The feelings won’t go away. I don’t even know what they are. I’m confused between missing an idea and missing a person — missing an experience and missing something that could have been. Everything feels very empty and I’m reaching out for the person who gave me life and true excitement through it, but he’s not there. I don’t care when, how or if we have sex. I just want him back in my life, back in my room playing guitar and singing past midnight. There’s an emptiness left in me, a void that got progressively larger as the time went by and I left the door open. I don’t care if he loves me. I don’t care if he fucks me. I just want him here.
I never really thought I’d have him because of timing, my own inadequacy and life playing ugly tricks. It started off platonic, then it got really fun, then it got really really fun, then we had sex and then it was over. I’ve wondered many times over the past couple of months if I would have preferred for that night not to have happened. If it was a mistake, if everything would have been better had we not given in. And every single time I find it so hard to fault myself. It was amazing in every way and I wouldn’t trade it in for a little more of my sanity.
With him I was in a state between caring and lust. A raw connection that I find so hard to believe came from my end only. It was neither aggressively passionate sex nor a neutral vanilla connection. But something came together and fit so well inside of me as I grasped his back and urged him to press into my groin, easing him deeper inside me. But the energy had begun to soar through my body as I felt my heart rate shoot up before I even began. By this point, we’d spent the better portion of seven hours between sleep, a terrible movie, sangria, wine and laughing, under a light blanket on my hard carpeted floor. With not much left to say, he eased closer. He’d had his hand on my thigh and I hadn’t moved in a while. He knew I was okay and I know he could feel I wanted this. He inched closer to me on the pillows, moved my hair out of my face and stood still there; I could feel his soft breath on my face. I’d never understood what those few seconds before a kiss meant. I’d usually manually skipped to the sex part. But this, this was different. I felt wanted, cared for, respected with the perfect combination between giving me space and wanting me so much that I could feel the seconds of resistance pinching viciously at me, as constant reminders of the pleasure I was holding off on.
The rest of the night I remember in flashes of trickles of sweat, his fingers caressing my clitoris as he took me from behind, my back arching so that my shoulder blades pushed against his chest, my head leaning back next to his. He spoke to me in sensual languages as he traced his lips against mine, down my chest, my shoulders, my nipples as he ate me out and I pressed down on his head, my fingers grasping at his hair. I clenched my toes tight to avoid waking my neighbor. I breathed through my screams, cramping up as he began inching upwards towards my chest replacing his soft lips with his throbbing penis. I couldn’t hold my voice low much longer as he pulled me closer and I released myself to the rhythm of his body.
The morning came and it was peaceful. A normal day. But as time went by, we spoke less and less. I think of him though, a lot. I reached out to say hi, he reached out to meet up. But he’s gone again. And I know I’ve cared too much. I don’t know if I’m looking for closure or hope at this point. I don’t know if it’s okay to miss him months later. But I don’t know if I can move on with this door closed. Maybe I’ll just have to accept he’s going to be the person for me with all the ‘ifs.’ The person who could have been, the one who could have made my life amazing, but the one, who through life’s funny ways, just never was — the one I just let slip away.
The Duchess is a student at Cornell. Comments may be sent to [email protected]. Between the Sheets appears periodically this semester.