Part of the problem was that I spent too much of my adolescence in the worship of wanting her. I’m tempted to say that it was a waste of time— as much as any other crush really is— but that’s not entirely true or accurate; with her it was something else. Always something else.

She was the “smart” one, in all the same classes in our modestly small high school. Alphabetically, we ended up seated near each other. Socially, even in the isolating awkwardness of American adolescence, we weren’t not-friends, the small world of our educational existence ensnaring us both. And even later on— as seniors— we were in the same cubbyhole office, doing “teaching assistant” work for different Math teachers sometime between third and fourth periods, and often after class. We were both voted “most likely to succeed.”

…

“How long did you know,” I asked, gauging her honesty with a wide berth.

“What do you mean,” she deflected, scratching at the cheap nail polish coming off in chips and flakes, half stuck beneath the edge of the other fingernail doing the scraping.

“How long did you know that I had a crush on you?”

“Oh that,” she said. It was cold and dismissive. “It doesn’t matter. I knew, and you didn’t do anything about it, but then again what’s it matter?”

We were naked, in her bed, lying on our backs, the sheets kicked off and teetering on falling off the bed completely— and in doing so they would join the comforter on the floor. What did it matter, I repeated internally, knowing that myself back then— an uncomfortable and awkward teenager with such a feeble grasp on emotions and honesty— would never have imagined what would happen just ten years later.

And not that ten years had passed by in an instant— but more in the dim realization of how different things had turned out. And where we would find ourselves, after dodging each other after high school— ironically attending the same university— and then somehow stumbling into each other in the same city. That, and then the slow binary orbit in each other’s gravity.

I grimaced, shifted my weight, and turned my body to her. “You’re right,” I said, just as coldly. “What’s it matter?”

I kissed her with a snarling lip and a razor tongue. She responded first as she would to any kiss, light moan and arching back, breasts up and ass down. But she knew it was different, too. It felt different.

With my free hand, I cupped the curve of her breast. Pressing deeply with my fingers, I squeezed harder and harder until I let my fingertips converge in a pinch on her nipple. She yelped into my mouth— a muffled and tiny noise I swallowed whole. Her eyes glossed over wet and shiny, and she sucked in a breath through her nose. I stared back with fire.

My hand let go and I put it between her legs, her thighs fighting me by squeezing together. My middle finger was just long enough to brush her clit and she shook. I let her break away with her lips and she flung her head aside— a whirl of matted-damp-short-brown hair whipping my face. She turned to hide her eyes.

I guess I sort of wanted to see her cry.

Grabbing her hair by the base of her neck I wrenched it forward. She grabbed my wrists, reaching up behind her head and down between her legs. Eyes wide and panicked, she struggled while I held still. The sweat on my neck and back were cooling with a chill. I might have had an erection but I paid it no mind. Right now, I had no cock.

What I had was a wriggling mess losing the strength in her thighs and her hands, the movements becoming sloppy and tired, her will submitting. I knew because I felt the new wetness on her pussy slick against the dried-up fuck from minutes before. I knew because I could push a little deeper each time, until I felt her lips on either side of my fingertip. I knew because she was about ready to let go of my wrists and I snapped at her, “Don’t let go.”

Her legs gave way and I pushed my finger into her wetness with a satisfying squish. She sighed and closed her eyes before a yank on her hair tore them wide open again. They watered shiny and my finger pushed and pulled in and out of her pussy. I let her blink only, each time the glaze of tears threatening to spill out from the corners of her eyes and onto her cheeks.

I put two fingers together and thrust them in, curling upward against the inner walls of her pussy and scraping with my fingernails. She took it in until I bottomed out at my palm, each push ending in audible noises from between her pussy lips.

“Fuck!” she spat, lip trembling and grip on my wrists almost just for show. To be honest I wanted her hand to ride mine— to feel the motion of it going in and out of her and combine it with what she felt in her cunt. And I wouldn’t stop, the slick girl cum accumulating on the sides of my fingers with her breath shallow and strained.

I pressed in deeper and curled my fingers up sharper, feeling the insides of her stretch against my fingertips. I pushed in harder and landed against her cervix and she yelped again.  I ignored the burn of lactic acid in my arm and my brain pleading me to stop.

Her grip tightened and her nails dug into my wrists with half-moon cuts. She buckled and shook and yelled some more and shuddered and cried for my cock— and really for me to stop— and she finally came. Tight with pulsing squeezes around my fingers still shoved in and out of her, she came and cried and tears streamed down her face and I kept finger fucking her cunt until I looked down and saw the telltale reddish brown stains of drying blood mixed in with creamy white wetness past my knuckles.

I let go.

She cried and she bawled and she hit my chest with her fists weakly before collapsing her legs inward and curled up against my body. I put my arms around her because I didn’t know what else to do and we lay there cuddled together with the heat of our bodies fading.

I would never apologize, the same way she never apologized for showing up unannounced on a school night. And sometimes that’s just how it goes.