by Amber Burns
That’s what I need her to tell me what’s up; I can’t rest with the knowledge she’s carrying a burden alone.
We can’t start anything, especially the forever plan I have, when lies start running.
My advance begins a dance. She steps back once for every two steps of mine. I have her coming up to the display window, broom clutched to her chest with both hands, her mouth falling open soundlessly. In the last second she turns from me.
I hug her, broom and all, gathering her soft body to my hard chest. I’m aware she’s gone tense, her back rigid and her breathing shallow. The contrast has my cock stirring. Sex, oddly, is not the first thing on my mind with her in my hold.
That’s a first.
“Tell me what’s up. I’m making no promises to fix it. I just want to hear any problems you might be having.”
When she doesn’t answer, I kiss her temple. She leans against me and it’s the sign that I wanted. Not freezing me out, I take her leaning as invitation to massage her sides, press her further against me until I’m starting to remember my hard dick.
“Vanna, let me in.” I breathe the plea.
My hand cups her breast, weighing the soft, warm flesh, errant thumb rousing her nipple. She moans and tilts her head back.
I’m aware we’re standing in front of the display for anyone to see. It calls to mind the fantasy I spun earlier.
It’s funny how the idea of allowing anyone else to see Vanna’s pleasure causes an unpleasant churning in my gut.
I stop my ministrations, dropping my hand from her breast and relieving the sweet pressure of my cock at the small of her back. I also have to tune out her mewling protest.
“Vanna,” my voice is steely, if not slightly strained, on purpose.
I need to focus. Fucking in her the display is not going to happen, neither is taking her to the back, pulling her skirt up her thighs, freeing her of her panties and sinking into her.
When I’m not touching her, she stirs and I loosen my hold to see what she’s doing. Vanna pulls around, her palms flattening over my pecs.
“Amos…”
I love when she says my name. She makes it sound like some freaking poem or any hymn a choir boy could sing.
“Talk to me, babe.”
Her lower lip quivers with all the sadness and worry and doubt she isn’t putting into words. I kiss her because I want to, but I realize I’m about to be rejected.
“I have to go,” she murmurs over my mouth.
“I know.”
“I have a second job.”
I’m not surprised. Okay, I am. But I’m numb enough to nod and wait for my body to follow my head’s rationalization: I have to let Vanna go and do Vanna, and when she’s ready – and I fucking hope she’s ready soon – to have her come back and stop pushing me away.
“Okay?” her beautiful browns are watery, and I suspect with unshed tears if her morose expression can be taken for value.
“Yeah, okay.”
My arms take a little longer to catch up. I do release her. She’s setting the broom aside and gathering her things, moving around me like egg shells are strewn all over the damn floor she just cleaned.
It kills to watch her toss back glances all the way to the door on her way to that boner-killing second job. It plain sucks when she holds the door open and mumbles to the floor – she’s definitely not looking at me, “I can’t lock up with you in here. Sorry, but it’s the rules.”
I’m already mad pissed I didn’t know my girl had a second job. Just how much did she need to pay off her rent to bust her ass off her and some other place? Was she flipping burgers all night?
Better be a damn office job. Scratch that. She better not be a secretary for some guy.
Vanna’s got way more going for her than menial, pen-pushing work, and right off the top of my head I could give her a job at the gym, being my personal assistant, and she’d be pretty fucking great to ward off my pushier clients – you know, the ones who sashay their titty-bits and squeeze their asses into ridiculous workout get and don’t get that I’m not interested bar any natural physiological reaction.
I get hard when I see jiggly female parts; it doesn’t necessarily mean I want you.
And why does this city have rent forcing its tenants to work two jobs? Are they trying to kill people?
No wonder people are grumpy here.
I’m getting grumpy just thinking about all work, no play, and the fact that I had all these questions with no answers.
“Fuck it.” My grumbling chases off some pigeons perched on the roof of Sterling Outfits. Bird shit splatters an inch from the toe of my boot. I do the full sweep, hair and shirt and pants to make sure I’m free of the crap.
Maybe Vanna has a point about the cursing. Mother Nature clearly seems to be shitting herself over it. Or her creatures are at least.
I start to think of Vanna, her second job and the home that’s costing her time spent with me.
We could have been on our way to Pearlwater Lodge, squeezing myself into one of the advertised suite Jacuzzi with my girl. Speaking of, I make a note to pull my cell out and call. The cancellation is quick, even if I slide the cancel-call button a little too hard.
Then, out of the blue, I get this idea to go see Vanna’s place for myself and determine whether it’s worth the two jobs.
Come to think of it, where the hell did she live?
Jolting up right off the door from the epiphany, I almost turn around and ram my head against it repeatedly.
Violet saves the door from being splattered with my brain.
“Yeah, she works two jobs,” she holds the door for me, locking up after we’re both through. “We used to live together, up until recently. You should have been there when she got the key to her first place.”
Violet smiles, that faraway look gleaming in her making me yearn for such a memory. Vanna must have been so happy.
I try to picture it using the fleeting times she’s smiled with me since our meeting, but it’s difficult, almost near-impossible.
Rather than pulling us through to the back, Violet leads us up the stairs, continuing over her shoulder, “Of course, it was for a price. As soon as we finished celebrating and we all came down from the high, we realized Vanna’s rent would require her to get two jobs.”
“How much does she get paid here?”
Violet pauses, her hand stilling on the knob of the first door of two and the closest to the stairs.
“No offense, but I thought family would have made things easier for her.”
Her smile is palpable of her sadness.
“Vanna won’t let us help.”
“Us?”
It’s a pointless question, and I know it’s really a distraction keeping me from thinking about what’s really bothering me: Namely, Vanna shutting everyone out.
And here I thought I was getting special treatment.
Massively conflicted, I try and partly succeed in concentrating on what Violet is saying.
Violet laughs, opening the door and continuing her lead. “Wes can be a jerk sometimes, but we’re kind of used to it. Still, I guess to an outsider it looks like we’re all this close,” her thumb and pointer are a fraction apart, “to killing each other, right?”
“Basically, my thoughts exactly,” I finally get a good look of the room and whistle. “I thought your back room was messy in the morning.”
“Well, if that’s your standard of sloppy.” The laughter in her tone, Violet’s heels carefully maneuver her through to the back of the room where she shifts not one, but two mannequin busts out of the way to get to the window behind.
The fresh air is going to take a while to circulate with all the clutter. The room, about the size of the small reception downstairs, has walls painted the color of spring grass broken with strips of white. It might have been more of an eyesore rivaling if I could actually see most of the wall.
Cardboard boxes, some burgeoning open with clothing, others acting as temporary c
lothing hampers, along with two chipped wardrobes from another time period and several more wire mannequin busts call the space home, and for years judging by the dust motes floating from them.
“It was stuck a bit. Guess we should come up here some more, other than to toss stuff.”
The air, I note, is stifling up here. Violet seems to feel the same and fans her face, making her way slowly back to where I’m standing, the safest away from everything.
“Man, is it stuffy in here?”
“Very.”
I feel the sweat congealing above my lips. Tugging at the collar of my black jersey without avail, I roll the sleeves around my forearms. Funny how underdressed I am for Albany’s autumn, yet I’m drenched within minutes of entering the room I’m now calling the Sterling dump yard.
“You wouldn’t happen to have central A/C.”
“I wish…” Violet’s voice gave away her distraction.
I follow her attention to my visible ink. I muse at her mouth opening and then closing and then opening again as she’s asking, “Did that hurt?”
“Not any more than it should have.”
“I’ve been really considering getting one. Wes has two, super tiny ones – he’s only shown me one, but he can talk when he’s drunk. Not a sleeve though.” She’s touching me now, mumbling, “That had to hurt…”
I get none of the sensual electricity spiriting over my flesh when Vanna touches me. Even attached to a pretty girl, Violet’s deep purple nail is no more than a finger trailing over my tat.
Couldn’t Vanna be that unabashedly easy? Even Wes would be more likely to stroking my arm. I’d have to ask Vanna to do it, or start her going before she considered it.
Thinking of Vanna has me steering our conversation away from my body art.
“So, what happened to piss Wes off? And don’t say ‘nothing’, because none of what I saw implied ‘nothing’.”
Violet drops her fingers away, backing away into her own polite space. “Take the words from my mouth, why don’t you?”
Her teasing is flat. The jocular tone masking something darker, sadder, and more potent; it’s the emotion I sensed from Vanna, that and her own Vanna-like uncertainty.
Violet opens the gaping flap of the box closest to her. Her fiddling is part of her process. She’s building up to share whatever she’s bottling up.
I’m patient. I can wait. Oddly, it’s easier with Violet than Vanna. Probably as I don’t have any other ties with Violet. I’ve got more riding on Vanna if I want to make her my wife and the mother of our children.
And do I – my balls are aching just thinking about it.
“Screw it.”
Violet’s decision is loud and rude; my kind of style, too. She meets my gaze. “Screw Wes and what he thinks. You’re with Vanna anyways. I mean,” and there’s a threatening gleam in her eye, “you’re not going to go around and blab to anyone, are you? Because if it gets back to me.”
“You’ll kill me? Hide my body up here, maybe in that dresser?” I point to one of the two wardrobes.
She grins and shrugs. “Hey, you said it.”
We laugh. There was never tension to begin with, but the laughter eases the oppressive warmth in the room – that and the open window might be working a little of its magic.
“It’s stupid. You’ll laugh if I tell you.” She rolls her eyes. “One of our clients invited me to an early dinner to talk business. He’s thinking of new designs for his cleaning services’ uniforms.”
“Like maid outfits?”
“Men.” Violet shakes her head, her amusement strong. “As I was saying, new designs for his maid uniforms, and he wanted to talk. Strictly business. Although the Salisbury steak was the deal-breaker, and I’m not going to complain or counteroffer if someone is willing to pay for my dinner.
“I can’t help how people are going to interpret it.” She breathes through her nose hard. “Someone in particular took the dinner as evidence of mixing pleasure with business.”
“Nothing wrong with doing that, too,” I’m thinking of Vanna. Of our reservations and her drawing away from me.
Violet’s saying, “If only people were less like the Kingstons and more like you. I’m sorry if her grown-ass son doesn’t know what mommy wants or not.” She’s murmuring by the end of her rant.
Kingston.
I recognize the name.
Something in my expression must have given away my thought as Violet smiles. “You know who I’m talking about. Yeah, well, her. Mrs. Kingston.” Then she tilts her head. “Who told you? Vanna? I don’t picture her talking anytime soon.”
“You picture correctly then. No, it’s not Vanna.” I almost add I wish it were; instead I’m looking around the room, vying for a topic change. “I could clean up here. It’d give me something to do, especially now that I feel bad over your tale of woe and all.”
“That wasn’t my plan,” but Violet’s smile widens anyways, flashing a row of pretty pearly whites. “Are you sure?”
“Would it help if I said I want to be here when Vanna comes back? And it makes me look good: The helpful boyfriend who so deserves something in return for his hard, generous work.” I stop shy of wagging my brows. I don’t have to. Violet is laughing towards the door, her head thrown back, long blonde curls shivering with her mirth.
She leaves me to it.
The thing about the small, dusty room is I can’t track time. It reminds me of waiting in the car for Vanna on her visit to Mrs. Kingston, my first encounter with this old woman driving the Sterlings to the loony bin and their business to hell.
At one point I glance at the window and note the air is colder and the world darker.
The next time I look up, it’s to swipe the back of my hand across my sweaty brow and admire one corner of cleared floor.
I work methodologically. The Marine in my blood framing the problem task, breaking it to divisible sections, and then working slowly, but efficiently until one project is cleared for another.
Vanna catches me starting Step Two of the Sterling dump yard cleaning.
“Violet,” she’s mumbling and skidding to a stop more than an arm’s distance from me.
I’d hug her dusty and sweaty as I am, but I’m good at reading body gestures and Vanna would close up faster if I touched her now.
“I volunteered. She told you that?”
“She did.” Her brows are raised. “I didn’t believe her though.”
“Believe it,” I hear the note of irritation clipping my response. Yeah, I’m pissed. All I’ve shown her is my good side. I’m close to calling it, grabbing her and stealing a kiss, bending her will with my cock until she’s craving me as much as I am her.
6
Some things are better settled with words, others with pure, hard, sweaty physical contact.
“I’m sorry.” She’s bringing me to the present, drawing me from seriously acting out on the short fantasy of taking her on the floor, or against the wall of the corner I just cleared. I was right, the green paint is an eyesore; plowing into Vanna would keep me from focusing on it though.
“…and I shouldn’t have assumed anything. Especially as you’ve been such a help,” she blushes when I pin her with what I hope is a hard stare. My resolve to hold onto the annoyance and hurt from earlier is melting, quickly.
She’s changed out of the Henley and jean skirt. The riding boots are now tucked in with her dark jeans and a faded orange sweater is warming her upper half. But it’s her hair that takes away from the ugly sweater and plain jeans.
I’m already aware Vanna could be wearing a flour sack and she’d still be stunning. She radiates mystery, and then once she has you hooked to beg for a private strip tease, you’re a sucker.
I’ve been to my share of meat markets. Vanna is a rare prize. To think if I’d prowled and continued my search the way I’d been going, I might never have met her.
“Amos?”
I grab a box and heave it atop the pile I’m creating in the proc
ess of clearing my next work area. I lean over the box, pretending to check the weight of the others below as if the stack could tip over.
“Amos?” She’s moving closer. Like a heat-seeking missile, I can feel her closing in, I know the exact moment…
I move fast from feigning the box-check to circling her wrist and tugging her into me. My arms are waiting, chest readied for the impact of her small, soft breasts.
