It Can’t Be

Chapter 19

Uh Oh

**

It was getting harder and harder to wake up with Sookie. Since we told Eric we were going to try to be together again, Sookie had been going to bed with me instead of waiting for him to go to bed… and staying in bed with me instead of making sure she was gone before he woke up.

The secrecy had made it easy to behave, but the urge to fall into old habits was coming back to me… Even though I didn’t want to pressure her, I couldn’t help but think about what waking up with her used to mean.

Nookie. Sookie Nookie to be specific… It was silly, but that’s what we used to call it and it was as much a part of our mornings as sharing a shower and eating our cereal out of the same huge serving bowl.

Waking up and seeing her bright blue eyes already on me was a problem. I’d wanted to be out of bed and in the shower before she woke up.

Avoid temptation.

The sweet smile she had wasn’t helping matters. “Morning.”

“No it’s not. The sunlight is just a dream.”

“Nope. It’s really morning. 6:30 Arabica Meridiem.” Coffee time… as opposed to PM… Pirate Meridiem. Rum hours.

I chuckled, wondering if she’d always used her own am/pm or if it was coming back to her like so many things were for me. “Did I sleep through my alarm?”

“Not that I heard.”

“Are you up because you’re worrying? Excited?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Both. Not too worried though. Just moving woes. Boxes and tape and what to pack versus what to leave.” She had already mentioned that she was thinking about leaving the furniture since it wouldn’t fit the style of the new house.

“Without furniture to get in the way…”

“I’m thinking I’ll just pack up our personals… leave the household goods and whatnot.”

“The house would be vacation ready.” Somewhere to sneak away to when life got hectic or just so she could see old friends.

She nodded. “And I’ll just call Dixie to help with the house here.” She’d been looking for an excuse to meet my Interior Designer ever since I’d described her as ‘Paula Dean with swatches’.

“And you’ll have an excuse to go shopping with Emm again.”

Another nod, but she didn’t say anything for a minute. She just stared. I couldn’t tell why… It was the blank stare that I couldn’t read. I never knew if I was in trouble; it had always been a tossup. When she finally said something I realized I’d been holding my breath. “We should probably talk.”

“Uh oh.”

She laughed. “Why ‘uh oh’? Why do you always say ‘uh oh’?”

“Because you have a tendency to start conversations with long stares and announcing that we should ‘talk’… ask around, impartial conversations don’t start like that.”

“Well this isn’t exactly an impartial conversation.”

“Like I said, ‘uh oh’.”

She growled and narrowed her eyes. “Why do you have to make this so hard?”

“Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind?”

She started rolling away, to leave the bed. “Nevermind then.”

Without thinking, I grabbed her and pulled her back to me, putting my knee between hers to sort of pin her. “No. Too late. Say it.”

She giggled, “We need to talk about sleeping arrangements.”

“Are you kicking me out of the bed and sending me to a guest room?”

“In Jackson… did you see the reservation confirmation?”

“No. I trusted Eric to make arrangements. He said he had the confirmation. Is something wrong?”

“Your son reserved 3 king rooms.”

“Shit. Now that Belle is going…”

“He fixed that. He changed one to a double.”

“Oh… Then what’s wrong?”

“Well, when I was double checking everything last night, I saw all the emails… He originally booked two kings and a double… Then Tuesday, he changed it to three kings, then once we told him that Belle was going with Alcide, he changed it back…”

“He assumed that he’d a share a room with one of us until after our meeting with Claudia.”

“Yes.”

“Then he took it upon himself to put us into the same room and play King Poobah in his own room.”

“Yep.”

“That little ass.” Not that I minded rooming with Sookie or giving him his own room, but he was being presumptuous and risked making things awkward. If Sookie hadn’t checked his confirmations, there might not have been a way to fix the room assignments.  Summer. Weekend. One of the nicer hotels that Jackson had to offer… It could have been booked.

“So you didn’t have any part of that?”

“No.”

“What would you have done if he’d asked?”

“I’d have… That’s not the point.”

“So you still would’ve wanted to share a room with me?”

“We can get another room… or change one to a double if you want to, but you’ve been sleeping in here with me…”

“That’s not what I’m getting at.”

“Then what are you getting at?”

“Do hotels still turn you into a ‘fiend’?”

I narrowed my eyes, sure that she didn’t realize that pinning her had ‘encouraged’ me as much as hotel stays used to. “I think I can behave myself, if that’s what you mean. We’ve been sleeping together for nearly a week…” I wasn’t sure if I believed it myself, but I could try.

“I’ve never seen you behave for long in a hotel room.” If I wasn’t already starting to think that she was goading me, feeling her leg slide up so that she could rest her foot behind my knee would’ve pushed the point… old habits…

Too much of the last week had made the saying, ‘like riding a bike’ echo through my thoughts… brainstorming about the pool plans; two hands, one drawing… the way we moved around one another while we made breakfast yesterday… finishing sentences… picking radio stations… settling on movies… planning our trip to Indiana…

Like riding a bike.

Her foot behind my knee…

Like riding a bike.

The way she curled her hands around the dent of my biceps, her thumb poised to tickle if the mood struck her…

Like riding a bike.

The look on her face like she was waiting for or inviting me to do something…

Like riding a bike.

I missed my bike… and I lapsed…

I forgot that I’d promised myself that I’d let her make the first move for anything more.

I forgot that it had been 16 fucking years since we’d been together… It was too much like the 2 and a half years we had together to remember the time I’d gone without her…

It was so easy.

Too easy to kiss her…

It wasn’t the first kiss I’d had with her since I got her back… but being together in bed made everything different…

Kissing shoved us past familiar and comfortable…

Staying in the mindset of ‘a kiss is just a kiss’ would’ve killed me anyway, but…

Sookie’s hands slid up to my neck to hold us together…

Her knee pulled out to put her heel into the small of my back…

When I groaned, she whimpered…

She needed air before I did, but she started chewing my ear instead of giving me the chance to calm down…

Wriggling under me just enough to cause friction…

I was already starting to throb when she started nibbling along my jaw…

Reaching between us…

Into my pants…

Wrapping her hand around my dick…

Squeezing until the perfect amount of pressure made me growl her name…

If that wasn’t her ‘making the first move’ I was going to die.

I tried. God help me, I tried. As miserable as the idea of stopping made me, I didn’t want her to regret anything… I didn’t want her to, but I still tried to get her to stop… calm down… something…

She only stopped chewing long enough to tell me to shut up…

My last effort…

I rolled to my side, taking her with me…

Getting off of her so she could get away, leave, call a time out if she felt like it… so she wouldn’t feel trapped…

She didn’t stop.

She didn’t stop and I couldn’t bring myself to stop her.

I finally gave up… the damage was done… no matter what the fuck happened from that point. If we stopped, I’d deal with it, but I wasn’t going to fuck it up, whatever it was, by resisting…

Every move her hand made could be felt in my teeth…

A streak of anxiety ran up my spine when she took her leg away from my back, putting her knees under her…

I thought it was over, that she’d ‘come to her senses’…

Before I had the chance to turn that inkling into a full blown mind-fuck, she twisted, diving under the covers to wrap her lips around my dick…

My whole body tensed fast enough that I jerked, shoving deeper…

She giggled at what she’d done to me, only making it worse…

Without thinking, I grabbed her ankle, pulling her leg so that I could pay her back for making me so fucking helpless…

Chewing, starting at her calf, one inch at a time, pulling her closer and closer until our bodies met…

Rolling to my back and pulling her with me…

Yanking her panties out of my way and growling the fucking instant I tasted her…

She was shaking before I slid my fingers into her…

Wrapping my arm around her hips and pulling her back, holding her still…

Every one of her whimpers gave me a fresh wave of chills…

Every one of my groans made her buck against me…

“Gooooood mornin’, Asshole…” Alcide. In the hall. Fuck.

Sookie and I froze, hoping like hell that Alcide was going after Eric first.

“McMuffins are… MOTHERFUCK!” No such luck.

My reaction: Yank the covers over Sookie’s exposed ass and yell at him to shut the fuck up.

Sookie’s reaction: Growl. The problem with that was that my dick was still in her mouth. My eyes rolled back so fast that they hurt. I had never been that painfully close to cumming and left hanging…

Cock.

Blocked.

I screamed, “I’m going to kill you, you piece of sh…”

“Y’all were fucking with me! That was just part of the joke… Y’all aren’t together!”

Since I was trying to unclench my jaw, Sookie yelled from under the covers, “You assumed that was part of the joke. Great timing. Jerk!”

It took her a moment, and she didn’t waste any grace doing it, but Sookie managed to rearrange herself under the covers to face me. She whispered, “So… do hotels still make you a fiend?”

I smiled at her, refusing to fucking laugh. “I guess we’ll find out.”

She kissed me. It was quick, but it didn’t do anything to discourage my mood or my urge to rip Alcide’s fat fucking head from his thick fucking neck. “I’ll bring red panties.”

“I’ll pack rubbers.”

She giggled, “Lots and lots of…”

She was interrupted by the sound of the bedroom door bouncing off of the wall. “What the hell happened!?” Eric.

I think I bit through my tongue.

Sookie folded back the covers we sat up to see our ‘friend’ (Alcide Interruptus) standing there with a McDonald’s bag and our son looking like he was expecting to see a crime scene.

I clenched my jaw and growled before I could make myself say anything. It wasn’t like Sookie could. She was blushing bright enough to look like she had a sunburn. “Mr. Boundaries thought that your mom and me being together again was bullshit because of the prank at lunch the other day. You woke up to his reaction to seeing us in bed together. Nice, huh?” In bed… mid-69… but I could hope that Eric would assume that she just had bed head and Uncle Rainman just over reacted to seeing us asleep…

Eric punched Alcide’s arm. “You gave me a heart attack, DICK! I thought something was wrong!”

“I… They… Sorry.” Good boy. For a split second, I thought he was going to say what he walked in on, but he thought better of it. He didn’t want to die.

Eric snorted at him, yanking the bag out of his hand and stomping out of the room. “Nice wake up call. If your buildings start caving in, you can make a living waking up narcoleptics and coma gorks!” OK. I laughed at that. It sounded exactly like something Sookie would say.

Alcide was still staring at us. His hand was still up like he didn’t know Eric had absconded with the McMuffins.

Without Eric in the room, Sookie wasn’t as uptight. “Is there something you want?”

“Y’all were serious?”

“Yes.”

“Y’all are back together?”

“Yes.”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

“Y’all are back together, together?”

“Sweet baby Jesus, yes. Eric and I are back together and if I didn’t still have ahold of him, you’d need stitches. Out.”

He opened his mouth to say something but, when he noticed that one of her hands was still under the covers, he assumed she meant that she had me by the dick and practically ran out of the room.

She waited until she heard Eric start bitching at Alcide again before she giggled and gave me a kiss. “Go get in the shower.”

“Come with me?”

She cringed. “Can’t. I have to go kill your friend.” That fucking mood killer.

“You’re going to have to wait. You don’t want to kill him in front of Belle.”

She threw herself back on the bed and hissed while I willed myself towards the bathroom. “Fine, but if you give him a key to our room tonight, I’ll kill you too.”

“Noted.”

**

I could hear her puttering around while I showered. Moving here and there… closets opening and closing, footsteps, baggage zipping and unzipping…

I’d already pulled my cache of rubbers out of the cabinet and was drying off when I heard her giggling.

“What’s so funny?”

“I just looked in your overnight… You forgot socks.”

“What’s funny about that?” The sad part was that I had plenty since every time I traveled, I had to buy more.

“That you still forget to pack socks.”

“Do you still have to buy a new brush everywhere you go?”

She laughed, “Shut up.”

“Do you still blame The Littles for stealing your room keys?”

When she didn’t answer, I assumed that she had wandered to ‘her’ room to get something…

But when I came out of the bathroom, she was sitting on the side of my bed…

With a jewelry box in her hand. The ring. Fuck.

“Uh oh.”

She didn’t move. She just stared at the box.

“Sookie.”

She opened her mouth, but closed it again… exhaling a deep breath through her nose. “I… When I grabbed your socks for you I saw it and thought you might need cufflinks since…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does. How long ago?”

“No. It really doesn’t. I don’t want you to think about it. I should’ve gotten rid of it a long time ago.”

“When?”

I sighed, wishing there was a way to avoid the conversation. “Not long after you left.”

She still hadn’t taken her eyes off the box and fumbled to open it again. Her eyebrows bounced and one side of her mouth turned down. “You said you tried to move on…”

“I did, but it didn’t work out.”

“Did you change your mind… did she give it back to you…?” Oh shit! She thought it was bought for someone else…

“Sookie…”

“I know it’s not my place. I’m just curious.”

“I bought the ring for you, Sookie.”

“Never mind… I didn’t mean to find it.” She hadn’t heard me.

“Sookie…”

“Sorry.”

I went over and knelt between her feet. “Sookie.”

She shoved the ring at me and tried to avoid looking at me… like I wouldn’t notice that she was close to tears. She thought I’d gotten close, loved someone enough to think about marrying them, love someone else at all…

“Sookie. I bought it right after you left. I convinced myself that you had just gotten cold feet or something. I’m not sure why I thought that a ring was going to help that, but it made sense to me at the time… I bought it for you.”

“You… you bought it for me?”

I nodded, happy to see that she was finally on track instead of thinking I’d bought it for someone else.

“You didn’t…?”

I shook my head. “Never even close. I haven’t wasted more than a month on anyone.”

“That’s a little harsh. They couldn’t all have been bad.”

“Good or bad, it didn’t matter. None of them were you.”

“What? You wanted another bitch to walk out on you?”

“No. I wanted my girl back.”

She shook her head. “I’m not a girl anymore.”

I nodded to differ. “You’re my girl.”

She sniffled. “You’re too sweet to me…”

“You said that before too though…”

“I didn’t realize how true it was… I don’t deserve you.”

“That’s my line.”

“You…”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“You didn’t deserve what I did to you…”

“I don’t know about that. If I’m so sweet then why wouldn’t I deserve the way you loved me back and took care of our son?” Yes, if a tree falls and there’s no one to hear it, it STILL makes a fucking sound.

She rolled her eyes, making it clear that she was feeling guilty again. I should’ve pitched the ring in the trash years ago, but that would’ve meant I gave up on her when I hadn’t… Getting rid of the ring would’ve been a lie.

I took the ring out of the box and she yanked her left hand away from me, twisting it up behind her back. I couldn’t help but laugh… I took her right hand instead and slid the ring into place on her ring finger… where it belonged. I wasn’t going to put it back in my sock drawer. “It’s your ring. Why not wear it?”

“Because it’s an engagement ring.”

I shrugged. “So? I bought it for you.”

“But…”

“But what?”

“You don’t want to marry me.”

“I’ve always wanted to marry you.”

“Eric, I…”

“Why don’t you just consider it a late Mother’s Day present? When I ask you again, I’ll do it with another ring.”

“Because you bought this one for the silly bitch who ran away from you?”

“Because I bought this one for the girl who stole my heart… I think the woman who brought it back to me deserves her own.”