The Bluffing Game by Verona Vale Page B

relationship.”
    I smiled. “I concur with all of those terms.”
    “Can you stop with the legalese for a minute?”
    “You’ve gotta admit it’s clear.” But he was right. I didn’t want to turn this into a no-strings contract like Sterling had with Andrea.
    Nick said, “I just want to hear June the human being right now, not June the attorney.”
    “Well, they get hard to parse sometimes. But I’m here. And I’m happy we’re giving it a shot.”
    “Do you want to meet for dinner?”
    I let openly myself flirt with him for the first time in years, guilt-free. It was a full and fulfilling sensation. “How about dessert? My place.”
     
    ~
     
    If you’ve ever been on an extremely strict diet after a lifestyle of freedom, you know about temptation. There’s always the memory of that one thing you miss so badly, whether it’s chocolate, a juicy hamburger, or just a steaming slice of crispy white bread slathered with butter, the smell of it so overpowering you can taste it. Getting back together with an ex after eight years usually goes one of two ways—either you revel in the illicitness of sucking forbidden fruit, only to kick yourself in the morning and remember what it really does to you inside, or, on the other hand, you finally taste again that thing you’ve been wanting for so long, and not only is it every bit as scrumptious as you remembered, you also can’t believe you ever thought it was worth it to live without it.
    Sometimes the initial rush of just doing the deed, breaking the abstinence, lasts so long that it takes a while to figure out which way it’s going, and the morning after, you don’t scold yourself, not for breaking your streak and not for waiting so long to break it. That’s how it was with Nick. A hug between close friends, even friends who were once together, is far, far different from the hesitant, exhilarated touch of lovers. Even the small act of putting our arms around each other right inside my front door, and letting ourselves feel, freely, everything we’d always wished we could feel forever, was like floating on a bed of air, letting it carry us in unconditional trust through whatever course it happened to take.
    Our desire for one another came in like a long, slow wave, and we rode it, letting it lift us up, and up, and somehow further up. We loosened ties and unbuttoned shirts and unclasped belts and forgot to step out of our shoes, all with the nervously quivering hands and shortness of breath of teenagers secretly exploring for the first time, the adrenaline jolt that thumped our hearts almost too much to bear, almost painful, but by the time we were both topless and running our hands up and down each other’s familiar backs and tasting each other’s soft necks again, finally, finally wrapped in each other, the nervousness slowly but inexorably subsided, and the rise of the second wave rose up underneath us.
    We left our clothes in a pile on the hardwood foyer, and in the living room lay on the couch, taking turns feeling each other’s weight on top of our own, re-introducing ourselves to every inch of each other’s skin, rubbing hands over arms and feet over legs and lips over chest and stomach. We kissed, gently, forcefully, penetrating with tongues one second and sliding back into soft grasping of lips the next. We felt each other’s wetness and firmness and readiness, and wordlessly we slid into closeness, him stretching deep inside me, me consuming and enveloping and squeezing him. We brought out old routines and rhythms as if asking each other how much we remembered, and then left them behind as if to say, let’s be something new.
    This second wave took blissfully longer to crest, and we floated on it, rose toward the sky on it, blurring and dissipating into each other’s heat and strength and gentleness, our bodies sharing one taste, one smell, one touch, merging from the hips upward until, as if our minds could not rest until they became one as well,