by Mindy Klasky
Jesus Christ, she was gorgeous when she blushed. He thought about stretching his legs under the table, edging his foot between hers, just so he could see her jump. Instead, he picked up his glass of wine and drained it, staring at her over the rim.
She swallowed hard.
And that’s when time slowed down. She wanted him, he knew that. And God knew, he was ready for her. He’d spent the better part of his afternoon run trying to pound away the image of those lips she was licking right now. He’d worked hard to forget the feel of her pulse jackrabbiting in her throat, the soft scent of vanilla that grew stronger as her skin heated beneath his tongue.
But she didn’t know him. Couldn’t trust him. Not really. Not yet.
So he asked her about growing up in Harmony Springs, about what it had been like going to school with forty students in the entire grade. He told her about high school in Boston, where there were forty kids in his Communications class, crammed four to a table, where there were only supposed to be two.
He tried to fill her wineglass, but she shook her head. He wasn’t about to let a decent bottle go to waste, not something that came with an actual cork and a goddamn rooster on the label. So he filled his own glass and drank it down, reminding himself that he had all the time in the world.
He asked her when she’d known she was going to college, what made her choose to major in accounting. He told her about showing up at the Army Recruiting Office the day after high school graduation, birth certificate in hand to prove he was over eighteen and didn’t need his parents’ permission.
The waitress, what was her name? Mona. Mona came by a few times, refilling water glasses, taking away empty plates, but mostly she kept her distance. He saw the way she watched from the front of the restaurant, recording facts that were sure to be around the entire town by tomorrow morning.
He cut off a bite of his steak and told Lexi she had to taste it, put it on the edge of her plate. He let her give him one of her shrimp, cupping his hand around hers protectively as she maneuvered a slick pink curl across the table.
It was risky, but he asked Lexi about her family. There was Golden Boy, he knew, who had to be older, given his bull-headed protective streak. Their parents were still married, still lived in the home where she’d grown up, still worked for the cookie factory on the edge of town, her father a baker and her mother an executive assistant for one of the bigwigs.
He made light of his own family, scaring up a few amusing stories about the girls, about how Paul decided to run away to live in Fenway Park when he was five. He mentioned Ma, enough to show he cared. He didn’t say a word about his father, and Lexi didn’t ask.
She was leaning toward him now, forearms resting on the table. Her shoulders were loose, relaxed. He tried to pour the last of the wine in her glass but she stopped him again, brushing her fingertips across the back of his hand. He filled his own glass instead.
Mona brought over a dessert menu. He didn’t bother looking at it, just asked Lexi what was good. She said she couldn’t eat another bite, but he told her they could share. She didn’t wait a beat before she asked Mona to bring a plate of the honey ricotta cookies.
He ordered a grappa to go with the sweets, but Lexi declined another drink. When the cookies arrived, she ate one, then patted her belly and said she couldn’t, she really couldn’t. But he held a second one out to her, smiling, and she leaned across the table to take a tiny bite, licking her lips to keep crumbs from falling on the table.
The old woman must have been rooting for him. She had the check ready on a plastic tray before he could finish turning around to ask for it. He slipped bills out of his wallet, adding a generous tip because that would be part of tomorrow’s gossip as well.
He climbed out of the booth first, offering Lexi a hand. He reached over and collected the gift for Susan Dawson. At the coatrack, she pulled Lexi’s jacket off a hanger, but he took it from her, held it low enough that she could easily slip her arms into the sleeves. He settled it over her shoulders, waiting for her to pull her hair free before he adjusted the collar against the soft skin of her neck.
She shivered.
“Don’t you have a coat?” she asked as they stepped into the night.
He shook his head. “Don’t need one.” And he didn’t. Not with his blood boiling in his veins. His truck hulked in the shadows two doors down, in front of the shuttered Mona’s Trattoria. He edged closer to Lexi and asked, “Where are you parked?”
“Me?” she sounded breathless. “I walked.”
“Can I walk you home then?”
She nodded. He let them get halfway down the block before his hand brushed against hers. Her fingers twisted around his.
He wasn’t drunk, not exactly. He had a steak as ballast, and he’d spread out the alcohol over a couple of hours. But a tune was humming in the back of his head, a wordless song that he might have heard in a dream. The shadows weren’t quite as dark as they might have been; the doorways weren’t as deep.
They didn’t talk now, not while she led him two blocks north of Main Street. They turned to the right, crossed one street, another, walked beside a well-trimmed city park. In the next block, she stopped on the sidewalk in front of a red brick house. A single bulb glowed on the long front porch. He couldn’t tell the color of the shutters; they might have been green or blue or even black.
“This is me,” she said, but she didn’t try to take her hand from his.
He let her lead him up the three steps to the porch. He felt her trembling, just a little, and he loosened his grip on her fingers. She reached inside her pocket to produce a ring of keys, but it took three tries for her to match the right one to the lock.
A dog started barking inside, its voice deep enough to frighten away burglars or most horny men. “I don’t…” she started to say, but she stopped to chew on her lip. “I’m not usually…”
He kicked down the ache in his gut. Of course she didn’t. Of course she wasn’t. She lived in the middle of Harmony Springs, where half a dozen neighbors were probably already reporting the pair of them to the gossips waiting on the party line. Or on Facebook. Whatever.
Ignoring the increasingly frantic dog inside the house, he bent to brush a kiss across her frowning lips, a chaste one, just to show there were no hard feelings. So he wasn’t prepared when her hands clutched at his shirt, fisting in the fabric like she was slipping away in quicksand.
She pulled him close for a kiss. She opened her mouth first. She tilted her head, finding a better angle, leaning in closer, and she whispered, so soft he barely heard her, “Come inside.”
He didn’t wait for a second invitation.
It was dark in the house and warm, warm enough that he realized he really should have bothered with a jacket out there. A three-legged hound charged him the second he stepped over the threshold, but Lexi ordered the dog—Lucky—down. It whined, but it obeyed, and Finn held out his hand, letting himself be sniffed.
Lexi closed the door and smiled an apology, clicking her tongue to call the dog into the kitchen. As Finn set the gift-wrapped box for Susan Dawson on an end-table, he heard a rattle in the kitchen, then a command for Lucky to sit. The snap of sharp teeth told him the animal had been bribed with some treat. A door closed, and Lexi returned alone.
Before he could comment, she was shrugging out of her jacket, letting it fall on the floor behind her. The instant her hands were free, she was working at the buttons on his shirt, sliding her palms up his belly like she was reading his ribs by Braille.
He reached for her, wanting to return the favor, but she tossed her hair, driving him back two steps until his shoulder blades flattened against the door. This was a side of Lexi he hadn’t seen before, the urgency, the need. He leaned his head back and let her work her magic, laughing with her when she discovered the tent in his pants.
She stripped his belt from its loops then, draping the leather around her neck with a grin that made him wonder how he’d ever thought she was a schoolmarm.
She took her time with his zipper, steady and slow, and he tightened his abs as he concentrated on not ending things before they’d really begun.
It had been too long since he’d been with a woman. Months, almost a year, and that had been some one-night stand in Germany. They’d both gotten what they wanted, but now he couldn’t even remember the girl’s name.
His body was shouting at him for waiting so long, his pulse was thundering hard and fast. He caught at Lexi’s hand, drank in her laugh as she fought to keep playing. Panting, he pushed off from the door, dancing her around so her back was against the smooth wood panels.
He reached for her wrists, but she twisted beneath him, enough to remind him how she favored her right arm. He caught her left hand with his, pinning it high above her head while he tugged her blouse free from her pants. He couldn’t work the buttons, not without letting her go, so he slid his palm across her belly, listening to her gasp in surprise at the cold of his fingers, or the need in his touch, or just the feel of him, measuring the tightness in her body.
God, she felt amazing. Warm and soft and wired to respond to every stroke of his fingers, of his thumb, dipping lower, to the waist of those pants. He needed both his hands, so he edged a knee between hers, leaning in to pin her with his weight.
Her thighs clutched around his, and his pulse bucked into double time. He wanted to rip her shirt off, to send the buttons flying, but he held himself back. Instead, he worked the bottom button, spreading both his hands around her waist, feeling the shudder that rocked her, head to toe.
He undid one more, fanning his fingers across her flat belly. Another, and the tips of his fingers brushed against the lace trim at the bottom of her bra. She moaned and shifted, riding his leg harder, tighter.
He slipped the last button free. The cloth draped from her shoulders, framing a bra that would have been illegal in most of the places he’d lived for the past ten years. He buried his face at the top of the sweet V, breathing in the warm scent of her, feeling her heart pound beneath his lips.
His hands slid up her ribcage, his fingers slipping around to work the hooks. She twisted beneath him, though, threading her fingers between his, folding his hands down to his sides.
She kissed him then, desperate and deep. This wasn’t just lips pressing against lips. This was one body crying out for another. The entire long line of her was edged up against him, taut and trembling, eager, inviting. He let himself fall into that kiss, swirl into a whirlpool where his sight merged with sensation, where his hearing blended with the sweet taste of her, where the sound of her whispering his name drew him forward.
Her bedroom was on the ground floor. Her mattress was high off the floor, soft as a box of cotton. She worked some sort of magic, first with his pants, then with her own before she opened a drawer in the nightstand to produce a miracle foil square.
She tore open the packet, laughing at the harsh catch in his breath as she put the contents to good use. And then she lay back on the bed, pulling him on top of her, into her. And he lost himself in the beat and the frenzy and the need of learning Lexi.
6
Lexi woke in the middle of the night. She lay as still as she could, listening to the man breathing beside her. And when she couldn’t stand it anymore, when she had to look at his face, she eased herself out of bed, moving inch by inch, careful not to shift the mattress. She held her breath as she collected her tangled bathrobe from the chair in the corner, silently shaking it out to make sure Pirate hadn’t left her any cat-toy treasures. She pulled the soft flannel close, knotting the belt around her waist before she sank onto the plush chair and studied the man sleeping in her bed.
Finn was sprawled on his stomach, one hand reaching toward the space where she had lain. A sheet covered most of him; she’d taken care to drag it up from the foot of the bed before she’d dared to fall asleep. His hair was rumpled, as if he’d fought his way through a hurricane. She could just make out the top of a tattoo on his left biceps, a scrolling banner of red and blue.
She’d never been in this situation before.
Sure, she’d had sex before. Boxes of condoms didn’t just materialize in the nightstands of dedicated virgins.
She’d even had sex on first dates before. More often than not, actually. If she hooked up with a guy, he didn’t expect a whole emotional commitment. Sex on the first date was like a hall pass; everyone could go their own way in the morning. No one got hurt.
But all the other times she’d invited a guy back to her house, she’d sent him packing before dawn. Oh, she made a joke out of it. She said Pirate had a bad habit of attacking dangling man bits. She said Lucky was fiercely protective. She made up early morning handyman visits from her father, buying trips with her brother. She pointed out she couldn’t cook worth a damn, not even scrambled eggs. That last excuse was even true.
But tonight was different. She didn’t want Finn to leave.
Maybe it was the way he’d confessed to her, telling her his work in the back room wouldn’t take more than a day to finish up. Maybe it was the way he’d told stories at dinner, checking to see if she was laughing, purposely shoving away dark thoughts he believed he was keeping secret. Maybe it was the way his face relaxed in sleep, the only time she’d seen him without those tight lines of pain between his eyebrows.
Maybe it was the way he’d made love to her, with perfect attention to her body, with absolute awareness of the pace she needed, the pressure, the touch. His intensity had been just this side of frightening. She felt utterly depleted, spent, in the best possible way.
She knew how to keep this going. All she had to do was lie.
She just had to keep Finn from seeing her back, from realizing how tight her right arm was. She had to create the opposite of Camp Renaissance, burying her disability so she couldn’t surprise him, couldn’t disgust the man who slept in her bed. In the years since Timothy had dumped her, Lexi had mastered the fine art of hiding her scars.
As if he heard Lexi’s vow, Finn shifted in her bed. He twisted onto his side, drawing his legs up into a fetal position. She stood, intending to straighten the sheet, to keep him covered and warm, but he jackknifed onto his back before she could move.
His head tossed, and his closed eyes darted back and forth. He was clearly in the middle of a dream, a nightmare. His hands closed on the sheet, tight enough that his knuckles stood out, ghost-white in the dim room. He moaned, saying words she couldn’t understand.
“Finn,” she said, keeping her voice low.
He thrashed some more, muttering words-that-weren’t-words.
“Finn,” she said, louder this time.
He sat up like a mummy summoned from its grave. His eyes shot open, and he stared straight ahead. His throat tightened across a jagged groan.
“Hey,” she said, coming to stand beside him. She reached out for his shoulder but pulled her hand away when she felt the heat blazing off his flesh.
His mouth stretched into a gaping hole. “Dawg!” he cried, stretching the word into five or six syllables. He woke himself with his shout, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. His left hand scrabbled at his side, clutching at thin air, even as his right hand closed around Lexi’s wrist, squeezing tight enough to make her squawk.
“Finn!” she said, and this time, he finally heard her. This time, his eyes focused. He stared at his fingers, at the narrow bones of her wrist, and he took a lightning inventory of the room—the shadowy door to the bathroom, the open passage to the living room, the chair hulking in the corner beneath a week’s worth of laundry.
He let go of her and collapsed back onto the pillows. “Lexi,” he said weakly.
“What were you dreaming?” she asked, even though she had a decent idea.
He shook his head and covered his eyes with his forearm. His other arm hung limp by his side, and she could finally make out the tattoo she’d only glimpsed before. Bunting, in red and blue, wrapped around three letters: JLD. Beneath it, a date. 12/24/14.
&
nbsp; Jonathan Lewis Dawson. Christmas Eve, the day Jon died.
“Can I get you something?” she asked softly. “A glass of water?”
He shook his head again. But he said, without opening his eyes. “A drink. Jack Daniels, if you’ve got it.”
She didn’t. And she didn’t volunteer that she had a full bottle of vanilla vodka, another of spiced rum. She didn’t mention the Chivas she kept for Chris and her father.
Instead, she pulled the sheet back and slipped into bed beside him. He started to pull away, but she clicked her tongue, the same way she would if Pirate was clawing at the curtains. She folded her arms around him, spooning against his back. His hands closed over her flannel-wrapped arms, but after a moment, he let her hug him closer.
“Hush,” she said, even though he hadn’t started to speak. “Go back to sleep.” And when his back remained as tight as a wooden plank, she brushed his hair back from his forehead.
“Fly me to the moon,” she sang in a whisper, her voice dipping easily into the time-worn melody. She knew every word of the song by heart, all three verses. And when she got to the end, she sang it again. One more time, almost a tuneless whisper.
He pretended to fall asleep, slowing his breathing to match hers. And she pretended to believe him, as she stared out the window, waiting for the blue-black of night to fade to grey dawn.
“What did you do then?” Anne asked, her expression a mixture of glee and horror.
“Put another Pop-Tart in the toaster.” Lexi shrugged as she looked at the audience of her fellow yoga class participants. “What? You all know I don’t cook!”
“You could have treated him to breakfast at the diner,” Megan Sartain suggested. The lawyer prided herself on her shrewd analytical skills.
