Swelter Read online

  “Oh shit. Fuck. Fuck. I'm sorry,” Bobby apologized, throwing his hands up, revealing his happiness down below. “Oh shit,” he cursed, covering himself with his shorts. “Lil—Fuck.”

  But this was it. This was the thing that stirred me. Like a revelation, I realized at that moment, that simple kiss felt like nothing I had ever felt with Rory. That kiss busted me wide open and the ache had found a way to escape and make room for a type of bliss I had never felt before. I wanted more of that feeling.

  “No,” I commanded in a hushed tone, stepping closer. “Don't stop,” I begged through a whisper.

  I watched his eyes wander my body in contemplation. My wet hair trailing down my shoulders and back, my nipples taut through the clingy transparent nightgown. We stood there wet and dripping, realizing we both had the same shameful secret.

  “I can't,” he muttered, his hooded eyes telling another truth. Bobby stepped in, scooping down for his lips to meet mine, and this was what was missing. It was like there was a universe I didn't know existed that just flung open its doors to me.

  My heart pounded with ecstatic energy as he dropped the shorts from his hands and wrapped his arms around me. His long naked body pressed against the airy moist cotton of my nightgown. I had always seen Bobby as a boy, until this moment, until I realized what was plainly in front of me all this time: That Bobby wasn't a boy anymore. And I wasn't a girl.

  This was why we had so much difficultly navigating our relationship in our newfound adulthood. Because the space between immature teasing and detached adult politeness was this unthinkable act, this forbidden desire.

  Bobby’s hand wandered up my waist and over my breast, shielded by the flimsy nightgown, as he cupped it softly in his hand, rubbing the firm nipple under him thumb. His lips swept down my neck and collarbone until he met his hand. Bobby looked up at me one last time, a chance for both of us to realize the mistake we were making, and I threaded my fingers through his hair, bidding him to continue.

  He yanked down the side of my nightgown, exposing my hardened nipple and rubbed his soft lips on its tip. I whimpered, titling my hips towards him, wanting my body to join his without question.

  I had always wondered how animals knew what to do without being told. Now I understood. When the body wanted it, it pleaded for it. Instinct. Bobby's lips exploring my damp skin felt as natural as the cool lake at night. Like the late breeze twisting under my nightgown. I didn't realize how forced everything was with Rory until Bobby clutched me in his arms. We joined like the ocean and the sun at the horizon. They met every evening, giving birth to the beauty of dusk, not because they were expected to, but because it was their destiny.

  I didn't think. I couldn't think. That's the only way I could give myself what I needed.

  “Lil . . .” Bobby breathed against my temple, unable to finish.

  I understood, so much was changing so quickly, and the emotions that coursed through us were so much more than could be quantified in simple phrases.

  Bobby slid his hands down to my behind as he lifted me onto a rickety table, seating me on it. Our mouths smashed together and I relished the taste of his lips, his tongue. As he leaned into me, Bobby's hardness pressed against me, threatening to change everything.

  I came up for air just for a second, just to look at Bobby through this new lens. Bobby was a beautiful boy, and it was beyond good looks. He radiated there in front of me. I pretended like I wasn't like everyone else who wanted to be close to Bobby. But I didn't just want to revel in that light. I wanted it inside of me so that I could shine back on him.

  I reached down and gripped Bobby's display of desire in my hands; his eyes rolled up as I massaged him.

  “I want you,” I murmured in his ear as I buried my face into the heat of his neck.

  “I've always wanted you,” Bobby murmured back, gripping my face in his hands, kissing me with such fierceness, I could hardly breathe. I knew what the ferocity of that kiss meant, and I felt it, too. And I was scared, but it only made it that much sweeter. To be scared. Alone. With him.

  He peeled down the rest of my nightgown, exposing my top half as I sat in front of him. I watched him take in the sight of me, like he had laid eyes on the most exquisite thing, like he couldn't believe this was real. Like a man who had spent his life looking for a treasure and finally had it in his clutches. I felt the same way looking at his naked body: shining, long, lean limbs with narrow muscles that ridged along his torso and arms.

  I wrapped my legs around Bobby as he suckled the swelling peaks of my breasts and nipped along my collarbone, forcing me to stifle moans into his thick, roguish hair.

  Bobby stood up and tried to look into my eyes. But our glares were too intense, those eyes that looked back had too much history; we couldn't hold the gaze for too long without shying away. He bit his lip as he studied his fingertips, trailing along my inner thighs, gently prying my legs open. He pushed the gown up, so that it had been reduced to merely a waistband. His fingers traveled up between my thighs, exploring the tender flesh. A breathy gasp escaped my lips as his simple touch robbed my lungs of air. I wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him closer, beckoning him to take his liberties.

  Bobby slid one finger in me, then two, as I mewed his name. So many times before I had called out his name, but never like this. This was a new language we had invented.

  I had longed so much for a touch I didn't even allow myself to covet. So strong was the urge that I felt myself shudder, an unfamiliar sensation taking over. I quivered tensely, like a guitar string being pulled taut. My breaths shortened as I let out a faint cry. But Bobby stopped as if he knew what was coming. The lingering tingles made me certain of the decision my body had already made. I wanted it all from Bobby. Every last drop.

  He pressed his nose against mine. The muscles underneath my grip were thick with tension. He was fighting. Fighting nature. Fighting inevitability. Fighting destiny. Those were battles no man could win.

  “I want to,” I pled. “I need to feel you inside of me.”

  Again, I wrapped my fingers around his girth, sliding its head against the slickness that had formed from his touch.

  “But, I've never done this,” I confessed.

  Rory and I had officially dated for a year. Before that we had been on and off. But all along, while we had done other things, I wanted to save my virtue. I thought it was for my wedding night, but I realized that was never the purpose.

  Doubt rushed into Bobby's eyes. “Lil, this is—”

  “I want it to be you,” I begged, looking into those languid eyes, the same color as the countless sunsets we had watched together on the lake “I need it to be you, Bobby.”

  “Lil...” His voice wavered through shaky breaths. “I need you to understand. This . . . that this . . .” He pressed his pillowy lips to mine and muttered, “I love you.” The words blew against my lips like the warm night breeze.

  “I love you,” I whispered back without hesitation.

  Bobby laid his forehead against mine. The quiet attic was filled with the rhythm of his heavy breaths. “Okay,” he gently nodded. “Okay.”

  Bobby pushed a few locks of damp hair out of my face. Then his hand slid down to mine, guiding me to the couch. My nightgown slipped to the floor as I stepped out of it and followed him. He paused to take one long look at my naked body, illuminated by the timid light of the single lamp in the room. There was no night sky to shield me this time. And his glare didn't stop at the curves and slopes of my tanned skin. He looked right inside of me.

  Bobby laid me down on the sofa and rested his body atop mine. There was a comfort in his weight against me, even in the stifling heat of this tiny attic. Our breaths syncopated against the creaking of the old furniture, creating a music of our own.

  We moved tentatively, heavy with the burden of the choice we made. Like we were dipped in warm golden honey, our bodies were heavy, slow, sweet.

  I began to tremble nervously and it embarrasse
d me. I had always been a little sharp with my attitude, a little braver than most girls. Especially with Bobby. But here, lying under him, my body shook against my will.

  Bobby didn't acknowledge it. He knew I never liked pointing out my weaknesses.

  “I'm going to get you ready,” he rasped reassuringly.

  His full lips made a path down my neck, to the shimmering valley of my chest. The concave slope of my stomach, glittering with tiny beads of sweat. The little bone on my hip. The delicate curve of my inner thigh. He opened my legs up and continued his voyage to the sensitive skin between my legs. Never rushing. Never pushing. He waited for the trembling to subside, caressing the forbidden fruit with his lips. His warm, patient breaths quelled the fear oscillating on my skin, and then his tongue slipped past the soft, wet flesh. Into me. I tugged on his sun-kissed brown locks, my legs wrapping around his shoulders.

  I had never felt this before. Rory had played with me down there, but this wasn't playing. This was mastery. This was craft.

  Bobby's warm mouth drank me up like wine as his hands gripped the suppleness of my thighs.

  I couldn't last long like this. Not with Bobby’s lips kissing the slick skin, not with his tongue mapping ecstasy. I pulled his hair as my entire body constricted and then shattered into millions of pieces. Bobby had the presence of mind to reach up and cover my mouth, but my cries of his name reached past his efforts. I quaked and quivered under a contrasting explosion of sensations. If they could all be seen, I would mimic a star ending its life. But instead, my eyes moistened from the flood escaping me. Each tear a tiny little fragment of stardust.

  I was broken, melted, reduced. And in that there was relief. I didn't have to be put together. Be the Lilly who loved the brother of the man she was about to marry. I was just scattered parts of myself.

  Bobby rose back on top of me while I was still trying to reassemble from the dismantling. Seeing him there, that face, so perfect that it had confused me for so many years, brought my focus back.

  I placed my hand on his cheek.

  “Now you,” I smiled.

  Bobby's length lingered over my belly as he kissed me again, sweetly, trying to slow down the moment for us. He burrowed his face into my neck as he pushed into me, patiently. It hurt, but the pain was always good with Bobby.

  I gasped, and whenever he stopped out of concern, I beckoned him to keep going, to fill me.

  “You're so tight Lil,” he groaned in my ear, before he was even all the way.

  I dug my fingers into his back as he pressed along, inch by inch, until he was all the way inside of me, taking deep breaths to cope with the tension of his circumference inside of me.

  Bobby pulled out slowly, then in, then out. Each thrust allowed my body to acquiesce to him.

  “Oh god,” Bobby moaned into my ear, from somewhere deep inside. “You're so wet. Oh god,” he pleaded. “Lil, I should stop. I should pull out.”

  I knew what he meant. He was close to the edge and he was inside of me, but I wanted him in me. This might be our only time and I wanted it to be complete.

  “No, Bobby. Don't stop,” I assured him. “It feels so good. Keep going.”

  “Lil.” His groan, deep and gravelly, tickled the curve of my ear. “Oh Lil, you feel so good . . . so fucking good.” I could feel a shift in his tone and the way his body tensed, just like I had when his mouth was on me, readying me for him.

  Bobby’s hips found a rhythm, like a turbulent wake on a placid lake. The husky moans escaping his throat grew hollow as he tightened further inside of me. His eyes rolled up and he clenched the sofa just above my head, reciting my name through gritted teeth, marking me, taking the gift I had saved for him all this time, before collapsing onto me.

  Summer 1957

  “What are we doing here?” I asked, still in a daze from my nap. It had to be at least two in the morning.

  “I thought we'd visit for old time’s sake. I haven't been here since . . .” he caught himself before making the mistake of mentioning the sin that had remained unspoken—the wedding.

  He didn't know I hadn't been back either.

  “Come on,” he said, making his way towards the main house. He pulled the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door, switching on the lights as he entered.

  “Jesus, it's like a crypt in here,” Bobby muttered. All the furniture was covered and dusty as if it had been frozen in time, because it had.

  “It is.”

  He yanked off a tarp from one of the sofas as cloud of dust puffed into the air. “You guys don't come here anymore?”

  “No,” I replied curtly. I wandered through the living room, feeling like a ghost haunting this once happy home. “I haven't since . . . the wedding. I kept making excuses. And then when your parents passed, I told Rory it hurt too much to come here. But that wasn't the real reason.” I picked up a dusty picture of my sister, the boys, and me waving from a pontoon boat with pure smiles on our faces. I tried to recall that feeling. “Rory kept making plans to fix things up, like it could make the past go away, but he hasn't. He's been busy with work.” I glanced over at a ladder and paint can, the only evidence of a future within these walls. “We took the clock though. More like your mother gave it to us a few weeks before the accident.”

  “Rory didn't mention anything.”

  “He wouldn't, Bobby. He wants to impress you. He wants everything to seem perfect. He doesn't want you to see what's become of us even though it's glaringly obvious.”

  I know Bobby thought coming back here might be a good thing. I once told him it was my favorite place on earth. But that was before it became the place that reminded me of the terrible decision I had made. Coming back here was like pulling out the stitches from a wound that never fully healed. Bobby coming back was enough to weaken the threads, and being here, I thought they might snap.

  I did what I always did when I couldn't sleep at night, when the heat indoors, even tempered by the coolness of the lake, was too much. As I stepped towards the porch, Bobby followed me outside.

  “Lil. I'm sorry. I thought—”

  “You thought what, Bobby?” I whipped around to face him. “You wanted to come here and remind me of what a great guy you are? How fun? How worldly? You want to teach me to laugh again?” I snapped. “Well you’re not such a great guy. Because you left me here. Stranded. Alone. Without you. You walked out with my heart and then you died. You died, Bobby. And now you’re here.”

  “You chose this life, Lilly! I didn’t leave you stranded. I left you, married to Rory. I left because I couldn’t even be happy for my own brother. I couldn’t look at him without jealousy. I couldn’t look at his wife without craving her. I didn’t want to become that person.”

  “And so you bring me here to do what? Because this place is just a reminder of everything I lost when I made that choice.” I crossed my arms and turned my chin up as if answers could be found above. A glory of brilliant stars flickered against the ebony sky. I had forgotten how much clearer things were out here. “What are you trying to accomplish?” I pleaded.

  “I'm just trying to make you happy again.”

  “Bobby, a happy Lilly is a Lilly who is with you!” I shouted. “All you're doing is reminding me you aren't Rory and that Rory can never be you.”

  Bobby took a step back, like my words had the power to physically move him. “I didn't mean to. I want what's best for you guys.”

  “There's no such thing. One of us will have to get hurt for that to happen, Bobby. We tried that before. To make Rory happy, and all it did was make both him and me miserable.”

  Bobby ran his fingers through his hair and clenched it at the roots. “Lilly, I am trying here. I am trying so hard to do the right thing. I've been selfish. I left. I did screw things up, and I'm just trying.”

  I snickered to myself. “He never had a chance. Rory never had a chance.” I shook my head in pity for the man I had grown to begrudge. “From the first day of our marriage, he couldn't win beca
use he wasn't you.” I spun around, looking to the black forest for a way out, an exit from my tragic dilemma. “I don't know how to fix this. He'll never be you. It's not his fault or our fault. It just is. And for years I resented him for that. I loved you. I loved hating you. I loved loving you. And when you left, I blamed him. It's not fair. None of it is fair. For him. For us.” My shouts vanished into the dark night. Just like all my efforts, they meant nothing. “We tried so hard to do the right thing. We sacrificed us for him. And I think it just made things worse. Look at him.”

  “Stop,” Bobby said firmly.

  “I was so cold to him. I pushed him away so much. I created that man you see today. Do you think that was the right thing?”

  “Stop,” Bobby repeated.

  My emotions erupted out of me, explosive from years of being crammed into a secret space. Years of secrets I couldn't tell. Of unrequited love. Of a life unfulfilled. Of dreams demolished. I pounded my fist to my chest. “It hurts. It physically hurts to see you every day. You are the first person I think about when I wake up. When I thought you died, I died. Rory was with a corpse.”

  Bobby stepped closer to me. “Stop it, Lil.”

  “And you keeping being you and I am trying so hard not to love you.” I didn't care anymore about pretending. The threads were ripped and I felt as raw as the festering wound I had dealt with for the past seven years.

  “And then you take me dancing and you tell me how you wrote me letters that you never sent and you bring me here. You make it impossible not to love you, dammit.” I thrust a finger in his direction and scowled. “And I hate you for that.”

  “God dammit,” Bobby said, charging at me and pulling me towards him. His lips collided against mine and there was no fight left in me to resist. Just like the night before the wedding. The magnetism between us was unrelenting, and as long as we were close, it was only a matter of time before we came crashing together.

  Seven years earlier

  We shut off the light in the boathouse attic so no one might find us as we lay naked, beside each other. We didn't say much for a while. I stared at the ceiling, trying to make sense of a future whose foundation had completely collapsed, as Bobby wrestled with the guilt of betraying his brother. I could see the pain in his eyes mixed with the exhilaration of having a taste of his own dream.