by Naomi West
Then the long-beaten part of my mind rears its ugly head and I start to wonder if I’m making a horrible mistake. When Greg first met Mom, he was one of the nicest men I’d ever spoken to. All the way up until their wedding day, in fact, he was kind and friendly and nice, at least to me and Travis. He would smile and play the good guy and make us believe that we were safe. The first time he hit me came as such a shock that the tears were more surprise than anything. I didn’t even feel the physical pain, the redness on my cheek.
Can that be happening again, a timeline crushed down to the space of a half-hour? Perhaps Dusty is playing me as Greg did. Perhaps Dusty is going to reveal his mean side the first chance he gets.
Dusty pulls into a motel parking lot. My breathing leaps ahead of me, causing my chest to rise and fall like a bellows, big, gasping breaths. When he stops, I jump from the bike and pull the helmet from my head, my hair plastered sweaty to my forehead. Even the rain is not enough to soothe the heat, the sense of being trapped. The absurd part is that I look to Dusty for support, even if Dusty’s the one I’m supposed to be afraid of.
He’s a stranger, I tell myself. He’s an unknown, just like Greg was; he might cause me worse pain than Greg did. We’re at a motel. What does he expect from me? Is this what he wanted all along? Was everything else just a game?
He approaches me warily, the same way I imagine he approaches one of his biker jobs. “Marilee? Are you all right?”
“I can’t breathe,” I whisper. My voice is thin. It sounds like the buzzing of a faraway bee on a spring day. “I seriously can’t breathe.”
“You’re having a panic attack,” he says calmly. “Come here.” He takes me by the shoulders and leads me back to the bike. His grip is firm, but not vicious like Greg’s. He guides me smoothly and easily, and then sits me down. I find I like being guided by him. I like relinquishing some of my control. I like not having to deal with myself, which is what it feels like I’m doing half the time: dealing with myself.
“Okay.” He massages my shoulders. “I need you to breathe, all right? I know that sounds really fuckin’ stupid, but I’ve seen tough men go through what you’re going through right now. Your breathing is too damn fast. There’s too much blood rushing around your body. You probably feel lightheaded. That’s all that is. So breathe with me. All right. One, two, in; one, two, out? Okay?”
I nod, desperately wanting to believe him. Greg just hit me one day. I was fourteen years old and I dropped a milkshake on the kitchen floor, and as I bent down to pick it up he slapped me across the mouth. “Stupid whore!” he snapped. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” I backed away, hand to my mouth, wondering if I was dreaming. This couldn’t be real. This was Greg, Mom’s Greg; Mom’s Greg didn’t do things like this. But he did—he does—and that was the day Marilee stopped being a teenager and become a punching bag.
“Listen to my voice.” Dusty brings his face so close to mine, I smell cologne and toothpaste and whisky underneath it. “Don’t disappear into your mind, Marilee. Listen to my voice. Look at my face. What color are my eyes? Can you tell me that?”
“Green,” I whisper, struggling to focus my hazy vision. “Your eyes are green, the same green as the sea.”
“Good.” He takes my hands. “Take a deep breath for me.”
I do as he says and slowly, inch by inch, I emerge from the past and panic into a rainy parking lot. We’re sitting in the corner of the lot, just across the way from the pool and the main building. I glance at the windows, wondering if anyone saw the crazy hyperventilating girl out front. Most of the curtains are drawn. It’s a nice enough place, not one of those dingy roadside stops for prostitutes and politicians. The pool is clean and the building is unmarked by graffiti. I rub my eyes and roll my neck in my shoulders.
“Thank you,” I say. “That was . . . I don’t know where that came from.”
“Do you want me to take you somewhere else?” he asks.
“Why are we here?”
“I want you to be safe.” He shifts as he talks. I sense there’s something he’s not telling me. I study his eyes, looking deeply into them. He’s telling the truth; he does want me to be safe. But I sense that there’s an animal reason too, perhaps a reason he does not want to admit even to himself. He hardens his face. His dead-serious expression returns. “But if you don’t feel safe, I can take you somewhere else.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Why not, Marilee? Why not?”
“Why not?” I spread my hands, taking in the whole parking lot, the whole motel, the whole state. “There are a hundred reasons why not. You don’t know me. You have no stake in what happens to me. We only met yesterday. I’ve never done anything for you which would make you want to help me. I can go on.”
“I just don’t like that bruise on your neck. That’s the truth of it. I can’t stop thinking about it, and you. All right?” He glances away like a nervous schoolboy. This is probably the most this man has ever shared with any woman, these few sentences. He bows his head. “Let me pay for this room so that you don’t have to go back there, so that you can feel safe. I’ll go and get your brother as well, if you want. I’ll go there right now and get him.”
“No,” I say reluctantly. “He won’t let you take him.”
“Let me?” He tilts his head at me. The rain slides down his head, plastering his hair, making it an even darker shade of black. “The last time I checked, your little brother was not an MMA fighter.”
“I ran away once. But maybe I should tell you about it another time. When we’re not getting soaked.”
“Wait over there.” He points to a smoking shelter. “I won’t be long.”
I huddle beneath the shelter, arms wrapped around myself. When Dusty leaves me I feel the panic rising again, as though it only disappeared to wait for a chance to strike. I fight it down, breathing slowly and watching the raindrops make rivulets on the plastic smoking-area sheeting. Dusty is not going to hurt me. Dusty is not Greg. He even said it himself. He just wants me to be safe. I bet if I asked him to leave, he’d leave without question. Maybe that’s what I’ll do.
He returns with a room key. We head into the room, which must be the nicest room in this place. It’s like a miniature apartment: bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. The bedroom has a plump double bed and a flat-screen TV on the wall, the bathroom is small but modern, and the attached kitchen is cozy but spotless.
“I didn’t know motels had presidential suites,” I joke.
“Most don’t. That’s why I brought you here.” He places the keys on the bed and returns to the door, standing with his thumbs tucked into his belt loops like he did yesterday, watching me coolly. “I’m guessing you’re going to need some clothes and stuff like that. Let me run out and get you some.”
“These will do for tonight. I can sleep in my underwear.”
His eyes go wide when I mention my underwear, just for a half-second. But enough for me to know that the mention stirs something within him. His neck muscles twitch. His fingers move as though loading an invisible gun. “You mentioned your brother.”
“Oh, yeah . . .”
And I tell him, as I have never told anybody else, about the time I tried to kidnap my brother. I was sixteen and he was eight. I ran to a motel. “A grubby one, nothing like this.” And I tried to start a new life, whatever that meant at sixteen years old. But then one morning Travis climbed out of the window and made his way home to Mom. From then on, he’s always told me he’ll do the same if I try and take him away. He won’t abandon her, he says. “Apparently before Dad went overseas for the last time he told Travis to look out for us, and he took that to heart, you know? It’s just something dads say, but he really took it to heart.”
“Thanks for sharing that with me, Marilee.” He turns to the door. “I’ll check on you in the morning.”
“Wait.” The word escapes me before I know how I’m going to follow it. “You don’t have to go.” I ignore my fear, my panic, my inhibit
ions. “Why don’t you stay for a little while? I think I’d feel safer.”
He hesitates, chewing his lower lip. It’s the first time I’ve seen him unsure of himself. His eyes flit around, settling time and again on my body, on my face. I see the hunger in him, but it’s not a sickening hunger, like Greg’s. This is the hunger of a real man. I don’t know how far I want to go, if I want to go anywhere at all, but at the same time I know that I want him to stay.
He releases his lip. “I’ll stay for a couple of hours. But I shouldn’t hang around too long.”
I don’t need to ask him why. His eyes say it all: if he hangs around for too long, he won’t be able to help himself.
He walks across the room to the bathroom door and then turns and faces me. He’s full of restless energy. He’s like a bull in the stock, bucking, eager to act, but contained by his own sense of decency. At least, decency is my guess. “Do you mind if I take a shower?” he blurts, sounding as though he surprises himself as much as me.
“A shower? No, of course not. This is your room.”
“We can talk after,” he says. “Or . . .”
He leaves the thought unfinished and disappears into the bathroom, locking the door. I sit on the edge of the bed, legs stretched out, listening to the water and wondering what he looks like naked. A bizarre medley of feelings dance within me: fear from the men, panic from the attack, anxiety for Mom and Travis, but there’s also lust as I think about Dusty, naked, just behind that door. I think about him massaging his muscles with soap. Then I slip my hand between my legs, sliding it up toward my pussy.
I just can’t help myself. It feels so damn good to forget.
Chapter Seven
Dusty
I turn on the shower, but I don’t get undressed. Instead I go to the mirror and stare at myself, looking into my eyes and trying to convince myself not to do anything with this girl. I feel like there’s a wild animal inside of me struggling to break free, clawing at my chest and my belly. I grab my dick through my pants. I’m rock-fucking-hard, so hard I could go out there and fuck her and come and then just keep on fucking.
I need to stay strong. I need to remember where this can lead, ’cause this is different to the club girls, to the quick flings. I actually care about Marilee. As little sense as it makes, that’s the fact. I care about her, and I don’t want to hurt her. And I don’t want to throw myself into a situation where in the end I’m even more fucked up than I am now.
The shower steams up the mirror. I wipe it with my forearm and lean close to the glass, staring right into my eyes. “Remember how it felt,” I whisper. “Remember how much you loved the old lady, and how it felt when you heard it. You fuckin’ heard it splatter right against the closet door. You heard it, and now you think you can just move on, love something else, and it won’t be taken away from you? What sort of life do you live? You’re an outlaw.” I thump myself in the belly. “You’re a biker.” I thump myself in the chest. “That shit isn’t for you. Ride, fuck some club girls, but never let yourself feel a goddamn thing!” I thump myself in the face, hard.
I step back, heaving in giant breaths. I want to leave. No, that’s not it. I want to want to leave. I want to be able to just walk out that door and pretend I’ve never met this girl. But I can’t. It’s like there’s a barrier stopping me. Every time I think about pushing past her and disappearing into the parking lot, my body seizes, physically seizes, like I’m ill. My cock won’t get soft, even when I think about chairs and the sky and all the other mundane shit men think about to distract them from women. All I think about is how she looked when she took that lighter from her bra, the slip of flesh, the pertness of those perfect breasts. I want to kiss them, suck them, bite them. And that’d be fine, if that’s all I wanted, but I want to hang around, too.
“Are you okay in there?”
“Fine!” I shout, a little too forcefully.
“Uh, okay.”
I go to the door and listen to her footsteps. How easy would it be to go out there and grab her fine ass and massage her thighs, listen to her sweet moaning, lose myself in the sound of her pleasure-filled voice? I go to the shower and turn it down to ice cold, and then strip completely naked. My cock is my enemy. My cock wants me to ravage that girl, and it’ll lead me that way even when I warn it about the dangers. Even when I warn it that I won’t be able to stay cold with her, that she’s unlocked something in me I don’t understand. Love at first sight shit, chemistry shit, spark shit. When the water has cooled completely, I step into the shower.
My body’s instinct is to leap away the same way I would from a gunshot, but I fight it. I force myself to stand as still as a statue under the cold water, closing my eyes and thinking of nothing, absolutely nothing. But then, wouldn’t it be good to pull that bra down just a bit more, just enough to see her nipples? I wonder if her nipples’ll go hard when I suck them. I wonder how wet she gets. Maybe I’ll lick her clit and then lean back and watch as it gets red and engorged, lick it even quicker until she comes. Maybe she squirts. I want to make her come, over and over. I never normally care about stuff like that.
“Stop it,” I whisper.
But I can’t stop. My mind spins on and on. The cold water does nothing except cover my skin with goose bumps. My cock is still hard, which is a fuckin’ feat. It takes a real sorceress to keep a man’s cock hard in ice-cold water, I reckon. I grab a towel and return to the mirror, looking at my tattooed body: the skulls and playing cards and snakes and wolves covering my torso, and the scars overlaying them. This is who I am. I am a scarred enforcer, nothing more. I should just go to the club and drill Alice, drill her so hard the bed collapses. But the idea makes me sick. How can I lose myself in mindless fucking when I have the girl from the porch right here?
Can I fuck Marilee without feeling anything? As the water drips onto the tiles, I search my mind for the answer. I try and envision a future in which being with Marilee doesn’t change me in some way, doesn’t open a door best left closed. I can’t see it. All I see is her cute smile, the pain and bravery in her eyes. Perhaps I see myself as some kind of savior. Perhaps this is all just me being selfish.
“Are you done in there? I need to use the toilet.”
“Yeah. Just let me get dressed.”
I drop the towel and pick up my clothes, pulling them on quickly, and then go to the door. I pause with my hand on the handle, telling myself that when I open it I’ll just walk straight for the door and into the lot, leave her here and never seen her again. I’ll send some cash by her house or something and maybe she can use that to help with her situation, but I won’t be around. I’ll be too busy partying and fucking and living the outlaw life. But when I open the door I just step aside so she can come into the bathroom, and then go to the bed and sit down, clenching and unclenching my fists in frustration.
I feel like a teenager all over again, the teenager I was before my life got turned into a fuckin’ shit show. I feel nervous, goddamn nervous. I can’t remember the last time I felt nervous. I can’t remember the last time being nervous was even an option for me. Usually I just barrel on with whatever it is. That’s the outlaw life. There’s no room for nerves. There’s no room for clenching and unclenching your fist. Everything has to be quick, brutal. And that’s what I want with Marilee: to act on instinct. But what happens when instinct passes? What if I can’t keep it physical?
She’s in the bathroom for a while, the faucet running. I guess she’s cleaning herself up. I pace around the room and then drop to the floor and do 59 pushups. I drop again and do 87, and then 91, my chest aching coolly. I’m about to hop down for another set—hoping that maybe, just maybe, exercise will hone my mind—when Marilee emerges from the bathroom. I take a step back, stunned.
She has stripped down to her bikini, her shirt and pants in a pile on the floor behind her, and she has washed away all her makeup. Her face is redder around the cheeks. Her nose is slightly pink. But the thing I notice most of all are the bruises, at least
five of them, six, no—seven. There’s one on her neck and two more on her arm, a couple on her legs. She’s marked clearly with them, colored purple and yellow and near-black. We just stare at each other for a long, long time. Her pain fills the room; it’s like I’m seeing into her past, her struggles, without her needing to tell me about them. She looks nervous at first, her shoulders sagging, but then she takes a deep breath and pushes her shoulders back, thrusting her breasts out.
