She laughed again before her mouth moved to capture an exposed nipple, suckling it like a grateful, starving newborn.

“Fuck…” I moaned.

Everything felt so absolutely utopian that I had to wonder if it was always like this. And if it was, how had I gone without it for so long? I wanted to hold her, because it was through the simple acts of affection that I could prove my sincerity. But there was something that needed to be done first.

I changed my rhythm inside her once again, my fingers gliding in and out of her so easily that it seemed choreographed. Her nails found my back and she softly nipped the skin of my shoulder between my teeth as she came. What I noticed the most, though, was that she stared directly at me for as long as she could. All-encompassing blue globes that could make or break my fragile, glass world stared right into me until they were lidded in long-coming gratification.

She wasn’t loud. Just a train of gentle moans and soft meaningless murmurs, but her body was nearly theatrical in nature as it twisted and bucked and pressed against me. She bruised me physically because we had already bruised one another so much vocally that I wasn’t even sure those spots would show anymore.

“Ashley…" she sighs, "Ashley…”

“Spence…”

“I just wanted to make sure it was really you.”

I smiled as I wrapped my arms around her, unsure if it was even necessary to respond.

“It’s me.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

She turned around and adjusted so she could look at me, winding those long, golden fingers through my messy, brown curls.

“Why are you here?” I asked suddenly, obviously catching her off-guard.

“In L.A. or in your bed?”

“In L.A.”

“School.”

“Oh.”

“I wanted to be back here. Close to everyone that mattered.”

“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked, needing to make sure all the answers were given this time.

“I don’t want to see anyone that’s not you.”

“So you’re not seeing anyone?”

“No…no…I only want you. I only want to be with you.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s always been you, and I know that even after all the…all the shit that’s happened between us, you know that. You know it’s always been you. For as long as I can remember. But after losing my mom and dad, everything got…harder. Everything that I wanted became what I was most afraid of, you know? Because I didn’t know if I could handle losing anything else. So I surrounded myself with all these people and all these relationships and all these things that didn’t really matter to me. So if they left me…so what? So what? But then there’s you. You fucked it up.”

I said nothing, because this was her stage. And the performance she had managed to fool me with was coming to a welcomed close. She was finally out of character.

“You fucked it up because you knew me too well and because I wanted you too much not to care. I was terrified to tell you about Megan because then you would know just how screwed up I had become. How could I explain to you that she was just some girl that I kept around for when I got too lonely, but cared nothing about? What kind of person would that mean I was? And why would you want a person like that around?”

“Do you still feel like that now, Spencer?”

“Maybe…sometimes…yeah, I do.”

“I love you. And I really do know who you are. I’m not going to lie, these past few months I wished that I didn’t.”

“I know,” she says, shifting her eyes.

“I wished that you could be another Aiden…someone that I kept around for when I got too lonely,” I said, parroting her admissions, “but you just aren’t. Not only that, now that I know what it feels like to love someone the way that I love you, I can never go back to the Aidens of the world. And the truth of that made me so angry at you. You didn’t just make me fall for you. You left me completely different…someone that can only be with you. Someone that can’t live a lie.”

She nods, a tear escaping her eye. She wipes it away before responding, “I don’t want to cry all the time.”

“You don’t have to, Spence. It’s okay because we’re finally going to get this right.”

And she just cries harder.