Navy boy pt. 3

Read part 1 here.
Read part 2 here.

I was over the ex. We'd fucked each other out of our systems on that rainy spring day, and miraculously gotten away with it.  Really, it was necessary. We could both now move on with our moving on. So we did. We tucked away the knowledge of our tryst and it remained nothing more than an inferred secret whenever our eyes caught.

I kept my prom date with Jeff. He was considered my boyfriend at this stage, so why wouldn't I? All dressed up we attended the event and it was just as much fun to see others as it was to be seen in our finest. Of course I had my eye out for Navy boy. As was his habit, he disappointed me by not showing up. I was curious to see him in a suit, and even more so to know who he might have asked to go as his date. Earlier in the week he'd been vague when I pressed him for a straight response about whether or not he was going.

"I haven't decided yet."

"Why does it matter?"

"You might see me there."

All said with gentle smiles and slight smirks in the evasive way that he owned. I always got the sense from him that he was hiding something. Was it the fact that he liked me more than he let on, or the fact that he didn't like me as much as I hoped? Or maybe he just liked to appear mysterious. Fact is, we both knew he was playing me, but what, exactly, was he playing at?

He ended up working the night of prom, so any fantasies I harbored about sharing a dance with him fell flat. The night carried on and being a resilient teenager, I bounced back from my hidden disappointment and enjoyed myself as much as possible. Which was a lot, actually. When the evening was over, our small entourage skipped the official after prom function and opted for a midnight viewing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, then we all separated to go do what teenagers do late on prom night.

My friendship with Navy boy chilled after that. He backed off from the flirting, the innuendos disappeared, and he withheld any touching. This, I think, is when I became fixated with his hands. It was the touching I missed the most. Our library conversations were now held across the table from one another, hands held in front -  mine tapping their nails in distraction or flipping through a magazine that I wasn't reading, and his calmly crossed one on top of the other, or fiddling with the Mickey Mouse watch that was ever present on his slender wrist.

Watching his hands, taking in the way his fingers worked the timepiece over caused my imagination to picture what else he could work over so gracefully. With a flushed face my eyes jumped away from his hands and settled on his eyes. There in his eyes I would see a recognition that he never gave voice to with his mouth. The words that fell from there were so casual, so unassuming, one could never guess the hot tension that was building under the cooling surface. I never guessed it. And I was sitting right across from it. My eyes explored him from hands, to eyes, to lips, then back to the hands. Every day for the remainder of the school year. Hands, eyes, lips, hands. Through casual chats about his upcoming graduation, and the verbal sport of tossing our summer plans about. Hands. Eyes. Lips. Hands. All the while I continued to date Jeff, look for an easy way out, and fantasize about those hands. Those eyes. Those lips. And those hands...

Something snapped in me the last week of school. I knew upon graduation that I would no longer have easy access to Navy boy. No more shared library. No more rides home. No more hanging out and talking. No more sexual tension to feed the flames. I was obsessed with this tension between us. What was once hot on top, yet cool underneath was now an iced over volcano. I needed a way to force things to the tipping point. One way or the other. I couldn't carry on like this  any longer.

In a moment of true grit I set aside all of my ego, let my determination guide me, and I grabbed my keys and headed to Navy boy's house.