\THE Ex is back in town, and happened to show up where I did last night. I was waiting for Dee to show up and he beckoned me outside, giving me his motorcycle jacket when I protestested that it was too cold. It seems silly, but I know for certain he does that because he still wants to ‘claim’ me. For people to see me wearing his jacket… well, it’s an indicator of who belongs to who. I wore it outside, but returned it when I went inside and got my own table.
We have a strange friendship, him and I. We’ve never had sex; he’s Muslim and simply doesn’t. It didn’t stop him from dating the horny, white, Jewish girl, but I never pushed the envelope physically. We did ALMOST have sex once…
The Ex and I had broken up and gotten back together NUMEROUS times. We have a history of falling asleep next to one another as friends and waking up again as a couple, and so any time that I end up at his house, I brace myself for whatever emotional roller coaster is about to happen.
Last February (yes, a while back), we’d been talking at the hookah bar and he casually threw out that a number of his friends – my friends, too – were going to be chilling in his apartment after the hookah bar closed. I knew before he finished his sentence what that meant, but pretended I didn’t and agreed. It didn’t hurt that it would mean a ride in his car (and I suppose that was also a bad idea since fast cars and reckless drivers turn me on like no other).
The Ex’s car is gorgeous. It’s all shiny and orange and black and fast. Really fast. He knows I love it and has, in the past, used that to get to me. Climbing into it, I just feel sexy, wind in my hair, smirking at all the other jealous drivers we pass by. Even the short ride from the hookah bar to his apartment left me feeling pumped and delicious, ready for anything.
All the Arabs were sitting in his room when we got there, looking at motorcycles and cars online (no big surprise there). It was nearing 4:30 a.m. and I was trying to hold on to the conversation, but it’s difficult, seeing as I speak almost no Arabic and they refuse to speak English to one another. I started to drift off and the Ex noticed. He told me to lie down in his bed, claiming he was too tired to drive me home. Of course, he wasn’t, but even if we both knew that, we let it go. I climbed into his bed and almost immediately fell asleep.
I’d expected him to go into the living room and maybe get into bed with me when everyone left, but he blatantly kicked everyone out of his room and joined me under the covers. He put his hand on my waist – the curve of my belly and hips always turned him on immensely – and I inched away. I really was tired, and I really thought we could avoid the inevitable ex-lover loving if I just didn’t play into his hands (to use a turn of phrase).
I could feel him, hard flesh pressed into soft, and it was a miracle that nothing ended up happening until the next morning. Just lying there knowing he was as ravenous for me as I was for him was torture. I wanted him to pull me closer and closer until there was no space between our bodies, but I stayed curled on the other side of the bed.
I woke up first, as usual, and got frustrated, as usual, that he was not awake. Agitated prodding to wake him up became teasing, then wrestling, and he was certainly awake by the time he had me pinned to the bed, lips just inches from mine.
“We shouldn’t,” I murmured.
“You want to as much as I do.”
“I know.”
“Who cares? No one says we shouldn’t have fun…”
He leaned down and firmly pressed his lips to mine. One kiss. One long passionate kiss, one that we’d both wanted for a long time. I felt a flush go through my whole body, starting where his lips were and flowing through my blood to all my ends. He pulled away, his breath as labored as mine.
“Let’s take a shower,” he suggested innocently, as if he really just needed to wash. He strutted into the bathroom and turned the shower on, and I stared at the ceiling, conflicted as to what I should do. “Are you coming?”
I stripped down – the bathroom was already fogging up with steam by the time I joined him. He was soaping up his body and I almost melted to see his strong back muscles bare again. They rippled as he reached for the soap and handed it to me over his shoulder, not even looking in my direction. The sexual tension between us always increased a hundred fold whenever we weren’t actually dating, and at that moment, I wanted him more than anyone. I reached up and touched the line of his spine, running my fingers gently from his neck to his lower back, resisting doing anything else.
Suddenly, he turned around and slammed me into the wall of the shower, lips pressed hard against mine, my curves conforming to his solid muscle. I groped feverishly, pressing my fingertips violently into his back, my breasts smashed against his chest. He tangled one of his hands in my wet curls and pulled my leg up to wrap around his waist.
I could feel his cock rock hard against my inner thigh, almost brushing the lips of my pussy. We’d never been so close to sex before, and I could feel his heart beating faster in fear and anticipation. He was a virgin – Muslims aren’t supposed to have sex before marriage, and he had always said he would never do it. But I could feel him, there, against my flesh, and I know we both considered how easy it would be to just slide him in and do it. He was pulling me closer and closer, his penis rubbing ever so lightly against my clit. Sex with him would be half making love, full of lasting emotion and feeling, a moment I’d never had with anyone else and still haven’t. The other half would be pure anger – anger that he’d broken his promise to G-d, anger that we’d given in to one another again, anger from all our fights and spats and arguments, anger that I’d slept with Arabs before that weren’t him, that held looser ideals than he, anger from the Shakespearean forbiddenness of our relationship, Palestine versus Israel, Jews versus Muslims, hard virgin versus wet harlot, him versus me…
“No,” I whispered firmly. “What are we doing?!” I shoved him away and moved to the other end of the shower, unable to look at him, staring at the bubbles around our feet instead.
It is a very difficult thing to say no to someone who simply looks like the Ex, and it makes it even harder to say no when the past is for us what it is. He said nothing. “We can’t,” I reiterated, not ready to leave him alone in there. He kept silent, but pulled me into his arms, the hot water still raining down on us. We stood in one another’s arms for hours – no, maybe it was thirty seconds in reality, but it felt like forever – and he finally spoke.
“Do you want to get back together?”
I stepped back slightly to stare him in the eyes.
“I can’t do that. I can’t do this.” I admit, I wanted to scream yes, but it was too much to handle, with our fights and our religions and everything that I couldn’t do over one more time. I opened my mouth to say something else, but realized I couldn’t breathe, the hot steam filling my lungs and emotions filling my heart and head.
“I have to get out,” I gasped. “I can’t breathe, I can’t…” I tore myself from his arms and stumbled out of the shower, collapsing onto the red bathmat on the floor. Trying to get air in and out was strenuous and I closed my eyes to focus on my breath. I felt a soft towel wrapped around me, and turned to see the Ex standing behind me, concerned.
“Are you -?”
“I’m fine. I just… it was too hot in there.”
“I’m just -” he sighed. “I’ll just finish my shower.” He paused before finally disappearing behind the shower curtain again, and I held the towel close around my body and left the bathroom. I sat motionless on his bed for a long time, until finally he emerged, half-dressed, and kissed my forehead.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For stopping us.”
“Yeah.” I pulled the towel tighter around me. “Well, I said I would never let it happen, no matter how much I wanted it to.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Of course not.”
He stood awkwardly for a moment, then finally shrugged. “Help me with my homework.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon working on his homework, entangled on his bed, but we didn’t kiss again – in fact, that was the last time we ever kissed.
Seeing him last night reminded me of that last time, almost a year ago now, when we almost lost control. I’m glad I said no. I couldn’t be who I am today with his binding expectations of a girlfriend, and I would never have met several people who helped change my life. Still, I wonder what it would have been like.
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