackles of my past and embrace my future.  I decide that Tuck is my first stop in my new life, so I point my Bronco in his direction and take off.

              I knock nervously on Tuck’s door and fidget with my shirt as I wait for him to answer.  When he opens the door, he takes one look at my tear-streaked face and immediately pulls me to him.
              “Kori, what’s wrong?  Are you hurt?  Did something happen to Gran and Gramps?”
              I love the fact that he is so concerned with me.  It makes me feel as if my epiphany is the right thing to do.
              I shake my head at him as he pulls me into his room.  “I’m fine.  Avery, Chelsea, and I had a fight, but I’m fine.  I just had to clear my head.”
              “Baby, I’m sorry you fought.  What happened?”
              I really don’t want to reveal to him what an idiot I am, but I feel that he deserves to know.  I curl up in the middle of his bed as he pulls me close to him.  I sigh as I reconcile myself to telling him everything.  If all of my craziness scares him off, then we just weren’t meant to be together.
              “It all started with my telling Avery that I was sexually frustrated because you are constantly pulling away from me.”  Tuck opens his mouth to interject, but I motion for him to allow me to continue.  “I accidentally let slip to them both that we hooked up before we were ever an actual couple.  They had no clue that had happened.  Don’t worry, I didn’t tell them everything, just enough to make them shut up.  So then when I finished telling them everything, including how you won’t have sex with me now,” I glare at him as I remind him of this fact.  He does at least have the decency to look abashed.  “Anyway, I told them everything and they started gushing about how I was in love with you.  I reminded them that I didn’t do love and never would.”  I glance up at Tuck in time to see his face fall at my words.  I feel a twinge of guilt, but I have to continue on with my explanation.  “After I got mad at them about that, Avery told me that I couldn’t judge myself because of who my father was.  She said I had to get over it.  So I got really pissed off and stormed off.”
              “Kori, Avery was right about the fact that you can’t continue to judge yourself because of your father.  She could have had a bit more tact, but…”
              “Hold on, I’m not finished,” I cut Tuck off before he can say anymore.  “After I stormed out of the house following an f-word ridden tirade, I drove to the cemetery and talked to my mom.  I was so angry with her, and I didn’t hold anything back.  After I got it all off my chest, I had an epiphany.  You know what it was, Tuck?”  He shakes his head and brushes my hair out of my face with his thumb.  “I realized I have to let the past go.  I’m pretty sure that I’ll always hate my father, and a part of me is still mad at my mother.  But I need to recognize the fact that I’m not trash just because of what my father did.  That wasn’t me, and I had no control over his actions.  I control my future.”  I lean forward and press a kiss to Tuck’s lips.  “I love you, Tuck.”
              I feel his lips smile against mine.  “I love you, too, Kori.”  He crushes his lips to mine in a kiss that I can feel all throughout my body.  He pulls away from me and holds me tighter against his body.  “I thought you didn’t do love.  I’ve known that I was in love with you.  Hell, I think I might have known it after I met your grandparents.  I’ve been trying to get the courage up to tell you, but I was afraid that I would scare you off.”
              “Trust me, Tucky.  You won’t scare me off.  You’re not going to be able to get rid of me that easily.”
              There is no more talking as our mouths meet again.  His lips are soft and warm against mine, and they move in perfect unison with my lips.  He rolls over onto his back and pulls me on top of him as his rough hands roam my body and make me shiver in anticipation.  My hands are gripping his biceps as they flex.  Warmth floods my body as I anxiously await his touch.   My body trembles as he grabs the edge of my shirt and pulls it over my hand.  He makes quick work of my bra as he flings it across the room. 
              “God, Kori.  I love you.”  He kisses me down my chest.  “So much.”  His mouth moves farther south as he releases the button on my jeans and tugs them and my panties down quickly.  “You’re so beautiful.  So perfect.  Flawless.” 
              My emotions overwhelm me as what I feel for this beautiful man rushes over me.  I love him. 
I love him.
  I never thought I would love anybody, and the fact that I fell in love with this perfect man, and he loves me back, is incomprehensible to me.
              “I love you, too,” I murmur as I yank his tshirt off his body.  I sit up, ignoring his protest, and tug his shorts and boxers off.  I fall back onto the bed, and he rolls me over so that his muscular body is pressed on top of me.
              His mouth makes its way back down my body again, worshipping and adoring.  My body jerks as his tongue strokes me and his fingers explore me.  His continuous adulation quickly has me thinking
stop
and
don’t you ever fucking stop
both at the same time.  Just when I’m wondering how much more pleasure I can possibly handle before I die, he slides inside of me.  If I thought that I was in heaven before, it does nothing to compare to how Tuck is making my body feel right at this moment.  He fills me completely and stretches me to the thin line of pleasure and pain.  He feels perfect.  All the times I’ve fucked meaningless guys in the past don’t come close to comparing to how I feel with him inside me.  I am momentarily distracted as I contemplate the difference.  Love.  I love Tuck now, so that’s what is making this so otherworldly spectacular.
              “Don’t stop, Tuck.  God, don’t stop.” 
              He moans his appreciation when my muscles clench around him as an orgasm racks through my body.  He continues to move inside me, and I’m wondering if I’m going to survive another orgasm as intense as the one he just delivered. 
              “Come, baby.  Come with me,” Tuck whispers in my ear as his tongue flicks my earlobe right before his teeth grasp it.  My body shudders and his jerks as he comes fiercely.  After a few moments, he stills on top of me and I’m aware of the sweat trickling down our bodies. 
              “I love you, Kori,” Tuck murmurs as he pulls me close to him.
              I’m too exhausted to utter a word as we both let sleep pull us under. All I can do is give a small, satisfied smile.