MARIEL

18~ Grandma ~

His hands were against the small of her back. His light caresses sent shivers through her spine as she entered the embrace. Their bodies came together and she shook as he pulled her tightly against him. It was a moment to be re-lived again and again, in reality and in her dreams and, as their bodies melted together, she felt his hot breath against her ear. His lips caressed the top of her ear and he whispered:

"Whore."

Esther's eyes opened in the darkness. Her body shook and she sat up in her bed, staring wearily out of the window to the right of her bed. She rubbed her eyes, remembering with an abrupt twist in her stomach that her brother was in the hospital and would never walk again.

By one in the morning, Todd had instructed Esther to take her mother home. Mary Caravan had tearfully protested, but he had convinced her that she was in need of more sleep than he. With red eyes and sagged folds of skin under her eyes, she finally agreed, but insisted she would return in the morning as soon as she awakened.

Once she was sure her mother had settled in, Esther had immediately gone to bed. The events of the day had been overwhelming. Not only had she been forced to process the news regarding her brother, she had had the guilt of Gabe in her mind, not to mention his lack of protection, and then the moment she had shared with Mariel at the diner weighed heavily on her mind.

She fell back against her pillows, reaching up to rub her head. It hurt. Badly. The amount of emotion and stimulation she had experienced in the last thirty-six hours was becoming impossible to handle, and her body was beginning to take the punishment.

Inhaling deeply, Esther thought of her time at the diner with Mariel. She wet her lips, rolling to her side and continuing to stare at the black sky through her upstairs window. She wondered what went through his mind, especially during the times they were together. He had made multiple efforts to touch her today, something that was generally rare for him, and she desperately tried to consider what that meant. She quickly realized she had become the person who annoyed her the most...the individual who felt they needed to dissect the thoughts, gestures, and words of the person they liked.

However, it was frustrating her to the point of insanity. She had given him multiple opportunities to show her how he felt, but each situation seemed to drive him further and further away from her. Esther physically felt her heart ache with the fear that she would be alone in her feelings for him. The feelings had been strong for years but, the older she grew, the stronger they seemed to grow. She had even attempted to date multiple people, men and women (something of which her parents were unaware and would never approve) for the sheer hope that it would banish the quiet, reserved young man from her mind. The longest relationship she had ever experienced lasted three months with a guy from her high school, and even then she could not eliminate her feelings for Mariel. Each time she looked at him, each time he was near her, she could not control the overwhelming physical response to his presence. Until Gabe, the most she had ever sexually experienced with a partner was fondling, as she had never allowed it to continue further. In her mind, she supposed she had been unrealistically saving herself for the one person she loved and wanted to touch her.

But that ended last night. Gabe. Oh, Gabe. Esther realized with sickening regret that, in her drunken state, Mariel had been in her subconscious, and she had rashfully used Gabe for a release she had drunkenly determined would never happen with Mariel. Hell, he could not embrace her without planting distance between them.

"I give up, I'm becoming a nun," she whispered to herself, sitting up again and slipping out of her bed. "Clearly, I make the worst decisions and pine away after a man who will never reciprocate." Sourly, she envisioned the situation.