by Anne Connor
And now, I know I could never want another woman again.
Her breathing slows down as I push her robe farther down her shoulders. Her breaths become longer and more steady.
It feels almost fucking wrong to do this to her, to touch her like this. Because I told her a long time ago that I loved her, and she told me the same and she took my ring. But she was a different person then. She was a twenty-one year old girl. She was young. Now, she isn’t that slightly awkward, skinny, fresh girl anymore. Now she’s a woman, and I was fucking gone when I should have been here. I shouldn’t notice the changes in her. I should have seen her every day, the changes happening so gradually that they would be imperceptible to someone so close to her.
I feel the force of that year squeeze up around my heart, and though it’s pounding hard inside my chest, it’s struggling. I press my fingers into the flesh on her shoulders, and I lean down and kiss the back of her neck.
Her head drops slightly, lengthening her long, gorgeous neck. I want to put my fingers around her throat the way she always loved, call her my fucking sexy girl.
But can I?
My cock presses up against my jeans, and everything inside me is on fire for this woman.
I want to take her right fucking now. Spin her around and take her face in my hands, kiss her tears away, push her against the wall until she feels so good that she can’t remember the sadness and pain I’ve caused her.
She tilts her head slightly to the left, and I kiss behind her ear. She’s letting me. The shy police chief’s daughter is letting the drunk next door’s son corrupt her.
A small moan escapes from her lips, and her shoulders tense up.
Fuck.
I start to pull away from her, and she steps forward slightly, her head still hanging down.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know if I can.”
I feel my eyebrows knit together and my lips part, but I don’t know what to say.
I came over to talk, but now I don’t know what to say.
I never thought this would be easy. It shouldn’t be. I don’t want it to be.
Because when she falls for me, she’ll be ready.
Daisy
Why the hell did I make Travis leave?
He made me feel so good. He made my body and my heart feel things I haven’t felt in so long.
Things I’ve only ever felt for him. Things I felt when I was younger, when he was the first boy I felt them for.
But maybe letting him in was a mistake. He had a key to my house, but that doesn’t mean I should have let him in.
Protect your heart, love, my dad’s always told me.
Right now, I’m being reckless.
But part of me wishes I hadn’t given him the ring back.
Shit.
I watch Travis as he walks away, between our two yards. They say fences make good neighbors, but he’s a good neighbor without that boundary between our homes.
I go over to my desk and grab my phone. I need to cancel my date with Colin. I can still feel Travis’ touch on my shoulders.
I can’t go out with Colin.
It wouldn’t be fair. To anyone.
I can’t imagine Colin is particularly happy about me cancelling at the last minute, but he takes it fine and tells me he’ll see me at work on Monday.
I turn my light off and flop onto my bed face-down, closing my eyes.
Could I have saved Travis? Should I have lied and said he was with me all night the night everything happened? Would it have mattered?
Why would he have confessed to something he didn’t do?
I have the house to myself tonight. Mom and Dad are out with a few other couples, at a dinner with people they went to high school with.
The only person I’m still really friends with from highschool is Sarah. Grabbing my phone, I text her to tell her I’m coming over tomorrow morning with bagels.
It’s still early, but I lay back and close my eyes. My phone interrupts me slipping off to slumber, and it’s a text from Travis.
Goodnight, it says simply.
I don’t want to dream of him. I want him right next to me, by my side. I want to fall asleep in his arms, because that’s what feels so good.
But I don’t know if I can.
I keep thinking back to the ring he gave me. I wish I’d given it back sooner. I wish I still had it, though, at the same time.
I close my eyes. I try to go back to the night of his 18th birthday. But I can’t. The dream is over. It ended the night he lied to me. The night he lied to my dad. To everyone.
But I don’t know if I can turn away from him.
“Is it too early to start drinking?”
Sarah calls down to me from her terrace as I get out of my car with a bag of piping hot bagels. She holds up two glasses of frothy orange juice spiked with a little bit of champagne and takes a sip from one of them.
When I get up to her apartment, I remember how much I want to move out of my parents’ place. But something’s still stopping me. It’s the way my room feels, it’s the way I’m able to look across the lawn and see something in Travis’ window even when I know he’s not there.
“I’m out here!” Sarah motions for me to join her. Her place is lovely; it’s in a small apartment complex on the main drag near the train station. There’s a lot of young professionals here and it’s in a good location if you want to go to the city for a show or a nice dinner.
My favorite part of it is the view. I step out onto the terrace and take in the serene skyscape of the rolling hills dotted with the trees of early autumn and the river gently rolling against the rocky banks butting up against the train tracks.
“Nice morning,” I say, gathering my sweater up around me and putting the bag of bagels down on the low glass table. I take a seat and grab one of the hot coffee mugs she has waiting for me.
“I don’t know how you’re able to leave your house without coffee first,” she says, shrugging the straps of her nightgown up on her shoulders.
“I’m not an addict like you.” I laugh and sip the hot liquid slowly, blowing softly before every sip.
We chat for a few minutes about work. She’s an engineering lecturer at the technical university the next county over. She doesn’t look like an engineer, though. If you’d see her on the street you’d think she was a model or a billionaire’s girlfriend.
“You have lots of paperwork to fill out, I heard.” Sarah moves away from the banister at the edge of the terrace and slips down into a chair, putting her legs up on the edge of the railing.
I want to tell her what happened with Travis last night. I want to tell her so badly; I need to. But the words don’t come. Because as much as I want to tell her we’re back together and it’s like nothing happened, that just isn’t the truth.
We aren’t back together. Everything is not okay. I still don’t know if last night was a mistake, but all I know is that I dreamed about him. He’s filled my waking thoughts for the past year, and last night, he filled my dreams too.
I’m screwed.
“What are you hiding?” Sarah looks over at me and takes a sip of her mimosa. “How was your date with Colin last night?”
I exhale heavily and grab a bagel from the bag, shaking my head. A soft breeze comes off the Hudson River and a light chill goes through my spine. Winter is almost here. I can feel it in my bones before I feel it on my skin. It’s like Travis in that way. I can feel it inside me, plates moving deep inside, before I even know what’s happening. He gets into my bones. He feels good there. He reminds me of something bigger than myself.
“I didn’t go on the date with Colin,” I confess quickly. I swallow a bite of my bagel and Sarah chuckles lightly, pushing her long blonde hair away from her face with her slender fingers.
“You know it’s rude to cancel so last-minute, right?”
She’s scolding me, but she’s right. And even though she’s scolding me, she’s also playing around.
“I know it’
s rude. That’s why I don’t do it very often.”
“You could have avoided all of this if you’d just said no in the first place.”
I take another sip of my coffee and put my mug down on the table.
“I know,” I say plainly. “He’s just very persistent, and I thought maybe I’d try going out with him as a friend, you know? It was just a movie.”
“It wasn’t even a movie,” she replies. “It was almost a movie. It was a movie before you cancelled.”
“Right.”
“And why did you do it?”
I narrow my eyes and focus on the trees swaying across the river. Everything looks calm, like the trees don’t know they’re about to lose all of their leaves for the winter. They don’t know they’re about to be stripped bare. It’s kind of sad, and a small dolor hits me in the chest.
I look down at my hands and swallow thickly, shaking my head.
“Travis texted me.”
A silence descends over our breakfast, and all I can hear is the slow, steady rumble of the river and the clanking of glass against the coffee table as Sarah puts her drink down.
“Why does that have anything to do with Colin?” Her words are patient. She already knows the answer. She already knows what I’m not saying. But that’s why she’s a good friend. She asks me questions so I can figure things out for myself, not because she wants to figure me out. It’s so I can do the hard work for myself.
Sometimes I need that little nudge.
She’s right.
“Sarah.” I take a deep breath and sigh. The air smells like dirt and fresh, sparkling lumber being set ablaze in a wood-burning fireplace and keeping someone warm. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. All he’s done is lie. And that’s when he actually talks to me. Do you know that he never called me once when he was in jail?”
Tear prick at the corners of my eyes and I fight them back, swallowing past the lump forming in my throat. We never spoke about him when he was in jail.
“Every word out of his mouth is a lie. I don’t know what to believe. He made me doubt everything.”
Sarah scoots her chair over to me until our knees touch. It’s like our way of holding hands when one of us needs it.
“You have to talk to him. And you have to give him time.” She looks out over the Hudson as the wind plays with her long hair, before looking over to me, her lips pulled down slightly at the corners. But her eyes are shimmering with a bit of something else. I can almost swear it’s...mischief. “Do you still have feelings for him?”
I do still have feelings for him. But it’s not just affection anymore.
Now it’s anger, and resentment, and regret. And worst of all, it’s confusion and disbelief.
I nod slowly and wipe the corners of my eyes with my fingertips. For some reason, a smile tugs at the corners of my mouth.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I do.”
Sarah looks out over the river and the trees and pats my knee, saying nothing. We just sit in silence and take in the view, and I start to contemplate how the hell I’m going to move forward.
How the hell I’m going to be able to do this.
Get over him, move on from him. That would be the easier option, I think. I could move down to the city like I’ve always wanted to. I could move to Boston like I’ve always considered. Everything would be easy compared to the little thing that’s still tugging my heart back to him.
The hard part is going to be letting him back in.
Travis
My engine rumbles as I pull into a spot on the far side of the parking lot at the police station. This one-horse bullshit town only has one station, and of course Daisy’s on the other side of that door. She’s always taken after her old man in that regard. She likes order. She craves order. She likes things to be tidy and clean and wants the bad guys put away and the good guys celebrated with a parade every year.
I suck the nicotine from the end of my cigarette into my lungs and wince as I pinch the end between my fingers. The smoke fills my car as I roll up my window and cut the engine.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Daisy since Friday night. My weekend was filling out job applications in my room, pounding the pavement to get a new gig, and tossing glances over at Daisy through her window.
She never went out with that other guy after I came over. She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have been able to get her mind off my touch. And she isn’t the kind of girl to screw around with one guy and then go off with another. She’s too fair. She’s too fucking good.
I get out of my car and slam the door shut behind me, holding the parole paperwork my officer’s given me. I have one year’s probation, and all that means is that I have to stay out of trouble until this shit is over.
Crossing the parking lot, the black asphalt teases me. The bright white parking lines remind me of being kids again, when Daisy and I would sneak off at night and cut through the parking lot of our school. We were just fucking kids, but I wanted her then, too. Before I even knew what that meant. I smile as I think about the way she used to walk on the white lines painted on the ground. She’d pretend to fall off them, even though she was on solid ground.
I’d pretend to catch her. She’d tumble into my arms.
It may have been all pretend, but to us, it was real.
I clear my throat loudly as I enter the waiting area of the precinct. Daisy’s still on front desk duty, even though she’s a supervisor now, overseeing a staff. She still has to fill out paperwork and man the desk. It’s a small town, and there’s not many people who want to work for the police department.
She looks up from her desk and buzzes me though, keeping her calm and serious demeanor as I smile and wave. I wiggle my fingers at her on purpose, and she finally smiles at me.
“You have an appointment, right?” she asks. There’s something playful in her voice, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She’s smiling, but she quickly looks away from me when she sees me coming through the door.
My eyes pass over her, from her eyes to her lips.
“No sane man would walk into a police station unless he had to,” I reply. The irony of my statement is not lost on us.
No sane man would walk into a police station unless he had to. If I was reporting a crime or confessing to something I’d done, I’d be sane. But I know I must be fucking crazy to have done what I did.
But still, I couldn’t help it.
I avert my eyes from hers and walk past. This isn’t my first time here. Not at all. I know this place well. From the first time I was taken in to the first time I came here for my first meeting with my parole officer, I’ve walked through this very same hallway and imagined her with me by my side. Instead, I left her.
The night it all happened, I left her at her house to wonder where I was. Now she knows exactly where I am, and where I’ll stay.
I knew she’d be angry with me. Fuck, I’m angry with myself, too. Have I atoned for the bad things I’ve done, or have I only made myself fucking worse?
Letting my hand graze along the rough wall of the hallway, I walk with purpose. But I also allow my mind to wander. I think about how she used to love being pushed up against the wall when we kissed. She loved having her hair tugged and I relished every moment I was able to slip my thumb along her lips, the way her moans would make me so hard.
I come around the corner of the hallway and see a few of the officers’ desks set up. The room is bright, filled with sunshine coming through the forest on the north side of the building. A few of the younger cops, guys I went to school with, come over and shake my hand, offering their welcome to me.
“It really is good to see you again.” This guy who was a year behind me, Mike or Mark or something, comes over and claps me on the back as we shake hands. There’s nothing bad between us. There’s nothing bad between me and most of the people I know here.
We share pleasantries and he tells me about how his sister moved to the western part of the state to start fresh. I d
on’t know why someone would move farther away from the coast to start fresh. If anything, I’d go to the city if I wanted something new.
But I don’t. I can’t imagine leaving again. Now that I’m back, it’s just not happening again.
I say my goodbyes and make my way over to the office where I need to meet my parole officer, Mrs. Drayton. She’s a nice lady, the sister of my junior high social studies and drama teacher. Those two ladies are like a fixture around here. Everyone knows at least one of them on a first-name basis.
I feel the young cops I just spoke to still looking at me as I go over to Mrs. Drayton’s office and knock a few times on the door. She smiles up at me kindly and takes her glasses off, motioning for me to come in.
“Please close the door behind you,” she says sweetly. I shake her hand across the desk and sit down. The sun is less bright in here, but it’s a nice space for a bureaucrat's office.
The office is filled with pictures of her family. There’s even a calendar made up with photos of her husband and kids.
“Mr. Bloom, thank you for coming here to meet with me today.” She picks up a folder from her desk and thumbs it open. It’s my file. She scans it with narrowed, serious eyes.
I laugh and shake my head.
“I thought I was required to be here,” I say. “If you don’t need me, I can go.”
“I just mean not everyone who is required to complete court-ordered parole necessarily does. Just showing up is half of it.”
I huff out another laugh and cross my arms in front of my chest. Off to my right, through the window in the wall separating the office from where the officers have their desks set up, I see Daisy’s old man talking to Colin’s father. They aren’t looking back at me. It’s almost like they’re doing it on purpose. I can feel their words, even though I can’t hear them.
