Snack (16 page)

I don’t know either.

I wake in the exact position I fell asleep in, tucked up against Snack. I look at him with only my eyes so I don’t disturb him. He’s beautiful. He always has been. Even when I was colossally pissed off with him or disappointed in him, that one thing remained. To me he was always the most magnificent thing I’d laid eyes on. I’ve struggled to push that reality out of my consciousness, but now that we’ve been together,
really
together, there’s no denying it any longer. I am forever in love with Marcus Christopher Snackenberg. I peel my eyes from his pouty lips to take in his jawline and then drop my eyes to his firm chest. I can stare at him all day.

It was still dark with a bit of moonlight and streetlight mix coming in through the large window in the dining room and spilling onto the floor in front of the bed. It is just enough light to see the whole loft in a fuzzy filter. I wonder why I was awake and soon realize my mouth is dry. I lick my lips a few times, but the dryness doesn’t improve. I need a drink of water.

I push away from Snack as delicately as I can, feeling less warm being away from the heat of his body. Even though I’m completely naked, I don’t bother to put on a T-shirt and I can’t steal the sheet, since it’s tangled around Snack’s legs. I can just grab some water and slip right back into bed next to my… What is he to me now?

I pad into the kitchen and open the refrigerator door as quietly as I can. When I turn back and step out from behind the island, I see Snack is awake. He’s propped up in the bed and watching me. And biting his lip.

Standing buck naked in the middle of an open space sends a flourish of insecurity over me. I hold up the water bottle I got from the fridge. “Do you want some water?”

“No.” Snack’s voice is husky from sleep and what I hope is want. “I want to look at you. Don’t move.”

I stand. Snack’s eyes on me cause my skin to instantly flush. I turn my head, as if the action of me not looking at him will make the energy buzzing between us lessen. It doesn’t. My nipples harden and I swear I feel flames burning from my inner thighs up to my core.

“Do you have any idea how amazing you look right now?” Snack growls.

I continue to look to the side. I’ve been naked with men before, but it’s never been in conjunction with the emotions I’m struggling to control right now. I can only shake my head because the lump in my throat won’t allow me to vocalize.

“I’ve been imagining what just happened for almost twenty years.”

I laugh and ask before I can stop myself, “Really, you were thinking about
that
as a twelve-year-old?” What am I thinking? Every twelve-year-old boy thinks about sex.

Snack the mind reader answers before I ask, “I don’t mean just sex, I mean I imagined it specifically with you. More like when I was thirteen years old, certainly after I first kissed you. And then all summer at Lake Geneva.” Still propped up in bed, Snack reaches out to me, his palm up. “Minnie, I want you to come back to my bed.”

I walk slowly back to him and take his hand. My mouth drier than before, but I don’t think water is what I want anymore. There’s something different I have in mind to slake my current thirst.

Snack pulls me down to him but at the last minute pulls himself up and meets me halfway. His hands are in my hair, his lips are on my eyelids, my temples, my cheeks, and finally my mouth. He kisses me with long, slow strokes of his tongue that take my breath away. When we come up for air, he slides his hands from my hair to cup my jaw, thumbs on my chin. “So, I need to know… While we’ve been… together. Were you, maybe, thinking… about someone else?”

“What?” I squeak. “No!”

Snack gives me a lopsided smirk. “A tall dark stranger maybe? Huh? Let me give you a hint.” One of Snack’s hands goes to my back as he slides his other one from my jaw to my chest and splays his fingers wide above my breasts. My body completely sandwiched between his hands and under his control. He leans me back on the bed and begins humming “Darth Vader’s Theme.”

I lift my head and giggle. “Oh my God, you know? When did you know?”

“Oh, course, I knew. I knew right after I handed you that toothbrush. I could hear it buzzing and John Williams playing on the regular in your bedroom after that day.”

“You didn’t?”

“I did. It was hot.”

I cock my head and smile right back at him, even though I’m sure I’m blushing furiously. “Thank you.”

“Enough. Be quiet. Relax. Let me show you how much better I am than a vibrating toothbrush.”

Snack pushes me back more firmly. My head hangs off the bed and I can see the reflection of us together in the mirror across the room. Snack leaves a trail of slow deep kisses from my collarbone and down between my breasts. He kneads both of them and then pinches my already sensitive nipples.

His mouth consumes my body, tasting and sucking my skin until he reaches the apex of my thighs, throbbing with need. Snack’s beard tickles and scrapes against my inner thighs and along my mound until he dips his head further and licks my clit before sucking powerfully and starting into the lingual alphabet. I squeeze my eyes shut to manage the overwhelming clenching at my core. I arch to take it all in. Snack physically restrains me, grasping my hips to stop my wiggling. Oh! He. Does. Not. Stop. Humming. Not until I come violently and thrust my hands into his hair to keep him close.

When I allow him to leave, he looks up at me. His hair and beard look like an Ewok awakened from a deep sleep.

I shake my head. “Wow, that was… better than a toothbrush.”

“You better believe it, young Padawan.”

I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my face. “And you’ve been brushing up on your Star Wars lingo. Very Sexy.”

“I’ve made a point over the past few years to watch all the movies.”

“Why?”

“I knew how important it was to you. Watching them made me feel close to you even when we weren’t.”

Snack crawls up my body and, in a lightning quick move, sits me up over his legs, straddling him. We both turn our heads to the right and stare back at each other from our reflections in the mirror.

“See how well we fit together.” Snack comments.

I hum. “Uh-huh.” I lower my head to the crook of his neck to inhale his deliciousness. There’s a spiciness about him not unlike the cinnamon smell of the cafe.

Rocking my already soaked core against his persistent hardness is not enough. I want him. Now.

“God, Min.” Snack growls into my hair, his hands flat on my back, pressing us together. His mouth is everywhere it seems. “I think I may always need a mirror when I make love to you. I swear I’m getting off just watching you move against me!”

“I bet it would be even better if you were in me.”

That mere invitation sets off a firestorm. Snack’s powerful arm wraps around my waist and lifts me quickly, and then just as swiftly he’s in me. I cry out at the sudden fullness, but continue to tilt and release my pelvis, trying my best to take in as much of his ample cock as I can.

“Minnie, put your hands on your head.”

Snack’s command is so direct, I respond without delay. He then lays back, but continues to run his hand over my body from my breasts, over my stomach, and then down to where we’re joined. There he stops and with both thumbs he runs slow circles over my clit, one thumb following the next in a never-ending swirl. My core clenches his hardness and then convulses, which triggers Snack to thrust up and in with even more passion. Hitting my peak, Snack is right behind me. I throw my head back and scream his name as he takes an even firmer purchase on my hipbones and powers his release deep into me.

Panting, he tells me, “I’ve never fit with anyone more perfectly. And I’m pretty sure you haven’t either.”

“You’re right. I haven’t.”

Snack pulls out of me by lifting me off and then sits up. We’re in the middle of the bed, me straddling him. Face-to-face. Completely naked and open.

“Minnie, can I tell you something?”

I laugh. We just made spectacular love and he’s asking if he can tell me something? “Of course! You can tell me anything.”

Snack appears pensive. “I have been so connected to you for twenty-six years. I know I actively pushed you away when you left for college and even after that, but I could never let go.”

My mouth falls open. “What do you mean ‘pushed me away?’ You said you missed Charlotte. You said…”

Snack drops his head so his forehead is on my shoulder, his lips brushing my collarbone. “I lied,” Snack confesses. “You know why we never made love in high school? You know why I picked a fight with you right before you left for Middlebury?”

Confusion is the only word for this moment. Snack just told me he said he missed Charlotte to push me away. He said he picked that fight with me on purpose. I shake my head. “No, I don’t know why. No, I can’t believe that’s what kept us apart.”

“At first, it was Clip. All the stuff he said to me before we started dating. All his warnings lingered with me, but really it was just… straight up fear. Fear of losing you.

In the end, my fear of
really
losing you had you lost to me the minute you got accepted into college.”

“Oh my God.” I bring both hands to my head and shake it back and forth. What am I hearing? “I think I’m beginning to see. To you, if we never broke up, then you could never lose me. If you never made a commitment to me or even risked failing to keep the commitment, you couldn’t lose me.”

“Exactly.”

It was twisted, illogical thinking, but it was all too human. I suppose I did the same thing, in a way. I’d never committed to anyone, or anything for very long. All that wasted time away from each other, but then again, Snack still cares about me. He never stopped caring about me. Just like I could never shake him. I’m not confused about how I feel anymore. I straighten up and poke my finger at his glorious chest. “First of all: Never listen to my stupid brother again.”

Snack nods and puts his hand up like he’s taking an oath of office. “I won’t.”

“And second: I think I understand. I was afraid of losing you, too. I had already lost you to Charlotte once. And then got you back. But when we broke up—”

“We
never
broke up. I never said those words. Why do you think I wrote NBU on every single Christmas card I sent you?”

I always wondered what that was. Why there were the letters NBU on every Christmas card, on anything, I ever received from him. NBU meant Never. Broken. Up.

“Like I was saying…
when
we broke up… I was heartbroken because I lost my boyfriend and my best friend. But I survived. Really, what was I expecting? That we’d get married at eighteen? That we wait for each other for four years during college? That we’d both give up our dream educations just to go to the same school to be together? No, my rational side understood. I survived losing my boyfriend, even though I frequently longed for you. That dream really fell apart when I thought I had another chance, but instead I wound up watching you marry Megan.”

“You were there? At the wedding?”

I nod.

“I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

I change the subject. Delving into the emotions I felt during his wedding to Megan is not a place I want to revisit right now. “I’ve missed you, Snack. I’ve missed my best friend.”

Snack thrusts his hands into my hair and puts his forehead on mine. His eyes close as if he’s praying. “He’s right here. Your best friend. Your boyfriend. Whatever you want to call me, Minnie. I’ll be whatever you want.”

“I just want you to be with me,” I say before claiming him once again with my lips, my arms, my body.

Snack called me the day after the reunion. Milliseconds from pressing the talk button, I let it go to voice mail. I’m very glad I did because his message crushed me. I was saved from him hearing the anguish that surely would’ve been in my voice had I spoken to him

“Megan and I are back together. She, um… There’s no other way to say this, Minnie. Megan is pregnant. I didn’t know when we broke up. She came and found me last night because she was afraid she was losing the baby…” I erased it without listening to the rest of the message.

Snack and Megan’s wedding was a month after our class reunion. To say it was a rushed affair was an understatement. Many of the older invitees were probably blissfully unaware of the reason for the hurried nuptials. Megan was nine weeks pregnant.

I received my invitation and, after fighting my initial response to tear it up or burn it unopened, stuck it up on the fridge in the tiny studio apartment on Belmont I lived in at time. I looked at it every day. Snack was completely lost to me. All hope lost forever. I had to decide if I wanted to witness it or go to one or two of my favorite North Halsted dive bars to daydrink instead of hauling my miserable ass to Bolingbrook for the “blessed event.”

I never RSVP.

At the last minute I decide to go. The irony isn’t lost on me that the wedding is being held at St. Benedict’s, because I feel like a complete traitor to my heart.

I wait across the street, watch the last of the guests file in, and sneak in through a door on the side of the church. I can hear the organ music playing as I wind my way through a few empty Sunday school classes and up the stairs that lead to the back of the church.

Fortunately, there are side aisle doors in the back of the church for me to sneak in. All eyes are on the bride as she makes her way down the center aisle. Nobody notices the chick dressed all in black at the back of the church hiding behind a pillar. Nobody except Adam Peterson. My ill-fated homecoming date.

“Hey, Cooper,” Adam whispers as he approaches. “Black to a wedding, huh? Classy.”

“Yeah, I really should stop taking my fashion inspiration from Darth Vader.”

“I think you look great.”

I shush him and then tilt my head quickly toward the front of the church to indicate for him to shut up and listen. I don’t want to hear whatever else he had to say.

From my hiding place I can make out the back of my dad’s head and Colette’s. Sid’s red mop of hair was a flaming beacon. And then there was my far-too-good-looking-for-his-own-good big brother, Clip. Standing up next to Snack. The best man. I snicker silently as I think to myself, “The best man to nail every bridesmaid in sight, is more like it.”