Enough Now

If you aren't a fan of short-shorts—i.e., things like the various 750 Word events on Literotica—then give this one a pass. It's a bit more than 750, but not pages more. I know that's not to everyone's taste.

A year or so ago, at the instigation of one of my writing friends, a group of us decided to do a short activity: we'd each write a story according to an agreed-upon set of guidelines and then share them with each other. It was just for fun; there was no implicit goal to publish them, though some did.

Each story was to be 1000 words, no more, and had to wrap the story around links to three songs on YouTube. Some just provided general URLs for the videos. Others, including me, had links pointing to specific moments in the songs that were the inspiration or the color we wanted.

This is what I contributed.

I've made a couple of small changes to put it here. Perhaps the biggest is that Literotica doesn't allow you to embed links to YouTube. So, I've copied the lyrics from those points into the story (and if you don't recognize them, listed the songs at the end). Of course, in doing so, the thousand-word limit went by the wayside, so I punted and added a little bit more in one or two places.

Now, before this preface becomes longer than the story itself: I hope you enjoy it.

I've never liked girls. I mean, I did like them. But I didn't like them. So why was I unable to look away from honey-colored hair, an elfin nose, and some sweater meat that was a magnet for sneaked glances when she looked away?

No, not sweater meat. That was ... I was ashamed, thinking that. That was jealousy rearing its green-eyed visage and turning me into someone I didn't like.

I want to taste her lips, 'cause they taste like you.
I want to drown myself in a bottle of her perfume.
I want her long blonde hair.
I want her magic touch.

We'd known each other since third grade. Playground tag and dodgeball giving way to after-school imagination in which she was always the pirate, never the princess, except sometimes. Then to the divides of puberty's onset, but never truly separating, only an embarrassed flush now and then on one side or the other.

Not just the two of us. Him too. A trio with the same classrooms again for fourth, fifth, and sixth. Middle-school classes that only somewhat overlapped, but high school constantly together as we dug our way through the Honors track. Make-believe had yielded to soccer, had merged into parties in one fellow-student's basement or another's, without any question that it was the three musketeers or no show.

My hand holding back that blonde mane, his comforting on her shoulder, in that first, disastrous encounter with vodka. Curled into a knot of three as he sobbed out the loss of his mother to breast cancer. Two pairs of eyes shining with un-jealous pride as I stepped up to deliver the valedictory despite the friendly vying.

Three for whom two years together at County were so much more than just financial acumen before parting to finish our degrees. But not really parting, glad of FaceTime.

Fifteen years inseparable. Soulmates.

Years after that summer evening when he and I crashed back on my bed, wine pilfered from the parents' still-going party driving shushed snickers and outrageous, half-asleep confidences.

Wine driving courage for me to reach a tentative hand and lay it on a thigh, the slight catch of breath telling me "awake" and the stillness hinting "okay."

My first time with another person, even if it was only sliding my hand farther to cup the hard length through the cloth and stroke until I felt the shudder and the dampness, knowing enough from my own, solo experiences not to stop until his hand clutched mine.

No, not only that. His hand, smaller than mine but bolder, under my underwear to wrap around my cock: a word I used sometimes in my mind but never out loud about my own. Minutes far more breathless than masturbation.

We parted in embarrassed silence. That was okay. We were too young, especially for "not normal" which the world back in those days said it was. We knew that, and that made the silence okay. Fulfillment would come with time and maturity and with a world that was more forgiving. Ease returned between us quickly.

Now, always aware of him, I saw the two of them leave the dance floor, returning to the tables to rejoin our companions. Friends gathered in the intervening years, some flying solo, others with partners. Her cousin—introduced at fourteen when his middle school and ours fed into the same secondary, honey-colored hair and high cheekbones marking indisputable kinship. A work colleague who recently stepped past the occasional "Lunch?" into the circle surrounding the indivisibly tripartite nucleus that was us. Indivisible except ...

I remembered the exact moment: two months ago at Cape May. I watched him, the dark-haired figure, as they came ashore from swimming. My eyes drank him in. Eyes that traveled up the long legs—"stork," he called himself—the firm thighs. Eyes that lingered on what was revealed by nylon firmly plastered by the water. Eyes that leaped quickly over the intervening: the abs, the pecs, the mouth I wanted to taste, to his gaze riveted on the bikini-clad form walking before him.

Did I know then? Yes. No. Yes, but the mind is funny and denies.

She was taking him home tonight. Standing on the dance floor they'd just left, I saw them decide, choose to say goodnight to the others, a decision I'd feared was coming.

Not because he told me his intention to ask her.

And that, the not telling me, was not because he predicted my reaction. He had no clue; I was certain. If he had, he would have talked to me. That was him, forthright to a fault. No, simply because he wasn't the type to talk about something private behind a woman's back.

I saw him lean in and whisper in her ear, clearly a question by the arch of his eyebrows I'd studied so often. Even though I couldn't hear it above the music, I saw/heard the nervous chuckle she'd had since third grade. I could read her lips. It wasn't hard. Five words.

"I'd like that. My place."

I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her.
I'm right over here, why can't you see me?
And I'm giving it my all
But I'm not the guy you're taking home.
And I keep dancing on my own.

I left the floor, stumbled to the bar. "A paloma." Tequila and grapefruit juice, just the astringent jolt I needed. Unbidden, my eyes strayed to the bar mirror, and I watched myself watch them. And then I couldn't anymore. I stared into my glass and tried to turn off my brain.

I thought they were gone. I didn't feel the presence at my back until she spoke. So quietly, for my ears only. I couldn't turn, couldn't acknowledge.

"I know, Alan. I've known for a while, even though he has no clue. And I've wished a thousand million times my eyes would go somewhere else. Or that yours would. But we weren't that lucky, you and I. Had it gone the other way, I'd be sitting where you are now with the same gutted expression.

"But I'm not standing here thinking I won. I didn't win. I'm scared I've lost one-third of my soul because I desperately need something from the other third. Please—" Her voice broke for a moment. "Be sad. Or be jealous. Be furious if you have to. But please, never believe I chose to hurt you, and never regret you loved him. Or"—now the break was almost a sob—"loved us till now. Because we both love you and always will, no matter how fucked-up this becomes."

There was silence, drawn into a thread until it was unbearable. I felt her withdraw.

It was done. The die cast; the decision made. I raised my glass and drained it with deep swallows. I took an even-deeper breath. It was done, and I drew what strength I could from that finality.

The thought of walking down a cold, cobbled street to the subway sent my mind to her choice every Christmas Eve when we bundled on the couch in front of a fire and television. Choice was the wrong word. She never varied what movie we'd watch just as he always chose the Grinch to start, and we finished with my Charlie Brown, a yearly ritual of pizza and old sweatpants and ugly sweaters and no alcohol because two of us had to drive after.

And in her choice: Andrew Lincoln as he walked away from Kiera Knightley's door to the sound of "Silent Night" after admitting what he knew was unrequited.

I echoed his words. "Enough." As quietly as he'd said it, "Enough now."

I tried for more. "I wish you—" But no, this wasn't a time for lying.

I wish nothing but the best for you, too.
"Don't forget me, " I begged.
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead."

Maybe ... probably ... someday I'd say those things, but right here, right now, no.

I pushed my empty toward the bartender. "Another and keep them coming."

"Alan."

For a moment, I thought I was mistaken, that they hadn't left and she had more to say. But it was a deeper voice behind me. Not his, oh thank God.

Her cousin. Eyes that were eerily familiar met mine in the bar mirror. They weren't hers—blue to her gray.

"Trust me. That will just make it worse. Tonight, I'll help you not think about it."

I barely heard. Why were his eyes so familiar?

"Tomorrow morning you can go home and start figuring out what comes next." There was a flicker of a smile that held no humor, and I barely heard his mutter. "And then someone else will help me do the same."

What?

I looked at the reflection of my face, of his, our gazes meeting.

Then I knew. No, not the gray of hers. Nor the hazel of mine.

But they were my eyes just the same.

Yearning ... the eyes of someone looking at what they couldn't hold.

Author's note: The first lyrics are from "Girl Crush" by Little Big Town. The second are "Dancing On My Own," originally by Robyn, but sung by the male voice of Calum Scott in the version my mind heard while writing. The last are taken from "Someone Like You" by Adele.

The movie scene that Alan thinks about is from Love Actually. The Grinch and Charlie Brown probably need no citation ... but the original, please, of the former. I'm old-school when it comes to Christmas specials.

Thank you for reading. I know it wasn't a HEA tale, but few of us have gotten through life without any scars in the love department, and I hope it felt a little real.