Tangled
Somehow, I managed to avoid seeing Zac for more than a few seconds at a time for the rest of our stay in New Orleans. If I had been forced to be near him any longer, I had no clue what I would have said or done. What he did during our day off, I didn’t know. I didn’t really care to find out. I spent it exploring the city, making all sorts of stupid impulse buys and trying really hard not to think about him.
Once we settled into for the bus ride to Austin, I resumed my routine of waiting in my bunk until the bus fell silent, then creeping to the back lounge where I could actually sleep. The lights had already been shut off, but I knew my way around well enough to find the couch in the dark. I couldn’t, however, see that someone else was sitting on it.
“I thought you might come back here,” Zac said.
I blinked in the general direction of his voice, waiting for my eyes to adjust so that I could see him. Slowly, they did. “What do you want? I’m trying to sleep here.”
“I want to talk. To apologize, I guess.”
“You guess?” I asked.
“And to explain,” he replied. “Please, can we just talk.”
“You can talk. I’m probably going to sleep.” With that, I plopped down on the couch across from him, put my pillow in place and pulled my blanket over my body. I wanted Zac to see that I was serious about sleeping and ignoring him.
I could hear him shuffling around in the dark, but it wasn’t until the couch sank under his weight that I realized he’d come over to join me. I supposed he wanted to be sure I stayed awake. He was going to annoy me into listening to what I was certain would be a half-assed apology, it seemed.
“Come on, scoot over,” he said, nudging me with his elbow. It landed hard in my side, and I just barely resisted the urge to shove him into the floor.
Instead, I did as I was told and pulled my legs up to my chest to let him sit down on the other edge of the couch. I pulled myself up into something closer to a seated position, even though I doubted I was really going to pay that much attention to him.
“Look, I just…” He began, then sighed angrily. “You seem like a nice girl, alright? And you’re new to… all of this. Maybe I just… want to protect you, I guess.”
“I know I’m friends with her, but I’m not actually your little sister,” I replied.
Zac snorted. “Thank god for that.”
I didn’t have to guess what that meant, but I didn’t feel like dwelling on it, either. “Look, you don’t have to protect me from anything. Or anyone.”
“Yeah, I do,” he replied.
“Who, your brother? You really think I have any interest in Taylor? Please.”
In the dark, I could only just make out Zac’s shaking head. “Not Taylor. Don’t you get it? I’m trying to protect you from me.”
“You’re not doing a very good job,” I squeaked out.
“I know,” he replied, and I could feel him shifting closer to me. Somehow, he’d managed to find his way under my covers without me even noticing. I could feel his bare legs rubbing against mine, and I knew that meant he was lounging around the bus in his underwear again.
“M-maybe… maybe you should just let me make my own mistakes,” I replied. I remembered being even more bold in the elevator, but right then I could barely get the words out.
“Maybe,” he echoed, easing me backward ever so slightly. “Is this a mistake you want to make?”
I had a choice then, and I could see it clearly. I could lie to Zac and spare everyone from getting hurt. Or I could tell Zac the truth, and lying to everyone else would only be the first way that I hurt them. In the end, it didn’t seem like it mattered which I chose—both were bound to screw us over one way or another.
“Yeah. It is.”
The words had barely left my mouth before Zac found it, his lips latching onto mine perfectly even in the darkness. He slipped his tongue into my mouth as he eased me back until I was laying down entirely. His legs pinned me to the couch, one planted firmly on the outside of my left thigh, the other nudging my legs apart. I knew I hadn’t locked the door, but I didn’t dare ask Zac to stop so that I could. If we stopped now, we might never start again. I didn’t know how far this was going to go, though. Surely we couldn’t go all the way right there where anyone could walk in. Could we?
“Zac, we… I mean, anyone could hear…” I gasped out.
“So you’ll have to be quiet,” he replied and I swore I could hear him smirk.
Before I could object to that, although I wasn’t entirely sure that I even wanted to object, his hand began to creep down my chest. I had no doubt where his eventual destination was, and I had to bite my lip not to make a sound when he found it, his hand snaking into my pajama shorts and coming to rest on the outside of my panties.
“You’re wet,” he whispered, like it was some secret revelation, as though I wasn’t acutely aware of how much he had turned me on with just a few kisses.
I only nodded in reply, my teeth still digging into my lip. When Zac let his hand creep inside my panties, I thought I might draw blood. He trailed his finger through my wetness, just teasing, before he found the spot he was looking for. A gasp forced itself out of my mouth in spite of my efforts to stay quiet. Zac pressed his lips to mine, presumably to shut me up, and slipped one finger into me. It met no resistance, since as he had pointed out I was wetter than I could ever remember being in my life.
Zac pulled back and stared at me as he fingered me, his thumb finding my clit while he continued moving one, then two fingers in and out of me. He was good. He was damn good. I wasn’t surprised; he was older and probably more experienced than me. There was just a hint of innocence about him, though. His eyes were trained on my face, watching the way his touch was effecting me. I could have sworn he was getting off just on watching me get off.
And I did. When it became too intense, I slammed my eyes shut and threw my head back. My mouth hung limply open, though amazingly no sound escaped it other than a hoarse, whispered moan. Zac pressed his lips to my throat, and that was the last push I needed to go tumbling off the edge.
“Zac…” I gasped out. His name was the only sound I could make even if I tried, it seemed.
“Shh…” he warned me, pulling his fingers out of me agonizingly, teasingly, slowly.
I watched breathlessly as he pulled his fingers up to his mouth and licked them clean. It was almost more obscene than everything he’d just done to me.
I suddenly wondered if he wanted me to return the favor, but I didn’t have to wonder long. He leaned down and kissed the side of my face, then curled up at my side as though he planned to sleep there. I knew it was a bad idea, but I was sure he would slip away as he had every other night we’d spent not quite so close together in the lounge.
As Zac cuddled up against me, twisting up like a pretzel around me so both our bodies would fit on the narrow couch, I was in a daze. I thought I was only thinking to myself, but a few words slipped out. “What the fuck just happened?”
“I know you’re pretty young, but I think you’re old enough to answer that for yourself,” Zac replied, chuckling.
I rolled my eyes, even though he probably couldn’t see me do it. “I just mean… you’re married, Zac. Your wife is—”
“Trust me, I know what she is.”
His words were full of so much vitriol that they shut me up quickly. Of course I’d suspected that his marriage had problems, especially after his drunken confessions, but I couldn’t have guessed those problems were bad enough that he would cheat on his wife when she was due in less than two months.
“Look, I’m not… I know what I said, but I don’t do this all the time. Or ever, really. Before we got engaged, when things were still on again, off again… but since we’re been married, I’ve tried my best to be good to her, in every way that I could.”
“I’m not sure what you want me to do with that information,” I replied.
Zac sighed. “I’m not sure, either.”
“Can we just not talk about it, then? It’s not going to accomplish anything.” Even though I had a billion questions, I knew there were no answers Zac could give me that would make what we had done okay. Nothing he could say would make the fact that I was falling for him okay. Nothing would change the fact that he wouldn’t, couldn’t be mine.
“Yeah, alright,” he replied, then cuddled up even closer and kissed my forehead. “Let’s just get some sleep.”
It seemed that only seconds after the words left his mouth, Zac was asleep. I envied his ability to drift off so easily, as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe cheating on his wife had, in some strange way, freed his mind.
It had done the exact opposite to mine.
No part of me was free now. Now that I’d had a taste, every inch of me, inside and out, was calling out for Zac. He’d ignited a desire that I feared he could never fulfill, never quench, even if he gave me everything he had to give.
But what did he even want to give me? It was a question I was terrified to ask. We might have been smoking buddies, but we were really hardly even friends at all. I couldn’t delude myself into thinking he had any real romantic feelings for me. As unbelievable as it was that someone as gorgeous as Zac could ever have any interest in me, I had to conclude that this thing between wasn’t purely sexual.
Maybe it wasn’t even about me. He was away from home, away from a wife who probably wasn’t in any condition to have a lot of sex. He was just satisfying a need, the same need he’d admitted to satisfying when their relationship had been on the rocks in the past.
But no… he had tried to tell me that this was a first, hadn’t he? That he’d never truly cheated on her before. If that was true, what made this pregnancy so different than the first two that he would need, for the first time, something his wife wasn’t giving him?
Maybe it was about me.
It was impossible to know. Even if I asked him, I knew I wouldn’t trust the answer he gave me.
In spite of my troubled thoughts, I did eventually fall asleep. It was a surprisingly deep sleep, the roar of the bus’s engine the warm comfort of Zac’s body lulling me to sleep and keeping me there. When I finally woke, light was streaming in the bus window. I tried to stretch, but didn’t make it very far. I realized Zac hadn’t left. He was still wrapped around me, still snoring. I wiggled out of his grip just a little, doing the best I could to loosen the hold he had on me. I was sure we had to wake up soon, and that meant people would be looking him in his bunk.
Before I could rouse him, the lounge door slid open. There was no point in trying to move or pretend to be asleep. We were caught.
Staring down at us was Taylor, his eyes wide and full of confusion and disbelief.
“Umm,” was all I could manage to say.