Content Warning: Mention of substance abuse and overdose.
When we bumped into each other quite literally, while she was en route to the library and I was en route from the bar, she told me to watch where the fuck I was going and to go fuck myself. It was raining kinda hard. I truly had not been looking where I was going, fair. Head down, half hunched under my skewed umbrella, I’d been loading a fucking video on my phone of some chick who could twerk it. Distracting. I’m a dirty man.
I’d had too much to drink the night (and the hour) before, it’s true. I was fucked. Before you judge, just know that my little sister had died about six months earlier, and ever since then, I’d been hitting the bottle pretty hard. I knew it was no excuse. I knew that spiraling into addiction was the last reaction I should have to her death, to the way she died. I just… I couldn’t see anything but my own misery: our fucked up childhood, and all that had led to Hannah going out the way she had.
Sobering, right?
I guess you could say that meeting Twaila set me on fire, thus, saving me. But not in the religious sense.
I didn’t get her name right away. She pushed past me, her Rottweiler puppy in tow on a leash behind her. That was one cute puppy. I kinda stood there and watched her walk away. I reeked of booze. I hadn’t showered in a couple of days, and I knew that if I didn’t get my act together soon, I’d stop looking fit, too. Not good. Terry wasn’t so stoked on serving me any more beers or shots. He’d said:
“Son, I’ve known you and your family a long time. What happened to your sister is a tragedy. And grieving is something you can’t skip out on. I know that. But don’t you dare go putting your family through a second tragedy, now.” And he’d handed me that last beer.
I watched her walk away. Ignored the video. Dropped my motherfucking cell in a puddle.
“I’m sorry!” I called after her. “I’m an asshole!” I screamed, probably with a little too much passion in my voice. Not even a turn-around.
She was fucking hot. I hadn’t found anyone hot since I don’t remember when. That ass. That walk. She made rubber boots and cycling pants look incredible. Her wavy black hair all pinned up above her face. She was gone. Angry. She’d been really angry.
I don’t know why, but I wanted to know why.
About three weeks later, I was on the up and up, well, relatively speaking anyway. I wasn’t trying to kill myself with booze anymore. It was huge. And I had taken to cleaning a lot. I might’ve been smoking a little weed. So what. I was getting my house back in order. Every now and then, that angry but beautiful face popped into my mind, and I wondered if I would see her again. I knew I hadn’t stuck in her mind at all, at least not in a positive way, but somehow I knew it was just a matter of time before I ran into her again. And when I did, I wouldn’t run into her again.
I was driving to work (I’m the IT guy at a start-up, yadeeyah) and traffic was seriously backed up. Must’ve been an accident or something. I looked down for a second to make sure my fly was up, and when I looked back up, my slow roll sent me tapping right into the fender in front of me. Ok, it was a bit more than a tap. Swearing like a maniac because I was already late, I pulled over onto the shoulder once there was room to do so, cutting my way through another lane to make it happen, and the car in front of me did the same. I got out of my car to apologize and take coordinates if necessary, not that I could afford paying for a damn thing, and it was her, of course. She didn’t recognize me.
“Fuck,” she was muttering under her breath. “Dude, this is not even my car.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “But you know, it’s basically just a scratch…” I smiled. “I can take care of it.”
“Hey, oh my god, you’re that guy who walked right into me a few weeks ago. I don’t believe this. Are you like, following me around or something? Trying to bang into me in as many ways as you possibly can?”
We looked at each other for a moment. And I couldn’t help myself, but my concerned look slowly morphed into a smile, and my smile into a slow chuckle. In spite of herself, she laughed a little too. She placed her hands on her hips, and shook her head, breathing deeply.
“What the fuck? I’m Twaila.” She extended her hand.
“Vince.”
“This is a bad day,” she had said.
“Let’s make it better,” I’d said. God, she was beautiful. Suddenly it didn’t matter that I was late.
“Who the fuck are you?” She was wearing a striking purple dress that ended mid-thigh and fit her body like a glove. Perfect hips. Slender. Lovely. Wavy black hair let loose. Her nose was simply seductive. Her toenails were painted bright red, which looked hot against her rich brown skin tone. White flipflops.
I knew I looked pretty good myself. I’ve got a thick head of black hair, Greek features, and I stand 6 feet tall. I used to box, and am still in pretty good shape, miraculously. I was wearing a white button-up shirt tucked into khaki knee-length shorts.
She looked me up and down.
“You think you can make it better?”
Half an hour later, parked down by the river, we had both called in sick. She was leaning against a tree looking at me, still. Big eyes.
“When you walked into me in the street,” she said. “You were in pain, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. I was. I still am,” I answered slowly, with an awareness of my body, my sensations, as they heightened. “And you were angry. Really angry. About something other than my sorry ass, weren’t you?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I guess I still am too,” she said.
Our eyes locked again, with humor, and my hand was already touching her face. The way I see it, it was unavoidable. It wasn’t until way later that I started to learn the intricacies of Twaila’sheart, and her beautiful rage, but in this moment there was only my hand and her face, and our breath. I took her face firmly in both hands and moved in to kiss her, but she pulled away at the last second. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from a pocket I didn’t notice she had and lit up.
She looked at me with intent, straight in the eyes.
“What? Are you gonna tell me something sweet, now?” she asked softly, sadness in her voice. And then, while she smoked the cigarette with one hand, and continued to stare at me, she reached down with the other and began to lift her dress, fingers stationed at her waist as she slowly fingered the fabric upward. Exhaling smoke in my face, she said: “Wanna run into me for a third time, Vince?” Her eyes were dark and lovely.
My breath caught in my throat as the purple fabric rose just above her hip bone to reveal smooth skin. Bare, silken creases exposed with longing. Ready for anything. Leaning back against the tree, still smoking, she parted her legs, propping one foot up on an abandoned concrete block.
“Get on your knees,” she said. I was a little shocked at first. I’d never had a girl tell me what to do like that before. But my cock was bursting out of my shorts all of a sudden, so I got down on the muddy bank, at eye level with her perfect pussy. I looked up at her. Her cigarette was eternal.
“Run into me again, Vince. I dare you. No hands.”
She didn’t have to ask me twice. I practically nose-dived, running my Grecian nostrils in and out and around her clit as I inhaled deeply. I knew she wanted my tongue, but I withheld, sliding the tip of my nose into her wet slit and rocking gently back and forth. She let out a low moan. I felt her throw her head back, because the rest of her lithe body compensated. She must have dropped the cigarette because her foot was lightly stubbing something out.
Breaking her rule, I grabbed her hips suddenly and firmly with my hands to pull her closer. She pulled away.
“No hands,” she repeated, but gently, so I took them away and stowed them obediently behind my back but then she moved her hips in closer all on her own, slowly grinding her sweet pussy right into my waiting face. I ran my tongue down to meet her, and up to guide her, and then into her wetness and around in a spiral: genuine hunger. I made some kind of animal noise, uncontrollably. It was all I could do not to shoot my hands out again to bring her in, in, in.
She was breathing heavy. Her legs were shooting out to secure the ground, and she was dipping into me. Moving down and in, down and in.
“Hold my ass,” she managed, between breaths. “Hold my ass.”
I reached out and cupped her ass with both my hands from behind, one cheek in each. I squeezed tightly, and held on, using this newfound grasp to move my eager tongue further into her. I tasted everything I could. I loved her from the very first taste, I tell you.
What do any of us know about love? Maybe love is in a taste.
She grabbed me by the hair then, and pulled me into her deeper, rubbing herself all over my face, while my hands still cupped her firm ass. Her back arched against that tree and she kicked her clean white flipflops into the mud without a care, standing on her toes and clawing them into the earth. She was moaning now, back and forth she was moaning onto me.
And then she was cumming, her juices gushing all over me, dripping from that strong Greek nose of mine.
I drank as much of her as I could.
She slid her back down that tree as I fell back to lie in the dirt and there we both were: wet, dirty, catching our breath. She closed her eyes, inhaling sharply.
Looking over at her from where I lay heaving, my cock still hard and begging to be released, I saw she was crying. Silently, warm tears. They had to be warm, as they glided down her silky face. She opened her eyes to look at me through the water, and smiled. The most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.
And then she lay down in the mud with me and rolled to me. Literally, rolled her body, the way a kid would roll down a hill, except the ground was flat. She rolled right into my chest, my heat, as I lay on my side, her face to my neck, and I caught her and held her there, close.
“We’re both in pain,” she said, kissing my throat, lightly.
“I want you around,” I said.
“Mmmm,” she nuzzled her head into my chest, and wrapped her things around my waist.
And then, something miraculous happened. We talked about life, and love, and loss, and cried a little, and made out a lot, and got mud all over our fine selves for the better part of two hours.
Twaila and I got to know each other. We got a taste for each other, there on the ground.
And we’re still doing it.