by Zoey Castile
He turns to me, and I know that I could stare at him like this for days. “You know, Lena, you were right.”
“About what?”
“It is salmon pink.”
PAT
So, both of my attempts at cooking have turned into shitastic messes. At least I’m wealthy in cookware because after breakfast sex, Lena finds a pan from I-don’t-know-where and makes pancakes and bacon.
“I need to pick up eggs and more things for dinner,” she says, munching on an extra crispy piece. She’s relaxed, rumpled, sweet, looking like we’ve done this a million times, which I would like to. Only 999,996 times to go.
Her ink-black hair falls over bronze shoulders covered in freckles. I wonder if I can count how many beauty marks are on her body. If I lose count, I’d just start over as long as I got to keep her naked and with me.
“Pat,” she says.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said, can I take your car later? Selena is still out of commission.”
I frown. I don’t want her to leave, but I realize that she’s going to have to go back to classes on Monday. She’s going to have more school functions and places to be. It’s one thing leaving the house and staying on my property, it’s another having to stand in front of others with their judgments and their staring.
That’s a problem for later. For the next two days, I have her to myself.
“Keys are in the car,” I say, and take her hand into mine. I lick the maple syrup from her fingers and watch a blush creek up her neck.
“I can’t fucking believe you keep keys in your car! What if someone took it?”
I cut the pancake with the side of my fork. These are almost as good as the ones my mom used to make us in the morning. “Even if someone were stupid enough to trespass on my property, I have cameras in the garage and around the house. We’re not in New Yawk.”
I mostly say it to light her up because she gets instantly flustered and cute.
“How dare,” she says, unable to finish her sentence. For the next five minutes she launches into listing every single good quality about New York City. While they include my favorites like pizza and bagels, I realize that the only one I care about is sitting right in front of me.
“You forgot one thing, the only thing that matters about that hell city,” I say.
Her brows are knit so tight, they’re almost touching, and her pout is irresistible. I get up from my stool and go to her, nestle myself between her legs.
“What?” she asks.
I cup her face in my hands, tilt her chin up to look into her big brown eyes. “It gave me you.”
She tries to suppress her smile, but she can’t, and a sense of pride fills the hollow parts of my chest because she is smiling for me. I did that. But then I think of all the other times I’ve done the opposite. How could I do that to someone I care about?
“Okay, Groucharella,” she says, giving me the tiniest eye roll. I hate Scarlett for teaching her that. “I’ll be right back.”
But I don’t want to let go of her hand. I kiss her all the way to the door, pressing my body against her. I sink my hands into the sides of the boxers to start to pull them down. I am so hard I can’t see straight and the way she toys with the outline of my dick against my sweats isn’t helping.
“Unless you’re going to come with me to the store, I have to go and get dressed,” she says playfully. There’s an underlying challenge.
I lick my lips and look over her shoulder at the frosted glass of the kitchen door. Yesterday feels like days ago. My heart races at the thought of going out there, but it doesn’t make me want to throw up like before. I did it yesterday, I can do it today.
“Okay,” I say.
Her eyes widen. “Are you sure?”
“You just asked me and I’m saying yes.” I put bravado behind my voice because if I have to put on a brave face for Lena, then maybe I’ll trick myself into believing I can do anything.
“Pat, you don’t have to. I shouldn’t tease you that way.”
“I’ll keep you company. You can drive.” I hold her stare. All those times I’ve looked at her at a distance and I never got to see the beauty marks on her face. It was like looking at the night sky when it was cloudy and now that I can see her, hold her, I want to do everything in my power to be able to keep this going.
She bites her bottom lip, and for that moment, I forget about everything. All I want is to put my mouth on that mouth. My body on her body. I kiss her, and she melts against me, so slowly that I feel like time is coming to a crawl.
“I’ll meet you outside in five,” she says, and I see the struggle in her eyes as she pulls away and walks out that door.
And I’m left standing there repeating in my head, I can do this I can do this I can do this.
* * *
“You’re a terrible driver,” I say, sitting in the passenger seat of my truck. I grip the handle above the window, which I’ve only ever used to hang things from.
The truck took time to start because it’s been a few seasons since I’ve turned the ignition. When Fallon and the boys drove me out here, we were in a rental.
Lena glances at me, narrowing her eyes, but when she catches sight of my knee bouncing in place, she places her hand on top of mine. “I drive well enough to have gotten myself out here.”
“You drove from New York? In that thing?”
“What did you think?” She laughs. “Did you think I could afford to have my car, that relic from days gone by, shipped here?”
I flush hot, a little embarrassed. I sit back and lower my baseball cap over my eyes. It’s ridiculous because the windows are tinted and they’re rolled up, so, even if anyone drove past us, they wouldn’t be able to see me. “I’m sorry. We didn’t grow up with money, but the second I came into it, I went a little wild.”
She smirks at me. “Sex, drugs, rock and roll also applies to actors?”
“Actually,” I say, realizing there is so much about me that Lena doesn’t know. I don’t exactly want her finding out from a YouTube video or anything. “Before I was an actor, I was a dancer.”
That has her attention, but she needs both hands to steer as she tries, and fails, to merge onto a highway. Someone beeps behind her. She curses up a storm fit for a sailor and in that instant, I want her dirty little mouth even more.
She turns her head to me for a second. “Like a stripper?”
“I’m actually a little affronted you didn’t guess ballet first.”
We both laugh, and she hits the gas, pulling onto the highway. My heart is racing about a thousand miles per minute every time I see another car. Thankfully, we’re blessed with Montana traffic, which is about fifty cars instead of hundreds. I take deep breaths, as instructed. While she was getting dressed, I called Chris. He told me that I’d made a huge step and shouldn’t push myself. I have to treat my mind like a physical injury and I’ve had plenty of those. He also said it might be good for me and Lena to take a drive because people are more honest when they’re driving or some such. So, this is me being honest.
“How many careers have you had, exactly?” she asks.
“Let’s see, I was a paper delivery boy when I was ten. In high school, I worked on cars out of the garage my brothers and I built. You now call it the pool house. I was a major league soccer player for about six months and then I got the compound fracture to end my career. Ronan passed away shortly after, then my folks, and I was in a shitty place. I did nothing, except for worked on cars back home. Oh, I figured out what was wrong with your car, by the way.”
“Oh yeah?” she asks brightly.
“It’s an old piece of shit.”
“You’re an old piece of shit.”
I take her hand in mine and kiss the inside of her wrist. “I am ten years older than you and I’m not sure if I should be bothered by it or not.”
“I’ll go with not. We have enough things to deal with.”
“Like?”
“Like don’t
change the subject. Tell me about your dancing days. Did you wear thongs? Do male strip clubs have poles? Wait—what was your act? Do you still talk to any of them?” I feel her eyes on me with that last one.
Right. Honesty and driving. Fuck me.
I think of my days with Mayhem City and the brothers I made there. Can I still call them brothers if I treated them like shit and abandoned them? Isn’t that what I did to Jack? “I haven’t talked to any of them in a while. I was closest with Ricky—stage name Rick Rocket.”
“I am not even touching that one with a ten-foot pole.” She giggles.
“Believe me, he’s untouchable. He’s fucking tiny compared to the rest of us, but he’s dapper as fuck, with an Australian accent, and about a thousand custom-made suits in his closet. He’s the reason I didn’t wind up at a dead-end job I hated. I mean, I love cars, but I never wanted to be a mechanic as a job. I wanted it to be my hobby. Something I did for fun on my days off.”
“What did you want to be?”
I stare at the open road, the trees with russet and yellow leaves against a pale-gray sky, mountains in the distance. What did I want to be other than Indiana Jones and RoboCop? “I don’t remember. I feel like I tried everything I thought I wanted to do and the world was just dead set against it. I miss dancing, though. I was good at it.”
“I believe that,” she says.
“Why?”
She flashes me a sexy, sleepy stare. “Because you know how to work your hips for a white boy.”
I laugh so hard, I can feel it in my abs.
“Would you do it again?” she asks.
“No,” I say without hesitating. “Not like this anyway. I don’t know. Dancing now wouldn’t be the same.”
She squeezes her hands around the wheel. “You’re beautiful, Patrick. All of you. Every part of you.”
“Half of me is, maybe,” I say, and I don’t like where this conversation is going. That hot feeling returns and I rest my head back. “Please, Lena, don’t make me go through this.”
“Okay,” she says, taking my hand and guiding it to her thigh. “Okay. Where are they now?”
“Who?”
“Your boys. You called them your boys. Where are they?”
I clear my throat and shrug. “You know firsthand what I’ve been like. In January? I was worse, Lena. I pushed everyone away and they stayed away. There’s only so much someone can take before they give up on you. I’m not so sure I’m better, but I think I’m trying.”
“How do you know they gave up on you?”
“Well, they aren’t here. Are they?”
“When was the last time you reached out?” she asks.
I lick my lips. Thankfully, she’s turning into the parking lot of the supermarket. “Four months.”
“You don’t know that they’ve given up. Maybe they’re waiting for you to be ready.” The lot is packed, and there’s only one spot, but the one thing she can do is slide into that parking spot like a knife in butter.
She flashes a pleased smile at me. “See? I can do one thing you mountain dwellers can’t, and that’s parallel park.”
It’s just before lunch, but it’s a Saturday. There are people pushing carts and bringing groceries out. Neighbors and friends stop and talk to each other. I sit back and take off my seat belt, not because I want to get out, but because it is suffocating me. An older woman with sandy-blond hair and a pinched face stares at my truck, parked right next to hers.
“Do you know her?” Lena asks, patiently waiting for me.
I squeeze her thigh. “She was my brother’s high school math teacher. After our parents died, I was basically the one to go to PTA meetings.” I’ve had the same version of this car for about ten years. The only thing that changes is how tall it keeps getting, but the license plate is the same. The locals, the real locals, know this is my car, or at least, guess at it from the double takes people keep making.
“Do you want to wait for me in here and keep the car warm?” she asks.
I do, but I don’t want to admit it. Why is this so hard? It’s been months . . . “Can you get cherry pie?”
She leans over and kisses me hard, biting my lip in a way that’s got me sprung in the next second. “I’ll be right back.”
The minute Lena’s gone, I feel the absence of her. A sick part of me wonders if I can get away with jerking off in my own car. Of course, that’s when my cell phone rings. It’s Jack. He never calls on the weekend.
“Hey, are you okay?” I ask.
“Easy, tiger,” he mutters. There’s a loud commotion behind him, cheering and music and laughter. Did I send my brother to a party rehab center? “I was going to ask you the same thing. Just got off the phone with Scarlett.”
“Dammit, Scarlett.” I tap my fist on the window.
“Don’t damn her, bro. Especially since how she tells it, she did you a solid.” Someone honks their horn next to me because some guy is on his phone instead of backing up, blocking traffic. “What is that, where are you?”
I sigh. “I’m at the Fresh Market parking lot inside my car while Lena buys groceries.”
“Holy fucking shit.” I hear the gasp and awe in his pause. “Pat! This is great, this is huge—”
“Easy, tiger,” I mutter back. “I don’t know what this is yet.”
“How do you feel?”
That’s the part that’s harder to answer. “A little freaked, if I’m honest. I couldn’t get out of the car.”
“But you got out of the house,” he says, with more enthusiasm than I’ve heard from him in a while. “More than once.”
“What about you? Where are you?”
“Oh, this guy in the hospital has made a great recovery, so his dad decided to buy us all Yankees tickets. It’s hot as balls here and my wheelchair keeps getting sticky from the floor, but we’re sneaking some beer. Look at that. We’re both having good days.”
“We are, aren’t we?”
“So, Lena,” he says, suggestively.
“Nope.”
“What do you mean, nope? I’m your brother.”
“You’re my little brother. I’m not going to tell you about my sex life.”
He cackles. “Who was your errand boy for years because you were too embarrassed to buy your own fucking condoms?”
“Safety first,” I say, and then we’re laughing like we’ve scrubbed our sins clean. There’s music in the background, signaling a lineup change, and a roar from the crowd. “I fucked up yesterday.”
I tell him about everything that happened and he listens. “I didn’t think, I just went. I had to find her and make sure she was safe.”
“Hey, do you remember when I got lost in that same way when I tried to run away?”
I didn’t remember, not at first. Then I think of the day he describes. Mom had just died and Dad wasn’t handling it well. Ronan was still in Washington and I was busy having girls sneak me into their bedrooms and barns while their parents were away. Jack packed a bag and took off. “She took that exact trail, too.”
“And you found us both.” He chuckles, and I wish I could be there with him. I wish that I could shake off this weight from my shoulders and walk down supermarket aisles picking out fucking cereal with Lena and drinking beer at a baseball game with my brother.
You can do this.
“There’s Lena,” I say.
“I want to meet her.”
“You will. I promise.”
“Don’t be a stranger, Pat.”
I hang up as Lena opens the door and unloads the cart with bags. People stare at her, this beautiful woman with ropes of dark hair and bright brown eyes. I don’t like the way some of the men leer at her as she returns the cart to the little shed, so I punch the horn, and they scatter like pigeons.
“What was that?” she asks, pressing a cold kiss on my face.
“My hand slipped,” I say.
She doesn’t quite buy it, but we drive and I tell her about the call with Jack. “He wants to m
eet you.”
“Good because Ari wants to Face Time with us. I told her we might have to work our way up to that, but that you’d at least talk to her.”
I like this. I like making plans with Lena. I don’t even feel the same anxiety I had moments ago. Between talking to Jack and having her back with me, I’m settled. I’m good.
We’re almost home when she says, “Wait, you didn’t tell me your skit.”
“My set,” I correct her. “And I will tell you if you don’t laugh.”
“I make no promises.”
“Then I won’t tell you.”
She gives me that sexy little pout and pulls into the garage. “What if you show me instead?”
“Okay,” I say, opening the door. “But I want to show you something else first.”
She arches a brow, but I simply tug her to the third closed garage door. She stands there with a smile that makes me dizzy by how beautiful it is. I almost forget why we’re standing there.
I push the garage door open.
“When did you do this?” she asks, her mouth open.
The punching bag is hung at the center of the garage. “The space was built for a gym, and it looks empty. But I think with time, I can get everything moved out here. Maybe the basement can be a bar or an arcade or something or an actual den.”
I’m rambling. She presses her hands on either side of the bag and looks at me. Tests out the balance and weight.
“This is what you were doing when Kayli was checking on me?” she asks.
I rake my fingers through my hair and nod.
She angles her head to the side, watching me. “Can I ask you something that might be uncomfortable?”
“Yes.”
“I know you’ve always worked on your body. But did it get more intense while you were here?”
I hold the punching bag on the other side of her. I think about every meal I stopped myself from enjoying, every day I toiled away on a carefully curated workout routine. I told myself that deprivation was discipline, but I know that’s what’s added to this.
“I guess, it’s the only thing I could control. It was like being in my own personal jail. I’m not just vain, though Scarlett might say otherwise. After I got injured, the first time, I saw the way people reacted to me when I looked a certain way. Like I was broken and fragile. The second accident? I couldn’t—I don’t know. It’s the only way I could release my anger. It started as an obsession. It still is. Even if I don’t want anyone to see me.”
