Prelude to kisses

Chapter 4

They are sitting on a bench overlooking a pond in a park. There are birds chirping and doves swimming in the pond. She looks around but there seems to be just the two of them. It's deserted and beautiful, the grass is so green she might as well grab his hand and lay with him on the grass than sit here on the bench. It's exactly what she envisions when she thinks of a date, she looks up at him and wonders if he had gone out of his way to find this place, the thought makes her smile.

Matt puts an arm around her, his gaze somewhere far, almost as though he was seeing his future in front of him. She entwines her fingers with his, he looks at her as if startled by the contact. When he looks away again, he opens his mouth to tell her a story from his childhood and he has that boyish grin on his face that spells his mischief to her. He tells her about his brothers and sister, about his mom and dad. Of his life growing up in the country. How it had all been simple back then when his only responsibility was going to school and herding cattle. How it felt like a burden back then but how he'd kill to go back there now.

Jackie smiles up at him when he's finished and feels his fingertips as they brushed her cheek, urging her to look at him, to kiss him, to touch him. And she does, she takes as much as she gives and he does the same with as much desire, with the same urgency as her. When they pull apart it's his eyes, she's sure she'll remember till the end of time, it's the black in them; the dark hunger to have her; all of her. Matt pulls her onto his lap keeping a protective arm around her waist as his mouth trails open kisses down her collarbone. She arches beautifully into him, pressing herself into the hard muscles of his chest, feeling everything and how he grows between her legs. She feels the sweet taste of his lips, the provocative dance of his tongue the way his hands move up and down her back sometimes at the back of her neck, holding her there. And it is in that she finds peace; in that she finds herself tearing herself in half to accommodate him.

It is in that moment as he moves her hips into him that she realizes she's accepted him, every single part of him. In that she feels a profuse amount of love and a certainty that she'll never love or have the desire to love anyone ever again. She is contempt, with him and herself and in this moment, nothing can take that away from her. When they lay on the bench together, she puts her head on his chest, feeling the beating of his heart, a thin sheet of sweat on his forehead. He calls her name, and she looks up, but it's not the same. His eyes are not the same, they look at her as though she were an intruder. As though he had woken up to realize that she wasn't the one he'd meant to go to bed with, the one he had meant to give himself to just minutes ago.

She wants to explain, to ask if she'd done something wrong when he starts pulling away from her, untangling himself from her.

And just like that she's up, heaving as she clutches the sheets between her fingers. Her throat feels dry, and she's drenched in sweat. It takes a while to come to her senses again, looking around the room to white walls that she knows very well. Angie shifts beside her, getting more comfortable in her sleep. Jackie smiles a little before getting off the bed to drink a glass of water. She had never dreamt of him before. It was almost two months since she had left his house that morning. She had begun to forget but now here she was, remembering, each piece falling back to its place in her mind.

I love, I hate, and I know not why, but its unbearable.

She can't remember where she had read that line but, in that moment, she found herself reciting it as tears fell from her eyes...