by Marnie Vinge
We sit together on the couch in silence for a while. It’s comfortable. Companionable. It’s the kind of silence that two old friends can lean into and relax against. It’s shelter in the storm. And I’m so glad to have that back.
Birdie puts the documentary back on and we watch for a few minutes. Then the door lock clicks open, and Ollie comes in.
“Hey,” he says to the two of us.
He swoops baby Sasha up and kisses her until she giggles once more. It seems that Ollie always puts her in a better mood.
He then kisses Birdie and nods at me.
“Ione, good to see you,” he says with a smile. He means it.
I tell him likewise, but the fact that he’s come home early makes me feel like I need to head out. I don’t want to cramp their style or be a third wheel, so I excuse myself and thank Birdie. I tell her same time next week and she kisses me on the cheek as I leave.
In my car, I decide to break my two-glass rule for the first time in three months. And I head over to the bar.
It’s busy. Campus is crawling with people. Most of them students, I’m sure. I wave hello to a few professors that I recognize. Some from my time at the university and others from my time on Wes’s arm.
The rooftop bar bustles. Waitstaff hop from table to table taking orders and making sure everyone is taken care of. The night calls for a vodka tonic with lime and my waiter—a cute kid that can’t be more than a junior—brings me my glass.
I sip the drink slowly, savoring the taste of the alcohol and the hint of citrus. It reminds me of my grandpa in a way that I can’t ever find outside of the drink. It’s like he’s here with me. Like I’m a medium, channeling him right onto this patio. But there’s a part of me that wonders if he would be proud of me.
I know he would be. I’m proud of myself. I’ve come so far from the time that I was Tom’s student—his lover, his mistress—to now.
I look across the bar and then I see him.
Wes.
My heart thuds in my chest, suddenly heavy with an ache that’s at once familiar and disconcerting. I feel alive just looking at him. Suddenly conscious of the alcohol coursing through my bloodstream, I want to seem cool. Calm. Collected. But when he starts walking over to my table, I stand and bump into it with my hip, sending a good portion of the drink splattering across the top of it.
“Hey,” he says with a smile.
“Hey,” I say.
“Mind if I join you?” he asks.
I find it odd that he’s alone. I nod, though, and let him have a seat next to me. He orders a drink and the two of us sit in silence for a moment.
“How was the wedding?” I finally ask, the vodka loosening my tongue enough to make the question palatable. At least to me.
He laughs and a smile creeps across his face. He sighs.
“Didn’t happen,” he says.
He looks at me.
“What?” I say.
“I called it off,” he says. “A week before the wedding. I just couldn’t do it. Something wasn’t right.”
His sentence hangs in the air.
“I heard about the thing out in the panhandle,” he says. “I think you’re crazy for having gone out there.” He leans forward. “But that’s what I always loved about you.”
“It wasn’t for the story,” I trace the rim of my glass with my finger and bump into the lime. “I went for an old friend. She was out there. The girl they talked about on the news. The one that got shot. That was her.”
“Oh, my God,” Wes says.
We sit for a moment.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he finally broaches the silence.
“Me too,” I laugh. He joins.
“What brings you out tonight?” he asks.
“Just didn’t want to go home,” I say. “Empty house. Too much taxidermy staring holes through me when I’m a little tipsy.”
“Norman Bates would call them friends,” he jokes.
“They make good company,” I say. “None of them talk back. I think that’s what my grandparents liked about them.”
“Better than kids,” he says.
“Much.”
He orders another drink and I nurse mine slowly. Finally, when it hit the bottom, I notice that Wes is staring at me. His eyes are the same deep brown they always were. I don’t know why I ever thought that would change.
“You wanna get out of here?” he asks.
My heart beats wild inside the cage my ribs provide. Of course I do.
“Yes,” I breathe.
Wes pays the tab and he stands from the table. He reaches a hand out for mine and I let him lead me out of the rooftop bar down onto the street. We walk towards his car, hand in hand.
We get to the car and he lets me in, always the gentleman. Inside the cabin, I wait for him. He climbs in and starts the engine. In the glow of the dash his face is illuminated green. His glasses reflect the dashboard instruments.
“I’ve missed you, Ione,” he says.
I’ve wanted to hear that for so long, I realize. I think about the night that we shared not so unlike this one only a few months ago. It brings a pain to my chest. A physical manifestation of the emotional upheaval I felt at the time.
“I’ve missed you, too,” I say.
He looks at me. His eyes catch the glow of the radio as he leans across the console. He reaches up a hand and cups my neck. His palm is warm, and I relax into it. Familiar and safe, it feels like home.
He draws closer, his lips only an inch from mine and I close my eyes. Our mouths find each other in the dark like they have a thousand times before. His kiss needs mine; his body needs mine. And before I can stop myself, I’m taking off his jacket, peeling away his shirt and he’s doing the same to me.
We pile into the backseat like two teenagers. And we make love, contorted into positions I haven’t seen since high school.
“Jesus Christ, Ione,” his voice is rough, ragged.
I lean down and close his mouth with a kiss. His back to the seat, he grabs my waist and slows his pace. His hand finds his way to the place where I need him to be. It happens quickly, needfully. It’s sweet and when we finish—me first, then him—I collapse on top of him.
“Fuck, I’ve missed you,” he whispers into my ear, brushing my hair away.
“Same here,” I say. I kiss him on the cheek, our bodies still entwined.
“Ione,” he says.
I lean up.
“I never stopped loving you,” he says. Against the low hum of the engine, his words seem to fill the car. They’re big and lofty and my immediate instinct is to buck against them, to fight them, and to run. But I don’t.
“I’m crazy about you, Wes,” I say. “I love you.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever said it.
In all the time that we were together, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him how I felt. Of course, I loved him. But there was something—someone—holding me back. And now, I was free of him. And I never wanted to be anything like the monster that Tom became. I didn’t want to hide behind my false bravado anymore. I wanted to be in love, and I wanted a partner by my side.
“I’ll love you ‘til the day I die,” he says.
And we make love again.
Wes spends the night, and, in the morning, I make coffee for us. We have sex again, twice. And it’s sometime around noon when we finally drag ourselves out of bed. We make huevos rancheros together.
He sits across the dining room table from me. It’s an antique relic that my grandma found once upon a time. The chairs are dark wood and creak with every movement. And somehow, Wes looks perfectly at home sitting here.
I watch him as he eats his late breakfast. He looks out the window into the vast backyard that I’ve allowed to be re-taken by nature.
“I could get that fixed up for you,” he says between bites.
It’s something he offered in the past. The idea then of him entrenching himself so deeply in my life that he was helping me fix up my grand
parents’ old house was too much. It was too close to intimacy.
I look at him and I’m silent for a moment. A smile creeps across my lips.
“I’d love that,” I say.
Afterword
I often joke on the podcast that the things I write about are a direct reflection of my own trauma and anxieties. While I have fortunately never been in a new age cult, I have had my heart broken. I think sometimes we have to write about our experiences in a larger-than-life kind of way. Things that aren’t necessarily life or death in reality certainly seem that way as we’re living them.
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ALSO BY MARNIE VINGE
Eerie Okie Short Reads: Vol. 1
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