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PICKING OUTFITS AND PUSHING LIMITS

Hugh

OCTOBER 5, 2002

S TRETCHED OUT ON MY GIRLFRIEND’S BED, WITH MY HEAD PROPPED AGAINST A STACK of plush pillows, I forced myself to keep my eyes trained on the pages of the book I was attempting to read and not the girl who was prancing around half-naked.

Unfortunately for me, Ulysses didn’t hold a spark to Lizzie Young.

“How’s this one?” she asked, and I watched from my peripheral vision as she prowled toward me.

Liz didn’t need makeup and dresses to look feminine, and I didn’t need the bullshit aesthetics to stroke my ego. Because I knew what she was, what she had, and it was everything and more. She was all I would ever want, ever crave, and ever desire. She was it for me.

Those kinds of girls bored me to tears because I lived with one of those girls. No, I didn’t want the girlie girl, with the stuffed animals and pink everything. I wanted the feisty girl with the sharp edges and the tomboy attitude. I wanted the girl who glowered at me when I held the door open, instead of blushing. The one who responded to “ladies first” with “age before beauty.”

That girl lit me up.

That girl floated my entire fucking boat.

“Very nice,” I replied, quickly retraining my attention on my book before she could pounce.

“Liar, you haven’t even looked.”

“Don’t need to,” I replied, turning over to the next page. “You look good in everything.”

There was a disco at the town’s rugby club tonight for the fourth years to celebrate their junior cert results. Instead of getting shit-faced with the lads beforehand, I was being held captive by a blond in a thong.

Apparently, my girlfriend needed my help to choose an outfit for tonight, and it was a matter of life or death.

This was a crock of shit for two reasons.

First, I had spent virtually every day with the girl since I was seven and never once had I heard her ask anyone’s opinion on fashion. Liz couldn’t care less about clothes if she tried. She wore what she wore when she wanted to wear it and that was the grand total of effort that went into her outfit picking.

Second, we had a momentary slip in the library last month, where I lost my head and spent the last three classes of the school day dry humping my girlfriend. Ever since that day Liz had been hell-bent on finding another hole in my moral chain-link fence.

It wasn’t like I wanted to hold back. I was weeks away from turning fifteen. Of course I wanted to have sex with my girlfriend. Christ, I thought of little else, and I knew most of my friends were happily cracking on with different girls every weekend, but I couldn’t do that. Because this was Liz , and I was determined to do the right thing by her .

We talked about it often and had agreed on her sixteenth birthday as the date. So when she pulled stunts like this one, it made being good a hell of a lot harder.

“So this dress is fine for tonight?” she challenged. “You’ll be perfectly fine with me wearing only this to the disco?”

“Perfectly.”

Her tone hardened. “So you’ll be okay with your friends seeing your girlfriend completely naked .”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re not naked, Liz.”

“Ha, so you are looking,” she challenged, sounding gleeful.

“I may or may not have briefly glanced,” I mused, pushing the glorious visual of Liz in a bra and thong to the back of my mind, but not before leaving a mental note to return to said visual when I was alone tonight. “Accidentally, of course.”

“And?” she pushed. “What do you accidently think?”

That you’re the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever seen .

“It’s your body, Liz,” I said instead, not giving her an inch. “You decide what you wear.”

“And if I decide to wear nothing?”

“I’ll bring a spare coat in case you get cold.”

“Dammit, Hugh, just look at me so I can seduce you already!”

“So you admit it!” I exclaimed, snapping my book shut and pointing an accusing finger at her. “You sneaky, little, would-be virginity stealer!”

She feigned innocence. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Your underhanded tactics won’t work on me, witch,” I laughed. “I know every dirty trick in your sneaky, little handbook. Hell, I’m the muse for most of them!”

“I didn’t invite you over to seduce you, asshole,” she said, doubling down, this time in a much softer voice. Her breath hitched, and she looked up at me with a lonesome, puppy-eyed expression, bottom lip wobbling and everything. “I really needed your help with an outfit.”

“Nice try,” I replied, laughing into her face. “But you already pulled that trick on me one time too many. A plus for effort, though.”

Her expression shifted in an instant, switching from angelic and frail to pissed off and frustrated. “You’re such a killjoy, Hugh.”

“Hmm.” Thoroughly amused by her antics, I returned my attention to my book and exhaled a contented sigh. “Whatever keeps your clothes on, Liz.”

“Oh yeah?” Unwilling to take the L like a champ, the little demon pounced on top of me, not stopping until she was straddling my hips. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

“Liz, stop.” Choking out a laugh, I attempted to protect my sides from her ticklish onslaught with my book, but she was merciless. “You know I can’t take it.”

“Take my clothes off.”

“Nope.”

“Fine, take your clothes off.”

“Ah, mercy, mercy…ah…ah…mercy, baby. Mercy!”

Using one hand to torment me with tickles, she pried the book from my hands with the other and tossed it over her shoulder.

Wrapping her hands around my wrists, she attempted to pin my hands to the mattress above my head.

I indulged her, allowing her to pin me down, because she was too fucking cute when she was playful.

“Ha.” Grinning victoriously above me, she leaned in close and purred, “Joyce can’t save you now, Biggs.”

I smiled in amusement back at her. “You didn’t save my page.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits, and I choked on a laugh.

“Oh my God, you are infuriating !” Wiggling her hips, she rocked on top of my obvious hard-on. “I can feel you, Hugh. I know you want this as much as I do.”

“I’m hard because I love you.” Another laugh escaped me that seemed to only aggravate her more, which resulted in more laughter on my end. “Because you make me happy.”

“Oh please.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re hard because you want to have sex with me.” She threw her hands up in frustration. “And every part of your anatomy knows it except your brain!”

“What’s the obsession with us having sex?”

“What’s the obsession with abstaining from having sex?”

“We agreed to wait until your sixteenth birthday.”

“I thought we agreed on your fifteenth.”

“No, we definitely agreed on your sixteenth.”

“Ugh.” She released a despondent sigh. “But it’s too far away.”

“It’s only a year and a half away.” Settling my hands on her hips, I stroked her bare skin with my thumbs to soothe her. “What’s another year and a half, huh?”

“A lifetime when you feel the way I do,” she groaned, collapsing onto my chest with a loud huff. “You have no idea how frustrated I am, Hugh. You laugh about it and make a big joke out of it, but it’s not funny to me. It actually hurts me. Like I feel physical pain because the urge is so strong. It’s like an itch I can’t scratch. All the time. Constantly. And I’m trying so hard…and you aren’t interested, and I just…ugh, forget it.”

“Liz.” Sighing heavily, I wrapped an arm around her. “You know I’m interested.” I reached up with one hand to stroke her cheek. “I want you so fucking bad it’s all I can think about most days.” I contemplated my next admission before blowing out a breath and saying to hell with it. “In the last two years, I can’t think of a single night when I haven’t gotten myself off to the mental image of being inside you.”

“Really?” She sprang back up, lap-straddling resumed, and looked down at me with an excited glint in her eyes. “You’re not bullshitting me?”

No, I wasn’t bullshitting her.

I was being honest.

Painfully, embarrassingly honest.

“Would you take one look at yourself?” I replied and then made the mistake of taking my own advice. The sight of her straddling me in nothing but a frilly white bra and matching knickers caused a groan to escape. “Jesus Christ, you’re so beautiful, it hurts to look at you. There’s not another girl in my world that can hold a candle to you, and that’s not an exaggeration because I haven’t taken my eyes off you since I saw you on the school bus in first class.”

Her breath hitched and she asked, “You really think that about me?”

“Yeah, Liz, I really do,” I confirmed gruffly. “I always have.”

“It’s only the exterior,” she whispered, gesturing to her body. “It’s wallpaper, Hugh.” An audible breath escaped her parted lips, and she cast her gaze downward. “I promise what’s on the inside doesn’t look like this.”

“There’s nothing ugly about you, Liz.” When she didn’t respond, I sat up and reached for her. “Hey…hey, look at me.” Holding her face in my hands, I forced her to look at me. “There is nothing ugly inside of you.”

“You don’t know that.” She clenched her eyes shut, blocking me out. “You don’t know about the things I think about.”

“I don’t have to know about them.” I smoothed her hair off her face and pulled her face closer to mine. “Because I know you.”

“It’s not just the thoughts.” Her voice was small and broken. “It’s the slips and the gaps and the urges.”

Hearing her admit this out loud broke my fucking heart, because she was voicing both of our fears out loud. We’d had an amazing summer. Months of stability and calm. But we both knew that, at any moment in time, the shift could happen. “If you slip again, I’ll be there to pull you back.” Stroking her cheek with my thumb, I nuzzled her nose with mine. “And if you lose track of time, I’ll be there to ground you.” Unable to stop myself, I leaned in and pressed a kiss to her lips. “And if you feel the urges, I’ll be there to protect you.”

“I don’t want to slip again,” she choked out, fisting my T-shirt with a death grip. “I’m so afraid.”

I couldn’t tell her that it wouldn’t happen, because we both knew that would be a lie.

All I could do was promise her that if it happened, I would be there on the other side.

“I’ll be here.” I kissed her again. “Always.”

“No matter what?”

“Yeah, Liz.” I kissed her softly. “No matter what.”