You want to know the truth? It was easy.
It was easy, because the bar was closing down and we were both going home alone, if we weren't going home together. It was easy because she was beautiful; beautiful enough that the men who had courage enough to approach her were too drunk to be of any use, and the ones who were sober enough didn't have the courage. It was easy because I was somewhat handsome and somewhat articulate and had been drinking water between already watered-down IPAs. It was easy because we both knew what we wanted, and neither of us seemed particular about the way that we got there. We just needed somebody else. It was easy—because she wasn't you.
By the time we reached my third-story apartment, our mouths had come together for a second time. I ran my hands up the sides of her body, feeling the softness of her stomach and the hardness of her ribs beneath a bodysuit. The kind that dancers' wore. Maybe she was a dancer. I don't know. There hadn't been any dancing at the bar. There hadn't even been a place to dance, had we wanted to. But neither of us wanted to. The door of my apartment hung open, and I pressed her back against the wooden doorframe while she worked her tongue feverishly against mine.
She smelled faintly of cloves, a scent which became almost heady as her hair fell in front of her face while we kissed. I raised a hand, brushing the lingering strands back without taking my mouth from hers. Her mouth tasted like hour-old beer and cinnamon. Not real cinnamon, but the spicy kind—the kind that only came from liquor or chewing-gum or those little red hearts that appeared only at Valentines' day and disappeared for the rest of the year.
I didn't care, one way or the other. She didn't smell like vanilla shampoo, or coconut body-cream. Her mouth didn't taste like the cheap Two Oceans pinot grigio that you used to drink. She didn't break our kiss to murmur against my ear. When my hands went into her hair, it was smooth, without a single kink or curl. My fingers don't ache, touching it. They don't want to curl, or grab it by the roots to find her neck.
As we stumble inside my apartment and kick the door closed, I can feel her fingers fumbling with my belt buckle. The metallic clink of it opening. The tightening and then sudden looseness as her fingers manage to open the button of my jeans and work beneath them. She doesn't manage to get below my underwear, the first time; the hand draws upward slightly, and she gets it on the second attempt.
I'm almost surprised, when my cock stiffens at the touch of her fingers. At the hardness which rises between her palm and the front of my jeans. It's been fourteen months, since I last slept with somebody. Since anybody touched me like this. My hands slide the cardigan off her shoulders. Lower shoulders than I'm used to. The straps of her bodysuit follow. Then my arm is around her waist, and she's bending backward over it so that my mouth can make the same motion it was doing against her mouth over a now-exposed nipple.
I don't know why it was the colour that hurt me—soft pink against the beige of her skin. Pointed. Pert and young-looking. Not round. Not dark. A hand clenched around my heart, and I focusing on not closing my teeth against it; at least, not too hard. She gasped at the first touch of them. Her hand was stroking my cock as much as it could, inside the confines of my jeans. It pulled out as I pressed her hips forward against my body, using the forearm held against the small of her back. When my other hand curved over the cheek of her bum, she recognized the action. A pair of legs wrapped around my waist as I lifted her.
I hate how easy this is. I hate how my body remembers what to do, because with every motion, every moment, I feel like it shouldn't. That this should be more difficult. That it should feel wrong. When I throw her down into the sheets of my bed, I wait to hear the sound of your voice in her soft exhale. I want to hate you, but I don't. I don't want to hate myself, but I do. There's nothing wrong with this—and that's the problem. That's what's wrong with it.
When I bend down over the bed to bring our bodies back together, I don't grab her. I grab the sheets, pulling them close around us. The smell of you disappeared months ago; the smell of your conditioner long ago having been overtaken in the pillow cases by laundry detergent. The smell of your moisturizer having faded from the sheets. But some nights, when I wake up and forget for a single moment where I am, who I am, who you were; I can smell it. I'm erasing the smell of a memory. As I use my body to move her up the bed, I know I'm using her body like a pomace-stone.
It doesn't matter—not to her. We both know what this is. I know it, as I get my fingers inside the button of her jean shorts and slide them down her legs. As the sky blue of her lace-fronted thong follows them. As my lips kiss up the inside of her bare thighs and my tongue parts the already-wet crease of her labia. I can feel the slight weight of her thighs, against either shoulder; the balls of her feet against my back, to either side of my slightly curved spine, just above my hips. They press against me, rolling slightly, urging me onward. So is her voice, from beneath the pillow that she's pulled over top of her face. I can hear her sighing, through the fabric. Each sound raising her stomach, each release of breath drawing it down once more. Not flat—she's too thin for that. Making a small valley of her body; the bottom of her ribcage and the raised bumps of her hipbones rising like beige hills.
"Fuck me," she breathes, pulling the pillow back from her face so that it's resting only against her forehead. I can't tell whether it's a request or an exclamation; breathlessness makes it hard to tell. "Fuck me," she repeats—this time, there's no mistaking the tone of a request.
"Is this not—"
"I need... penetration..." the words come from open lips. One of her arms comes up, disappearing under the pillow; fingers dragging backward through her hair, "to cum."
