Under the Stars and Stripes (Under Him)

“There’s more, though,” he tells me. “Like electricity that doesn’t hurt you when you touch it.”

“Exactly,” I say to him, with a smile creeping up on my face. “In fact, it’s almost like that electricity is coming from inside you. Like when we touch, we’re closing some sort of circuit and exchanging these unique energies.”

I feel myself start to blush again.

“Oh, shit. I can’t believe I just said that out loud.”

“It’s true though,” he says. “I feel it too, and I couldn’t have said it any better or more eloquently myself, because that’s exactly how it feels.”

“Well, then fuck the butterflies,” I say, taking another step in toward him. “Maybe what we’re talking about is…”

“A spark,” we say in tandem, and then we fall into one another, like two parallel walls in an imploding building.

If it wasn’t for the fact that everything about this feels as though it’s exactly the right thing to be doing right now, I’d probably be pulling myself away from him and pointing out how inappropriate it is, being that I’m his employee and he’s my boss.

I’d probably also tell him that this living arrangement idea was not a good idea and that I should get my things and go back to my dad’s or Sarah’s.

But this spark… it’s already lighted a flame.

The very first kiss seems to last a lifetime, and not in a bad way. It’s just that the moment our lips finally touch, it seems as though time begins getting slower and slower all around us.

Every sound stretches in length and deepens in pitch, every movement progresses, although more and more slowly as the kiss goes on until every person and everything in the world around us has just frozen in time.

When we come up for air, I swear I can almost hear that sort of whirring sound you hear after electric is restored from an outage. And even though the entire world around me has finally begun to move again and has returned to its original pace, I can’t help but notice how much different everything I see around me looks.

Colors are brighter, vibrant in ways I didn’t even know that they could be, and I can see the light cast from the sun and bulbs dancing into even the darkest corners of the environment.

It’s almost as though this very kiss between two people who dared not even consider that they could ever have any sort of romantic relationship with one another broke some sort of spell of despair the world had been under. Or at least it interrupted it somehow for the time being.

“Can I tell you something?” I ask him.

“You can tell me anything,” he says.

“Well… it’s just that… I don’t know… I know we’ve only known each other a few days, but somehow it just feels like our time together transcends our physical bodies— like we’ve spent centuries together as spirits before coming to this life.”

I chew on the ends of my hair nervously, wondering if he’ll think I sound like a fool.

“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” he asks me, as if I must be kidding. “Because I feel the same way, Brittany.”

“No, it’s not the only thing. Actually, you kind of cut me off before the big finish.”

“Which was?” he asks.

“Which was that I… I feel so safe when you’re around. I normally have so many insecurities and fears buzzing through my head so fast all at the same time, but something about when I’m with you… whether at work or just right here and now… makes it so that I don’t feel so afraid.”

His mouth drops open.

“Was that– is it too soon to be saying that?” I ask, horrified. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m not good at this thing– whatever it is that we’re doing. I’ve never had any good examples of what intimacy is. My parents hated each other, and I never knew either side of my grandparents. I’ve never even had a boyfriend before– oh, fuck— not that you’re my boyfriend, of course!”

He’s going to think I’m such a weirdo.

“Brittany,” he interrupts me. “It’s not too soon. I feel safe with you, too. I feel a lot of things when you’re around that I don’t know that I ever have felt before either. And it’s terrifying and unexpected, but the feelings are so welcome and comfortable that I can’t just get up and run from them.”

I smile, and then I lean in to kiss him again. And when the kiss is over, he still holds me there, and I feel his cock throbbing through both our pants, and I want it.

It’s not like I was waiting for marriage before I lost my virginity or anything. It just seems like since the moment I got into high school, I have always been too busy for boys. So much so that my mom even thought for a while that I might be gay.