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The friend she found after
“So you're going to be at this ceremony thing, right? Because Matt can't come and I don't want to be standing all by myself with a bunch of football people pretending I care about college ball,” Julie says, and even though they’re talking on the phone Jess can tell Julie’d rolled her eyes as she said ‘college ball’.
“Julie, I hate to break this to you but I am a football person,” Jess replies, wedging the phone between her ear and scrunching up her nose as she clears out the litter tray.
“Oh come on, don't sell yourself short,” Julie says, and Jess can imagine her with a stack of students’ work on the passenger seat next to her, driving home from work, her laughing face reflected in the car mirror.
“I'm choosing not to be offended by you right now,” Jess replies. She chucks the used litter into a plastic bag, and pulls the ties shut, contemplating running it downstairs to her apartment complexes’ main trash cans. “Yeah, I'm going.”
“This is great news,” Julie says.
Jess walks to the sink and washes her hands with so much hand-wash liquid that she knows she’ll be able to feel a film of the stuff on her skin even after rinsing it off. Worth it though.
“I don’t think the ceremony thing’s going to go late,” Jess says, chucking the bag in the trash can just outside her door, the one the landlord has explicitly told her shouldn't be used for this purpose, no one saw though, she checks to make sure.
“I really hope not,” Julie responds.
One of the parents of the kids I coach gave me a bottle of Pinot, we should drink it because I’m pretty sure it cost twice what I’d normally spend.”
“Ummmm...” Julie starts in reply, a noise that could be a response to traffic.
“Are you doing family stuff that night?” Jess asks. She’s had to divide Eric Taylor, Coach, from Eric Taylor, Julie’s dad. The former is a good boss, if one with an erratic approach to paperwork, the latter a good father with occasional bouts of unthoughtfulness.
“No, I’m free, we’re doing brunch the next morning, which dad is pissed about...” Julie trailed off, moving East hadn’t changed Coach Taylor’s issues with brunch. Julie continues, “which is good because we still have the American education system to fix, and that will probably take at least a few hours.”
“Probably,” Jess replies, smiling into the half-lit gloom of her mostly-tidy apartment.
“OK, great. I better go because I've just realised I am completely lost and I am supposed to be at this debate event in about ten minutes. The last time Zane Brown got left unattended at another school it was not pretty, people had to sign waivers.”
Julie Taylor had been far more of a presence in Jess’s post-school life than she'd ever been at school. That was at least partly because Jess now works for Julie’s dad. Julie still lives in Chicago with Matt, he's working at the Art Institute, is doing a masters in preservation and Julie teaches high school. Jess stayed at their apartment last January on the way to a training camp in California. It was messy with unmarked essays, charcoal sketches and a truly alarming number of fancy condiments, amassed like an army next to the stove.
Last January, Julie and Jess had stayed up drinking red wine on the sofa bed, a mimicry of the kind of slumber parties they’d never shared as teenagers. They’d ended up having a fairly intense conversation about teaching, mostly in furious agreement, leading to a few spots of red wine on the patterned sofa cover from overly enthusiastic gesticulation. Julie was good to talk to about the links between classroom teaching and coaching. Jess had always known Julie Taylor had a lot of opinions, and now she loved hearing them. They basically agreed on the limitations of teaching and coaching in affecting change. Coach point blank refused to have this conversation with Jess, even when she’d pulled out the big guns and told him it was important for a college essay. He’d said the word pedagogy made him nauseous and no amount of Jess leaving copies of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed around the office had changed his mind.
Two weeks after the phone call from Julie, Eric receives an award for his coaching. He looks terribly awkward while doing so, alternating between an open smile and glaring at the audience as if he personally blames them for the terrible finger food and badly chosen background music. Despite the show Jess knows that if nothing else he loves the excuse to order Julie to come see her family. For her part Jess spends the time circulating around the important people, occasionally catching Julie in the corner of her eye. Julie's standing with Tami and making no secret that she's eager to go, her gestures towards the door growing increasingly ridiculous.
As soon as Jess and Julie get into Jess’s apartment after making their apologies to a whole bunch of football people Jess should probably be making more of an effort to feign interest in Julie pushes her into a chair at the kitchen table.
“So the thing is...” Julie begins with the tone of someone presenting momentous news, Jess’s heart leaps in her chest.
“What’s happened, are you OK?” Jess asks, a rush of words and concern.
“Let me tell you! The thing is. I really want to have a drink right now but, I can't drink,” and Julie pauses with a flourish and Jess sees the shadow of a dramatic teenage girl she never really knew, “...or for the next 7 months.”
And then Julie puts her hand on her stomach, like a pregnant girl in a soap opera.
“That's amazing! Right? Right?” Jess says, crushing Julie against her in a hug. Jess has done this routine with work colleagues, cousins and not-still friends from high school, this feels different.
“Yeah. Yeah, it is! I'm gonna have a baby, Jess! Matt and I made another living thing? Who let that happen?” Julie sounds like she means it as a genuine question.
Jess relinquishes her grip and leans back, trying to catch some hint of a new human being in the hang of Julie’s clothes or the curve of her belly, “That is crazy, I have no idea. You guys are going to be the best parents. Oh, I'm going to start buying baby football clothes now. What team is baby going to go for?”
“You're ridiculous. This is like a dry run for what my dad is going to be like. Maybe the baby will like lacrosse or something, you don’t know. Or Hockey!”
“You haven't told him yet?” Jess asks, ignoring the whole 'liking other sports' absurdity.
Julie pulls her arms in front of her, crosses them and bites her lip, avoids eye contact and says quietly, “you're the first.”
“Oh, wow. I...” Jess feels a bubble of selfish pride inside of her, but tamps it down as best she can.
Julie kind of rocks on her heels, still gripping her arms across her chest, “It's only early ... we're still getting used to the idea. I wanted the first person I told to ask about baby football clothes, not, like, how we're going to pay for college and what pre school we should be on the waiting list for.”
Jess smiles at her, “You’re going to be great at it, those people need to calm down. Don’t go all mombie on me Julie Taylor!”
Julie laughs back, looks more certain and says, “Yeah. Now, let’s talk about other things, I hear the first symptom of becoming a mombie is only talking about babies.”
The friend who stayed
“Let me tell you Jessy-baby I am not looking forward to Christmas this year. Maybe I should just lie. Tell everyone I'm working on the cure for cancer instead of that I flunked out of my masters and I'm working at Barnes and Nobel after flunking out of my masters,” Landry says.
“Landry, people care about you a lot less than you think they do.” Jess says, because it's something her dad says, and it's true.
Jess is passing through Austin on the way to see her dad, founder of a fast-food chain and several good pieces of advice. Landry had picked the bar. It was the kind of place where they'd purposefully mismatched the chairs, and there was thrift store trash hanging from the ceiling. The kind of place that made Jess feel at once immensely superior to half the clientele and also somehow lacking.
“It's like the song goes, Jess, famous in a small town.” Landry says, crooning at her a little, masking her laugh.
“I'm appalled that you listen to Miranda Lambert, you used to be cool.” She says.
“That was never, ever, true,” Landry says, tracing a line across the kitchy formica table top, “Did you know that Matt Givens from our AP English class is a lawyer?” he asks abruptly.
“I did not know that,” Jess replies and is glad for the distance her life has taken her from Dillon, from high school.
Landry continues, thumping a hand against the table, clearly he’s in his stride now, “Unfortunately, my mother knows. Also Natasha Batmore is modelling for JCrew and Sam Nugent is a dentist. Dentists make a lot of money. He has a new BMW with personalized number plates, Jess. I have a beat up bicycle.”
“Don’t be so sulky, you have a beat up bicycle and an apartment in Austin with a lovely girlfriend in it and you know all the shitty Austin Indie bands and some of them even let you carry their gear sometimes,” she says the last bit with a deprecating twist of her lip. That’s how she and Landry have always worked, even though they haven’t flirted in years.
“It's just a rented apartment,” Landry says, “Also sometimes they buy me drinks, and call me by my name. Well... mostly they seem to think my name is Liam. And people with personalized number plates are dicks.”
“Always. Come on, it's not as if teenage Landry wanted to be a dentist or own some stupid shiny car.”
“It's been a shitty year Jess,” Landry says, looking more intently at the table top.
Jess takes a breath, she'd kinda known that, but Landry'd been out of contact lately. They used to talk every other month or so but she hasn't heard from him since April. Julie had told her that Matt had gone back to Dillon for the funeral.
“Well, your dad died,” she says, bluntly. Landry laughs at her, and she lets out the breath and continues, “no one would ever talk about it, with my mom. It made me mad. It's a big thing. You should talk about it.”
“Did you ... I mean. Did you ever go talk to someone, a professional, about it? About your mum dying?” Landry asks.
“Not really. But just because I didn't doesn't mean you shouldn't.”
“It would be weird, right? Going to a therapist? I would feel weird doing it. It'd be like I was in a Woody Allen movie. I have the wrong accent for it.”
Jess keeps her face thoughtfully interested, eager not to reveal she still hasn't watched any Woody Allen movies. Instead she says, “keeping a healthy brain is just as important as a healthy body.”
Landry screws up his face at her, looking all the world like one of her high school students, “can you turn off the high school football coach barbie thing for a sec, y'reckon?”
Jess laughs at him, “Yeah, OK. High School Football Coach Barbie is not a real Barbie, though.”
“And a tragically untapped market it is. So, my girlfriend thinks I should go. Also, I'm on her government health insurance as of last week, so I may be running out of excuses.”
“You’ve totally picked a winner Landry,” Jess says. She’s met Landry’s girlfriend a few times and she’d been just the right amount of indulgent of Landry; sweet but tough. She has wispy red hair cut to shoulder length and her roller derby name is Strawberry Shortquake.
“I know,” Landry says with a private smile which makes Jess a little wistful. “I'll go get us another round, you good with the same?” he says, nodding at her mostly empty beer glass. She nods back her assent.
While Landry makes his way up to be served by a bored looking guy with very elaborate facial hair Jess stares across the bar at a couple waiting in line for a drink. Their hands are grasped together, their eyes locked. Gross , her inner 11 year old monologues. She's going to get her own health insurance, so those feelings can just shut right up.
Landry gets back with a glass of beer sweating in each hand, placing both of them on the table with a soft thud, but the liquid un-spilled.
“Lots of different people use the services of mental health professionals,” Jess chirps, and it has the desired effect.
Landry barks out a laugh, “Oh my God, stop.”
“But I mean it, they do, with all sorts of accents.”
“I've got that stupid Texas thing, I don't like talking about feelings.”
“Unless they're about football,” Jess says.
“Obviously,” Landry replies and continues after a second, “My dad was... not as big of a fan of mental health care professionals as you are.”
“Well fuck him!” Jess says, then feels appalled at herself. Probably not a good thing to say to someone whose dad died months ago.
But Landry looks amused, says “You’re right, fuck him. If he didn't want me going to an overcharging, mollycoddling therapist he shouldn't have died and left me with all this fucking... stuff!” Landry gestures emptily at the stuff his dad had left him with, it seems to encompass most of the bar.
They laugh at each other across the table.
“Jess, you don't suppose there's any risk we'll become well adjusted adults in the near future, do you?”
Jess has a working theory, one she’s pretty confident in, that that only happens to other people, so she replies with a laugh, “I would say there's next to no risk of that, Landry.”
The one that came back
Jess is struggling through the door of her apartment when he calls. She’s holding two Whole Foods bags, a recently dry cleaned suit jacket, a very full handbag and her cat is making an escape attempt through her legs. She dumps the bags, and shuts the door on a pissy cat. She baby-swears under breath, words her dad would let her say, “fruit cake, fudge...” as she searches through her bag for her phone. She grabs it just as the “missed call” icon appears, because, of course.
“Hey, Jess?” says a familiar voice on the other end of the line.
“Vince?” she asks in reply.
She hasn’t really heard from him in ages. They broke up freshman year, “OVER SKYPE!” her girlfriends had shrieked as if it was a war crime. What were they supposed to do, meet up half way to break up ‘properly’? No, Skype had been fine. But after, there's never been much to say. Which is sad because they’d once had so much to say, but that was kind of why they’d broken up.
Vince is talking, she realises “... so I was wondering if you would want to get a drink or something?”
“What?” she replies inelegantly.
“I was asking if you wanted to get a drink because I’m going to be in Philly and I hear that’s where all the most promising high school coaches hang out these days?”
“Oh shut up. Yes I would like to get a drink. You better pay, High School assistant coaches do nothing on first year NFL quarterbacks,” she says and he laughs.
“What are you doing in Philly?” she says, and then winces. It’s that stupid situation where she actually feels fine but their history hangs between them, complicating a totally normal phone call.
“Apparently there’s some wonder coach there, I mean, another one apart from you. Maybe if I work at it I'll get more field time next season, I am sick of the bench.”
“Always working,” she says, even though she’d seen that picture of him on Deadspin at some fancy nightclub looking completely wasted (the picture hadn't really been of him, it was their starting quarterback in the forefront, but the moment she'd seen it she'd just seen him).
“Yeah baby,” he says.
“So, when are you here?” she says, blithely hoping that comment was said with some sarcasm. She's spent a bit of time around NFL players now, and she hopes that Vince isn't completely convinced he's hot shit.
He replies, “Next week. For however long he needs me, probably a couple of weeks.”
“Text me when you’re here, but next Friday?” she says.
“Yeah, I’d like that,” he replies.
“OK, well...” she
“Bye.”
“Yeah, bye,” she says to her cell phone and then “fuck” to her cat.
Jess does a pretty great job of pretending that this isn't a big deal. After the call she orders noodles from the place across the street that will deliver if she sweet talks them, even though she could just walk the hundred or so feet across the street. She swaps her work clothes for yoga pants, and grabs a beer, sits down to watch some old game tapes Eric wanted her to report back on.
A week later Vince calls again (and this time she's got his number saved so she's a bit more prepared), and she ends up inviting him to hers, because even though he's hardly TMZ material she doesn't want someone to see them and ask questions. It's just easier.
They get ill-advised levels of drunk. Jess kind of forgets to cook dinner and Vince always was a good guest, he brought a lot of beer. To begin with she feels nervous so she drinks fast, her apartment feels too bright, too warm, the bubbly-cold of the beer makes it better. Soon they're at the stage of drunk where you need to overshare, where you can feel the juicy details of your life swishing around your head, like a bottle of coke rolling about in the back of a hot car, ready to explode.
“Are you dating anyone?' Vince asks.
“No. I mean, I was kind of sleeping with this guy but...” Jess stops. That's not the kind of thing you're supposed to say. Boyfriends? Yes. The guy you met at a bar who turned out to be a bit of a douche but who was good enough in bed you still sometimes booty-call him? No.
“... um.” She finishes.
“Nah, it's cool, it's cool.” Vince says, “Sleeping with someone is good you should, you should do that.”
“Well, um, thanks?” She says and giggles.
“Are you, do you have a girlfriend?” She asks, then feels silly. What a naïve question. NFL players probably don't even have girlfriends they just have hookers and blow.
When Vince laughs she realises that she'd said that out loud.
“Yeah, it's mostly hookers and blow. In between protein shakes and 7 am training sessions. And after all that you don't even get to play,” he says, like the sullen teenage boy she'd known.
“You will though Vince, you’ll get to play more, you know that, you're good,” Jess says, and it's not empty reassurance, she means it.
“Thanks Jess.” Vince says, smiling at her, “but nah, I don't have a girlfriend. I um was...”
“What? Does it involve an orgy?”
“No, it doesn't involve an orgy.” Vince says. Then he starts fidgeting, looking at her and then away. This is it, Jess thinks. She'd suspected it was something, because surely they'd been in the same city before but there'd been no phone call then (not from her either, to be fair).
She finds herself half-hoping, but not really, that he's going to express his enduring love for her. Right now, after this many beers, and the light hitting his face, he was her first real love and she wants . It's not the regular want of a hot guy at a bar, or Idris Elba on a screen, the simple pull of sex. It's the dull ache of romance and planned, once blended, futures.
She doesn't know what she'd do with his undying love if she had it. She doesn't want a boyfriend in the NFL, it would be complicate her career, but worst of all she'd never get to see him. Plus, neither Vince nor she are the people they were when their relationship made sense. So it's a good thing that instead of unrequited love Vince admits something a little different.
“Did you know that Luke Cafferty and I used to hook up?” he says, suddenly, looking surprised that the words made their way out of him.
“You did not!” Jess replies instinctively.
“We did. Not while we were together, Jess. I’d never have...”
“I know, dummy. But. I can't believe it. We were in high school. In Texas .”
Vince smiles wryly and inclines his head at her, says, “Gay things do happen in Texas, Jess.”
“I know, I just. You're, gay?” Jess asks, works on keeping her tone neutral. Free of judgement.
“Bi,” he replies, turning his head away but still glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.
“Cool, that's cool. So you and Luke? How?”
“We hated each other, do you remember the beginning of that season? Coach always got us to do those terrible bonding exercises in adversity together,” Vince kind of shrugs as he finishes.
“I am still processing this,” Jess says, and then hurries to correct herself, “I mean, it’s not a problem! It's great!”
“Jess, it's kind of a problem. The NFL is not the most gay-friendly place. If some pictures turn up of me making out with a guy, it'll be a big deal, a career impacting big deal.”
“You make out with guys?”
Vince laughs at her, “Didn't we just do this?”
Jess feels frustrated by her alcohol-slowed tongue, “No, what I meant was, it isn't just Luke? It's, you still...”
“No. I haven't seen him in years. We're not, y'know, star crossed lovers or whatever,” Vince says, finishing with an ‘eww’ face.
“Right.”
“If I was a girl it'd be hot though, right?” Vince says with a laugh, a self-deprecating eyebrow shake, “Katy Perry would write a song about it.”
“One,” she says, counting it on her fingers, “I'm not sure Katy Perry writing a song about your sexual experience is as great as you seem to think it is, two,” she points to her next finger, “it's not, not hot.”
“Oh really.”
“I mean, guys are into girls kissing girls. It's a thing. That people could be into.”
“People. Sure. You want me to tell you about the guy I made out with the other day?” Vince says, and he's laughing again so Jess isn't really sure how seriously she should take him.
“Yes. No. Ummm,” she answers.
“Are you, like, into it really?” he says, looking at her like she's a play to be picked apart. It's probably fair, given the conversation they just had about him.
“Yeah. I mean, I don't wanna make you feel uncomfortable. It's, it's your experience not-”
“You are being far more considerate than any one of my teammates has ever been about girls who kiss girls.”
“Not a huge achievement.”
“Well no.” Vince smiles. “But it's not as if ... I mean, the thought of you being into it that's really... uh, good. I'm saying, it wouldn't be a selfless act.”
Jess giggles at him, they smile at each other.
“So tell me then,” Jess says.
Vince kinda smirks before he starts, a dirty twist of his lip and glint to his eye, “it was at this club. A fancy place, it was a really stupid idea because there were people there who knew who I was. But Jess, you know when you see someone and just think: I want them, now?”
“Yeah” she replies dry mouthed.
“He had these lips, the kind you just wanna kiss. And his body, God Jess, I wanted him so bad. When I talked to him, it wasn’t a minute before he was asking if I wanted some air.”
Jess nods encouragingly, taking in the intent look of Vince’s eyes, the way he licks his lips before he starts to talk again.
“We ended up going out the back. He pushed me up against the wall of the alleyway. I could have easily stopped him, he wasn't as strong as me, but I let him. I sometimes like that, letting someone think they can push me around a bit.”
“Uh huh.” Jess says in reply, watching the line of his forehead. He looks bashful, she thinks.
“So we kissed, and he was doing that thing where you grab a little bit of the other person’s lip with your teeth and just bite a little. You know?”
Jess exhales sharply, replies softly, “yeah.”
“And then he dropped down to his knees. He undid my pants before I had a chance to think about how stupid I was being.”
“You were going to stop him?” Jess asks, disbelieving.
“Yeah, I was probably never going to stop him, was I?” he asks rhetorically, laughing a bit at himself.
Jess makes up her mind quickly, the beer helps. She stands up, walks around the table and straddles him, his thighs shift beneath her, hard muscle, and she whispers into his ear, “so what comes next?”
Vince clears his throat. “Um, I could feel his breath against my dick, he pulled my boxers down.”
“Hmmm,” Jess says, appreciatively, shifting in his lap and, yes, Vince really was enjoying telling her this story.
“His mouth was really amazing, Jess. He put his hands on my thighs, holding me there. Then he took my dick in his mouth.”
“Did he look like he enjoyed it?” Jess asks, running her fingers against his scalp, through his short hair.
Vince smiles, “he really did Jess.”
After speaking Vince noticeably fixes his attention back on her and says, “Can I?”
Jess nods, hurriedly, because she’s waiting for something more. He undoes the top few buttons of her shirt.
Vince looks a bit affronted at her giggle, “What?”
“It's just you know, a bit boring surely? Y'know boobs,” she says, giggling into his forehead.
“How can you say that? Boobs are awesome!” Vince proves his point by slipping his hand further down her shirt and pinching her nipple through her bra. She gasps against him. “I have a good memory for plays,” he says.
She laughs at his cheesiness. She's a bit surprised that he remembered, but then she remembered what he liked too. The sex they'd had when they were together had been frantic, snatched in the minutes her brothers didn't need her. Confined, also, by teenage worries about how to do it 'right', how to be 'good'. It had gotten better after that, so much so that after the initial sadness over their break up it had in all honesty been the thing she'd missed most about him, his fingers and lips, the rounded muscles of his ass, his teeth on her thighs, him inside her.
Vince is unbuttoning the buttons of her shirt but she's not letting him off this easy, “what happened then? As long as you aren't too distracted?” she asks, smiling at him because she knows a few of his weaknesses and one of them is competitiveness (she’s pretty sure he would claim it as a strength).
“What? Oh, um." Vince says, diverts his gaze from her and continues, voice dropping lower, "his mouth, yeah, it was so good. The way his lips looked, spread over me. It was amazing. I wanted to last but I was so close to coming.”
“Yeah.” she says encouragingly, giving up all pretense and basically writhing against him, feeling the firm heat of his dick against her panties, her legs bare, skirt rucked up to her waist.
“When I came he swallowed, I don't get why that's so good, but it is,” Vince says and pushes the shirt off her shoulders.
“And then,” she prompts, as Vince undoes the clasp of her bra.
“Well, I pulled him up. Kissed his mouth. I could taste me on his lips.” Vince leans forward and sucks on her nipple. She's suddenly aware of her near nakedness in contrast with him, he's still wearing jeans and a shirt, socks, shoes. It's not that she doesn't want him naked, because she wants to touch his skin, all of it, but there's something good about this too.
“Did you?” she asks, in a gasp, leading him. She can't get that image to leave her, she needs to know.
“Did I what?” he asks. There's no way he doesn't know what she's asking, the shit.
“Did you suck his dick?” she asks, he's not going to stop her, and scrapes her teeth against his earlobe, making him gasp.
“Yeah, I did. Went down on my knees in front of him, slid down his fly, grabbed his dick,” Vince says this in a rush, and the images flood through Jess’s mind. “It was a really nice dick Jess, just the right size, I could feel it stretching my mouth and... can I please go down on you now?”
“What?” Jess asks, confused and then sees his plaintive face, chuckles out, “yeah, OK.”
He stands up, grabbing at her legs to keep her pressed against him. He turns and puts her down on the chair they’d both been sitting on. Then, he kneels in front of her and pushes her skirt up more, pulls down her panties after a teasing press of fingers against her wetness through the fabric.
With her panties gone, he smirks up at her before lowering his mouth. His tongue is flicking against her clit, firm consistent strokes, just the right amount of pressure. He’s got better at this, she thinks. She can’t scrounge up any jealousy, only gratitude. She finds herself grabbing at his hair though it’s too short to get a proper handful of. He stops, looks up at her, lips glossy from her wetness.
“Any pointers?” he asks, grinning.
“No, no it’s really good,” she says, and he opens her against with his fingers, lowering his mouth again to lick deeper and then sucking, finally, at her clit.
She can feel the pressure building inside her. It’s achy with the frustration that giving someone else this power always is. If it was just her, her fingers, she could do this quicker, more efficient. But the waiting means that it will be better, she can already feel her legs shaking, the tremors of her building orgasm. She looks down, enjoys the sight of him between her legs, the firmness of his muscled shoulders, his long fingers on her thighs. Jess feels herself giving into the feeling of his tongue the perfect friction against her clit, the thrum he is eliciting from her body.
Vince moves, puts his hand on her breast, pinches her already tight nipple, harder and harder, in time with his tongue. Jess is peripherally aware of her breaths growing louder, her toes clenching almost painfully against the kitchen tiles. Mostly she just feels building pressure, a wave about to crash, so close, so close, a different but real agony. And then there is a burst of feeling that she scrunches her eyes shut against. It's like a string's been pulled inside her, she's no longer drawn tight, her body moves without permission, arching up a little. She lets out a gaspy-moan, absurd even in the moment it echoes after her orgasm.
After, legs still quaking a bit, she pulls Vince after her into her bedroom and they make out, rolling over in her bed sheets. Lips slow to begin with and then more insistent. Vince stops her and pushes his jeans down, and mutters against her breasts, “I don’t, I mean, it’s just really uncomfortable right now, I’m sorry.”
She smiles and pulls at his t-shirt, running her hands over the skin pulled tight over muscle.
“I always liked how you felt, inside of me,” she says, laying a row of kisses along his collarbone, she feels him still.
“God, Jess, yes can I?”
She likes that he asks so sweetly, likes it a lot, so she doesn't let him wait, answers by reaching into the night stand for the box of condoms, passes one to him.
Vince pushes down his boxers, she barely sees his dick before he pushes the condom down. He kisses her on the lips, strong and sure before pushing inside her, she wraps her legs around his waist. He feels so good inside her, and he’s remembered how she likes the rhythm, fast, teasing, shallow thrusts followed by slow and deep. They groan together. She loses track of almost everything else, just feels him inside her, his hands on her body
“So good, you feel so good,” Vince babbles into her hair before dropping his head to suck a bruising kiss to her chest, just above her breast, dropping further down inch by inch to suck her nipple into his mouth.
“So good, Vince, feels so...” she trails of with a moan and feels the moment he comes, it remind her of before, the way his body stills and shudders, but there is no accompanying ache with the memory. He pulls out and this time she finishes herself with her fingers. She focuses on the memory of the feeling of him inside her, the friction of his thrusts, and comes against her own fingers mimicking him, with a smaller gasp, a lesser crash of pleasure than before but a release that trickles through her body.
“God I love watching you do that,” Vince says and they smile at each other in the darkness, just light enough to see their faces.
Jess turns off the light in the hallway, Vince reaches for his boxers and pulls them on. He makes no move to leave and she doesn't encourage him. Jess pulls him into her for a hug before rolling over to sleep away from him. She feels herself drift off, and the next thing she is conscious of is waking to sunlight through uncovered windows.
There’s a note on the kitchen table, which she reads over plunger coffee, a smile tugging at her lips.
“I had a 7am training session Jess, you really have to believe me. Please call me sometime.”
In small letters underneath it says “I really wanted to write something dirty but I didn’t know what to say so you’ll have to use your imagination.”
And then
The next year Julie and Matt have a baby girl, Ella Jessica Saracen. Jess goes to visit a lot. Ella mostly wears Texas football colors but even Jess admits that she looks pretty cute in the Blackhawks jumper that Julie's teacher friends bought for her.
Landry goes to see a therapist, gets into a creative writing program and proposes to his girlfriend. She says yes. Landry tells Jess on the phone and says even though they’re not getting married for ages his girlfriend has very particular ideas about bunting.
Vince writes her emails. About football, mostly, because he's started in a few games now. He loves playing of course, like he loved playing in college, in high school, and even before that. Sometimes he hooks up with guys and sends her very descriptive emails about what happens. Jess Merriweather likes football but she’s got to admit she likes those emails even better than the ones about what play the team is trying to perfect.
Jess has almost finished her teaching degree (she took it half time), Eric is giving her more and more responsibility with the team and several local schools with promising programs have expressed interest in taking her on as a coach. Jess really wants to print out those letters and nail them to the faces of all the people who said she couldn't be this, couldn’t do this. Mostly though she's feeling pretty zen; she has a picture of Ella Jessica Saracen on her fridge, alongside an invite to Emily and Landry's engagement party and a hot football player sending her dirty emails. None of which is to say there aren't a few more hard match ups coming but the scoreboard is looking pretty good for the moment.