Saved Between the Sheets: An Anthology of Stories that Get to the Point

by R. M. Walker

  We all decide to finish talking, which of course involves more makeup sex on the table and counter and then we finally end up in Raiden's room. After another round of some intense makeup sex, Lexi sits up in the middle of the bed and reaches out to each of us. When she knows she has our attention, she starts to speak.

  "I want to give this a shot between us, but I also want you guys to know it's one shot. I know we'll fight, but that's what makeup sex is for, and we're pretty good at it." She gives us all a blushing smile.

  "But I am not a doormat nor can my heart take being broken by you guys again. Please don't make me regret this," she says, looking down to the hands in her lap.

  We all look to each other and nod in agreement. Min scoots in behind her, wrapping his hands around her waist, while Chance and I move closer to her sides, running our hands over her arms.

  Raiden moves in front of her and takes her hands in his, intertwining their fingers together.

  "Lexi, we will spend every day proving to you that you are not only more than enough for us, but we will cherish every moment you give us. We're men, we're going to be idiots, but we are your idiots and I know I speak for the others when I say that we will try our best to never ever break your heart again. And if something does happen, we'll be here to help you pick up those pieces because I can see us loving you for a very long time." He brings her hands up to his lips and tenderly kisses her fingers.

  "A very long time, huh?" she asks

  With one last look to each other, we realized that forever wouldn't nearly be long enough to love this woman here in front of us.

  Later on that night, while Lexi is snuggled between us, Chance whispers, “You guys know she saved us, right?”

  “How so?” Min asks

  “Before her, we were just going through the motions. Yeah, we used our powers to work for the government and save the day but damn if I didn’t know what I was missing without her, and now I don’t want to imagine my life without her,” he says with a yawn.

  “So she’s like our little Life Saver?” Min pops up and Raiden rolls over and smacks his arm.

  “I dare you to call her that, see what she says to that.” He smirks then goes back to snuggling Lexi.

  I guess in a way Chance is right. She did save us. She saved us from a life without her, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  About the Author

  M Lizbeth lives in sunny Florida with her three children, mom, and five dogs. She lives off coffee and donuts, and has a love of fuzzy socks and all things Whovian. Her love of reading and writing, as well as making friends with fellow authors, gave her the courage to write her own books and alas, you just read one. Thank you so much for supporting her and her writing. See you in the next book!

  If you’d like to keep up on the happens and future books of M Lizbeth, join her FB group here: M Lizbeth’s Magical reading realm

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  Saving Parker

  R.M. Walker

  Author’s Note: My story is set in Cornwall, England. The legal age of consent in the UK is 16 years old. Parker and Lowena are both 17 (almost 18) and 27 in this story, so they are not underage.

  Saving Parker

  “Have you heard the news?” Mrs Pennington moved closer to the shop counter Mrs Teller presided over.

  I smiled to myself, putting the loaf of bread into my basket before crossing to the dairy cabinet. I’d known both women for as long as I could remember. And, no doubt, they’d been gossiping for longer. If anyone wanted to know what was going on in our little village of Penarth, Mrs Teller and Mrs Pennington were the ones to ask.

  “Ernie Cooper?” Mrs Teller asked.

  “Ern? No. Has he finally admitted he’s deaf?”

  I glanced over as Mrs Teller folded her arms over her ample bosom. “Edith got so fed up with him, she told him straight. Get ‘em checked or she’d cancel his racing channel.”

  “About time. Edith’s a saint to put up with that man…”

  I let their talk drift over my head as I tried deciding whether to get two pints of milk or just the one. I picked out the two-pint bottle and dithered. Sometimes I ran out, sometimes I didn’t. It was a harder decision than it looked.

  “Did you hear, Lowena, dear?”

  I looked over at Mrs Teller. “Sorry?”

  “The old chapel? It’s sold at last.”

  “Oh, that’s good.” It’d been our local chapel until the vicar died and the church sold the building. The company who bought it renovated it but couldn’t find a buyer. Standing empty for years, it’d be nice to see people in there.

  I put the two-pint bottle back and took the one pint. No point in wasting it. The shop was only four doors away from my cottage. If I couldn’t get my arse here before I did my weeks’ shop, then I needed shooting.

  “You haven’t heard then.” Mrs Teller knew something I didn’t. Which was usually the case, so I humoured her.

  “Heard what?” I asked.

  “Parker McGowen bought the chapel.”

  The bottle slipped from my fingers and smashed onto the floor. Cold milk splashed over my shoes and legs, and I gave a cry of horror, staring at the mess. My head was full of cotton wool and my body was numb. Parker? Parker was back?

  “They can get so slippery,” Mrs Teller remarked as both women came over.

  It broke my trance, and I stepped back. “I’m sorry. I lost my grip.”

  “Don’t you worry m’dear. It’ll clean, won’t it, Mrs Teller?” Mrs Pennington led me away from the milky mess.

  “Of course. You go on home, Lowena. I’ll get Ted to bring your shopping later.”

  I didn’t have the inner fortitude to fight my way out of the fog creeping over me. Not even knowing my reaction would be around the village before the day was over mattered.

  Mrs Pennington led me to my cottage, and before I knew it, I was sitting at my kitchen table whilst she made a pot of tea. Talking all the time, she told me all about Mr Pennington’s hip replacement. Only a few of the gory details registered through the blanket of fog around me.

  She set the teapot on the table and filled a mug for me. “Maybe this is for the best,” she murmured, her kind faded blue eyes understanding more than she said.

  I had nothing to say. I lost my words when Parker moved away.

  She patted my shoulder. “Ten years is a long time, dear. Maybe now you can put it behind you and move on.”

  She left, and I heard the front door close quietly. She wanted me to move on. But where did I move on to? What was there to move on for?

  I stared at my mug and only saw Parker.

  Ten years was a long time.

  People said I was courageous for staying with Parker. I wasn’t. It never occurred to me to leave him there. Even if it had, I wouldn’t have left him. How could I leave him to die alone? He was my soulmate, my other half. And even though the sea didn’t take him from me, I still lost him.

  I first saw Parker when we were ten years old. He was scrawny and grimy, with tousled black hair that needed trimming.

  He moved in with his Uncle Gunner after he lost his parents in a car crash. I felt sorry for him. Not only for losing his parents but having to live with Grumpy Gunner, as he was known.

  Gunner’s Farm was huge, and he owned most of the coastal paths too. He’d tried to stop hikers from using them, but the government wouldn’t let him. It made no difference to him whether they walked the coastal paths, he was just mean that way. He was ancient, spat when he was cross, and smelt weird. I figured he was why a peculiar smell emanated from Parker, as well.

  Our small school only had two classrooms and a teacher’s room. Built in the early 1900s, one classroom had been for boys and the other for girls. Each with their own playground. As education changed, they divided us into years rather than sex. Reception to year four in one classroom, and years five and six in the other. The toilets were outside and built from stone. Only the cubicl
es had a roof, and if it rained the sinks flooded. They were cold in summer and freezing in winter with spiders in every corner. Sometimes they made their homes in the chains hanging from the cisterns. By the time I was six, I’d perfected the art of running home at lunchtime to use the toilet and still have time to play hopscotch. Mrs Polkinghorne, who roamed the playgrounds looking for mischief makers, was easy to avoid. She was ancient, wore a headscarf no matter the weather, and was short-sighted.

  Parker made the total number of boys in our year five. I was the only girl. I didn’t mind. My friends, twin sisters, Jo and Karen, were in the year below.

  The dirt that clung to Parker wasn’t why the other boys disliked him. It wasn’t because he was an incomer. His crime was his outer packing didn’t match the inside. He was my first lesson in not judging a book by its cover, or in this case, not judging the boy by the layers of mud on his neck. He may have been growing potatoes in his ears, but there was nothing wrong with his brain.

  Mrs Bell, our teacher, didn’t hold out much hope for his educational levels when she first laid eyes on him. I didn’t like Mrs Bell; I struggled with remembering my times tables and she often ran out of patience with me. So when Parker’s test results showed he was the smartest boy in the school, I was elated to see the pinched sour look on her face.

  The results toppled Thom Reed, title holder, from his pinnacle of lordliness over us lesser mortals, and Thom didn’t like it. He had it in for Parker and loyalty to a local over an incomer meant the rest of the boys followed Thom’s lead. They excluded Parker, calling him nasty, hurtful names. He shrugged it off like water from a duck’s back. I never joined in or laughed at him, but it made me feel dirty for not saying anything either.

  In October of our last year in primary, Karen and Jo’s dad was promoted, and they moved to Truro. I was now the only girl. There were other girls, but they were all younger and in the other classroom. Without Karen and Jo, I understood how lonely Parker was. Or how lonely I thought he was.

  With no one to partner with, Mrs Bell put me with Parker. It was another thing for the boys to laugh at. Pongy Parker lumped with Slow Lo.

  It was embarrassing at first because he was smarter than me. I wasn’t the worst reader there, but I struggled with comprehension and my maths was atrocious. If the number was higher than I had fingers, I was in trouble.

  The first couple of mistakes I made working with him, he’d frowned at me. I waited for him to laugh as the others did. But he didn’t, he rubbed out my numbers and waited for me to try again. Sometimes when I really struggled, he’d take some paper and go over what Mrs Bell had tried to teach me. With him, after a couple of times, I understood it. That didn’t go down well with Mrs Bell.

  We became friends without even realising it. We had an easy-going acceptance of the other we didn’t otherwise have. He didn’t talk much whereas I had enough words for both of us. I didn’t mind that he didn’t talk much, and he didn’t mind I talked too much. Sometimes he only pretended to listen, but I didn’t care. It was nice to talk without someone telling me to shut up or give my tongue a rest. And I think he liked company that didn’t call him names or nag him to wash.

  We finished primary school firm friends. When we went to the comprehensive, they put us into the same tutor group. And despite both of us making new friends, we decided it would be silly to stop being friends just because it wasn’t primary.

  At thirteen we watched our first black and white vampire films. My father had two, and Parker and I watched them when my parents were gardening, and we were supposed to be doing homework. By Saturday evening I had a new obsession: creatures of the night.

  I talked myself into believing we had vampires in our village. And I talked Parker into going around the graveyard looking for disturbed ground. Detecting nothing, I decided we’d need to stay the night to discover where they were rising from.

  Parker refused, but I was determined to keep the village safe.

  I bought garlic bulbs on strings from Mrs Teller and filled my water bottle from the chapel font when Pastor Owens wasn’t looking after services on Sunday morning.

  I sneaked out after it was dark and headed to the graveyard. It wasn’t much fun and a lot scarier without Parker. I was about to surrender and head home when he appeared with a flask of hot coffee and two chocolate bars. Overjoyed to see him, I hugged him until I realised what I’d done and jumped back from him. He asked if I’d given him any dreadful girl deceases. I told him I wouldn’t waste them on him.

  We stayed all night, talking and laughing. With no appearance of vampires, I was satisfied our dearly departed residents hadn’t joined the undead and we went home shattered.

  My dad found out, and I was grounded for a week and not allowed near the TV for a while. I asked Parker if he got into trouble; he said he didn’t as his uncle never checked on him.

  Our vampire hunting days started and ended in one long weekend.

  At fourteen he discovered the art of washing behind his ears, and someone took the scissors to his hair. At first, I’d stared at him. I hadn’t realised he was reasonably good-looking under the mud and messy hair. He’d taken it the wrong way and threatened to put spiders in my shoes. And he would. He’d done it before.

  While Parker was perfecting the art of daily washing, I was reading the classics we were introduced to in English. I devoured Austen, Bronte, Byron and the like, but my favourite was Wuthering Heights.

  I replaced my jeans with long flowing skirts and my Care Bear t-shirts with billowing blouses. Ribbons held my brown hair— which I curled religiously every morning—off my face, and I wore an anklet which jingled when I walked. I’d recite paragraphs of Wuthering Heights as I walked along the shoreline, waiting for my Heathcliff to sail into view.

  When Parker saw me, he said I was stupid to wear a skirt when rock pooling. I told him Heathcliff wouldn’t recognise me in t-shirt and jeans, and what did he know, anyway?

  He said I should put my jeans on and give Heathcliff a lucky escape. I stormed off, refusing to speak to him anymore. But a rare find of an unbroken bottle sparked my excitement, and insults were forgotten. We spent the rest of the afternoon imagining it was a message flung into the sea from some ship-wrecked man miles away.

  It was around then that Parker’s voice broke. I didn’t know much about it, not having any brothers, and when he first squeaked in front of me, I burst into laughter. He refused to talk much after that for quite a while, despite my earnest apologies. He became a silent friend, and his self-imposed silence was a green light for me. I’d recited endless poems and paragraphs from whichever book I’d given my heart to. He still didn’t listen, and I still didn’t care. Being with Parker, whether he talked or not, was enough for me.

  His silence ended when the squeak left, leaving a deeper tone than before. Now it was my turn to listen to him read, and we spent several weeks taking it in turns to read our assigned English books.

  Somewhere between fourteen and fifteen, I had a growth spurt. Towering over him, I lorded it every chance I got. He got his own back though. He put frogs in my backpack. And take the stalks off tomatoes and fling them at me yelling ‘spider’. It didn’t seem to matter how many times he did it, I’d always scream.

  But the tides turned, and by the time we were sixteen, he was five inches taller than me. He was still lanky, with messy hair, and quieter than me. But the dirt was nowhere to be seen, and the odd smell disappeared when his uncle had to buy him new clothes, because everything he owned was now too small. We still read together and spent weekends rock pooling searching for the flat rocks we’d take to Mrs Bindle.

  Mrs Bindle was a lovely lady in her seventies who had trouble walking. She painted the most glorious pictures on the rocks we brought her. And when the tourists came in the summer months, they bought them from her. She paid us in delicious cream teas and homemade apple juice. It was a mutually satisfying arrangement.

  I imagined my life would stay the same forever. But change ha
ppens and my world was rocked.

  Every summer, my parents and I would go to Cardiff to visit my grandparents. Every time I’d send Parker the silliest postcard I could find and buy him a tacky souvenir. One year I got a pack of sheep poop for him. It was chocolate coated raisins really, but he’d laughed and eaten the lot. I’d spend ages picking his gift; it had to make him laugh. Parker didn’t laugh much, and I’d made it my job to hear him laugh at least once a day. And he always laughed at his gifts.

  The summer we were seventeen something changed. When I came back from Cardiff, he’d altered. He was quiet, as usual, but he was reluctant to talk to me. He was drawing away from me, and I didn’t know why. It was frightening to think I was losing my best friend. So I demanded to know what was wrong with him. He refused to tell me, but I kept on asking.

  It changed everything for us.

  ***--***--***

  SUMMER.

  Ten years earlier...

  I checked my hair in the mirror and grabbed my coat.

  “Mum, I’m off to find Parker.” I didn’t wait for a reply and shut the front door behind me. I was on a mission, and nothing would get in my way.

  Parker insisted nothing was wrong, but I knew him better. He was withdrawn, reluctant to spend time outside his front door. Something or someone had upset him. I hadn’t outright nagged him although I wanted to. I did drop subtle hints to let him know I was his friend. Which meant what he dealt with, I dealt with.

  He was the most unflappable person I knew. Nothing seemed to rattle him. He never got angry or impatient, not even the insults of our primary days upset him. But something had and I’d fix it or die trying.

  The beach started at the end of my street and it didn’t take me long to run there. The tide was on its way out, and I hoped he’d be in our cove searching for flat rocks.