Coming Home

I’m in a state of limbo. My apartment is rented to someone else. I’ve sold all my furniture and put a few boxes in a friend’s garage. Almost everything I need is in two enormous army surplus duffle bags that I now drag up the drive of my childhood home like the chains of Christmas past. 

When my mom and dad divorced, they moved out of this house with shocking speed. My dad, now living in Valencia, rented the place to a mysterious tenant who I was, of course, told absolutely nothing about, only instructed to “go get the rest of your belongings from the garage before the house is sold.”

From far away, my childhood home is exactly as I remember it: cream-colored stucco with dark brown trim, its moldings fanciful curlicues pressed onto two square, stacked stories that rise against the suburban sky, a tiny little cupola-like turret set towards the back like a lone birthday candle. When I was growing up, I thought it looked like a giant piece of caramel, a building made of spun sugar and chocolate trimmings. 

But upon closer inspection, I see the dirty, forlorn FOR SALE sign is stuck in the lawn—which is still green, albeit with some weeds. The windows are caked with dirt, and the mailbox is overstuffed with slick white envelopes sticking out from its metal craw. 

Despite these signs of neglect, the hedges are trimmed, and the flower beds near the front door are freshly watered. 

I look up. A curtain on the second floor twitches, as if someone has pulled it closed. 

I go around to the back—my usual way—and open the fence quietly. I tiptoe across the patio, which is partially weeded, and see that someone has dusted off the ping-pong table. A single paddle and a can of beer sits on its green surface, as if abandoned midgame. 

I pick up the can. It’s half-full and still cold, beads of condensation rolling down its aluminum sides. 

I am about to push open the sliding glass door when a voice says, “I wouldn’t.”

I look up. A man about my age is standing at the fence I just entered through. He’s a little under six feet, with the build of a former athlete now slightly gone to seed.

He holds his own can of beer. From the way he shifts his weight from foot to foot, I surmise he’s a little drunk. His thick, wavy black hair is standing on end as if he has just run his hands through. By the looks of it, he probably hasn’t shaved for at least three days, and he wears a pair of very old jeans and a Joni Mitchell t-shirt. I sneak a couple longer glances at his face, taking in his crooked nose and wide, full lips. He looks familiar to me and somehow a little glamorous.

“I’m housesitting for my folks next door,” he says before I have a chance to ask if he’s the new renter, if the house is now his. “I didn’t want you to accidentally break and enter.” 

His eyes are enormous, deep-set, and the grey-amber color of smoky quartz. They send a thrill straight into the pit of my stomach.

“I remember you,” I say. 

He invites me to join him for dinner. 

As he grills two steaks, he tells me about my old house, the car he sees parked out front sometimes, the fact that the garden is always watered. The more he talks, the more I remember about him and his family. 

The Solanos are seriously wealthy, so wealthy that it always surprised me growing up that they lived next door to us. The father is some kind of financial consultant who occasionally got helicoptered into important meetings up and down the coast when traffic was bad, while his mother fancied herself a glamorous globetrotter. She used to host decorative-looking European exchange students every summer, usually from the major capitals: Madrid, Paris, Rome.

I had been casual friends with Danny’s adopted sister, who was my age. The Solanos had seen the long hours my parents worked and insisted on inviting me over for birthday parties, holiday celebrations, the occasional weekend in Joshua Tree or Laguna Niguel. I had been a free companion for both their exchange students and their daughter. I was a sort of foster child whom they could be magnanimous toward without any real long-term commitment. 

I can count the number of times I’ve directly spoken to Danny before today on one hand—he was already a college freshman by the time I entered high school, and clearly thought of me as nothing more than a mildly annoying neighborhood kid. Nevertheless, I knew every detail about him as if he were a movie star or some kind of household god.

Now, the man himself stands in front of me, taking a long, meditative pull off of a joint. He pinches the end between his forefinger and thumb, offering it to me.

I shake my head. 

He shrugs: suit yourself. 

He returns to tending the meat, and I watch him with hungry eyes. His shoulders are still broad, and his arms muscled, but there’s now a comfortable layer of padding over his chest and belly although he does bear the weight with almost regal nonchalance. His gain looks good on him, lending some gravitas to his still-boyish face. He has the most beautiful hands I’ve ever seen on a man, and that same lazy grin that had flipped some switch inside me back when I was a teenager, all those years ago. During the Solano get-togethers when he’d been in attendance, my body always seemed to know when he was within a twenty-foot radius. 

I wonder now, as I sit and watch him, how obvious my crush was. I wonder if he was flattered or annoyed by it.

“So what do you do?” he says. I’m sitting on the low wall next to the barbecue, idly kicking the heels of my sneakered feet against the bricks as if I’m still sixteen rather than thirty-two. I wish I’d worn something different. After dumping my boxes at my best friend’s house, I was filled with so much buzzy adrenaline that I just pulled on the first clean thing I could find, which was a faded old cotton sundress that reaches my ankles. Its thin spaghetti straps don’t really complement my ratty-looking Converse, but I’ve been comfortable and cool as I’ve taken the bus from Los Angeles to my hometown in Pasadena carrying the heavy bags of essentials. 

“I play music,” I say. This time, when he proffers the joint, I take it gladly,  placing it between my lips and sucking so hard that the ember at the opposite end  glows like a dragon’s eye. 

Danny stands up. “Oh yeah?” he says. “What instrument?”

“A few different ones,” I say, my voice tight as I try to hold on to the smoke.  “Piano. Drums. Bass. Guitar.”  

I exhale.

“Huh,” he says. He hands me the joint again.

I watch as he carefully hangs the tongs on the handle of the barbecue and walks over to where I sit. I say nothing as he pushes my legs apart so he can stand between them. He slides the skirt of my dress upward slowly—so slowly—to bare my legs. He pulls the top of my dress down—I wore no bra, I don’t really need one—and rubs his thumb across my nipple as my eyes grow wide. I blow a long plume of smoke over his head to hide my nerves. He bends his head to kiss the hard bud and runs his knuckles up my inner thigh once, twice, three times; traces the seam of my pussy with a tender, curious touch. He pulls back and looks at me, his face amused: I’m as surprised as he is at how wet I’ve become. 

“How do you like it?” he asks, his voice matter-of-fact.

“Slow and soft at first,” I say, my voice hoarse. I’ve thought about him, about this, for years. “Then fast and hard.”

He nods, his face intent as he absorbs my words. He rubs the rough, calloused pads of his fingers lightly across my nipples, watching as the flesh contracts and tightens under his ministrations. I make small grunting noises in the back of my throat as I watch his flesh, tanned and smooth, move across the pale skin of my breasts. He lifts his eyes to my face and grins as my back arches higher and harder. Then without warning he drops his right hand and slides two thick fingers deep inside me, as far as they’ll go, grinding and curving them upward until I emit a high, keening cry.

“Shhhh,” he says playfully. “Most of our old neighbors still live here.”

“Fuck you,” I say. I grab his shoulders, kneading the flesh there. “I’m dying.”

He pushes the fingers already inside me a little farther, a little higher—I can see the tendons and muscles of his forearm contracting with the effort—then drags them out of me with infinite care and slowness, curling them as they almost completely withdraw. He does it a second time and then a third. By the fourth, I have to shove my face into his shoulder to muffle my screams as my flesh convulses around him.

After that, he goes savagely fast as I sit there on that low garden wall, his cheeks hollowing as he sucks my nipples deep into his mouth, his thumb pressing against the swelling bud of my clit, his fingers fucking me with a ruthlessness that has my legs involuntarily moving and flexing—I can hear the rubber heels of my sneakers hitting the bricks of the wall with a random, staccato beat. 

Then he stops right before I come a third time—the steaks are almost done, he says. I sit there, trembling and dry-mouthed, as he puts the meat on a platter  to rest. He places a clear plastic dome over the food to ward off flies. He turns off the grill. He wipes his hands on the kitchen towel tucked in the back of his pants.  Then and only then does he turn toward me and extend a hand, flexing his fingers in silent command: come here.  

I use my own hands to brace myself before I jump off the wall. My legs are still too wobbly to rely on them for any kind of support. 

“Let’s go upstairs,” he says, grasping my waist. “I want you to suck me off.”

“Okay,” I say. The absurdity of the situation threatens to overwhelm me. I still haven’t set foot inside my childhood home. I drop my eyes to hide my laughter. 

His former bedroom has plaid sheets and a plain grey duvet on the bed; his  teenage sports and academic trophies have been moved to a tasteful single cabinet,  and the walls are bare except for a few photos and a calendar. 

“No posters of girls in bikinis,” I remark out loud.

He smiles at me, then sits on the bed. He spreads his knees apart, then points  at the floor. I kneel, place my arms on his thighs, and look into his face. He gathers my hair—I wear it longer than I had as a teenager—into a thick mass at the crown of my head, watching closely as I unzip his pants, push aside his underwear, and grasp his already hard cock, its smooth girth hot in the palm of my hand, and put my mouth around it. 

“That’s good,” he says, as I angle my head, bent my neck. He tugs firmly at  my hair and I moan a little around the wide head of his dick. I cup his balls, rub his perineum, push him as far as he can go into my throat. I hum,  running up and down the scales, so he can feel the vibrations from my vocal folds passing into his flesh. He grunts approvingly and runs his free hand down the skin of my neck, across my chest. He reaches into my dress to rhythmically squeeze my tits as I suck and kiss and coo over him until he’s close, very close. 

Now it's my turn to point and gesture. He kicks off his pants, removes his shirt, lays backwards onto his bed. He sits up again so he can watch me, intent and  still, as I pull my dress over my head. I stand there for a moment, maybe two, then revolve slowly on one heel so he can look at all of me. 

When I turn back around to face him, he moves his eyes up to meet my gaze and smiles. 

I push him flat on his back. I fluff up one pillow as carefully as if I were a hotel chambermaid and move it underneath him so it cradles his skull. Then I mount him and grasp his cock so I can press the head of it against myself, into myself, from ass to clit and back again, just the way I like it. I close my eyes and  moaned.

“You’re noisy,” he says. “You love fucking.”

I moan in reply. Suddenly I feel a little shy, even as my pussy grows slick and I can feel blood pulsing up his shaft as I tease myself.

“Look at me,” he says, his voice low. He locks his hands around my hips, his fingers digging into my flesh.  “Look at me when you’re using my dick to get yourself off.”

I put one hand on his chest and look him in the eye. His pupils are enormous, his face flushed, his breathing erratic and deep. He looks from my cunt to my face and back again.

“I love this,” I say. “I love the way it feels when I’m about to come. Like my pussy is a dark star, about to collapse in on itself. I love how good it feels when I have a fat cock inside me, pushing my walls apart, slamming into me over and over again. I love coming on a hard dick.”

He exhales. “Christ.”

I can feel myself getting wetter and wetter as I continue to use his flesh to agitate and arouse myself to the point of no return. His eyes are burning into me, his breath hitching and catching in his throat. Finally, he removes my hand and pulls me onto his stiff upthrust dick and holds me there, unmerciful as I writhe and wince and  yelp in a sour-sweet combination of pleasure and pain.

He’s a little too big for me to stay on top, even when he removes some of the burden by wrapping his hands around either side of my waist to slide me up and down. I had been wrong to assume that his youthful strength has evaporated entirely. Finally I tell him he has to stop, that it’s too uncomfortable. We flip positions  and he puts his mouth between my legs, whispering pet names and soothing words and promising that it’ll feel better from here on out. I grip his hair as my legs kick outward, spasming like a dog being scratched in just the right place as he  laps and kisses and sucks at that hot button of flesh between my legs, plunging his tongue up to the root inside of me, his thrusts tireless and strong. After several minutes of this, he withdraws entirely to look at me, the gasping sweaty mess I’ve become, before he puts his tongue back inside me. It feels fatter and wetter now, or maybe that’s just my pussy. He holds a big palm over my lower belly to keep me still since I keep wiggling both toward and away from him, the sensations almost too much to bear. He pushes three fingers inside me and then makes his tongue stiff, drawing a firm line up and down over my clit, half a dozen times. 

I come for what feels like minutes then, just a long shuddering spasm that breaks into smaller ones that chain themselves together and become a single-pointed, overwhelming sensation only to again break apart into a dozen separate micro orgasms—lather, rinse, repeat. 

When I’ve settled down—when I’ve shoved his head away from me because my stomach aches from the clenching and contractions he’s put me through—he dips his head and blows a long, cool stream of air directly onto my poor, red overworked cunt. I come one more time, like a freight train screaming through the night, a long high whistle of joy escaping my lips. 

I flip onto my hands and knees, and he fucks me from behind  as hard as he can until we’re both gasping for air. He asks if he can fuck me in the ass. I say no thank you. He murmurs agreement and digs his fingers once more into my hips. He pushes me flat onto my belly and shoves a pillow under my hips so my ass tilts toward the ceiling. He moves my legs close together and fucks me that way, his legs flanking mine. When he comes, he’s quiet, almost completely silent. I can feel his pelvis and hips convulsing and I start to moan myself, in sympathy and arousal.

When he pulls out, still semi-hard, I feel the walls of my pussy clench forcefully around his departing cock and smother my sounds of protest into the surface of the mattress. 

Afterward, I kiss the taste of myself off his lips. He confesses that he doesn’t usually get so aggressive right off the bat. I say in this case I’ll allow it. I run my fingers along his jawline. His stubble is soft, fine, and thick—almost velvety, like the hair on his head, unlike the wiry thatch between his legs. I rub my face, my breasts, my nipples against his beard like a love struck kitty cat, it feels so good—no stubble burn, I remark and he smiles. We keep kissing and to our mutual surprise, become aroused again. We aren’t kids, after all, though it feels as if we had opened some portal to an alternate past via our screwing—some hot summer night between my junior and senior year, I might have been the kind of girl who could have snuck into his bedroom when he was home on vacation, and we would have fucked well into the wee hours of the morning before I had to climb out his window and get myself back into my own room before anyone found out. 

“Let me try something,” he says, and pushes me onto my back. He opens my  legs and plays with me, his fingers slick with my fluids. He inserts one finger, then two. I wince: I’m more tender than I thought. 

“I don’t think I can go again,” I say ruefully. The mind is willing but the flesh is spent. 

He rises to one elbow, looks at me thoughtfully. He drums his fingertips against my belly. “I get it,” he says. “We really went at it. Just give me a minute.” He drops his head then, and I brace myself—even the wet rasp of his tongue may be too much, but instead he rubs the soft nap of his beard against me, over my outer lips, uses his thumbs to spread me open and stroke the inner ones, finally rubbing his chin over my clit. I feel liquid move through me and soak his face. I lift my hips off the bed. A moan is pulled from my throat; I ache, but I can’t bear for him to stop. Suddenly, shockingly, he lowers his suede-soft chin forward and thrusts it inside me, dragging it from the opening of my pussy up to my clit with slow,  agonizing thoroughness. I think my spine might crack into pieces as the spasms tear through me; I feel as if an electrical current has been inserted into me. I shout: a sound of triumph, a sound of pleasure, an admission of agony. I call his name; I yell the word fuck as loud as I can. And even when it’s over, a thousand aftershocks roll through my body. I grip his neck as if I’m enduring some sort of hard labor. He looks in my eyes and tries not to look too self-satisfied until I’m done. 

Photo by Kirill