First Man (5 page)

I learned that Lily sighed when I kissed her neck, fumbling with her housekeys. Teasingly, she pushed me away from her but once the door was unlocked, she pulled me inside, slamming the door as an afterthought.

Southern gentility aside, Lily was far from shy. Once the world was locked outside, everything was forgotten but touch and lips and breath. I knew in the coming days, I’d examine her apartment, trying to sort out the whys and whats of her life from the objects she surrounded herself with, but right now the décor was nothing but a blur of color in my peripheral vision as I slid the strap of her dress down her shoulder, kissing the bare skin that it revealed.

“Adam,” she breathed, her voice sounding like a prayer.

And, suddenly, I wasn’t the one doing the seducing.

My shirt went first, her delicate fingers making quick work of the buttons on the soft grey linen before letting it fall, unnoticed to the floor. Her hands traced the contours of my muscles. A small smiled crossed her lips.

“Not what you were expecting?”

Her fingers skated over my ribs, and I tensed as she hit a ticklish spot. “Nerds are generally a bit less cut than this.”

I threw my head back and laughed, the sound loud in the silent room. “I’m a nerd then?”

Lily nodded solemnly. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Adam, but you are very much a nerd.”

“I think I can live with that.” Her hands found my belt, and I knew that I could live with anything as long as she didn’t send me away.

With agonizing slowness, she unbuckled my belt, keeping her grey eyes focused on my own and leaving no doubt to her intent.

Snapping myself out of the trance she had pulled me into, my hands got busy. I fumbled at the zipper of her dress like a clumsy teenager. When I finally had it open, she took a step back and pushed the dress down, leaving a swirl of blue fabric on the floor at her feet.

I surged forward, picking her up and carrying her into the bedroom like a Hollywood cliché. Maybe clichés weren’t so bad after all.

Her bedroom was the same riot of color as the rest of the house, but my tunnel vision had narrowed down to the bed. A fluffy white comforter covered the king sized bed, the absence of color making it almost glow in the dim room.

The last few articles of clothing we were both wearing were left like a breadcrumb trail in the last few steps to the bed. Her boldness continued to surprise me. Her hands and lips were everywhere, and, though this was far from being new, she left me breathless.

I was not a man inclined to lay back and let someone else have all the fun though. In one quick motion, I pinned Lily beneath me, reversing our positions. “Not fair,” she purred.

“I don’t expect you’ll be complaining much soon.” My words came out as a barely audible murmur against her neck as I kissed my way down her body. I paused at her breasts, lavishing those creamy globes with lips and tongue until her nipples stood up in hard peaks.

Lily moaned, and I wanted to hear her make that sound again and again. I wanted to reduce her to a shaking, sighing creature who knew no other sensation but pleasure. I wanted her to come undone and lose herself the way I had lost myself in her.

I moved lower, to the apex of her parted thighs. My tongue had barely touched her aching flesh when her hips arched up off the bed. Her fingers tangled in my dark hair, yanking on the strands in a way that would have been painful in any other instance. In that moment though, it just made me want her more.

Lily gasped as I delved deeper, tasting her essence as it poured over my tongue and revealing in the litany of pleasure-fueled noises that I doubted she realized she was making.

I could have stayed there forever, drawing her closer and closer to her peak, but backing off, learning the topography of her body like an ancient mapmaker. Lily was definitely right in her assessment of me. I was, without a doubt, a nerd.

Lily’s grip on my hair tightened, and the pitch of her voice grew higher, a keen of pleasure that rose and rose until snapping with a cry of “Adam!” as her release rolled over her.

I kissed my way back up her body, prepared to claim her as I’d wanted to since that first afternoon in Park Hall. Lily had other ideas. With a satisfied smile still painted across her face, she pushed me onto my back and settled above me.

“You’re used to being the one in control, aren’t you Adam?” she asked. Desperately aroused and wanting nothing more that to bury myself in her heat and never leave, I would have agreed to anything, but her words gave me pause. Behind the teasing words was a woman calling me out.

As she hovered above me, I knew that the world-weary traveller act wasn’t going to hold out under her scrutiny. She expected me to be a person and not just a collection of cynical one-liners.

I didn’t know how to answer the question in her eyes. I’d been alone inside myself for so long, I didn’t even know how to unlock that door. Instead, I closed my eyes and pulled her into a deep kiss that broke off with a gasp as I breached the wet inferno of her core.

Her eyes met mine, and I felt exposed and naked in a way that had nothing to do with nudity. She rocked on top of me, taking me into her body with a rhythm as old as humanity.

“Adam,” she moaned, and I stared at her face with those unguarded grey eyes, her cheeks flushed from exertion. Her hair was a tangled halo of golden blonde that tickled my face when I pulled her closer. Her lips traveled across the curve of my jaw, and I felt the warm, wet pressure of her tongue against my pulse. “Adam,” she whispered again. I felt her lips take the shape of my name against my throat.

Her breathing grew ragged, and I could feel her tighten around me. “Lily,” I gasped, breaking the silence for the first time. I had a thousand words I wanted to say, but they caught in my throat. The only word that could escape was her name, “Lily Lily Lily” whispered like a mantra. My words cut off into a choked cry as we both found our peaks.

I’d like to say that rush of words flowed out of me, but I’d be lying. I’d like to say that I told her I was falling in love with her. I didn’t. I tugged her down against me and buried my face in her hair as the last throes of passion were wrung out of both of us.

I woke to bright sunlight peeking through the horizontal slashes of her blinds. A painting of a tiger lily hung on the wall opposite the bed. The artist had used a metallic paint that sparkled in the morning light. Tangled in soft white sheets with Lily pressed against my back, I had stared at the sun creeping across the painting. I hadn’t even noticed it the night before.

In those quiet, early morning hours, I felt the first tendrils of roots.

LOST

“A
dam, tell me about Paris.”

Sprawled across my lap was Lily, looking at me like I held the secrets to the stars. We’d been entangled in each other for close to three months, and she had already become my longest relationship to date. I had neglected to share that fact with her, somehow knowing that fact would just make her sad for my lonely, barren past.

Her words, not mine.

Sometimes I forgot how close we really were in age. I was five months shy of twenty-eight and beginning to feel it. Some days, the six year gap between the two of us seemed more like a chasm.

The wide world was far from perfect. I’d seen enough of it to embitter myself, and I was starting to fear that I was poisoning her. Lily called my accent “nondescript British nomad,” but whatever the accent, I had perfected cynicism to a fine art.

“Paris is too much of a tourist trap. Even the French hate Paris.”

Some of the spark drained out of her grey eyes, but she refused to be daunted. “London?”

“Terrible weather and too much traffic.”

“Tokyo?”

“New York with shitty hotels.”

Lily crawled out of my bed, suddenly very concerned with finding where she had abandoned her clothes last night. I watched appreciatively as she leaned over to retrieve her blue lace bra that had somehow ended up on my desk looking ridiculously out of place amid the photocopies of parchments and piles of notes.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She ignored me as she slithered into the tight jeans I had peeled off her slender hips only a few hours ago. She had given up looking for her shirt, counting it as lost within the Bermuda Triangle of dusty books that covered every flat surface and had instead grabbed mine from the floor. Her fingers were steady as she fastened the buttons.

“Lily-”

“Why do you have to be like this, Adam?” Her voice was quiet but I heard the resolution in it. “Why do you have to be so cynical all the time? You’ve been everywhere, you’ve seen everything. I get it. I
haven’t
. I don’t want to know that Venice smells like a sewer or that London has too much traffic!” I closed the distance between us and tucked a strand of her pale hair behind her ear, ignoring the tangles and the smeared mascara and seeing the unvoiced question in her eyes and choosing to ignore it.

“I liked Egypt,” I whispered after the door shut behind her.

Taped to the door of Apartment 309 was an envelope made of thick, off-white paper.

Lily,

I care a great deal about you, but I can’t be who you want me to be. You knew what I was when you met me, and I’ve tried to never lie to you. You knew this would happen one day. It was time to move on.

Adam

Written below the scrawled signature and smudged into near illegibility were the words
I’m sorry.