Hard Facts by Penny Clarke

22

Summer

Bad enough I toss and turn because thoughts of Natalie and Morris and secrets swirl around my head, but when lightning throws my bedroom into vivid brightness and crashing thunder shakes the walls, I realize sleep will be near impossible tonight.

I sit up in bed, as more flashes illuminate the violets on my nightstand. Their purple petals have faded to brown, drooping over the edge of the vase. I know I should have thrown them out long ago. But they’d been my bedside companions for weeks, for what feels like forever, and I dread the idea of them left in the trash.

Although… better late than never.

So I gather the vase and tiptoe out to the hall. Only to find Grayson’s not asleep on the couch. He’s sitting at the bay window, glasses fixed to the raging storm.

“Hey,” I breathe into the dark room, and I see him jump, even at that hushed whisper.

He replies, “Can’t sleep, either?”

Setting the vase on the kitchen island, I shake my head. I debate what to do next. Aside from going over my practice test earlier, we’d spent most of the evening separated. Him, out here in the living room, studying. Me, in my bedroom, pretending to do the same, when all the while, my mind was on him. Do I go back and keep pretending? Or—

“Come watch,” Gray taps the window.

Decision made for me, I make a pit stop at the fridge, then join him on the other side of the window seat. Sheets of rain fall sideways over the bar strip, clouding the dim campus lights just beyond it. No one’s out, both due to the hour and the weather. It’s just me and Gray, up too late, watching gusty winds rip leaves off tree branches and veined strikes of lightning light up rivers of water on the street.

Cold condensation runs down my fingers, reminding me of the chilled bottle in my hands. Popping the cap, I take a short drink, then pass it to Grayson. He gives the lemon-yellow liquid a questioning look, but says nothing before swigging it down. We’re quiet then, comfortable, as we pass the bottle back and forth, watching the storm.

Once I’ve had enough sips to feel warm, I set the bottle between us and interrupt the quiet to ask, “What’s the deal with Natalie and Morris?”

Gray watches raindrops race down the window pane. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“You mean to tell me,” I lean back on the wall, folding my arms in my lap. “With all your observations of each of your friends, that you don’t know?”

He looks at me and admits, “I don’t know.”

Resting his arms on his knees, he speaks to the window next. “You know that week at the beginning of freshman year? When admissions has all those events for first years? Meet and greets, concerts, that kind of thing.”

I stare at him, frozen to the spot, but when he keeps talking, I tear my gaze away to watch outside.

“Natalie found me in our dorm. She was just… roaming the halls. Morris had left our door open, so she saw me there, alone, getting a head start on my classes, and she stopped to say hi. Before I knew it, she dragged me to whatever stupid ice breaker event was going on at the time. Morris was already there, and they hit it off. Immediately.” He smiles in memory. “I turned my back for a moment, and when I looked again, they were gone. Disappeared. I didn’t see Morris again until noon the next day.”

“Do you think they…”

Taking the bottle, Gray shakes his head. “I don’t know that, either. But after careful study, I don’t think anything happened.” He shifts on the seat, crossing his legs under him before taking another drink. “I saw Morris a couple times, after he’d hooked up. He’d always be more relaxed. When I saw him the day after he met Natalie—he was anything but. Like, way keyed up. More so than normal.”

“That’s it, then?” I take the bottle and wipe condensation on the edge of my shirt. “They really are just friends?”

“So they say.” But then he’s shaking his head, adamantly. “I don’t buy it for a fucking second. Morris—” He sighs, frustrated, and I hand him back the bottle. He holds it, not drinking a drop, he’s so riled up. “To everyone else, Morris is the captain. The quarterback. The golden guy, you know.”

The guy who comes to your rescue, I silently add. The hero.

“But to Natalie, he’s just—he’s just Theo. He lets her see parts of him I don’t think the rest of us even realize he has. I have spent years watching them, Summer. Fucking years. Never have I seen two people more perfectly suited for each other. And they—it goes against all the numbers, all reason, that they’re not together.”

Thunder rumbles and rises, as though prompted by his animated voice. Gray blinks, remembering himself, and he smiles sheepishly. And I wonder just how much of that impassioned rant was because of numbers and logic, and how much was only because these are two people he cares about and all he wants is their happiness.

“Anyways,” Grayson carries on, in a more subdued tone. “That’s why I’m going to win this bet with him. Because once I do, he has to tell her. You know, that he loves her.”

I stretch out a foot and poke his knee with my toe. “Grayson James, if I didn’t think it completely illogical, I’d almost say you were playing matchmaker.”

In a flash of lightning, I see his blush. Lamely, he finishes, “Yeah, well… Some people just need a little extra encouragement.”

Then he takes a large gulp from our shared drink, face souring as he swallows. He holds it up. “All right, are you going to tell me what exactly I’m drinking?”

“Coconut rum. Peach schnapps. Vodka. Orange and pineapple juice. Liz and I made it for that ABB spa retreat the other weekend.”

“Do I even want to know what you call it?”

I grin deviously. “Ankles in the air.”

With a snort, he takes another drink. “Is not.”

“Is, too.”

“You make these up.”

“I do not!” Laughing, I steal the bottle straight from his mouth. “Honest, it’s from a book. Liz gifted me it for our big/little celebration last year. We’re trying to make our way through every recipe before I graduate.”

“A likely story.”

“It’s true. Here, we’ve already done…” I shift the bottle to count off my fingers. “Buttery nipple, clit-licking cowgirl—or, if you’re so inclined, a cock-sucking cowboy. Deep throat—a personal favorite. Redheaded slut. Oh! I should make that one for Walsh. She’ll hate it. Blue balls, tie me to the bedpost—”

“Okay, okay. I believe you. Stop,” Gray groans, wrestling the bottle from me and taking a victory swig. “What’d you get her then?”

I tell him in a hush after a crack of thunder, “A vibrating butt plug. That syncs to music.”

His eyebrows skyrocket. And because I’m feeling more than a little mischievous—and a bit tipsy—I hold up a secretive finger to my mouth and confess, “I bought two.”

Gray finishes the bottle off in one fell swoop.

“What about you?” I ask.

He uses the collar of his shirt to wipe off his mouth, coughing from downing the alcohol too quickly. “Do I have a vibrating butt plug that syncs to music? No. I can’t say that I do. Or ever wanted one.”

“You’re missing out.” My mumble’s lost in the rain and thunder. Then, louder, “No, this professor that Natalie mentioned earlier.”

“Teaching assistant,” he stresses. “She was a teaching assistant.”

“Did you do it in her office?”

He keeps his mouth shut, head whipping to look out the window. But I see it. That small upturn of a smug-as-fuck grin.

“You totally did,” I squeal. Then, I reach for the bottle, only to realize it’s empty. “Damn, I wish I had something to toast you with. Even I never hooked up with campus faculty. How did that even come about? She call you in to discuss a bad grade, and you offer to make it up with some extra extra credit?”

He rolls his eyes. “Hardly. She was a grad student. We kind of circled each other all semester. She was pretty shy, and I was, well—”

“A virgin.”

“Yeah. So I passed the class. Never made a move. Months went by. Then we ran into each other on campus at this engineering department thing, and she told me to meet her in her office later. And I had this sense something would probably happen, so I went and it… happened.”

As easy as that. No special brownies. No alcohol. No secret fake relationship. Just a man and a woman, interested in each other.

I twirl the empty bottle on the seat between us, and it falls right off the ledge to the floor. Which means I’m left to focus only on Grayson, the torrential rain, or the swirling storm of bitter jealousy inside my chest.

“Well, what do you know,” I mask those feelings with a flippant tone. “Geek in the streets, freak in the sheets. So what about after that? Did you keep seeing her?”

“She wanted to. But I said no. For one, she was graduating. And two…”

He stares out the window, flinching as rain pelts the glass. I prod him with my foot to get out with it. So he sighs and tells me, “I forgot a condom, that first time. She said she was on the pill. But then… she was late.”

To class?my tipsy mind almost asks, right before—

Oh.

Oh.

“Fifty. Twenty-five. Three.” Gray says suddenly, sitting up, until his face is right in front of the window.

Then, he breathes on the glass, soft and slow. Enough to form a light mist. And in that mist, he traces out a five and a zero.

Fifty.

“Just over fifty percent,” he taps the number. “That’s how many teens in the foster system get their high school diploma.”

He strikes a line through it. Writes out a two and a five.

Twenty-five.

“Twenty-five percent make it to college.” Then he erases the fog completely.

“And three.” He holds up that exact many fingers without looking at me. “Only three fucking percent actually graduate.”

“Gray—”

He doesn’t hear me. His eyes are lost in the window. In a storm. “I know these facts by heart. I memorize them daily. To remind myself. Why I’m here. All I’ve got to lose. Because, according to statistics, I am more likely to wind up in jail than earn my degree. More likely to drop out. To work a job for shitty pay and depend on government assistance and be a shit dad just like my dad was a shit dad.”

I set my hand over his, gently curling those fingers down. “But she—She wasn’t, right?”

“No, thank fuck,” he grips my hand. Squeezes it hard. “It was just stress, from working on her thesis. And the whole thing stressed me so much that I bombed a final exam. Flunked the class. I had to retake it. All the while, those numbers kept running through my head, and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. That’s what my life will be like. That’s what’ll happen. If I don’t focus. If I let myself get distracted. And I couldn’t—I can’t, Summer. I can’t be just another statistic.”

That restless tempest inside me grows stronger. All high winds and mayhem, relentless rains washing away the confusion and the disappointment and the wretched bitterness. Whirling through my mind and taking everything in its path so that I see. And, fuck, how clearly I see. His no kissing rule. His hesitation to touch me. His reluctance to fall into bed with me, to carry through what had started the night we gazed at the stars on his ceiling.

And the storm kicks up again, surging and raging and flooding with indignant fury. At those facts. At that system. At every other storm he’s had to weather alone.

But most of all, at him.

“You’re not.” My voice is laced with emotion. With livid, quivering certainty. “You’re not a statistic. You will never be a statistic. And do you know why?”

“Summer—”

“Because you’re a fucking nerd,” and I say it, not with teasing, or insult, but with absolute pride. “You’re double-degree, double-major, honors-program, Dean’s-List, Grayson James Rowe. You built a fucking robot. You know everything about everything. Every fact in the fucking world. Look how far you’ve already made it. You’re defying the odds.”

He opens his mouth to speak, but I’m not done. Scooting off the window seat, I spin to face him, hands on my hips. “So you failed a class. Big fucking whoop, Rowe. I flunked two. That didn’t stop me. I found a tutor. I found you. But you—you, what? Cut yourself off? From dating, girls—from sex? I mean, how many girls have you slept with, then? Was the teaching assistant the only one?”

Turning away from the window to face me, he says, “No. Four.”

Four. He’s only slept with four other women. On a campus of thousands, there’s only been four.

It’s odd, how such a simple number can fill me with such a confusing mix of pleasure and annoyance.

Grayson shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’d just admitted. He rushes to say, “But I don’t see why that matters. Look, we’ve been drinking, and you’re upset—”

“I’m upset because you’re the smartest guy I know!” I shout. “And you’re being incredibly stupid!”

My voice rises with the rolling thunder overhead. “I’m upset because you’re so passionate. And that passion—It’s beautiful, Gray, how much you love the things you love. It’s sexy as fuck. And how the hell can you sit there and tell me it’s a distraction, if for one blissful moment, you let yourself feel that passion returned—”

His knuckles turn white as he grips the edge of the seat. “Because there are consequences—”

“And there are ways to avoid knocking someone up!” I throw my hands in the air. “I’m not saying to rush dick-first into a vagina without grabbing a condom or rely on the pull-out method. But there are other things you can do—Things we did. If I recall, you seemed to like dry humping just fine. Use your head. Or better yet, your hands. Your mouth. Toys. Find a girl who only gets off from anal. Or who loves giving head—”

Lightning bursts, shining up the whole room. The expression that passes over Grayson’s face. He turns his head to the side, no longer watching me, as the room quiets. Even the thunder settles, as though sensing the firm set of his mouth. The narrowed brow. That wrinkle in the middle of his forehead.

But that electric charge. It stays. Zapping and buzzing and zipping and humming. Sending a volt of realization right to my very core at that discomfited look.

“We should really go to bed.”

I ignore him, to ask in a softer voice, “Gray… How many girls have you gone down on?”

After a slight hesitation, “Three.”

Static electricity pulls me forward. My foot hits the empty glass bottle, and it skitters across the floor, making his head snap up.

“We both have exams tomorrow.”

I stand between his legs. Lift one knee onto the window seat. His glasses slip down his nose, staring at that meeting of our bodies. Remembering the last time I’d straddled his thigh like this. How hard he made me come on it. Until I saw stars.

“And how many have gone down… on you?”

His silence is the only answer I need to confirm my suspicions.

“I…” Rain on the window covers the sound of my voice, but after a moment, I realize it’s not the rain at all. It’s that drumming beat in my chest. In my ears. A sudden rush of pulsing nerves, fueled by the sizzling energy in the air. “I love giving head.”

He says my name, and that is drowned out by the rain. But I see it. The whisper forming on his mouth, as he stares up at me. Slowly, he sets his hands on my hips. Fingertips grazing the skin above the waistband of my sleep shorts. I think, if he pushed me away now, I’d fall to pieces. Run straight outside and let myself be struck by lightning.

But he holds me steady over him. I brace my own hands on his firm arms. “I can do it, Gray. I can make you come like that. If you want. Do… Do you want me to?”

I’ve never been so nervous before, bringing up the possibility. Most guys jump right on board. But Grayson…

Gray makes me nervous. He fills me with uncertainty. Even when I’ve never been more certain of anything than how much I want him.

Honey eyes lift to mine. His throat works tightly, and I think maybe he’s nervous, too, as his chin dips down, just a fraction of an inch. And my hands drift up at that tiny nod, framing his jaw as I bring his mouth to mine in a whisper of a kiss. Groaning, he deepens it, wrapping his arms around me and hefting me, fully, onto the window seat. Onto his lap.

I lose track. Of the storm. Of time. Of anything but kissing him. The gentle nudge of his lips. The hot slide of his tongue. The swelling bulge at the apex of my thighs. I pull back, breathing deep and lips swollen, to take off my shirt. And Gray kisses me again, crushing me to his chest, his hands gliding over the bare skin of my back, my neck, into my hair, before rounding to the front to cup my breasts.

His touch is slow, sensuous. Seducing me with leisurely exploration. And I think it’s him, not the drink we’d shared, that’s making me drunk with pleasure. With anticipation for what’s to come.

Almost reverently, I tug off his shirt to return that touch. Trace the muscles in his arms and chest. All that powerful strength, giving so easily when I push against it.

“Lie back,” I softly direct. He leans against the wall and I move until I’m on all fours over him. Pressing my mouth to his collarbone. To one tight nipple, making him tense. I lightly run my tongue over its twin, and his whole body shivers.

And as I work my way down—kissing his chest, brushing my fingers over those hard planes, squeezing the solid muscles of his arms at his sides—he doesn’t disguise his rushed breathing. Those sharp intakes of air. The way he groans in one drawn-out breath when I find one line of that vee at his hips and I do what I’ve wanted since that first glimpse I’d had of it—I lick it. Drag my tongue along the taut skin, as I delicately skim just under the waistband of his jeans with one finger. Taking care not to brush against that tented bulge, I pluck open the button.

“What…” Grayson wets his mouth as I sit up, dragging down the zipper. “What do I do with my hands?”

“Whatever you want,” I say, slipping my hand into his shorts. Making him gasp, sharp and sudden, when I wrap my fingers around him. Gently rubbing, I murmur, “You can keep them at your sides. Hold onto the window bench. Or you can touch me. Touch my tits. Slap my ass. Pull my hair. I really like having my hair pulled.”

I smother his impatient curse with another kiss. And because I can’t wait any more, I tug at his pants, and together, we push them down his thighs. His cock springs free, and instantly, I have my hand on it again. Working it in a firm grip, feeling it swell and twitch under my palm, even though he’s already so. fucking. hard.

Gathering saliva on my tongue, I let it fall onto that bulbed head. Guide my fingers up and over and around. Trace the slit at the top, mix his precum with my spit. Rubbing over the rounded crown. That thin strip of skin on its underside, before pumping my hand slowly down. Spreading that slickness, making his hands, his fingers, flinch and flex in a long sigh.

I work him slow, teasing all that wetness over his hard cock, before I finally settle my mouth on him. And the moment my open-mouthed kiss touches him, the instant my lips surround him with more wet heat, he groans. I taste him, and fuck, he tastes so good, and all I want is more, I’ve been so hungry for this. So I take more. More and more and more. Slipping him further into my mouth. Flicking his hardness with my tongue. Stroking his shaft from the bottom as my head bobs over the top. Filling the space around us with the filthy noise of me sucking and slurping and moaning, my mouth full of him.

Silent strikes of lightning pulse through the window like strobe lights. Giving me brief glimpses of Gray’s face. Every twitch, every gasp, every small murmur and plead for me to oh fuck oh Summer, holy shit, holy fuck don’t stop please keep sucking keep sucking. He stares down, sees me looking up at him, then shuts his eyes on another gasp before opening them again. Watching me. Moaning on his cock. And he bites down on one fist. Sinks his fingers in my curls.

“Are you—Fuck, you are,” he moans. “You’re fucking touching yourself again.”

Because he’s enjoying this so much, getting so into it. Hips gently rocking. Pushing his cock to meet each suck. All those dirty sounds escaping his mouth. Groans and quick hisses and deep, shuddery breaths. I watch him and I taste him and hear him and feel him, and all my senses are so full of Gray that it sends hot, pulsing electric shocks straight to my core. Like the rain outside, drenching me in heat and need and want, until I have no choice but to try to relieve it with a hand under my shorts. Circling my clit. Plunging inside me. Until the soft sound of my desire echoes the sound of his.

Gray leans forward, releasing my hair to reach for my ass, high in the air as I bow over him. And instead of slapping it like I expect him to, he squeezes each cheek, firmly, in his hands. His cock slips from my mouth as I moan, loudly. But I keep him in my fist. Keep pumping and stroking, until I slide my tongue down the length of him. Kissing his heavy sack. Weighing it in one palm. Delicately massaging. Worshiping him with my mouth and lips and tongue and fingers.

But as I sink back on him, his hands return up. Cradle my face. He brushes both thumbs on my hollowed cheeks, watching me with such a tender expression, that if it weren’t for my mouth sucking his cock, I’d think I was the one being worshiped.

“I’m going—I’m going to come,” he warns in a gasping breath.

Oh fuck, yes, please, I beg him with my eyes. Come for me. Come fast. Faster than last time. Harder than before. Let me make you come.

I suck him faster. Harder. Work him over and over and over, needing to see it. He threads his fingers through my hair, lightly tugging by the root. When his body contracts, I feel him try to lift my head. Only I sink right back down, taking him deep. Feeling his cock swell and tense under my tongue. Just as a clap of thunder makes the whole air quake, Gray cries out with a furious moan. A hot, heavy column of cum bursts down my throat. Greedily, I swallow it. Tease another hot spurt with my mouth and swallow more, more, more. Until finally, he draws his cock out, wiping a pearly drop from my lip with his thumb. And because I haven’t had nearly enough of him, I open my mouth to plead for that small last bit, and he gives it to me, letting me suck on his thumb until no more is left.

“Fuck, that, you—” and it’s me unable to form sentences, so high am I still from strength of his release. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I say hoarsely, “Your cock’s so good, Gray.”

But he says nothing. When I glance over, his chest heaves in rapid movement. His throat works nervously. And his eyes stare where my other hand’s still hiding beneath my shorts.

“Gray—”

He attacks. Grabs my shoulders and pulls me to him in a bruising kiss. Tasting himself on my tongue. Groaning into my mouth as his hands wander and roam and squeeze all over my body. Yanking me closer and closer. Crushing me against him. Until we both lose balance and down we go, tumbling off the window seat in a tangle of gasps and moans and giggles.

On the floor, he doesn’t stop. After making sure neither of us is hurt by the fall, he settles his weight on top of me. Pins me under his body and nips and teases and devours my lips with his. He does the same to my breasts. Licking and sucking and pinching and plucking. One hand slides hot and fast to the front of my shorts. Rubbing me through the fabric.

“Do—Do you?” he rasps harshly against my skin, and I cry out, “Yes! Fuck, yes, please, Gray.”

That hand shoves under my shorts. His whole body, so frenzied and primal, stills. “You’re not wearing underwear.”

And he sits back on his knees. Removes his hand to tear my shorts down my legs. “How often do you do that?”

“Not wear panties? Quite,” I sigh as he settles between my legs. “I didn’t wear any that first night. At the drive-in.” I sigh again as he trails kisses from my tits to my stomach to my hips. “Or the murder mystery party. The night we kissed in Kellermann’s.” I sigh more and more as he presses his mouth against the inside of my thigh. Lower and lower and lower. “And I never wear any when you’re home—here. When you’re here. When you—Ah, oh, fuck, fuck, oh shit—”

Then it’s me weaving his hair in my fingers. Pressing his mouth closer as he dips his tongue in my pussy. Slow and unhurried, compared to his rush before.

After a delirious round of kisses, he lifts his head to look me straight in the eye, his lips shining with me. “Tell me what you like. You might have to guide me, but I’ll get you there.”

And I think I could come, from that determined look on his face alone. With his glasses all crooked like that, knocked askew from my twitching thighs.

With an emphatic nod, I push his mouth back down and rest my arms above my head. Focusing only on my pleasure. On watching him. As his shoulders spread my knees and his hands grip my hips. Feeling his nose brush my clit and his tongue lap at my wetness and the murmuring rumble of his groan against my lower lips, blending with the thunder outside.

“I like—” I pant. “I like when you talk about chemistry. And numbers and volcanoes. And the stars.” He chuckles, agreeing, it would seem. “And I like that you use your hands—fuck, yes, like that.” He beckons two fingers inside me, rubbing at a spot that has me moaning for more. “And I like that you help with my volunteer work. That you teach me how to play pool—North, a little north and yeah, yes, yeah, right, right there—I like that you like really bad movies. When you get all smug, it makes me so wet. I love seeing your head buried in my pussy and—and oh, oh, fuck, Gray—” Because he buries it even deeper with an enthusiastic growl. He slips his fingers out, and then I feel them, slick with my arousal, spreading me to his mouth, until his tongue finds my clit.

“Fuck, fuck, I love that you buy me flowers, Gray,” I take several breaths, in and out, hard and fast and heavy. Outside, the storm builds its fury once more. Rain crashing over the window and thunder building a rapid drum and bright bursts of electricity, spotlighting when Gray tilts my hips. Holds my thighs over my stomach, taking inspiration and hiking my ankles way up in the air to devour me. “Suck, yes, suck, right there, right on my clit, please, please, please—I like when you kiss me. I like when you hold me. I love watching you come. I love tasting your cum. I like when you lick my pussy like that—yeah, yeah, just like, just like—fuck!”

I clasp his head over me as I rock my hips into his mouth. Shrieking in ecstatic release as thunder booms and lightning strikes and the walls and floor quake and the very air seems to rupture and split and I don’t give a single fuck, because it’s Gray, he’s doing this, he’s, oh, fuck, he’s tearing my whole world apart.

And when it’s over, Gray sits up, catching my shaking legs before they fall immediately to the floor, and he gives me that smug grin, and I think—Well, now here we go all over again—

Until a ringing snaps me out of it. A ringing I thought was only in my ears, but Gray must hear it, too, since he glances over to where his phone’s lit up and vibrating on the coffee table.

We look at each other with identical worried expressions. Because it’s way too late for anyone to be calling.

“Get it,” I push at his shoulders. Pants around his knees, he trips when trying to stand, so we work together to pull them back up, leaving the zipper undone. As he answers it, I find my clothes and pull them back on, listening.

“—ship’s sinking and it’s taking our captain with it,” Levi’s voice blasts through when Gray puts it on speaker.

“What?” Gray looks to see if I understood any of that. I shrug.

“We need all hands on deck!”

“Levi, slow down—”

Static bursts as the phone switches hands. Levi’s still yelling in the background, but it’s Spencer’s voice that comes through, loud and clear and urgent, “The basement’s flooding, Rowe. Get your ass back home. Now.”