final push.
I rolled my eyes at her comment, and watched her notice something I’d hoped she wouldn’t. It was a picture of us on the fireplace mantle, at the corner. It was a picture we’d taken our first Christmas together where she was pretending to be Santa for one of our friend’s parties, and she’d pulled me into her lap for the picture. I looked shy, but entertained, as she leaned me down and made a face at the camera. It was one of my favorite pictures of us because of its playful qualities.
Erin picked up the frame, and looked down at the picture. “You told me you’d destroyed this one.”
I groaned at the reminder of how terrible we’d been to each other in the settlement. “Erin … I’m sorry. I know we were gruesome before, but … I think we’re different now.”
“Did you finally listen to all those messages I left you – begging you to forgive me?” she almost sounded angry, but I knew how she had intended her question.
“I listened to them as you left them, Erin. I never waited. I just wasn’t over it,” I explained with honesty that she could read as easily as she read into our smiles in that picture. She looked up at me as I continued: “I didn’t think I’d ever be over it.”
“… But you’re over it now?”
There was a pause in conversation.
I looked at her and she looked at me, but neither of us knew what to do. I wanted to make love to her just to show her what I felt about us, but I was afraid she would see the other memorabilia around the place. My heart was racing at the possibility that she would tease me for it, but she never did. She found every piece, but she didn’t give me a hard time. After she’d toured through the whole place, she set the last little souvenir on my nightstand, and gave me one of her all-encompassing hugs. It gave me hope that she could change – because she wasn’t bitter about me anymore – and it gave me hope that I had changed too.
I knew it wouldn’t be easy to mend our relationship back to what it used to be, but I was willing to try. I wanted to put in the effort, because I knew that we both wanted the same things. All we wanted was each other.
Erin certainly proved that to me over and over as she had me in my bed. She was on top of me, then under me, and then beside me to whisper into my ear.
Her hand had slipped between my legs from behind just as I was becoming frustrated. She hadn’t let me cum any of the four times I had been approaching an orgasm. Instead, she was teasing me and keeping me on edge, using the advantages of her knowledge to be able to control my shudders and moans. Still, I was becoming impatient.
“Ehh … Erin … why can’t you just … give it to me? … Ughh …”
“I like to make you work for it,” she answered, so quick to explain that I felt like it had been on the tip of her tongue all day. Maybe longer.
I think she was right, though. I think we liked to make each other work towards something great, because it always increased our efforts. We certainly didn’t make things easy for each other at times, but that only gave us new and interesting ways of figuring out our solutions.
At first, my friends were angry that I’d fallen back with the first woman I had ever loved. It took them some time to see that Erin was looking out for me, and that she was sorry for what had come between us. I was sorry for the way I had treated her, too, and her friends began to see that. We learned quickly that we could rile each other up much faster than we ever knew. Instead of using it to hurt one another, we found a perfectly good use for it on long, rainy days.
“What are you doing?” I would laugh, pinned underneath her on our bed.
“It’s called payback,” she would grin, teasing me just the same. We used the fight for good, and gave in just as easily as we stood defiant, which resolved more arguments than it created. Erin – my first – will be my last, I know that now.
Will we ever get