Chapter 8

“Well, it’s true,” I added assertively. “However hard you think your cancer makes my life, have you considered that maybe it’s worth it? Yeah, I’d much prefer it if you didn’t have cancer, but all the same, I like you. I like how you make me feel. And that kiss, or that sorry attempt at a kiss, felt like a good idea to me at the time, and I don’t regret that I tried.”

She still stayed silent. But I felt her hand wander over to my side to reach out for my hand. I reached out too and weaved my hand through her hand and squeezed.

“I know I said I was too embarrassed to say what I wished for, but now I want to tell you,” she said.

“Ok. What’d you wish for?”

“I wished that you’d try that kiss again.”

My heart shot up into my throat. It kept me from breathing. Or maybe it made me hyperventilate. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t paying attention to my breathing. That wasn’t important. What was important was the prospect of kissing her.

Without having anything else to say, I reached up to touch her face. I put my palm against her cheek. Her cheek flexed as she nervously swallowed.

She sat up. I sat up too. And we sat facing each other in the darkness for a long moment before I finally found the nerves to grant her wish. I leaned forward. I put my hands on both her cheeks and found her lips with mine. They were soft. The kiss was tender. It was simple, our lips pressing lightly. Then we both sighed at the same time, then we laughed.

“Yeah,” I replied. I licked my lips. I wasn’t finished. I wanted more. “Can I do it again?”

So, we kissed again. This kiss wasn’t like the last one. There was less fear in it. More desire. Like the first kiss had made us tipsy, so all the inhibition and the trepidation had vanished, and we were both excited to do something both of us had found so damn hard to do before. It was kind of like jumping off the high dive platform the first time and being so nervous about doing it the first time, but after doing it, realizing there was nothing to fear. Only, this kiss was infinitely more exhilarating than a high dive. There’s really nothing that comes close to describing how I felt at that moment, with my lips on her lips, knowing she wanted her lips on mine.

Desire is a positive feedback loop, like the fusion core of a star. The more we kissed, the more we wanted to kiss, and the closer I wanted to get to her. The more my desire burned, the more I wanted it to burn. Our lips parted. Our tongues touched. We breathed each other in. We tasted each other and wordlessly agreed that the taste was wonderful.

My mind swirled drunkenly. Before I knew it, her lips were elsewhere. They were on my cheeks. My neck, where they touched tenderly, and where she allowed her tongue to touch my skin to taste me. I gasped at the warm wetness of her tongue and sighed at the cooling feeling left behind.

I’ve only ever kissed a handful of times. And none were very memorable. All were prudish and fleeting and awkward. Those kisses were doors that were opened only to be quickly slammed shut. This kiss was not like those kisses. This kiss was a door that swung wide open to a lush land and stayed open, inviting me through.

Without thinking, I unzipped my fleece layer, which I had kept on because of the night’s chill. Autumn unzipped hers. I pulled off her shirt. She pulled off mine. We breathed heavily. Almost heaving, like we had just finished a sprint.

I put my hand on her chest just beneath her collarbone. My fingers grazed along the edges of her port-a-cath above her right breast.

“Ow, that’s tender,” she laughed, flinching.

I retracted my hand.

“It’s ok… I like your hands on me. But I’d like them even more somewhere else.”

She grabbed my hand and pulled it back towards her chest. She slid it slowly beneath her sports bra. A hard nipple brushed against my palm. I teased it with the flat of my thumb. She moaned softly.

I did the same with my other hand on her other breast, slipping it beneath her bra.

“I’ve never been with a girl,” she whispered.

“Me neither,” I whispered back. And just to be sure, this is what she wanted, I asked, “do you really want to do this?”

I couldn’t believe what was now unraveling. It was like a dream. A floating, listless dream. A dream with an aura that hummed quietly around us, as if we weren’t in a tent in the California desert but deep space, and we weren’t amateur astronomers but astronauts in an escape pod, stranded but happy because we had each other.

So, this was really going to happen then.

She pulled her sports bra off as I kissed her. She gently pushed me down onto the sleeping bag and pulled my bra off me. She put her hands on my breasts and caressed them just as I had caressed hers. Awkwardly, uncertainly, but lovingly.

I didn’t know what to do next, so I just let my desire go wherever it wanted to go. I released it like a ball down a sand dune, happy with whatever path it wanted to take because every path led it to the same place. I just needed gravity to do its thing. That gravity led my hands into Autumn’s balled-up hands. I wrenched my fingers into them to free them, then pulled her hands above her head, keeping her pinned down while I planted my kisses down her naked neck, her naked collarbone, and her naked breasts (careful to avoid the port). I found her sweat-salted and erect nipples with my mouth and wrapped my lips around each one, sucking until she squealed. I played with them with my tongue, then went farther down her body, kissing down the curve of her ribs, then her stomach, which turned concave as she arched her back in response to the kisses.

“Mmmm,” she muttered as she clutched my hair in a tugging grip. She writhed as I planted my kisses. She held her breath as I unbuckled her belt and slid it off her waist. She sighed as I unzipped her jeans and pulled them slowly down. She helped me pull them down, wiggling them impatiently over her hips, kicking them off her ankles. Then, only her panties remained, pale in the darkness as a desert moon.

I thought a lot about how my first time would go. I created a lot of fantasies in my mind, and in every one of those fantasies, the sex happens in slow motion, and there’s music playing in the background, like in one of those teen dramas where the teens look like they’re in their thirties. But this wasn’t like that at all. It was better. Silence punctuated by the smacking sounds of kisses and our heavy breathing. Our movements awkward, and knobby. Our nakedness veiled by the darkness. We were frantic, dazed, and clumsy. But there was a phenomenal sexiness to our frantic, dazed clumsiness.

I pried Autumn’s legs apart and nibbled at the inside of her thighs, while I ran my fingers across the top of her panties. Up and down, sliding my fingers over the soft cotton, pressing into the valley between her lips. Then I slipped my fingers into the triangle, grazing through her plush pubic hair until I found her swollen clit. She uttered soft moans as I rubbed it gently, writhing, thrusting her hips to press her pussy against my hand. After a moment of this, Autumn muttered, “take off my panties.”

“Take off your clothes too,” she said eagerly.

So, I did. Then I pressed my naked body against hers, pressing my breasts against hers, my pussy against hers.

My pussy ached. So did my nipples. My only relief for that was to keep going. To thrust my aching body against Autumn’s. To keep my hands running over her nakedness, kiss her on her mouth, and run my tongue all over her to taste the salt of her sweat, and, in turn, to be kissed and to feel Autumn’s tongue against my skin.

Our clits touched as we rubbed. We found a good rhythm. The moonlight was bright enough now that I could clearly see Autumn’s face. I could make out the freckles on her face. The soft expressions of pleasure. In her wet eyes, a lust-driven daze. I probably had the same look in mine.

My abdominals clenched. Scintillating waves washed through me. Lovely waves that made me want to press my pussy harder against hers. Then the trembles and involuntary sharp moans each time my swollen clit moved against hers.

“Oh God, I think I’m about to cum!” I gasped, barely able to string the sentence together.

I felt her body tense up beneath mine, too. I felt her tremors beneath me. Her hands grasped my butt cheeks to pull my hips tightly against hers, her fingernails digging into my skin.

Each wave of pleasure was more powerful than the one that preceded it. I was an unstable core on the verge of supernova. There was nothing that could stop it now. Nothing. No one. Just another wave and — there it was. My collapse.

“Oh, God!” I moaned as the seismic pleasure rippled through me. I put a balled fist against my mouth and bit into my curled finger as a brace against it.

Autumn held me to her. She held me tightly, nuzzling into me, stroking my hair as if to coax me through my aftershocks. She planted kisses on me, and I planted kisses on her.

As nice as it is to masturbate, climaxing is not quite the same as if brought about by a partner. There’s nothing quite like the overwhelming feeling of love that invades your every being in the aftermath. In that quiet prominence, I felt nothing but pure love for Autumn.

When the aftershocks faded, and when my conscious recoalesced into rational thought, I realized I had not given Autumn what she had given me.

“Now it’s my turn to make you cum,” I said to her.

She giggled and whispered back, “you don’t have to. I don’t mind just laying here with you.”

“I not asking you if I can. I’m telling you I will,” I replied as I kissed her. “Now spread your legs.”

“Yes, ma’am!” She laughed, delighted in my surprising assertiveness.

The heat from her pussy was powerful. She was still wound up. She was still aching for pleasure.

I’ve never performed oral sex on a girl before (or oral sex, period), but I had a good idea of what I needed to do. She spread her legs for me as I moved my tongue between her salty labia.

“Oh, Joey,” She moaned.”

Her hands gripped my hair. Tugged on my scalp. It was painful. But a good painful. Her writhing, and her moaning filled me with feisty confidence. I was having fun with this.

“You want to see stars? I’ll show you stars,” I said.

“Please,” she yearned.

I flicked my tongue inside her lips, savoring the taste of her sex, moving between her lips, up to her clit, swirling my tongue gently around it as I slid my forefinger into her pussy.

“Easy, cowgirl. Take it slow.”

I went gentler with the penetration.

“Mmm, good. That’s perfect.”

I kept up the rhythm. Matching the flicking of my tongue against her clit with the pumping of my finger inside her. Her pussy grew accustomed to my finger and became wetter. It became easier to move my finger inside her, and I also felt the involuntary clenching of her abdominal muscles, and I felt her breathing become more labored.

“Oh God!” she squealed.

Her trembling began. I licked her faster. I moved my fingers faster and deeper inside her while she pressed my face into her pussy.

“Oh God,” she squealed again. “I’m going to –“

Before she could finish her warning, she came. Her pussy tightened strongly. Her whole body tightened up like a spring, quaking with waves of euphoria, then, all at once, released.

When her orgasm tapered off, I climbed into her arms, pulled a sleeping bag around the both of us, and we snuggled into each other.

“Thank you, Joey,” she murmured. “Thank you so much.”

“So, did you see stars?” I asked.

“I saw entire galaxies,” she sighed.

She clutched onto me tightly. Weaved her legs between mine. I ran my hands along her shape.

“I don’t want to sleep,” she said listlessly. “I just want to keep breathing you in.”

But soon, she began to snore.

I managed to stay awake a little while longer. Just like her, I wanted to keep breathing her in. I wanted to feel her naked body. I wanted to imprint her smell and her every curve into my memory.

Eventually, I joined her in sleep, my last waking memory being that I loved her.

It was noon when we stirred awake. We woke together and yawned like cats. The sun had turned the tent into a stuffy sauna, so I unzipped the tent flap to let in the sweet desert air.

We were the last ones left at the campsite. Technically we were supposed to be checked out, as Autumn reserved only one night, but it was the weekday, so the campsite wasn’t going to fill up anytime soon. The park rangers didn’t come by to pester us.

Soon we were back on the road back to LA. Autumn sat with her knees pushed up against the dash. Her window was open, and she had her hand hanging out like a wing.

“You know, I completely forgot that today is Valentine’s Day. Happy Valentine’s Day,” she said.

“Oh, I didn’t think about that. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“Will you be my Valentine?”

She fluttered her eyelashes at me. I laughed.

“Of course,” I replied. “Always.”

The ‘Always’ came out inadvertently. I blushed hard.

She replied with a kiss on the cheek, then rested her head against my shoulder.

As we passed through the San Gorgonio Pass wind farm, I spotted a parallel track of white in the clear blue sky above us, clawing its way south or southwest. Contrails from a jet heading to Acapulco or maybe to Hawai’i. Hawai’i was always a dream.

“Hey, you wanna go to Hawai’i someday?” I asked Autumn.

“Um, does the Pope shit in the woods?”

Autumn laughed. “Meaning I’m totally down. When I’m done with this cancer business, let’s go. But only if we go to the Big Island. That’s where the Keck Observatory is.”