by Joanna Bell
"Damn," he said, immediately stuffing the whole thing in his mouth. "Is there fif –" he swallowed – "is there fish in this?"
"Oh," I replied. "Yeah, sorry. I forgot you didn't –"
"No," he said. "That's – holy shit that's delicious."
I laughed in spite of the somber mood. "Told you."
"Are there more?"
"There's a lot more," I replied, handing him the entire bag.
"I can't believe how good these are," he enthused after downing a third and then a fourth. "These are really good."
"LA is known for having good tacos."
"Is it?"
I smiled, my disobedient heart full of affection as I remembered my first few encounters with Cillian Devlin's almost charming lack of worldliness. I bet there are people living on remote Pacific islands who know Los Angeles is known for its tacos. Cillian didn't, though. As tall and strong and decisive and willing to fire shotguns at the feet of full-grown grizzlies as he was, there was a side to him I remembered from when we were first together, a side that sometimes seemed almost boyish, like some old-timey small town kid wowed by the big city.
"Uh-huh," I confirmed. "It is. It's because it's so close to the border – big Mexican population."
Cillian fished another taco out of the bag. "Yeah," he said as he ate. "Yeah, that makes sense."
When I was a little girl and my maternal grandmother was still alive, I remember asking her one day why she always watched me eat. Even if it was just a plate of crackers and cheese and she wasn't having any for herself, she would always sit down at the table with me and observe quietly.
That's how you know you love someone, she told me. You're too young to feel it now but you'll see. One day you'll be the one sitting at the table watching your husband or your daughter or maybe just your cat eating their dinner and you'll know, too.
I was skeptical at the time. I tried to understand what my grandmother meant, though. For a few months I even took to peering into the cage when my hamster ate his daily kale leaves and carrot sticks. I never felt it, though. I never felt the calm satisfaction my grandma said it made her feel to watch me eat.
Until that afternoon in the hotel room, watching Cillian Devlin eat tacos like he was starving. I caught myself smiling as he reached into the bag once more, and my wise grandmother's words instantly came back to me:
That's how you know you love someone.
I looked away immediately, shaking my head.
"What?" Cillian asked, still eating.
"Nothing. I didn't say anything."
He smiled. "I know. But I saw you thinking something."
It was because he was hurt. It was about what happened in the hospital earlier, about the real anguish I saw in his eyes. It's normal to care about people who are in a lot of pain. Right? It doesn't mean you love them. It's normal. It's what anyone would feel.
***
"So Peru, huh?"
Eventually, my ex-husband stopped eating. And when he did, he wanted to talk.
"Yeah," I replied. "Peru."
"Why?"
How to answer that question? With a straight-up confession that I didn't think I would ever get over him without a total change of circumstances? And that now I was in the same room as him once again I didn't think it even worked?
"I don't know," I said slowly, looking out the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony. "I think I wanted to do something that mattered. My whole life everyone always praised me for everything I did. I was so smart and so well-behaved, I had such great potential – all of that. But now I've been in Peru for so long I feel like none of that ever really did anything for me. I'm not saying praise is bad or we shouldn't encourage children. I guess I'm just saying you never really develop any confidence without doing something. I never felt useful before this. And it's good – it's a good feeling."
Cillian balled up a napkin and threw it effortlessly, without even really looking, into a trashcan sitting over 10 feet away. It would have taken me 50 tries to do the same thing. "Uh-huh," he replied. "I can understand that. It's weird how you and I are both from wealthy families but the ways we were brought up are so different."
"How do you mean?"
I was pretty sure I knew what Cillian meant. I just... wanted to keep talking to him. I knew I shouldn't, but I did. It made me irritated with myself.
"Just what you were talking about," he replied. "Your parents praising you and being nice to you. My dad isn't like that. He thinks the way to raise kids is to be as hard on them as possible – to toughen them up."
"Yeah," I smiled sadly. "I noticed that. Maybe there's some middle ground there, though? Like maybe kids need some level of adversity to toughen them up – but not too much? I don't know – all I know is I'm not a strong person at all. Maybe my parents don't care about that, though? Maybe they figure if you have enough money you don't have to be st–"
"That's not true."
I looked up. "What?"
"That's not true. You are strong."
I couldn't help laughing. "How do you know that? Me and you – I don't know, Cillian. It's so weird. Like sometimes I feel like we really got to know each other. And then other times it feels like we never moved past being strangers who really liked having sex."
My cheeks flushed after I made that comment. I bent down to rummage in my purse, pretending I was looking for something so he wouldn't notice.
"No," he shook his head insistently. "You're strong. I can just tell."
"You can just tell?"
"Yup."
"Well," I replied, briefly wondering how many months of hard labor it was going to take to forget the feeling of just sitting next to him in that hotel room. "I hope you're right."
"How long do you think you'll stay? In Peru, I mean?"
Until I forget you. "I'm not sure. Maybe for awhile."
"Really? So you want to keep doing that kind of work?"
"Yes," I replied. "Yes, I do. It's like I said, this is the first thing I've ever done that actually feels like it matters. I know it hasn't been that long but being there has changed me. Or maybe it's changed how I see the world? Not that I've become this excellent person or anything like that, I just mean I care about different things now."
"You already were an excellent person, Astrid. And strong, too."
Cillian's voice was quiet, but clear. Serious. He meant it. I was half-tempted to jump out of my chair, grab him by the collar and scream: 'STOP BEING SO NICE!' into his face.
"Yeah," I whispered, thinking again about the photos of him with the other women, and about my own continued presence in that hotel room, about the fact that I dropped everything I was busy telling him I cared about to fly back to the US the minute he said he needed me. "I don't know about that. But how about you? How about your life in Sweetgrass Ridge? What are you up to these days?"
He winced and looked away. "Not much to be honest with you. Drinking, I guess. Drinking a lot. This is the first time in months I've been sober for more than 24 hours at a time."
My first reaction was to laugh – I thought he was joking. It almost immediately became apparent that he wasn't.
"It's like I said," he continued. "Things aren't so great for me – and that was before Jackson got hurt. I said meeting you made me think and it did but I didn't mean it made me think in some kind of inspirational, productive way or anything like that. Mainly it just made me think about what an asshole I've been. What an asshole I still am."
"You're not an asshole," I said. It was a confusing conversation because I actually meant it when I said it. Cillian was sitting slumped on the bed, looking like a broken man. I felt for him, even though the things he did were still very much in the forefront of my mind. "It's a choice, anyway. People who are assholes choose to be assholes."
A wan smile crossed his face. "So you're saying it's easy? I just have to choose not to be an asshole and that's it? Fixed?"
"Well," I replied. "Why not?"
Cillian gav
e me a look, then, and it was like I briefly saw the ghost of a much older man in his eyes.
The conversation meandered into shallower waters after that. Part of me wanted to keep asking him about his life, to keep talking about the things that mattered. Another part was afraid it would weaken me, soften the parts of myself I hardened against him. Soon the tacos – and the wistful regret for what might have been – settled into our bellies. I don't remember if there was a moment when I realized I either had to get up and leave right away or risk nodding off. I think maybe there was.
A few minutes later I was slumped in the armchair and Cillian was sprawled across the bed, both of us fast asleep. I woke up in darkness a few hours later, still sitting in exactly the same position.
I stayed there for a few minutes, listening to the sound of my own breathing. Outside the window, in the distance, I could see planes lining up in the sky, one behind the other, in preparation for landing at LAX. Cillian was still asleep, one foot hanging off the end of the bed. I looked at him in the dim light, my heart full of competing emotions. Compassion for what he was going through. Anger at what he did – at what he still hadn't admitted to doing in spite of all his declarations of regret and reform. Desire. Poignant, almost painful nostalgia for what could have been.
But it couldn't have been. Because he is who he is and you are who you are and he did the things he did.
That's what I told myself as I carefully lay a thin blanket over him. The AC was on high, I didn't want him to get cold.
I half-intended, when I agreed to go to Los Angeles, to ask him about everything. About the letter I received, about his brother and about what exactly went down between them. And about the photographs. Just thinking about those images – and the way they made me feel – hardened my heart a little as I stepped into the bathroom to smooth my hair and straighten my rumpled clothes in front of the mirror.
I was getting ahead of myself again, congratulating myself on being able to be in a hotel room with my ex-husband without giving in to my baser desires. Cillian was so hurt, though, so wounded by what was happening with his brother that I think I momentarily forgot just how dangerous he was to me.
I turned the light off in the bathroom and opened the door again, planning to call him the next morning, intending to be there again if he needed me.
As I tiptoed past the bed a hand suddenly grabbed my wrist.
"Oh!" I exclaimed, startled. "I thought you were still sleep–"
"Don't go."
Oh, his voice. Thick with sleep and sadness, it hit me in a deep, deep place.
"I have to," I whispered, my heart hammering in my chest. "Cillian, I have –"
"Don't go."
I could have pulled my arm away. But I didn't. I didn't step back, either. I just stood there next to the bed, not moving.
And that's where I stayed, as still as a statue as he brought his other arm came up, his hand slipping under the hem of my shirt and laying flat on my belly, moving around to my waist.
"Astrid, please. Don't go."
I dropped my bag, suddenly unable to breathe. Something was giving way inside me.
Cillian pulled me into his arms, rolling me over onto my back in one easy movement, settling his body between my legs.
It was everything. It was still everything. He was still everything. The perfect weight of his body on top of mine, the feeling of my legs wrapped around him, the overwhelming sense that there was nowhere else I should be except where I was. I buried my hands in his hair as he bent to kiss my neck and sighed my own defeat into the darkness.
Chapter 31: Cillian
I could say I was half-asleep – and I was. It's not an excuse, though. I knew what I was doing. I was awake before Astrid was, lying quietly on the bed as my eyes adjusted to the dark, watching her sleep. I watched her wake up, too. I watched the way she moved around the room – so quietly, with such care not to wake me – and stayed silent as she laid an extra blanket over me.
She was always so gentle with me. Even when I didn't deserve it. Even when she was the one who needed it and I was too stupid and self-involved to understand.
I thought I would just let her leave. That was the plan. Let her go and then take care of the issue in my pants myself. Jerk off, eat the rest of the tacos she left for me – because Astrid is the kind of person who leaves the tacos instead of taking them with her – go back to sleep, wake up in the morning and continue praying to God that my brother didn't die. That was the plan.
But then she walked by the bed and I swear my hand moved of its own accord, my fingers wrapping themselves around her slender wrist without any direction to do so from my brain.
And then she didn't move away. She didn't pull her hand back or yell at me to fuck off. She just fucking stood there and the sudden, almost choking lust that rose up inside me just to be touching her wrist was too fucking much. It was all too fucking much. She was too much. My wounded brother was too much. My asshole dad was too much. All of it. My whole life. Everything.
When I felt her soften, just slightly, the barrier I had erected when she arrived in LA – the 'good guy' barrier – fell instantly.
Reaching for her was an act of desperation. My life was fucked even before Jackson got hurt. And then he did and it was like the universe was paying me back for all those years of not appreciating just how good I had it.
I had some self-control. More than I ever did before. I kept my hands off her for as long as I could. When she wanted to kiss me in the car I resisted. Even that night in the hotel, it could have so easily ended the way I imagined it – with Astrid leaving quietly, still under the impression I was asleep, and going back to her hotel room alone.
She didn't leave, though. She stood there beside the bed for a few whole, long seconds and I reached out and that moment was the end of both of us. My hand on her wrist. That's all it took.
I pulled her into my arms, pressing my face into her neck and just breathing in huge, huffing breaths of her.
"I'm sorry," I murmured as she cradled my head in her hands, letting out those sweet little sighs I never managed to forget. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm –"
"It's OK," she whispered, tilting her head up towards me, opening her mouth for my tongue. "Cillian, it's –"
I kissed her before she could finish, so hungry for her mouth I was panting. How many times since she left did I close my eyes and think of those kisses? How many times did I get hard in the middle of the Super Mart or miss a green light at an intersection over a sudden flash of remembrance? To have her in my arms again was everything I needed. My beautiful, impossible girl.
And so we indulged ourselves. Astrid's hands tightened in my hair as I yanked up her shirt and slipped my hand into her bra, cupping one achingly soft breast in my hand, running the tips of my fingers over the nipple until it pebbled to attention and her kisses melted into whimpers.
I had her on her back almost immediately, settling my still-clothed body between her legs because that was the one place in the entire universe where I needed to be. She wrapped her arms around my neck as we kissed, rocking her hips up against me until it started to feel a little too good.
"Wait," I panted, laughing in spite of myself. "Astrid – wait."
"What?" She breathed, gazing up at me.
It was still dark in the room, but there was enough ambient city light filtering in from outside that I could see it glistening in her eyes as she looked at me.
"It's OK," she said again and I don't think either of us really knew if she meant what we were doing was OK or that I would be OK or that everything would be OK or if it was just meaningless babble. All I know is I believed her. I looked down at her underneath me, at the upturned tilt of her chin as she waited for me to cool down – and I believed her.
Astrid Walker said it was going to be OK, and so it was.
She pulled off her shirt as I hovered over her, and then tossed it aside. Next went the bra.
"Oh Jesus," I whispered, looking down
as she unzipped her pants, watching the top edge of her cotton panties slide down over the upper curve of her pussy. "Oh Jesus, Astrid."
Once, when I was younger – just fresh out of high school or close to that age – a girl commanded me to 'take' her. We were in some random bedroom at a random house party, getting down on a pile of coats – and she told me to take her.
I didn't know what the fuck she meant. She wanted me to take her? Take her where? Weren't we already where we wanted to be? Did she mean give her an orgasm? Wasn't I in the process of doing that? I ignored the girl at the time and kept doing my thing, because I was too proud to ask what she meant.
It took me almost a decade to find out – and Astrid didn't have to say it. Her body – naked underneath mine, arching up towards me, open like a flower in full bloom – did all the talking. I couldn't even see much in the gloom, it was like looking at sand dunes under moonlight, all black and white and shade and light and smooth curves that some part of you just burns to own.
"Cillian –"
She was offering herself up to me. Finally I understood what that poor girl meant all those years ago. I knelt up on my heels between Astrid's thighs, unbuckling my belt and then unzipping, sliding my hand into my underwear and wrapping it around my full, throbbing length. My balls felt heavy and full, my lungs filled to capacity with breath I knew I could only fully exhale when I felt her around me.
She reached for me again, pulling me down, kissing me, spreading her legs for me. I moaned when I felt her – before I was even inside her, when I was just dragging the tip of my cock up, sliding it between her slick, warm folds until there was nothing and no one on earth except us.
I sank into her at once, all the way, until her cries took on a new tone of desperation and she threw her head back on the pillow, shaking it from side to side.
My first thought was how did I go so long without her? How did I live for so many months without the feeling of her sweet, warm pussy around me? She felt so good. She felt like heaven. I curled my tongue between her lips and fucked her slow and deep until we lost ourselves in the rhythm of our bodies moving together.
