Sunspots and Raindrops

Banner by the great cfizzle over on 'Zilla. She's read so many of my stories and made me so many banners. She's truly amazing.

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Brendon’s Point of View

I couldn’t stop pacing. My breathing rate was much too high and my heart felt like it was ablaze within my chest. I was angry; angrier than I’d probably ever been in my entire life. My hands were in tight fists and the muscles in my arms were stiff, unyielding. I couldn’t have relaxed even if I had told myself to, even if I had wanted to.

Maybe if she’d wanted me to…

She’d told me to wait twenty minutes at 8:36 P.M. So, I watched the clock like a hawk, each minute passing by painfully slowly. The same way time seems to drag in an extremely long car ride. Nothing seems to make the time go by faster and when you think you’ve been driving for half an hour, in reality it’s been four minutes.

Endlessly frustrating was all I could think about.

Finally, at 8:56, I was out the door and running across our lawns. I wasted no time in knocking on the door because I knew that Sonny wouldn’t have wanted to leave her room. I knew that she was probably scrubbing off her smeared makeup before I would see her broken down again.

And then, not a minute later, I was walking into her bedroom. She was sitting on the edge of her bed with her hands limp in her lap. Tears were streaming down her face, carrying her makeup with them and I realized that she hadn’t even tried to tidy herself up before I got there.

Something inside of me swelled and burst at the sight. I loved the way she didn’t care what she looked like around me because I didn’t care one bit. She could have no arms and an eye patch, but I’d be there to carry her books for her and use my eyes to make up for her lost one.

She sniffed and looked at me, the tears in her eyes glistening as she attempted to smile. The sight broke my heart.

“What the fuck happened?” I asked firmly. I was angry, but not at her in the slightest. And I was worried almost to the point of hysteria. She opened her mouth to answer me, but as she did so, she lifted her chin revealing four red streaks on her neck. Following my gaze, Sonny tried to cover the marks. Pain shot across her face, making her eyes squint and a hiss to slip through her teeth.

The sound brought me to my knees as I scooted across the carpet toward her to get a better look at the marks across her throat. “What the fuck?” I asked in a whisper, not so much to her as to myself. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I looped her chin with my index finger and gingerly lifted, exposing her neck completely. “Did that…that…prick do this to you?” I could feel my fury boiling upward like a pot full of water on a stove. Sonny’s green eyes were trembling and she could only nod. My anger boiled over. “I’ll beat the shit out of the asshole!”

My hand moved to her cheek and she leaned into my touch, her eyes closing as she raised her hand to touch mine, removing it from her face to place them in her lap. “You don’t have to do anything, Bren,” My bubbling wrath simmered, but not when I noticed the tears in her eyes as she winced while she spoke. “Just the fact that you’re here is enough for me.”

I smiled at her. A smile that I hoped was reassuring and affectionate and not itching for a fight. “Of course I’m here,” I traced her knuckles with my thumb and she reciprocated the action with hers. “You wouldn’t have even had to ask me.”

She tried smiling at me, her eyes studying mine for a little while. I wondered how easily she could see right through me, not in the sense that she could figure me out instantly if she could and not in the sense that all she wanted was a puzzle to solve and then toss in the trash. In a sense that she and I were on the same page. Meaning that she understood me and, more importantly, I understood her.

“I bet you’d like to take a swing at Thomas, huh?”

She knew exactly what I was thinking.

“You’re damn right I would!” I say, leaping to my feet and bouncing on my toes like a boxer in the ring. I knocked my knuckles together like I was wearing red boxing gloves. “Ain’t nobody going to lay a hand on my woman like that and live to regret it.” I was never good and imitating Rocky Balboa.

But it didn’t matter. Sonny laughed and the sound was like a neurotoxin to my brain, sending any legitimate thought out the window along with any rational feeling. Aside from the now bubbling affection I felt toward her as she approached me and took my hands in hers. I smiled at her, not that I could’ve gotten my face to relax even if I wanted it to, and she returned the expression though tiredly.

“Thank you,” she said as her fingers slipped into the spaces between mine one at a time. She pulled them to her sides, causing me to have to take a step forward to keep from falling into her. But I didn’t mind the proximity.

In fact, I disliked the space still between us and decided to resolve the problem by reducing it to nothing as I pressed my lips to hers soothingly. She smiled into the kiss and her arms slunk around my neck while mine took her by the waist and hips. And like we had done before, we both pulled each other closer simultaneously and the initially soft kiss was intensified.

I didn’t know what came over me because the thought hadn’t crossed my mind before, but suddenly, I was pressing against her and she was walking backwards until the backs of her knees met the mattress. The buckled and she fell flat on her back, but with fistfuls of my shirt, I was pulled down with her, though I caught myself on the heels of my hands so as to not collapse on her completely.

She laughed slightly which drew the same sound from me before she reached up and connected our mouths again. Not minding the contact, I lowered myself to my elbows and situated myself with my body pressed completely, and at the same time lightly, against hers. And though the way her fingers tangled themselves in my hair and the way she tasted like a cherry Jolly Rancher was distracting enough, I couldn’t help but focus on the way we fit like perfect puzzle pieces.

She was warm like she had a fire burning under her skin and I could feel her body heat from every point at which we were touching. One of her legs was between mine, I noticed suddenly, and the warmness emanating there caused my stomach to somersault and a wave of new toxins to flush my train of conscious thought.

I put my hands on either side of her face and tried to divert my attention from the way she was making me feel physically. I’d thought my heart rate was unhealthy ten minutes ago in my bedroom; my heart was pounding three times as hard there on Sonny’s bed. Sounds threatened to crawl up my trachea, but I kept them suppressed. I didn’t want to get the wrong idea because I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea.

I couldn’t shut my brain off. Suddenly, everything needed to be analyzed. I was tracing the outline of her feet with mine and each time I’d catch my foot in her sweats, she’d laugh a little, making me laugh with her. And then, I needed to trace other areas of her anatomy, though nothing explicit.

Her hair was first. It felt like velvet in my hands and I let it run between my fingers like I would soft white sand grains on a beach. I traced her outer ear down to her jaw, following the suture behind and back into her hair again. From her hair, my hand followed her jugular down her neck, carefully sketching the muscles in her neck with a feathery touch so as not to irritate the bruises there. From there, my hand grazed over her shoulder and before I knew it, it was resting on her clavicle.

Clavicle to upper arm to lower arm to side. My fingertips dipped between her ribs slowly, this time causing her arms to flinched and constrict around my shoulders slightly, bringing me closer to her still. I felt her squirm beneath me, our bodies running against each other, generating more heat.

And though I didn’t realize what I was doing before I was doing it, my hand had maneuvered her shirt away from her hip and I’d placed my hand on her bare abdomen.

She broke away from the kiss, her eyes darting downward for only a millisecond before connecting with the ceiling. I was placing kissing on her cheek on jaw as she caught her breath. The inflation of her lungs against me caused my hand to slip further under her top. Her eyes dropped to my hand again and suddenly, every drop of blithe desire was gone from me. She was just as concerned with rushing things as I was and I had no intention of rushing anything with her. How could I when every second spent with her wasn’t long enough? There was no such thing as spending too much time with her, but I still wanted to milk every second for all its worth.

Her breathing had slowed and her mouth had opened to speak, but I had placed a kiss on her neck where the marks were beginning to form. A feathery light kiss, I left a train of them along her neck and throat before brining my face to hers.

She was smiling at me but when I asked her why she didn’t answer. And I realized that I didn’t need an answer. I rolled to my side and continued to look at her as she gave me one more adoring grin and then turned her attention to the ceiling, yawning.

She was perfect in every sense of the word. She was talking about how much of a prick her mom’s boyfriend was and though I believed it one hundred percent, I could hear the tone of confliction in the core of her voice. Though she was without a doubt in pain, I could tell that she was trying to act as normal as possible for me. She held my hand and kissed my fingertips, letting me know that whatever I’d just said had meant something to her. She realized that her makeup was everywhere and laughed before grabbing a washcloth from her bathroom and wiping it all off right before me.

She was genuine with me and I every time I thought she wouldn’t get better, she did.

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“I have to do something amazing for her for her birthday,” I said as Ryan, Brent, Spencer and I all sat around in Ryan’s basement.

“Well, do you have anything planned?” Spencer asked.

I gave a half-hearted shrug. “Not really,” I answered. “Her birthday is the day after homecoming and I don’t really have any ideas that are good enough.”

Spence mimicked my shrug, looking stumped. My friends were great, but when it came to women, we could’ve all used a little time in the field. None of us were exactly chick magnets.

“What do you think she’d like?” Ryan asked, strumming his guitar absent-mindedly. It was something he always did and we’d all learned to tune it out. If Ryan was talking, so was his guitar, we’d realized not long after meeting him.

“That’s the thing,” I say with exasperated pleasure. “She likes everything!”

The guys all rolled their eyes, but I could tell they weren’t annoyed. They had all met Sonny already and they’d all loved her. Her gripping personality had taken hold on them before they could realize what they’d gotten themselves into. And after only a few days, it was like the five of us had been best friends forever.

Before I could go on, my phone buzzed in my lap. I flipped it open to see a new text message from Sonny.

Dress color preference for homecoming?

I didn’t try to hide the smile that took over my mouth.

You choose. I’ll love it no matter what.

Send.

“I’ve got an idea!” Spencer exclaimed and I was all ears.

Spencer finished explaining and I realized that his plan was perfect. The four of us made the plans and looked up all the contacts we needed before leaving Ryan’s basement. I headed to the mall where Sonny was shopping for a homecoming dress.

I couldn’t decide what I was more excited for: to see her, to see her in possible homecoming dresses, or her upcoming birthday.

In that moment, nothing could’ve gone wrong.