30 Love, page 4
I don’t know if she likes it rough, light, romantic, nasty, or just straight-up gangsta, and I’m afraid to ask, so I just lean in and start kissing her again, slowly moving my kisses to her neck. Her moan is encouraging, so I push on.
“If there’s something that you’d like me to do in particular, feel free to let me know,” I say.
“Same with you. And if there’s something I’m not doing right, don’t be afraid to say something.”
I reach for her breast, and squeeze it softly through the fabrics of her shirt and bra. Part of me starts dancing on the inside. I have never touched her like this, and just the thought of being here with her like this is starting to give me a full-blown light saber. She clumsily tosses her hand onto my crotch, but she does it so hard that it’s like she’s smacking my shit with her hand. I wince, but try to play it off. As she starts to stroke me through my jeans, the pain begins to subside.
“That feels nice,” I offer, encouraging her.
She kisses my ear lobes, and her warm breath tickles me. I pull away for a second, shrugging my shoulder to my ear. “That tickles.”
“You’re too cute,” she responds playfully. “Where can I kiss you where it won’t tickle you then?” Her voice is coy, and for a moment I’m tempted to give her a bullshit answer, but then I remember what she said earlier.
“Are you sure you want me to tell you?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“Well, I don’t think that kissing my balls would tickle.”
“Kissing your balls?” she says, looking at me as if my balls were some exotic delicacy from Fear Factor.
“I’m sorry. I know that probably came out wrong.”
“No, I think you said exactly what you meant. We’re in the moment, and you basically tell me you want me to lick your balls.”
“Well, you don’t have to necessarily lick them. Shit, I didn’t mean it like that. I was just trying honesty on for size. My bad.”
She takes her hand off of me and sits up straight for a moment. “This is so…awkward. Doing it like this. I feel like I’m auditioning for the job of your wife, and that’s not the way I want to feel when we make love for the first time.”
“I understand. You wouldn’t believe how focused I am right now on trying not to mess this up.”
For a few minutes we sit side by side not speaking. I begin to wonder if we might be making a mistake by rushing into sex.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I venture.
“I was just thinking that we have everything to lose if this doesn’t work.”
“You can’t think negative.”
“It’s not me thinking negative. It’s me being realistic. What if we’re not sexually compatible?”
I take a deep breath before responding, “I tell you what. Why don’t we just talk for a while? We’ve had conversations about sex for most of our lives, yet here we are acting all brand new. We’re the ones who’re putting all of this unnecessary pressure on ourselves. Let’s just talk.”
“Okay. I have a question then. What’s your favorite position?”
“I don’t really have a favorite position. It all depends on the woman, I guess.”
“Fair enough.”
“What about you?”
“I like to ride, but I don’t mind getting it from the back. It depends on how big a guy is. How big are you?”
I could easily just pull down my pants, but I feel put on the spot. “Probably not as big as I was a few seconds ago,” I chuckle nervously.
She laughs, and I laugh along with her, trying to relax my nerves.
“I have an idea,” I say. “You have a moon window in your bathroom, right?”
“Yeah. What are you thinking?”
“Why don’t we just light a few candles, put on some soft music, and take a nice hot bubble bath? We don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want. I can rub your back and bathe you.”
She thinks about this for a moment before rising from the couch. She walks over to her kitchen counter and picks up her iPhone. “Do you still like listening to Me’Shell Ndegeocello?”
“You have some Me’Shell on there? For real? You’re truly a woman after my own heart. Please tell me that you have ‘Soul Searching’ on there.”
“Of course. I know how much you love her.”
I smile. “Well, I’ll go ahead and start the bath then. You get the candles.”
Lailah’s tub is large, oval, and deep enough for two people to move around comfortably. Bubbles float above the surface of the water like billowy clouds. She has placed small candles in various corners of the room, and the scent of wild raspberry from both the candles and the bubbles is intoxicating. Just as I remove my shirt, she walks in with her speaker system and places her phone onto the cradle, turning on the music.
I continue to undress, as Lailah fiddles with the volume. I step into the hot water and have to stand still for a moment as my skin adjusts to the temperature.
“Damn, this shit is hot.”
“Well, you’re the one who ran it, so you can’t blame me,” she says.
She is now looking at me standing with one foot in the tub, one foot still on the bath rug. I must look like a guy who just got caught breaking into the bathroom, because my body is positioned so awkwardly. I want to smack my head when I realize that this is the first time she’s seen me naked, and I have the dumb luck of looking so fucking vulnerable. To add insult to injury, she takes a seat on the lid of the toilet, crosses her legs, and watches me.
“This is fucked up,” I say, barely able to budge an inch.
She laughs.
“Aren’t you gonna join me?” I ask.
“In a minute,” she says. “Right now I just want to look at you.”
Once I’m finally able to get both feet into the tub, I begin the slow and arduous process of sitting down into the water. For a fleeting moment, I think of Bugs Bunny sitting down in that big kettle of soon-to-be soup. “Rabbit stew,” I mutter.
Lailah bursts out laughing, immediately picking up on my reference. “Why don’t you just run some cold water in there to balance it out?”
“That’ll end up making some parts of the water too cool,” I say, although in reality I’m giving her suggestion some serious thought. Standing there, like my feet are encased in cement, I turn on the cold water. It takes me a minute before I can move my foot and stir it around. I then lower myself into the water and smile. “Yeah, that’s perfect.”
In my haste to adjust the temperature of the bath, I’m just now noticing Me’Shell singing softly in the background, her heavy voice moving seductively over a syncopated bass and keyboard exchange.
“Join me,” I offer.
Lailah continues to look at me without moving. “I just want to look at you for now.”
“You already said that.”
“I know—but it’s true.”
“Okay. Don’t let the water get cold though. It’s perfect right now.”
As I sit in the bath, by myself, we talk, reminiscing on what it was like growing up in a place as small as Daily, Mississippi, a place with a population of 15,000, including cats and dogs. We laugh replaying anecdotes of the various things we lived through, but then I remember prom.
“Why didn’t we go to prom together?” I ask.
“We really should have gone,” she responds. “Teddy Blake was definitely not the move. You know that boy used the whole bottle of Cool Water.”
“I could see if he was your boyfriend, but you had to go and pick that bozo out of the blue.”
“Well, why didn’t you ask me to go then, since you were so concerned about who I went with?”
“After you kicked me to the curb during junior year, I didn’t want to run the risk of having you not want me around. I would’ve asked you if I knew you’d say yes.”
She laughs, as she removes her shirt casually. She’s not wearing a bra, and even in this dim light, I can tell how amazing she looks. It’s been ten years since I saw her like this, and it may as well have been yesterday, because it’s like I’m seeing her beauty for the first time.
“Well, that was then. If we could go back in time and you asked, I’d say yes.”
She continues undressing and approaches the tub, extending a toned leg into the water. There’s a huge part of me that’s rejoicing right now, unable to completely process the notion that this woman will soon be my wife. She eases down into the tub, sitting in front of me, her back nestled warmly against my chest. My arms immediately pull her into an embrace, as she lays her head back against my shoulder, her curly hair tickling the side of my face.
“I can’t believe that we’re finally together,” I whisper softly.
She moans, placing her hand on my knee. “It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”
As we lie here, I rub her shoulders and occasionally drip hot water from my fingertips onto her chest. Up until recently, I wasn’t even convinced that Lailah had feelings for me that went beyond us being friends. It feels as if she must have been considering this for some time, though, and the only thing that was keeping us from being together was this arbitrary line she had drawn. If it were otherwise, she wouldn’t be seated in front of me right now. Just being friends who made a deal wouldn’t have us taking a bath together—especially with the sexy music of Me’Shell Ndegeocello playing softly in the background.
No. This must be the real thing.
I pull her closer and kiss her neck, my hand working its way toward her inner thigh. She wiggles in such a way that my fingers slide easily inside of her. Her right hand eases around the back of my head and rubs my hair teasingly as she rocks back and forth against my hand.
“I want to look at you,” I say.
Lailah leans forward, gripping the tub, and rises, her beautiful figure glistening in the ripple of the candlelight. She slowly turns around, as I scoot forward. Placing her feet on either side of my waist, she begins to lower herself so that she is seated directly in front of me. We begin to kiss as I pull her closer, our moans intermingling with the music as I enter her.
Up until now, I never knew my body could feel this way, and the fact that it’s Lailah making it feel this way is all the better.
5
Growing up, I was always afraid of Lailah’s father. At six feet four inches, he is a human mountain. Even now, he towers over my five foot ten inch frame. He’s the kind of guy who projects a very stern demeanor to everyone around him, but if you get him to laugh, his entire face will light up like a winning slot machine. My father is the quintessential joke teller, so that probably explains why they get along so well. The only reason I know that Mr. Landfair can look stern is because I have seen him when my parents weren’t around, and he looks as if he could chew through steel. While it’s our plan to go to her parents’ house first, I begin to caution the wisdom of asking this man for his daughter’s hand in marriage while my parents are not there for backup.
“My father likes you,” Lailah says, when I mention all of this to her. We’re passing through Tuscaloosa and getting onto Highway 82 West, headed toward Daily.
“How can you be so sure?”
“If he hated you, then you’d know. Trust me.”
Her words don’t make me feel any better. In fact, it reinforces the idea that her father can be a pretty scary guy.
For a while we drive, just listening to one of the CDs my cousin sent me from his store in New York. I glance over at Lailah as she sings along with a song I’ve never heard before, but am quickly growing to like. She is beautiful, and the sun coming through the window glows against her skin. I place my hand on her thigh, remembering the feeling of being inside of her.
“I love you,” I say.
Her lips peel back, revealing her dimples. “I love you, too.”
The feeling of actually telling her that I love her in the romantic sense is still new. But what’s even more exciting is hearing her say the words back to me without wondering if she’s just being platonic.
I glance at her left hand and realize she’s wearing the costume ring I gave her.
“I’ve gotta get you a better ring. That one was supposed to be a placeholder. I can’t have you wearing that around your parents. No telling what they’d think of me for giving you that.”
She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter to me. I know how expensive rings can be. I just figured you’d give me another ring before the wedding.”
That’s another thing. In addition to my failing to buy her a real ring, I’ve been so caught up in the magic of it all (and I’m guessing she has too) that we haven’t even set a date. That’s one of the things I’m secretly hoping we’ll be able to take care of this weekend. But first the ring.
“I think we should pick up a ring before we go to your parent’s house,” I say, before I realize how crude my words must sound.
“Dizzy, it’s not even that serious.”
“Your father will hate me, I’m telling you.”
“No he won’t. And, seriously, if you’re going to get me a ring, you should put some thought into what you would like for me to wear for the rest of my life, not just what’s available at the mall.”
She definitely has a point. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I just don’t want to give the wrong impression to your folks.”
“You’re acting like you’ve never met them before,” Lailah says.
“I’m just nervous. That’s all.”
“If it makes you feel better, I can just not wear the ring at all.”
As I see her sliding the ring down her slender finger, I stop her. I remember her hand, years ago, wearing a very similar ring, and it reminds me of just how long I’ve wanted to be with her. It’s as if we’ve been practicing for this moment ever since we were kids.
“Keep the ring on. If your parents ask, we’ll just tell them what I told you when I gave it to you. And I promise what I ultimately get you will make it well worth the wait.”
She leans over, kissing my neck. I feel her tongue skating softly along the nape, and I get harder than carbonite Han Solo from The Empire Strikes Back.
“La, don’t make me pull this car over. You know there are a lot of dirt roads off in here, if you’re feeling freaky.”
“You’re the one who’s a freak, Mr. Lick My Balls,” she says.
We laugh, as she takes my hand and we ride the remaining distance, mellow in our thoughts, just like the grooves coming through the speakers of my Jeep.
As soon as we pull into the Landfairs’ driveway, Lailah’s mother comes to the front door of their quaint two level country brick house. The house actually seems just as large as it did when we were younger. I remember thinking how much bigger Lailah’s house looked than my own, mainly because my house was a one-level wooden house built on an elevated platform (which made it fun to run and jump off of the porch onto the grass below). Even the house Lailah is renting now is vastly larger than my apartment. My guess is that we’ll either use her current digs or look for something comparable to start our lives together. I imagine that we’ll have that discussion soon enough. The main thing right now is to get her parents’ blessing on what we’re doing.
“Mom!” Lailah yells, jumping out of the car. Her mother embraces her and rocks her back and forth.
“Come here, Dizzy!” Mrs. Landfair calls out to me, as I walk over and hug her petite, but curvaceous, frame. If daughters are supposed to take after their mothers with age, then I have absolutely nothing to worry about.
“How are you, Mrs. Landfair?”
She whispers in my ear. “You can just call me Mom.”
I look at Lailah, and she shrugs at me guiltily. My body immediately tenses.
Still holding me, Mrs. Landfair adds, “I didn’t tell Robert. But I’m sure he will be just as excited as I am.”
I nod, my smile weakly clinging to my lips. During the entire five hour drive down here, Lailah never thought to mention that she had already told her mother about our engagement, especially after we agreed that we would wait and do that together. Now I feel even more pressure to get this thing right, because now I have two people who will be anxiously watching my performance.
When we walk into house, Mr. Landfair is coming in through the back door wearing a grilling apron that reads “Don’t Mess With My Grill.”
“Baby girl,” he says, scooping Lailah up in his arms and swinging her around like a little girl. Lailah squeezes him tightly, smiling.
“You’re grilling? I am so in heaven right now,” she says.
“Well, your mother said you and Dizzy were coming today, and I thought it would be good to break out the grill and fire up some chicken and steaks.”
Mr. Landfair’s grilling is legendary, and I immediately wonder if it was Mrs. Landfair who might have recommended that he grill something, since we were coming to bring some rather gigantic news to the family.
“Dizzy!” Mr. Landfair says, grabbing my hand and pulling me into a massive bear hug. He is so freaking strong that when he grabs me, two drops of bitch come out of me. I’m overwhelmed by his grip, and I feel locked in his smoky smell. The only thing I can think is that this man could crush me in an instant if I ever broke his daughter’s heart.
“It’s good to see you, Mr. Landfair,” I offer, as soon as I am able to refill my lungs with air.
“You guys have a good drive? Didn’t pick up any paper from the highway patrol along the way, did you?” he asks, addressing both of us.
“No, Daddy,” Lailah says, laughing.
