Notes: Written for the Weekend of Upholstery Abuse. Title Belongs to Bob Seger.
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Stella made Ray fall in love with summer.
It started that first year, him working on his car in the garage, her sprawled out on the roof, singing along to the music he had playing in the background. "Let's go somewhere, Ray," she'd say, and they'd get in the car and drive until they found someplace that neither of them had ever been.
Those nights would end back in the garage, making out in the backseat until the windows were fogged and she stopped his hand on its way to her pants. He'd go home afterward and jerk off between the sheets, thinking of her long tanned legs in her tiny shorts, her shirt clinging to the curve of her breasts.
They first made love in the middle of a thunderstorm on her living room couch.
"My parents are out of town," she told him that afternoon, pressing up against his back and slipping her arms around his waist. "Come over tonight."
He showed up just after sunset, drenched to the skin, and she answered the door with a tiny secretive smile on her face. "The power's out," she told him, and led him to the living room. There, she stripped off his wet clothes, licking up the drops of mingled water and sweat as they left trails down his back and throat.
She pushed him down on the couch, straddling him and kissing him slow and deep. One of his hands rested against the top of her shorts, just over the curve of her ass, while the other reached up to peel away the shirt that stuck to her skin. She was bare under it, and she let her head tip back as he took first one nipple in his mouth, then the other.
This time when his hands went to her shorts, she didn't stop him, and she let him lay her back against the couch to touch her and lick her through her panties. When he finally peeled them away, her hands were insistent on his shoulders, pulling him back up the couch to kiss her.
He sank into her as thunder crashed, and he would have laughed at the clich� if her legs hadn't tightened around him, pulling him deeper into her. They moved awkwardly at first, finding the right angle, the right leverage, and then it was smooth and easy, the best kind of dancing in the world, her arching up into him as he thrust down against her, burying his face in her neck and hearing her panting beside his ear.
Her nails marked lines across his back when she came, and it was the sting of pain that sent him over the edge.
They lay quietly on the couch afterwards, sprawled across each other, sweating and exhausted, and they watched the lightning cast shadows across the walls.
Years later, she left him in August, packing her things while her hair fell into her face, sticking to her eyelashes with sweat and tears.
That was the night that Ray fell out of love with summer.