Mr.Sandman

(9) I’m not a Rover

You know that burning sensation you get when your nostrils redden after sneezing into rough paper towels all day?
My heart felt like that, and with each pump, I felt the scrapes swell and almost blister. His tears had stopped but mine had just begun.
While his cheeks were marred with drying vein like rivers, my tears seemed to float, rolling too quickly and heavily to leave a trace behind them.
My fingers were going numb with the pressure I gave to gnarl them in their clawed position.
He kept murmuring something, more to himself, I supposed, than for me, slurring while lifting his face and buss anew.
I understood what they meant, though.
They were words of disbelief and gratitude in his own and personal language.
I’m not foolish enough to believe he belonged to me, but I was fully aware, how meaningless everyone else was compared to his feelings.
I had wondered, when waiting for Raine to appear at the theater with Natalie, if Raine, had actually ignored my pleas and had squared off my struggles, would he have managed to get me against the McDonalds dumpster.
Would I have been offended?
Would I leave him when only finding him moments ago?
Would I cry and dread the dreams of him at night?
Aside the fact that my pondering was a well of distraction, I was sorely curious.
Would I have enjoyed it either way?
What would my reaction be at the end?
I recalled the tightness of his jaw, his collar bone pronounced with stiffness.
What would I hold against him?
The location in which we did something I was willing to do?
It wasn’t that simple, but it was easier to summarize the situation if it caused too much pain.
Where would we go from here? I thought to myself.
What if he no longer felt the same after a few weeks?
Months?
Years?
The uncertainty of the future was like a knife twisted into my triceps, taking away the ability to reach for what I longed.
A compromise that seemed impossible, but then so was our encounter with each other.
Impossible to have met in sixty something days and nights worth of dreaming.
Impossible to have fallen in love.
Impossible to have actually found each other in real life.
Impossible to have him in my arms.
His lips did their usually distracting searing down the base of my throat and the sun dimmed through the grimy window of his room.
I had lost track of what my arms were doing, feeling detached from everything else but the feelings he caused.
And of one thing I was sure, enough to bet my life on.
I would never leave him.
Like a shock of electricity, time slowed but Raine hastened his pace, pushing me unto the floor in frenzy and covering me with every inch of his body, his wrists matching mine and the length of his legs giving room to curl mine under him like a cocoon.
Our faces were like a single mold, inseparable and one.
Our chests infusing to share heart beats.
I took such delectation in the heaviness of his weight over me; I may have threatened him if he so much as thought to move.
His heaviness was proof of his existence in me. Of the importance he held in my heart, in my dreams and in my life.
“Tracy,” he murmured in his throaty seductive tone and the hairs on my body stood, writhed and collapsed.
I made a sound that he must have understood. I on the other hand, was to busy to.
“My luv, your friend is outside waiting for you.”
I nodded, not really listening until he moved his face away from mine, waiting for my second reaction as his little huffs of breath fell on my cheek bone.
“I won’t leave you.” I purred.
“Tracy, you can’t just leave her outside.” The beat of his intakes picking up.
My eyes fluttered open then, riled for more affection and so quickly thrown off.
“What are you saying?”
His features had taken to that hazy definition movies in the 1950’s had when focusing on an actress/actor’s smiling face. I let my eyes widen as he smiled angelically, his dimples caressing my soul and his eyes a distant cousin of the color of copper.
“Tell her you are going to be here longer than you expected.”
I comprehended his meaning, but couldn’t fathom why he had stopped kissing me in order to tell me this.
When he began to lift off me, I gave a shrill cry and clung to him with both my legs and arms.
I ignored his chuckle while burying my face between his shoulder and neck.
His arms enveloped me to keep me steady and before I knew it, he was standing while I clung to him like a scolded child. His hold on my back and bottom were sure to keep me from falling if my grip slipped and his steps were in shorter strides but with a casual balance.
He opened the door and walked out to the hallway.
I heard the TV and the blender running.
“What did you do to her?” I heard Natalie roar and Albert whine, “Dude!”
I could hear the smile, the smugness and the happiness in his voice, which I was sure was a different face from the person who had greeted us with hesitant snarls and fear. “She doesn’t want to let go and neither do I.”
To show my approval to his answer, I gave him a mashed kiss, since my lips were already compressed against his skin.
There were sounds of shifting and without warning, he spun, giving them his back and spoke to me.
“Do you have something to say to you friend?”
I peered from my safe haven at two awestruck people. Natalie’s face heated with a blush and her mouth open. Albert was quicker to turn away with embarrassment.
“Nat….um…I…I’m sorry…I…” I was dying of shame.
Somehow, Albert came to my rescue. “Hey Nats, how about I take you home? You look dead tired.”
The slight vibrations of Raines shoulders were reflexes of him sustaining his laughter.
Natalie scrunched her nose at me and then smiled brilliantly with such glee, I felt befuddled.
“Sure, thanks Al. See you later, Trace. Want me to tell your parents your sleeping over my house?”
I nodded meekly.
She whispered her goodbye and wiggled her eyebrows, Albert pushed her along and out the door. “See you two tomorrow.” His farewell too cheerful.
Mortified, I mumbled mine and curled into a ball in Raine’s arms.
“We have smart friends,” Raine commented, hurrying back to the room.
I laughed, receiving his shower of kisses with rapture.