My Skylar (19 page)

“Maybe if Rob leaves, I can find a way to remind you whom I belong to.”

Rob never left and neither did my paranoia.

***

and we sat in the Public Garden. It felt great when it was just the two of us, but once the trolley let us off in front of the dormitory that evening, my discomfort returned.

I hadn’t even been able to enjoy the time spent with him because of my preoccupation with

examining every last detail of every girl who walked by the open door of his room. This level of

jealousy was something I had never experienced and made me feel like I was losing my mind.

We were getting ready to head over to Nina and Jake’s for dinner. They lived only a couple of

miles from the university, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see my best friend while I was here.

When Mitch had gone to shower, I looked around at the Spartan gray walls and calculated that

he would spend approximately 800 nights here. Then, I thought about how easy it always was to

get him sexually aroused. How could he resist if he was horny or drunk and some hot girl was

begging him to take it? There were 800 opportunities for that to happen. I knew he wouldn’t hurt

me intentionally, but he was human, and now I saw with my own eyes what I was up against.

When he returned from the bathroom, he was shirtless and wiping his wet hair down with a

towel. The fact that he had been walking down the hall looking so sexy irked me.

As I watched him get dressed, I couldn’t help but ask, “Do you always walk around half-

naked?”

“Not always.” He winked. “Sometimes, I go full frontal.” He examined my timorous expression

and was no longer laughing. “That was a joke.” He threw the towel on the chair angrily. “Alright.

You need to talk to me. Right now.”

I looked down at the ground disappointed in myself. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into

me.”

“Do you have any idea how excited I’ve been all week about you visiting? I thought you were

gonna have a great time, and I’m fucking pissed that being here has made you nothing but

miserable, and now, you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“It’s my own fault. It’s just weird seeing this other life you have now. I’m used to having you all to myself.”

“You
do
have me. You’ve been so busy looking for reasons to worry, that you’ve missed that.

Yes…there are a lot of girls who live here. But I don’t want a single one of them. I want my

girlfriend. I’ve fantasized about our time in Lake George every single night.” He caressed my

cheek. “This isn’t easy for me, either. All I want to do is make love to you. I’m counting the days til Christmas so that we can go away and be alone.”

“Me, too.”

“You need to trust me, okay?”

He cradled me in his arms as water dripped down from his hair onto mine. His heart was

beating rapidly, and I regretted having upset him. I loved him so much, and suddenly felt like I

needed to show him.

I walked over to the door and locked it. “Is your roommate gone for a while?”

“I never know with him,” he said, still looking upset by my earlier behavior.

I got down on my knees and began to unzip his jeans.

He gripped my wrist to stop me. “Whoa. What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to.”

“You’re doing this because you’re feeling insecure. I’m not letting you.”

“I promise. It’s not because of that. Let me do it.”

Despite his insistence that I stop, his rapidly growing erection indicated otherwise.

“Skylar…”

“I just want to taste you. Honest. I’ve wanted to do this for a while.”

His trepidation succumbed to the desire reflected in his darkening eyes that told me he wanted

it badly. He didn’t say another word as I pulled his sweatpants down. He was fully hard when I

wrapped my hand around his thick shaft. His breath hitched as I slowly licked in circles around

the wet crown.

“Fuck. That feels so good,” he said under his breath while his hands massaged my hair.

I moved my mouth up and down slowly, developing a rhythm as I took him deeply from root to

tip. I was surprised how turned on I was, my underwear wetter with each movement. His palms

were plastered against the door for balance, and his eyes rolled back. I took him harder, wanting

desperately to own him more with each thrust of my tongue.

He moaned from deep in his throat. “In…credible.”

His cock was hot and slick in my hand as I pumped it into my mouth. His stomach contracted

with each heavy breath, and his eyes were closed. I loved having this total control over him.

After a couple of minutes, his trembling hands gripped the back of my head. “I can’t. I…I’m

gonna come.”

I took him even deeper.

“Shit. Skylar, you need to get off me.”

I ignored him, jerking him harder and swallowing every drop of the hot, salty cum that spurted

out in a seemingly endless flow.

He panted, still leaning his back against the door. Looking frazzled, he said, “Wow. I think I

need another shower. That was…I can’t believe you did that.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner.”

***

After he buzzed us in, Jake came to the door and immediately started ducking and blocking his

face. This was his way of busting my balls over a time back in New York when I showed up at his

apartment and decked him with my giant bag as soon as he opened the door. At the time, Nina

mistakenly thought he had cheated on her, and I left my father’s house at the height of my

sickness in a rage with the intent to beat his ass. It was the most impulsive thing I’d ever done,

although it ended up being a huge misunderstanding. Still, he never lets me live it down.

“I see you’ve downsized your purse. I should be good,” Jake said as he wrapped his tattooed

arms around me. His cologne was intoxicating and as always, touching him gave me the cheapest

of thrills. “How’s my Skylar?” He slapped hands with Mitch. “Sup, Bitch?” He always called Mitch,

Bitch
. “You takin’ care of my girl?”

“Of course, man.”

Nina yelled from the kitchen. “Hey, Sissy!” That was our nickname for each other, short for

sister since neither of us had one.

The house smelled like Indian spices. Nina must have been practicing some recipe from that

international cooking class she told me about.

Their condo was really cozy, decorated in lots of black and red with dark wood furniture.

Ornate drawings that Jake created using kohl pencil were framed as artwork on the walls. One of

them was a sketch of a pregnant Nina, looking up at the moon. Her hands were covering her

breasts.

Jake sipped a beer and joined Mitch on the velvet sofa.

Their two-year-old son A.J. came running into the room. I ran to him and lifted him up. “Look

at you!”

His hair was almost black like Jake’s and gelled into a Mohawk. I tickled him. “You look just

like your Daddy.”

“Daddy is bananas,” he said in the cutest little voice.

“Nina taught him that. Just for that, I’m gonna try and impregnate her tonight,” Jake said.

I laughed. “How’s that coming along, by the way?” Nina had told me Jake really wanted

another kid, but she wanted to wait.

His lip ring clanked against the beer bottle as he took a sip. “Haven’t slipped one past the

goalie yet.”

Nina overheard and came out from the kitchen wiping her hands on an apron. Her dirty

blonde hair was longer than the last time I had seen her. “You’ll never believe what he did to me

the other day. I opened my birth control pill container, and the pills were missing. Instead, there were a bunch of candies in there with a note that said,
‘Even trade: SweeTarts for lady parts.’”

A giggling A.J. jumped on Mitch’s lap, took off his Yankees cap and put it on his own head.

Mitch started to tickle him, and A.J. was laughing so hard he got the hiccups.

“You’re good with him,” Nina said. “Don’t be surprised if I call you to babysit.”

“I’d do it. Seriously. We’d have fun, right A.J.?” Mitch turned to me and winked. “I wouldn’t

mind one of these someday.”

While I couldn’t imagine having a baby anytime soon, the thought of a little blue-eyed Mitch

running around made my heart smile.

As if he’d just read my mind, my heart fluttered when he whispered in my ear, “She’d have to

have your eyes, though.”

Jake turned to Mitch who was now bouncing A.J. on his leg. “So, Bitch, how are you liking

BU?”

“It’s okay. Statistics is killing me, though.”

“Come on. Statistics is easy as balls. Let me know if you need any help.”

Nina sat on Jake’s lap and wrapped her arm around him. “That’s how I got into trouble in the

first place, letting this guy tutor me in math.”

Jake stuck his tongue out at her, and I could see his tongue ring. “Subtract her clothes, divide

her legs and multiply, baby,” he joked.

She kissed him. “You’re sick.”

“You know you love it.”

I could have sworn I felt the temperature rise in the room from the explosive chemistry those

two had. I envied them because they were at a point in their lives where they could just enjoy each other. I wished that Mitch and I were able to fast forward past the next four years.

Nina hopped off Jake’s lap. “Sis, you wanna help me finish up dinner?”

“Sure.”

Their kitchen was small but modern. Stainless steel pots and pans hung from above a small

island. The cabinets were dark cherry wood with black granite counter tops, and there were at

least 20 bananas sitting in a fruit hammock.

I laughed. “Bananas anyone?”

“Jake’s like a monkey. He eats them by the bushel.” She cleared her throat. “Mitch is really

looking hot these days, huh?”

“Why do you say that?” I snapped.

“It was just an observation. You tell me all the time how hot you think Jake is. I’m just saying

Mitch has really grown into a man from the last time I saw him.”

“Sorry. I’m just—”

“Something is bothering you. Talk to me.”

I looked down at the terracotta tile floor. “It’s been a bad couple of days. His being here in

Boston is tougher than I imagined it would be.”

“What about it in particular?”

“He’s living with a bunch of girls. It’s like a brothel. I’m losing my mind over it.”

“So…”

“What do you mean, ‘so'?"

Nina poured some orange-looking curry sauce over plates of basmati rice. “He loves you.”

“I know, but four years is a long time. So much could go wrong.”

“Do you know how many women hit on Jake everywhere we go? If I worried about that crap, it

would make me nuts, too. You saw what happened when I jumped to conclusions in the past and

stopped trusting him. I was wrong. At the end of the day, trust is all you have.”

“I don’t think I could handle it if he ever cheated on me. I’ve always been such a strong person,

but when it comes to him, I’m so weak, and I hate it.”

“Love makes us crazy. Take one day at a time, Sissy. You’ve been through a lot the past couple

of years, more than most have in a lifetime. Maybe the stress is just catching up with you now.”

“Maybe.”

Jake walked into the kitchen carrying A.J. “Everything okay in here?” He kissed Nina’s neck.

“You know they say curry boosts the male sex drive.”

“In that case, plain rice for you.”

“Nooo, baby. Load me up on the Tikka Masala.”

***

Mitch remained. There was no doubt that I loved him, and he gave me no reason not to trust him.

Yet, with him gone, I had too much time to think.

My grades were plummeting, and I started seeing a therapist who reaffirmed Nina’s theory

that my overreacting to everything was some sort of delayed response to the stress of the cancer

ordeal.

Things were just starting to get a little better when a routine visit to my gynecologist sent my

life into a tailspin.

My periods had been irregular, and while I remembered discussions with my doctors prior to

the cancer treatments about the risks of infertility, I hadn’t paid too much attention, mainly

because the priority was getting rid of the Lymphoma fast before it spread.

“Skylar?”

A nurse led me into a small room where she took my blood pressure. This was a follow-up

appointment, and I was supposed to be getting the results of a blood test I had taken days earlier.

I focused on the butterflies on her scrubs and the pumping sound of the blood pressure

monitor.

“The doctor will be right in.”

I looked through a pregnancy magazine while I waited, listening to a low instrumental version

of a Whitney Houston song coming from a speaker overhead.

Dr. Ottone had a troubling expression on her face as she entered the room and cut right to the

chase.

“So, Skylar, I wanted to talk to you about the results of your blood test.”

“Okay…”

“It seems that you have poor ovarian reserve.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, everyone is born with a limited number of eggs. Over time, under normal circumstances,

they diminish. However, when a woman receives high doses of chemotherapy…that can destroy

your eggs. It seems you have a very limited number remaining. It’s also possible that they may be

of poor quality due to the treatments you received. While we can’t be absolutely certain, you’ll