Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1056 Constant Craving

There was a knock. It was probably Colin, coming to check on me. "Come in."

No answer. I tried to sit up. Another knock. Now I realized it was coming from the window.

From the window...?

I slid it open and there was Ziggy. Or at least a strong hallucination, which said, "This new trellis is kind of flimsy so can I come in before I break my neck?"

I went into sudden panic mode and began trying to yank the screen free, until he got me to just raise it in its track (oh right, that's how these things work...) and then pull him across the sill. His pants got dirty with dead bugs and soot from the windowsill, but neither of us cared much about that.

He kissed me long and deep and he tasted so familiar my heart twisted suddenly. Like my body finally figured out he wasn't all in my head.

He flattened me back on the bed and I lay there looking at the very colorful ceiling while he went and shut the window and then turned my AC unit on. It was actually a white ceiling but the patterns in my eyes made it colorful in my ecstatic inebriated state. "You came," I exclaimed.

"Not yet," he murmured in my ear. My hands felt his hot skin. I'd missed the moment when he'd shed his shirt. "I plan to."

"Good." I tugged at my own shirt and with help he got me out of it.

I don't remember a lot of what happened, which is probably a shame because if the impression that remains is accurate at all, it was some of the best sex we've ever had.

I remember flashes of it. His teeth on my skin. The sound of his breath as he thrust. The familiar feeling that I wanted to ask a question but couldn't think of it.

I don't think I had an orgasm. I think I was too soused. But that was fine. That wasn't important. What was important is that he was there.

The question surfaced while we were snuggling together afterward, his body fitted against mine like two pieces of a tavern puzzle. I was probably sobering up some by then.

"What are you doing here?"

The dark chuckle. "That wasn't obvious?"

"Fucking me, yeah, but–"

"Surprising you, you mean?"

"Oh." I remembered the real thing that had been nagging me. The feeling that something was going on that he wasn't telling me. "You planned this. You told me you weren't sure if you were going to come, so you could do this."

"Mm-hmm." He licked sweat from behind my ear. "Was it okay?"

I let the question roll around in my head for a while, which meant letting him sweat the possibility I was going to say no, it wasn't.

But it was okay. He didn't know I had started to feel suspicious. There hadn't been much time for my suspicion to grow. "When did you get here and where are you staying?"

"Yesterday. And we still have some time on our sublet, you know."

I laughed. "Colin and I might have run into you by accident. What would you have done then?"

"I would have sprung the surprise on you a day early and we would have undoubtedly had a threesome with Colin," he said matter-of-factly. "But I'm glad it was just us this time."

We ducked into the shower together, then made an appearance at the party, just long enough to let a couple of Courtney's acquaintances be starstruck, and for me to have another beer or three, and then we went back upstairs and had another round of fairly epic reunion sex.

I woke up more hungover than I ever remember being. I was lying there, wrapped around Ziggy, and what woke me was the unmistakeable hiss of a piece of paper being slid under a door.

I extricated myself from my still-sleeping lover with an apologetic kiss and tiptoed over the the door to see if I had imagined the sound.

I hadn't. There was a piece of paper. It read:

TODAY IS MAY 19th!
YOU ARE IN:

BOSTON

Bus leaves for brunch at 1:00 SHARP!

Someone had slipped a joke daysheet under my door. It was a good joke, too, considering the state of debauchery we were in. But I couldn't help feeling a little twinge of longing, just sharp enough to make my eyes sting.