Free Moment of Impact by Lisa Mondello Page B

until I feel his body rise. Only then do I pull away and kiss his stomach, then his chest and then I’m straddling him again.
    “The condom,” he says, dragging in each breath.
    He quickly sheathes himself and then he’s inside me, gripping my hips and moving me up and down on his cock. I’m the first one to climax, but he’s not far behind me. I can hear his moans mingle with mine as I go higher and then feel my orgasm rip through my whole body, splitting me in two.
    Seconds later, I collapse against Gus’s chest and feel the warmth of his body and the sunlight coming through the window.
    We lay there quietly for a little while, neither of us talking.
    “You’re disappearing again,” he says, stroking my hair as I rest my cheek on his chest. “You do that a lot.”
    My ass is still in the air as I lay on top of him. I don’t want to move. I can understand why he thinks I’ve gone somewhere in my mind. I had. But I’m still here and I want to stay here.
    I lift myself up and slide off his chest so I’m lying next to him uncovered. For some reason I don’t mind being naked with Gus. I know I’ve gained weight since I’ve been on the island. I hate my body. I hate that I can’t condition it to be the way it was when I was sixteen and I felt like I was on top of my game.
    Since I’d been on the island, I hadn’t had as much time to work out. My normal daily two-hour dance workouts had been reduced to a half hour at best. I wasn’t used to sharing space with so many people.
    I like my roommates. They’re different. Freer in ways I hadn’t even imagined it was possible to be free. Heather doesn’t mind being forward. I like that about her. She knows what she wants and goes after it. A smile pulls at my lips as I recall the tirade she’d had one morning at breakfast about Jason, her ex who’d gotten angry with her for getting the job at the Windjammer and ended up grabbing the first waitress who walked by and kissed her right in front of Heather.
    If that were me, I would have cowered in the corner and cried. Not Heather. She waltzed up to the bouncer, a total hunk of a man in his late twenties who could probably be an A list movie star if he had the brains to get his sweet ass out to Hollywood and try out for a role. He didn’t even have to know how to act. Women of all ages would pay money to just sit and drool over him in the movie theater. Heather just grabbed him by his head and planted one right on his lips. It was enough to intimidate the shit out of me. But not Heather.
    Up until then, I’d believed Heather was all hot air, complaining about everything from the lack of hot water in the pipes to the smell of low tide. But after that, I knew she was just one of those girls who wouldn’t let life get the better of her. And I envy her for it.
    In a way, it reminds me of Gus. The only difference is Gus wasn’t the open book that Heather was.
    I don’t know why Penny worries about Heather so. She’s so much stronger than me. I’d let my life be crippled by my parents for far too long.
    “Earth to Lily!”
    I glance up and see Gus with his hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone, quietly shouting to the ceiling.
    I giggle. “What?”
    “You left me again.”
    “Again? I didn’t mean to.”
    He touches my chin with the tip of his fingers. “You say I do that all the time. Why don’t we go there together?”
    “Okay. Where do we go?”
    “How about that place that makes you look so sad.”
    My stomach begins to burn so I sit up in bed and stretch. Gus loves my tits so I’m hoping he’ll get sidetracked and just want to make love again. But he doesn’t move. He continues to look at me as if this is the most important thing I could ever tell him.
    “There’s no place,” I say.
    His jaw tightens. “Fine.”
    He starts to push the sheet off his body but I won’t let him. I don’t mind seeing him naked, and he’s never seemed shy with me. At least not the way I can sometimes be.