Together Apart: Change is Never Easy Read online

  Gestures aside, Zach had picked up that rose because they were going to have sex for the first time once finished with the county fair, and giving roses was what you were supposed to do when you wanted to get laid.

  “Well,” she said, “then you can gesture me all you want later tonight.”

  “I like doing that, too.”

  “You don’t know if you like it. You haven’t had it yet.”

  She held him close, pressed together below the waist. Sam could feel a stiffening in his pants, matching the moistening she felt in her own. She wasn’t normally a public-display-of-affection sort of girl, but standing in the middle of the crowd, a rather innocent kiss still on her lips and with Zach’s bulge pressing against her, she found herself wanting to do something uncharacteristic like grind against it, maybe push him against a wall and hump on him for a while.

  “I know I’ll like it,” he said. “I’m psychic.”

  “I think it’s sweet that you got me a rose.” Sam softened her eyes, entering his world. Zach was an artist’s artist — the kind of man who believed passion should trump practicality. “Really.”

  “You think it’s corny.”

  “It is corny,” she said. “But I’m allowed to like it, too.” She felt the rose’s stem, found the thorns stripped, and dropped it down her shirt. The rose’s red top poked up from between her cleavage.

  Zach watched, taking a long moment to gaze at her B-cups. He’d handled them plenty so far and was obsessed with them. Her light-brown hair with its loose, billowy curls spilled around the rose, framing it.

  “That’s shockingly hot.”

  Sam cocked her head with a laugh, then took Zach’s hand in hers and slipped into the moving crowd. The fair was a great place to people watch, and now that Zach had gotten her thinking (and gotten a few things revving below), she let herself slip into his headspace, where clouds could be puffy, white cotton filled with fairies or angry thunderclouds … just so long as they were noticed. She looked at the people walking by, then at Zach, and realized how lucky she was to have found him. He was a dreamer and a brooder to counterpoint her stable nature, sure … but she liked what he stirred inside her. It was as corny as the rose between her boobs, but she really had started noticing birds singing since they’d been spending so much time together. This was mainly because Zach always pointed them out. She rolled her eyes and acted above it all, then listened as if for the first time.

  She gripped his hand tighter.

  “What?”

  “I was thinking of how you make me notice birds singing.”

  Zach looked at her seriously. She looked back. They shared a moment, her bright-blue eyes meeting his brown ones.

  “Oh, fuck you,” he said.

  The laugh she’d been holding spat between her lips with a noise like a raspberry. He laughed, too, his own falling out the same way.

  “You’re an artist, too, you know,” he said. “You should be glad I’m bringing some romance into this relationship.”

  “You got me this rose because you know I’m going to take my pants off for you later,” she said. Sam had said it off-handedly, but it still sent a spark up her middle. She’d pictured her pants off, with him in front of her, his missing, too. Part of her imagined how those two pantsless people would fit together in a way that was so analytical and dispassionate, yet also sizzling hot. “I’ll bet you’ve called ahead to the hotel and asked for a portable stereo playing Michael Bolton.”

  He made a face. “I never have sex to Michael Bolton.” Another look crossed his features. It looked to Sam as if he was wondering whether he should have said it in that way, implying that he had an individual routine for each girl he slept with. But to worry was absurd. They were both 19. They’d each had a few before, nothing serious or particularly special.

  “Okay, I’ll bet you’re going to carry me across the threshold and lay me on a bed covered with rose petals.”

  “Well, not now, I’m not.”

  They walked a bit further, past a row of carnival game booths. A barker asked Zach if he’d like to win his lady a giant teddy bear. Sam tugged him forward, not allowing him to look. Zach would probably see that as a supreme act of romance: an act of Americana nostalgia so perfect it could be immortalized in a Hummel figurine. But if she could barely find a place for his rose, what the hell would she do with a bear?

  “I’m serious, though,” he said when the booths were behind them. “I didn’t mean ‘romance’ like … well … like roses and stuff. There’s that, and I like the idea of doing something stupidly corny like that just because I can, but I really mean ‘romance’ in a more general sense. Like how people ‘romanticize’ the past. That usually means whitewashing, but I’m just saying … like … appreciating the wonder of every moment.”

  Sam looked over at him and smiled a mischievous smile. “Are you trying to tell me you’re dying?”

  “Oh, never mind.”

  “No, I get it. Really. But I’m not like you in that way. I can appreciate it, but life is life.”

  “But that’s what I keep trying to tell you, Sam. You’re an artist. You can’t think that way if you want to make art.”

  She laughed, pulling him toward a giant pirate ship ride that was clearly unsafe. “I don’t make art. I ride carnival rides operated by men with six teeth.”

  Zach looked like he wanted to push, but let it go and allowed her to pull him. She could write. Writing didn’t pay the bills, so she was working toward her journalism degree. Art made practical; ‘nuff said; what more could a girl ask for? He could try and make it as a starving artist, but she wasn’t going to. They were new to each other. He admired her creative work, she admired his stunningly emotional art. Sam thought that maybe one day, Zach was the kind of guy who could make pure art work as a career, but right now they were two kids, and earning potential didn’t matter. Sam wanted to score high marks in her classes and have fun with her boyfriend. The time for art and talk of the future was later.

  “I don’t trust that guy,” said Zach, looking toward the carnie operating the pirate ship.

  “The fun of fair rides isn’t the rides themselves,” said Sam. “It’s the thrill you get from cheating death. Are you really wussing out?”

  Zach vehemently shook his head, bouncing his unkempt mop as he broke into one of his disarming, cheek-to-cheek smiles.

  “Oh, of course not,” he said. “I love fair rides.”

  The ride ended, the riders disembarked, and the carnie pulled back the rope to let new riders on. A group of kids ran to the ship’s ends, where you got the best action from the ride’s rocking. Zach tried to shove in with them, but Sam, still clenching his hand, pulled him forward and into the middle.

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “The middle?”

  “I’m scared,” she said, tipping her head down. Sam had a way of smiling she knew Zach found unbearably cute, looking at him from rolled-up eyes, with her lower lip tugged in a light bite between her teeth. She did it now, and he rolled his head back, defeated.

  “Fine.”

  They slid into the bench. The carnie checked the safety bar. After he’d gone by, Zach checked it, too, found it loose, and made it safe. Then, alone in the ship’s stupid middle, Sam and Zach began to sway and move, thrown back and forth into the bar as kids screamed behind them.

  Sam crawled her hand onto Zach’s lap, then cupped his bulge and lightly rubbed it.

  Zach looked over, side to side, then up and down. With one hand, Sam unzipped his fly. His pants were loose. It was easy to get her fingers inside, to find the fly in his boxers, and to wrap her fingers around his warm flesh.

  The ride plummeted, taking Sam by surprise. She gave a delighted, chirping yell, her hand full of Zach and stroking. He seemed caught somewhere between ecstatic and shocked, definitely not in the pirate ride’s full spirit.

  “What are you doing?” he hissed.

  “I’m appreciating the wonder of this moment.”

  “There
are kids here!”

  Sam looked side to side, rubbed harder, and said, “I don’t see any kids here.”

  “Behind us!”

  “Well, then I sure hope they don’t move the safety bar and climb down here while the ride is moving, to see what we’re doing!”

  Sam took long, quick strokes with her hand, feeling Zach’s girth radiate heat in her grip. This wasn’t like her at all. Sam was passionate but by the book, handies on rides wasn’t her usual scene. Truth was, even Zach’s dorky rose gesture had her excited, this was her way of telling him that she had enjoyed it. Women could be complicated; men had to do different things to please each one. But men were easy. All roads led to dick, and all meaningful things could be conveyed with the right rhythm and tempo. Besides, the taboo was getting her wetter. With her boyfriend’s cock in her hand and the prospect of their first night together right around the bend, Sam felt like she could get off on the ride’s vibration alone.

  “Sam, seriously.”

  “Oh, seriously?” She stroked faster.

  “I mean … wow … but on the ride … it’s … ”

  “You’re an artist,” she said, smiling her devilish smile. “I’d think you of all people would appreciate this.”

  “You’ve gotta stop,” he said. It was perhaps the most reluctant thing she’d ever heard him say. He sounded like a man choosing to die for his country, because it was the right thing to do.

  “I’ll make you a deal, Picasso,” she said, now gripping him under the head, feeling it pulse above her fist, “you want me to stop, go limp.”

  “Well, I can’t exactly … ”

  “Then there’s only one other way.”

  Sam had studied the ride on their approach. The carnie operating the pirate ship let the ride go on forever. Based on their earlier third-base activities, Sam knew Zach wasn’t exactly a one-pump-chump but was still betting his chances of popping his top in the duration of a single ride was at least 50-50. Based on how incredibly hard he felt in her grip, the scenario itself was more of a turn-on than her handjobs in his room, with the TV on and James and Brian playing that Magic card game in the other room. His shaft was already twitching under her hand, his physiology saying things his best intentions seemed at war with.

  “Jesus, Sam.” His breath was picking up. She watched him, feeling herself begin to slide atop her panties on the ride’s seat. She wanted him to get off. Not for him, but for her. She could imagine the thing in her hand, entering her, parting her lips, exploding inside of …

  Zach leaned his head back, eyes closing, sensations of the thrill ride and her pumping hand blending. His balls tightened; his cock throbbed harder. She stroked faster, the ride now slowing, and ship’s arcs smaller. Above and below them, riders screamed.

  She leaned toward him, put her lips to his ear, and went for broke. You only lived once.

  “I can’t wait to have you inside me,” she whispered.

  It was enough. As the ride slowed further, hot liquid covered her knuckles as Zach grunted and leaned into her, body convulsing. The other riders were in their own aftershocks, having gone from screaming to chatter, to recollections of wasn’t-that-awesome. Still Sam felt pulses coming from Zach’s cock, running down her skin as she stayed with him through his descent.

  The ride stopped, and the carnie stood. Sam jerked her hand from Zach’s fly, leaving it open. She had pulled a line of spunk out with her emerging hand. It lay across Zach’s leg, white against the dark fabric.

  Sam’s lips puffed laughter, the back of her hand covered. Zach looked satisfied, then mortified.

  Sam turned her head, saw the carnie looking at them.

  “Oh, go on, get out of here,” he said, nodding at Sam’s white-covered hand. “Just don’t get any on my seats.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Six Years Ago

  “I can’t believe you made me cum in my pants at the fair.”

  “I didn’t make you.”

  “The bathroom stalls didn’t lock. Some fat guy came in while I had my pants down, a giant pool of jizz in those stiff, brown paper towels after having wiped it out, and the guy just looks at me frowning, like he disapproves of a decent guy getting cum out of his pants when some broad makes him lose his shit.”

  “What an asshole.”

  “Come over here. Come over here and let me take that off of you.”

  “No way. Your pants are all sticky, as if you came in them at the fair.”

  Zach reached out, took Sam by the waist, and pulled her into his stiff-fronted pants. The walk to the bathrooms was disgusting (he’d wished he was a briefs guy; cum kept plopping down his leg as he walked like Andy Dufresne taking his wall debris out to the yard in The Shawshank Redemption), the walk to the car nasty and stiff, and the car ride to the hotel unbearable because by then Zach’s hard-on was back, and Sam had started being even less Sam-like, unzipping the top of her jeans to flash her panties and unbuttoning her shirt to “adjust” her bra. Now he was rock-hard again and wanted nothing more than to get between the legs of this little minx who had somehow replaced his Samantha.

  “Gross,” she said, looking down and making a face.

  “Let me put this gross thing in you. I want to put it in you.”

  “Where’s my Michael Bolton? My rose petals?”

  “You keep teasing me like this, we’ll only need rolls of paper towels. To clean you up afterward.”

  “Hot.”

  Zach shut her up by finding her lips, mashing them together, then reaching out and pawing her tits. They were perfect little gravity-defying beauties above a stomach that was so flat it was damn near concave. She put her hand on his bare chest, pushing him back.

  “What?”

  “Too fast,” she said.

  “Too fast? From the girl who jerked me off on the pirate ride?”

  “I want it softer. I want a memory.”

  “Oh,” he whispered, realizing that was something he should have said. Or at least thought.

  “You can rail me harder in the morning,” she said.

  “Oh.” Fuck. Now that she’d said that, it was even harder to slow down.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she said.

  He was already stripped to his boxers and socks, and she’d already mocked him for leaving the socks on. His boxers, right now, looked like they were showing everyone where the far wall was, their front so stiff it looked like a dipped ice cream cone.

  “I’m not getting you wrong.”

  “I want it. I want to f … ”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “ … freshen up first,” Sam finished. She looked back at him. “What did you think I was going to say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You thought I was going to say I wanted to fuck you, didn’t you?”

  “For the love of God, Sam, if you want me to slow down, you’re going to have to stop saying things like … ”

  “What kind of a girl do you think I am? Oh, and I’m not so sure I got all the cum off of my hand from when I gave you that handjob earlier.” She licked her fingers, one at a time.

  “Should I get the rose petals, or just bend you over the sink and make it so you can’t walk for a week?”

  “That totally makes my vagina wet.” Sam was standing in front of him in only her panties. They were soiled like his boxers. Together they looked like an advertisement for adult diapers. For very horny adults unable to control their fluids.

  “Pussy.”

  “You’re the pussy,” she said.

  “I meant … oh, hell.” His waist rod nodded, as if in agreement.

  “Go wash your dick off,” Sam suggested.

  Zach plodded toward the bathroom. Good idea. Cold water, and all of that. He seriously wondered if he should close the door and rub one out, just to make it easier to slow things down. Now she wanted to be romantic. Now that she’d gotten him all hot and bothered. Zach could cum a hole in a wall right now. Sam might actually be in danger.

  �
��Good idea,” he said, turning.

  “Because dried cum is gross. I’m not putting that thing in my mouth until you get it clean.”

  “Sam, fuck!”

  “Okay, fine, in a minute.” She put her tongue in her cheek, held her fist beside her mouth, and made a blowjob gesture. “I’ll be over there on the bed, with my panties off.”

  He walked into the white, deceptively sterile-looking tiled space. He pulled off his boxers and threw them into the trash. The place where his boner had been stayed upright, like a dirty washcloth hung on an upright peg to dry. He looked at the sink, then at the door.

  “No beating off in there!” Sam called out. “Save that dick to put in me!”

  Zach didn’t reply, now hobbling toward the sink with what felt like two grenades between his legs. Sam tinkled girlish laughter from the front room.

  He turned the faucet all the way toward cold, winced, and leaned forward with his balls on the counter, dick pointing toward the faucet. He wet a washcloth, soaked it, and stuffed it onto his boner. It was cold but tolerable, so he did it again, this time cupping the shaft. He lathered up, aware how this would make a wonderful pornographic America’s Funniest Home Videos, and worked soap all over. Then, going up on his tiptoes, he put his head against the mirror and used his hands to splash water directly from the faucet all over his crotch. It was very cold. He started to shrivel immediately, like the wicked witch of the West. He finished the job with the washcloth, then shrugged and threw it away. They might charge him a few bucks when they found one missing, but leaving it in circulation was cruel.

  He toweled off, pulled off the socks he still hadn’t thought to remove, and left the bathroom, naked.

  Blessedly, Sam seemed to have tired of teasing him. She was in bed, sheets and downy comforter pulled high, curled toward Zach, lying on her side. Her panties puddled the floor by her nightstand.