Everything inside me collapses in a fast free-fall.

I spring from my chair and race to the kitchen. I don’t want Alan to see me cry. My fingers curl around the edge of the sink, my head lowered as I struggle to breathe in and out.

He thinks I’m who walked away from us. It’s too much for my emotionally undone senses. That I haven’t a clue why I never received a phone message or letter from him doesn’t matter. Alan hates me. It would have been so much better if Alan hadn’t come to Berkeley. If I had never known this.

Alan’s voice sounds behind me, void of emotion, but at least no longer angry.

“Why are you crying, Chrissie?”

“You can be so mean sometimes, Alan. Why did you come here if all you wanted to do is insult me and call me names? I would have preferred to pass on that.”

“I would prefer not to be here as well.” He says it coldly.

“Then why did you come?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “It did seem ridiculous to be in San Francisco and not to see you, Chrissie. So I came here.”

“You sent me roses for Christmas, didn’t you?” I whisper.

A long pause; I can feel him staring at me.

“Yes,” he says, the edge returning to his voice again.

I push my lips tightly together, fighting a fresh wave of tears. I knew they were from Alan. I knew it in my heart. I felt it in my skin.

“Was there a card with the roses?”

“No,” he says in a rough way. “I had given up sending you cards by then.”

“How long after I left New York did you continue to call me? Send me letters?”

“I don’t see as how that’s important now.”

“It’s important to me.”

He takes a minute.

“A year.”

Another heavy silence between us, and the emotion warring in the room isn’t only my own.

“Why didn’t you call me, Chrissie?”

The room is suddenly overfilled with the feel of Alan. His anger. His hurt. I’m dizzy and confused.

“I didn’t know you tried to reach me. If I’d have known you called me, I would have called you back. But I didn’t know. I didn’t get your messages or anything else. I thought, when I left New York, we were over. Clean break. You told me we were over if I left. What was I supposed to think?”

“I was angry. It was bullshit to get you to stay. I didn’t mean it when I said we were over. I regretted saying it the moment you walked out the door.”

Time stops around me, heavy and silent.

“Where did you go the summer after you left me?” he asks in a worried way. “Linda wouldn’t talk to me about you. It got me concerned. And Jack doesn’t take my calls since New York.”

Concerned. I can’t begin to process that one, or what I hear in his voice.

“I drove across country with Rene. An after graduation road trip we’d planned all through high school. Jack thought it would be good for me. So we went.”

“So you weren’t in Santa Barbara?”

“No.”

“I traveled to Santa Barbara two weeks after you left to try to reach you. Went to your house. Maria said you weren’t there. I’ve always wondered if she lied to me.”

My senses slowly grow aware that I’m still facing the sink with my hands clutching the counter, the only thing keeping me on my feet.

Two weeks. He only just missed me. “I wasn’t there.”

Another long exhale of breath. “Chrissie, look at me,” Alan orders.

I can’t move. If I let go of the counter I will drop to the floor.

“Please, look at me, Chrissie.”

He brushes the hair from my neck with his fingers. I want to turn into him. I want him to hold me. My entire body feels vacant with shock, like I’ve been run over by a truck. All this time, I thought he ended it with me.

“I apologize for being an ass earlier,” he murmurs, his voice pulling me from my thoughts. “I didn’t mean a single word. Not the cruel ones. I’ve been nervous since I walked through the door.”

My fingers curl tighter around the rim of the sink. “I’m really glad you came to see me. It’s been hard wondering why we ended not at least as friends.”

Alan’s body eases closer into me, not touching, but close enough to surround me with the feel of him anyway.

“It’s been hard for me, every day, not being with you,” he whispers.

I hear him swallow.

“I love you, Chrissie. I never stopped.”

“I need you to go, Alan.”

He places a feather-light kiss on my neck. It ripples along my nerves, and then jolts in my sex.

“Are you still in love with me?” he murmurs.

“I want you to go.”

“I have two days, Chrissie. I don’t have anywhere I have to be for two days.”

Two days. The blood starts pumping even more fiercely through my body. That unrelenting pull. The electric current. The want. Here, now, over a year later in Berkeley.

“Do you really want me to leave?” Alan whispers.

I hesitate.

He turns me around, away from the sink, and eases into me, one hand planted on the counter, holding his body just beyond me. I lift my face and his mouth lowers. The touch of his lips is just a touch, gentle and yet a sharp reminder of how we used to be. I feel his finger lightly on my cheek, nothing more, but the feel of him is all across my flesh.

I part my lips and he deepens the kiss in slow degrees, giving the feel of him, inch by inch.  I’m about to melt in my skin. He slowly pulls back.

I open my eyes to find him staring down at me.

“Tell me now, Chrissie, if you want me to leave.”

His expression betrays nothing. He hovers over me, watching my shifting emotions as my brain, my body, fills with my need.

“Please, tell me you want me to stay,” he says softly.

I take in a steadying breath. I say nothing and he leans into me. His lips touch my neck, my breathing increases, my head tilts back as my heart accelerates. I don’t stop him. Then I’m pinned against the counter and he’s kissing me passionately.

I lock my mouth on his as we devour each other’s lips in an almost desperate, frenzied way. I let him press my body against him, lifting me into his pelvis, molding us together, giving me the feel of him there.

He lifts me from the floor, never breaking contact with my lips, and he carries me from the kitchen. Somehow, he knows where to take me and eases me back on my bed. I don’t resist as he undresses me and I lie still as he gazes down at me. The cool air of the room touches my flesh, and the warmth of his fingers brush it away.

He starts to remove his clothes.

A kiss on my arm; my heart skips a beat.

A touch on my shoulder; tears in my eyes.

He covers my entire body with a kiss and a touch, but he doesn’t say the words whispering through my memory. He doesn’t need to. A kiss: I’m sorry. A touch: I love you. Soon, all I’m feeling is him and I’m out of my mind with the feel of him.

His clothes are in a pile on the floor. He’s naked, standing there staring at me. He exhales, a ragged shudder through his limbs, and then he’s in me. I close my eyes and I revel in the feel of him, the taste of his mouth, the bite of his fingers as he holds my hips, easing out of me slowly, and then again, harder, slamming into me.

He moves faster and faster.  I wrap my legs around him. I rake his back with my nails. I bite his shoulder. I run my tongue along his flesh. I feel myself tighten and tighten. I’m whimpering and he’s overfilling me as I melt around him.

He lifts up onto his knees, taking my hips with him, going as deep as he can go inside me. I come quickly, calling out his name. Alan follows with another hard thrust, and the surface of his flesh is claimed by trembling as he pours himself into me.

Slowly he quiets, lowering us to the bed, until he’s on top of me, his face in my hair.  I kiss his head. My fingers wander the surface of his back. We’re both quiet inside, and I’m lost in Alan, again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN