by M. C. Cerny
“As real as it ever was.”
Our clothes fell away with none of the shyness despite years apart. She was still bone thin but her body gained curves only time could make and grooves made by harsh living and experiences I couldn’t begin to understand. Vibrant tattoos covered scars I didn’t have the courage to ask about. Not sure I ever wanted too.
“Condom?” She husked between buttons and zippers. I followed her lead and pulled one from the drawer handing it to her assuming she knew how to use it. The thought made acid bubble in my stomach but better safe than sorry because God only knew what I missed in the years apart. We’d never used them before, but we were stupid then, sadly intelligence came with a plethora of history between us, stacked against us.
She opened the foil packet and with a practice I couldn’t bring myself to watch, I felt her align it over my shaft and roll it down squeezing me tight and rubbing against her clit. I blocked out the jealous thoughts of other who had been here after me and before today. Right in this second was the only moment I was giving us right now.
“Sierra, baby.” I pulled her hips into mine and her body circled rubbing against me. It was irresistible and my cock jolted against her wet center. No matter what, we always fit and I pressed forward inching into her with the intent to go slow, be careful with my girl, but maybe that was my problem. I treated her with kid gloves and what she craved was a pressure and a wave that crashed into her and forced her to examine who she really was outside the definition of before.
“Harder.” Her nails scrapped against my back stinging against the air conditioning and I seated myself fully inside her, balls slapping her ass and breathless groans.
“Like that?” I laid into her pressing her deep into the mattress.
“Harder.” She grunted and I moved tilting my hips and grinding against her clit. If Sierra wanted to be punished, I was in the headspace to do it after all these years and no answer but the deafening silence that followed her abandonment.
We rocked our bodies in the tradition of a good old hate fucking and clawed each other closer thrust for thrust and skin slapping crescendo.
“Harder.” She screamed.
“You want it harder?” I growled. She nodded her head and I’d give her what she wanted this one time even if I woke up hating myself. This kind of fucking simply wasn’t who I was. I didn’t have crazy kinks to tie her up and spank her ass blistering red. I pulled out with enough force to make me wince and I flipped her over hauling her hips up. I slammed myself back inside and leveled myself by gripping her hands over her head and pounding into her until the bed slammed and rocked against the wall. The tenants in the building were likely to call the police for the racket going on in here. It couldn’t be helped, I had demons to exercise and Sierra begged for forgiveness I couldn’t give her. She needed to forgive herself in order to get there.
Her orgasm ripped through her body as I slapped her ass leaving a hot hand print across the pale flesh. I wanted to inflict damage if I was honest and letting my anger get out of check fit the bill. A few swats and my hand smarted giving her what she wanted, needed, and scared me in the process. This wasn’t who I am. I couldn’t do this every time. I wasn’t into this even if it was what got her off. We needed to find some common ground, somewhere in the middle where a compromise wouldn’t kill us both in the process.
“Oh god.” She moaned and I emptied into the condom pressing against her feeling it ooze out the corners and run down my legs. She always made me bust a nut.
“Fucking amazing, as if you never left in the first place.” I murmured into her hair kissing her temple. Her pussy clenched holding me tight and the contractions made me hard all over again.
11
Sierra
I said goodbye the only way I knew how, by running away. Andrew didn’t want me, heck; I didn’t want me in my own skin. For so long I had been paralyzed by my fear. Would I ever be good enough? Worthy? Deserving of some scrap of happiness?
No answers came but I always rounded back to how Andrew left me feeling.
He slept in the bed looking like a greyhound had run him over. Legs akimbo and hair wildly sticking in all directions. My heart felt full and I knew I had to leave him here, behind.
I slipped the gold chain off my neck, the promise ring he’d given me a decade earlier looked worn, the diamond chip cloudy from dirt lodged in the setting. I had carried this with me, my guilt, my burden. Andrew was right. In order to move forward I had to look ahead and leave it all behind. Even if I was leaving him behind a second time for good. I hoped the wounds had scarred over enough that it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much as it did then.
12
Andy
I looked up from the bed watching Sierra walk into the bathroom as I leaned up on my forearms. “Leaving so soon.” Her back stiffened and I knew she heard me.
“You’re awake.” Her voice didn’t inflect any surprise but I knew she had been hoping I was still asleep so she could make her getaway. Always good at running. Never good at staying.
“I’ve been awake since you left my bed a decade ago. This never ends well, firefly. Come here.” I said patting the bed and brooking no argument.
“We shouldn’t.”
“I know we shouldn’t do a lot of things, but we were never good at following the rules were we?” I smiled as she sat next to me on the bed. Her nails followed the abstract pattern of the bedding and I grabbed her hand to get her focus.
“No, we weren’t.” She hummed to herself, an annoying little sound that told me everything and nothing at all. Damn her for not giving me much to go on and damn me for letting her get away with it.
“Tell me.”
“What?” She shook.
“Tell me who helped put you back together. I’m wildly jealous it wasn’t me and I probably owe him a case of beer.”
“Why does it have to be a he?” She furrowed her brows. A small smile edged at the seam of her lips. Lips I cursed myself for wanting to kiss and taste and breathe and live in.
“Come on, you don’t even call Taylor or Kristen and they would have welcomed you with open arms.” I knew she didn’t get along with women in general. Call it a catty thing or maybe a hunch on my part.
“Andrew, let’s not do this.” I clasped her hand in mine watching her eyes dart to the paintings on the far wall attempting to ignore me.
“Not do what? Be real? Be honest? Be everything we should have been ten years ago? Sierra, I’m not mad if you had a thing with someone else in all this time. I just need to know I’m not going to wake up one morning and find you gone all over again because I’m fighting with the ghosts of our pasts.”
“Is this because I didn’t say goodbye? Wrap up our adolescent adventures in a neat little bow?” She sneered. Her defense was to go on the offense and I wasn’t getting sucked in to this game of hers.
“Fuck, yes. No. All of it. Help me understand where the hell I went wrong with you. With us.” I sat up and pulled her rigid body into my arms letting her legs straddle mine. She tried rubbing her damp core over me and I stilled her movements squeezing my eyes shut in frustration. I could fuck her little body for hours slowly loving her but it wouldn’t get me the answers I needed.
“Andrew it was never anything you did. It was that I was never right for you to begin with.”
I scoffed at the absurdity.
“And don’t you think I should have had some fucking say in that? You left me the morning after I married you.”
“Let’s be real, you married me because you thought you knocked me up.”
“What?”
“Look, if we’re having confessions, that baby wasn’t yours.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.” The truth hurt. Burned actually, but it wasn’t going to change anything that had already happened.
“I didn’t want to break you Andrew. I loved you and because I loved you I had to take that shame with me.”
It sounded like an excuse but to two ei
ghteen-year-old kids it hadn’t been something in our wheelhouse to deal with like rational adults. I knew this. I forgave that part of the situation a long time ago.
“Will you tell me who?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She hissed.
“Of course, it does because he hurt you.”
“You can’t get vengeance on a dead man. Karma took care of that and the baby I hadn’t wanted then too.”
Realization dawned on me and the events clicked into place like a stubborn Rubix cube.
“The accident on the freeway. That was you.”
“He was giving me a ride to Poughkeepsie. He was drunk and I was terrified you’d hate me, but all I did was hate myself.”
“The baby?” My heart was a lead balloon in my chest. So much lost, so much more than just time.
“I miscarried.” The words hung heavy and weighted between us. The why didn’t matter so much as the whole knowing she had been alone through all of this. She’d chosen to be alone instead of sharing her burden with me as we’d promised to do when we’d said I do inside that tiny little courthouse room with a judge who’d watched us cause mischief.
She continued almost trance like as if she’d practiced this anesthetized unemotional speech in her head over and over again to protect herself from the pain. “They had to remove tissue, an ovary, and I got an infection. I’m not right. I’ve never been right and I can’t have kids.”
“I’m not worried about future generations of Easton’s. Jesus, Sierra, I wanted you. Damn it, I still want you.” The truths she shared with me were razor sharp scalpels painfully cutting away the wounded flesh around my heart. I didn’t want to feel any of this but the numbing lies she told before stopped giving me relief a long time ago. I would always remember she kept this from me but my stubborn heart had already forgiven her. I’d lay wasted at her feet if she’d just give us a fighting chance.
“Now you see why this is no good. I spent all these years running and coming back feels like the first day all over again. Like I don’t belong.”
I wanted to tell her she’d always belong to me. Instead, I offered, “So who do I owe that beer to?”
She laughed a light sound with her rough unused voice changing the mood entirely.
“His name is Emmett.”
“Emmett.” I let the name roll off my tongue. Oddly enough the typical pangs of jealousy weren’t there. Only gratitude to this person who stepped into my place doing what needed to be done.
Sierra traced the seam of the bed sheet closing her eyes and rocking her head like her time with this man was a dream or a fading memory.
“He’s Amish.”
“That’s unexpected.” I liked this Emmett guy immensely.
“He’s also pledged to a pretty girl name Julia when she returns from Ohio.”
Leave it to Sierra to find someone as equally unattainable as herself.
“The cat?”
“No, that was my parting gift. Emmett found me in a corn field.” She fingered the long scar that ran up her thigh not yet covered in a colorful tattoo and my hand found hers tracing the web of white tissue broken and healed over stronger than her tan skin. So many scars cut deep with her, and the worst ones remained unseen.
“Emmett told me I needed something to care for. A reason to get up in the morning and a demanding squalling kitten was the only thing he had handy.”
This Emmett guy figured out Sierra better and faster than I ever could.
“I guess it’s better than a goat or a pig.”
She snorted rolling her eyes, “We sort of bonded over our runt status and I took him with me.”
“Makes sense. You know, I could use some taking care of.” I stretched yawning and she jabbed me in the stomach playfully.
“You’re not a motherless cat.” She smirked.
“No, but I could be pretty demanding. Tell me about your time with Emmett.”
“He tempered my storm. Showed me how to harness the wind and ride out the flood.”
I nodded remembering how Sierra had been too wild, too impulsive to control. “Things you couldn’t do here.”
“At the time, no. I was so destructive. I still am. Most of the time I don’t know what to do with that energy and not hurt the people I love.”
“No one is asking you to be perfect. Just don’t walk out the door.”
“I don’t know how to not runaway.”
“Then let me anchor you.”
I rolled us over and pinned Sierra underneath me. Her pale face reflected her pain. Pain I couldn’t take away, and didn’t have a right to or an explanation for. This beautiful woman endured more abuse that I knew about and she was still here. I called that a blessing and a success. I wanted to be her safe place, the soft place she could fall apart and land on but I wasn’t sure what I had to do to earn that place within her hurt soul. This was completely uncharted territory for me and I still harbored a decent amount of anger and guilt over her leaving without an explanation or a second glance.
Sierra wasn’t budging and I could be stubborn enough for both of us. I mean I hadn’t in all these years filled the divorce papers and I had ample time and reason if I wanted to. I just couldn’t let her go. I held her grandparent’s hands at each of their passing and I fought her uncle for the winery when the will was up for probate. I defended her to my family who couldn’t understand my allegiance or the thin band of gold I wore on my thumb when we couldn’t afford decent wedding rings. I waited ten years for her and I knew I’d wait a hundred more to have her again.
I loved her still, my crazy, reckless girl.
13
Sierra
It had taken me years to realize the bridges I had burned in leaving New Paltz were irreparably damaged. There was a time I would have taken whatever accelerant I could get my hands on just to watch it burn. I didn’t care who I hurt. I was convinced that I was only hurting myself. Oh I had casualties a plenty along the way, bodies carelessly pushed out of my path in favor of the bite and pain of being alone. My wrecking ball cut a swath far and wide obliterating my reality until denial set in heavy and hard.
Andy had been one of many who thought he could save me from a past he didn’t know would haunt me for the rest of my life. I didn’t deserve his love or forgiveness. I often wondered if things fell apart because Andy loved me too much and I didn’t have it in me to love him enough. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to love him, that couldn’t have been father from the truth. I didn’t know how love and the hurt that burned within me like acid took precedence in healing before I could be any good to him or anyone else.
Destruction was the only thing I knew and I dug deep.
I was a mess.
An utter destroyed mess.
My life had been nothing but a series of crawling out of those messes, most of my own making only to fall into much bigger and more complicated ones. Usually those were made by the people I aligned myself with and who freely took advantage of me. I was hell on wheels. I was hell on his heart.
I couldn’t fault Andy. I’d broken the boy he’d been, I just didn’t realize the monster I created within the man. This idyllic town I’d been forced to grown up in had become my dystopia I ran scared from. I hoped now that the dust settled I could find more than one way to cross that river back to him… back to us or whatever carnage was left. I’d take the scraps over having nothing. Even if he never looked at me again I would have taken his hate because then I would have known I still meant something. It was the void of feelings that left me hopeless.
Andy would always be the sweet boy of my past but I lost us both somewhere in the middle. He looked at me now with eyes full of disgust and mistrust. Who could blame him, really? Right out of high school when my immigration papers where being filed he offered to marry me and what did I do? I slept with someone who meant nothing in the grand scheme of things but who I knew would hurt Andy’s ego sending him running far and wide from me.
A good therapist didn’t have to
explain my self-destructive behavior to me. I broke things because I didn’t feel I deserved to have nice things, yeah how fucked up was that for a revelation. I had a lifetime filled with regrets and damage I inflicted without the help of anyone else. Causing chaos was what I did best.
So yeah, it didn’t matter if Andy and I had this lingering intense physical and chemical reaction to each other. I couldn’t act on it. I had two more months of self-imposed celibacy and another round of tests to make sure I was clean as a whistle. Pregnancy would never be an issue but I didn’t see damning Andy to a course of retro-viral medications was fair either. I wasn’t that much of an asshole these days.
I lay on my bed in my old bedroom counting the glow in the dark stars my Nonny had left clinging to the pale blue ceiling mimicking the sky at home. My hand absently lifted up my shirt and traced the defined scar that made me feel less like a woman each time I had to confront it.
It would always serve as a battle scar to the life I destroyed too soon, the life that would have tied Andy to me forever. I could never have that now. What did the doctor who cut me up say? You’ll be nothing but a barren wasteland with your stupidity. In some ways he was inarguably right but that imaginary therapist I saw each night in my dreams, yeah, she would tell me to morn for that little life and for the little girl who didn’t know any better. That was the part that felt like it would take real courage to face those demons and I didn’t have the fight left in me to tackle that any time soon. Getting through these next 60 days would be my priority.
Watching her chest inhale and exhale in her sleep is the calmest Sierra would ever be. The sunlight in my bedroom glinted off the mirror on the closet door and painted her olive skin golden. The slashes that marred her arms like tiger stripes showed me how tough she was in the darkest of times. It was still scary as hell, I wasn’t going to lie. Nobody signed up to have a partner clutching to a past filled with abuse and self-harm. Though it had been a long time and none of the faint scars were fresh I still carried the burden of worry. Worry that I couldn’t help her this time considering she ran off the last time. I followed the dance of the rainbow on her skin wishing it would coat her brand new, not because I wanted nice, neat, orderly things but because I wanted her to have the peace sleep brought her in her daily restless life. The rainbow blended into her skin as the sun moved across the morning sky with each minute that passed. The colors shifted to pain old golden sunlight. Gold. Sierra was worth it all.
