by Ace Gray
Following the usual pattern, this was when the story changed a little. Suddenly the baker knew things, vague and hypotheticals, but things nonetheless. Horse peppered him with blows, even a few kicks, hoping to draw the whole story out.
After a particularly hard toe to the ribs, Horse stepped back and met my cold gaze. “What do you think, Cole?”
“I think he knows more than he’s saying.” That was always the truth after all.
“Mickey would appreciate it if you get it from him.”
The mention of Mickey automatically had me wanting to rebel, but Horse glowered at me, reading my thoughts perfectly. So I shot him a look and squeezed the man’s throat. Hard. All the muscles of the baker’s neck tensed and wiggled beneath my hand.
“How do they know?” I kept my voice low and icy in his ear.
His hands came to mine and scrambled to break my grip. I tightened it.
“Tell us.”
He sputtered, still clawing at me. His neck was a thick block of wood, so hard, so tense, I was trying to crush it rather than just choke him. Even the skin on the back of his neck was turning a purplish hue. He wheezed a few syllables again.
“I think he’s trying to tell you something, Cole.”
I dropped my grip and let him collapse to the floor. He took two deep breaths before I nudged his shoulder with my Chucks. He flopped flat on his back. It took his eyes a split second to focus on us but then they shifted between both Horse and I where we leaned over him.
“It’s Jimmy Ponies. He’s playing both sides.”
Fury roared inside of me as violent as Mickey himself. Without thinking about my actions, the repercussions—without thinking of absolutely anything—my mind cleared, my breathing slowed and operating on instinct alone, I grabbed my gun from my back, pointed it at the beet red baker and pulled the trigger.
11.
Elle
“The modern medical system doesn’t account for the underlying causes. They want to slap on a Band-Aid or prescribe a pill because it’s a one-time cost, not an ongoing treatment plan to actually fix the problem. Biomechanics are the root of almost all chronic pain and if they’d just let us take the time to fix biomechanics, we’d solve so much.”
“Wow.” I said it more because I couldn’t believe my date was still carrying on, not because I found his rant on physical therapy entertaining.
“Right?” He totally misinterpreted me and launched into more details.
I had to bite my lip to keep from saying something stupid, or something about strangling Conrad when I got home.
After I told him the full story, about Jimmy and Mr. Maloney and how Cole knew them, about what I felt for Cole, Conrad immediately stopped faux-fainting and went completely serious.
Was meeting you a coincidence?
Conrad had asked like the obvious answer was no. He reasoned that if Jimmy was in deep, and Cole was connected to the people he was in deep with, couldn’t he be spying on me? Couldn’t he be ensuring payment? The thought had never crossed my mind. But now as Dr. Know-It-All babbled on about the United States health care system, my mind wandered back.
I’d called and texted Cole for a solid two weeks and heard absolutely nothing. I had sent one last text before agreeing to this date.
Just tell me if you were watching me because of Jimmy or if it was real. I mean, it felt real to me but…
I sounded like an idiot and I knew it. I couldn’t even finish the text for Christ’s sake but it nagged at me. More than Cole not answering, the seed of doubt that Conrad had planted was far worse. I could live with not talking but I couldn’t deal with our moments together being an act.
“See you’ve got to have decent shoulder tension or maybe even tension headaches but I can fix that by the release of the upper traps and retraining of the lower traps, lats, rotator cuff.” Dr. Know-It-All reached across the table to rest his hand on my shoulders.
They melted and I hadn’t even realized they’d crept up to my ears.
“I’m fine. Thank you.” I gently reached for his hand and pushed it down to the table. The thought of him caressing my neck made my skin crawl.
Apparently my body only responded to brutish strangers choking me.
“You’re fine now but give it a couple of years and…”
Blah blah blah.
The date was as blah as the guy, both paling in comparison to the bone shaker that Cole had been. To pass the time I imagined Cole’s tattoos on the doctor’s skin, it was the only way to keep my eyes attentive and my smile polite. The ink didn’t fit beneath his khaki blazer but it passed the time.
Before I knew it I was dodging his kiss as I all but shot into the back of an Uber. I grabbed my phone, ready to screech at Conrad for what he’d done, but it opened to my texts. My empty texts. Cole hadn’t taken the opportunity to explain himself.
I should have taken a video of a far too aggressive middle finger but I just couldn’t. The distress he’d worn the last time I’d saw him stopped me short. That wasn’t the response of a man on a literal mission. That was honest and pure, and it made me miss him all the more.
I scrolled up through the messages to find the one message I had from him. I couldn’t help but trace the letters of his text with my finger.
“On a date?” My Uber driver tried to strike up a conversation, I grunted and bent over my phone.
My finger caught the edge of the video I’d first sent him. The one of me masturbating with him coated on my thighs. Cum on camera was all I had left of Cole. It wasn’t a lot, it certainly wasn’t those bewitching green eyes, deliciously roped body or the bruises he left me with, but it was him.
When I glanced up, my driver was finding anywhere to look but the backseat, so I pressed play. I admitted it was slightly twisted to watch myself touching myself but it was for Cole. And it was him speckling my thighs after all.
I surrendered to it. And when I did, the video was hot. Like good porn hot. Arousal was spreading between my thighs at the sight of, well, arousal between my thighs. Watching, my body remembered how I’d trembled beneath my fingers, then beneath his. How warm I’d been when he was coming on me, and it wasn’t the heat of his jizz but a fire far deeper.
I looked up and checked the Uber driver’s line of sight again in the rearview mirror. The memory of Cole watching me in his mirror pounced on me. The need to get off built and broke inside me in a matter of moments.
My teeth bit down on my lip far too hard as I shuffled my bag onto my lap to shield me further from the driver’s eyes. I worked the fly down on my jeans and pressed my fingers between my thighs. I adjusted my phone so I could watch again and pressed play. Synchronized with my videoed movements, I started to rub one out in the back of a 2013 silver Prius.
I wasn’t there anymore. I was in a vintage Charger, an airplane bathroom, a leather belt latched across my throat. My fingers rubbed and dipped around my clit, sliding easily everywhere it went.
My teeth were going to break right through my lip. In hindsight, a silent orgasm inspired by Cole was a horrible idea but I was too turned on now to stop. My finger skated around and around, in and out, just as I’d done in the video. My hips bucked up but after just a moment I shoved myself down remembering I was in an Uber, not Cole’s bed.
I peeked up at the mirror and it only fueled my fire. The video playing out did too. I was building, courtesy of my hidden finger, and fast. I pictured Cole, what he would say, what he would do if he were here now and I felt the build up.
Remembering him vulnerable and scared in the shower the last few moments we’d been together pushed me over. Waves of an orgasm crashed into me and I couldn’t help but close my eyes and drown in it. When the palpitations stopped, I was left gasping but still kept hold of my bottom lip to do what I could to disguise it.
Cole. Cole. Cole.
My body trembled at a rhythm that was all his.
“Miss, we’re here.” The Uber driver was glancing back in the rearview mirror and even j
ust the movement renewed the trembling in my body.
I didn’t try to hide it this time. I couldn’t. My lip sprung free and a whimper ghosted across my lips. His eyes bugged, and I flushed from head to toe. But I couldn’t make myself feel bad. The delicious orgasm alone wouldn’t let me. The very real memory of Cole’s hands on my body was a second and very enticing reason not to give a single fuck.
His gaze shifted down to my take in my heavy breathing and then further to where my bag sat piled on my lap. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I knew he knew what I’d just done. It colored his face a darker shade than mine had to be.
Cole would laugh. Hard. And then he’d rub his hand overtop of mine where it still lingered inside my fly as he kissed me in that completely soul shaking kind of way. With his smirk in the back of my mind, I pulled my hand out, unseating my bag from my lap and exposing my open fly. I zipped it and the sound spliced through the dead silence of the car. My driver’s eyes went even wider.
“So, um, yeah. Thanks.” I shot a hand gesture that was a lot like a gun in his direction and slid out.
The tires of the Prius squealed on the pavement as much as Prius wheels could and the second he was back in traffic, I doubled over laughing. It took me a while to let go of my knees and stand up straight. It took me even longer to catch my breath. But the giggles didn’t fade as I walked up the stairs to my apartment.
“What’s so funny?” Conrad asked from the couch when a second wave of giggles overtook me with the door firmly closed behind me.
“Nothing,” I answered, waving him off as I chucked my bag on the table.
“It’s not nothing.” He stood up and walked over to lean against the wall, crossing his arms to study me as he went. “You orgasmed.”
“What?” I tried to sound more shocked than guilty.
“Don’t you dare what me. That wrinkle,” he stepped toward me and pressed his pointer finger to the middle of my forehead, “disappears when you come. Was the doctor that good?”
“The doctor blew.” I didn’t even bother to check myself as I wove around Conrad and yanked open the fridge. I popped open the wine and poured it into the nearest coffee mug before turning back to him. “You ever set me up with a piece of cardboard like that again and you’re going to find yourself on the streets.”
“Just because you sell a few of your art pieces for serious money doesn’t mean you own me. Just the condo. It takes way more than a lease to boss me around.” He quirked his eyebrow.
“Yeah, a big dick and low standards.”
“True.” He smirked. “Now spill.”
I sighed as I studied my best friend. He had that thin-lipped and pinched brow look that he got when he was focused. When he was writing that face show up when the words were flowing past his brain and directly to his fingertips. It was the epitome of determination.
“Fine.” I grabbed my phone, flipped to the video of me doing me, “I was thinking of Cole and watching this. I got myself off in the backseat of my Uber.”
My phone clattered against the tabletop and Conrad reached over for the moving screen.
“Oh holy fuck. That’s a vagina.” He dropped it like I’d handed him a hot coal.
“That’s my vagina.” I arched my eyebrow.
“You got off watching yourself? What kind of monster are you?”
My giggles were back in full force.
“I mean is that an Oedipus complex? Should I worry about having to save you when you fall in? Or have you become a lesbian without telling me? Because maybe then we could get married.” He looked over at my phone once or twice and pretended to vomit.
“I was thinking of Cole. Of how he made me feel.” A contented smile spread across my face.
“Girl, you have got to get off that mob train or whatever it is. Nothing good will come from that.” He sounded like my mother. Or like my mother would have if she gave a damn, if she hadn’t been wrapped up in that mob shit herself.
“Except orgasms,” I countered.
“Except orgasms,” he agreed. “But that’s not enough Elle Belle. Not even remotely. Apparently great orgasms come at the touch of a button these days.” He pointed toward my phone.
“They’ve always come at the touch of a button.” I pointed down at the apex of my thighs.
“Touché.” He blew out a deep breath. “Just remember that, okay?”
My eyes roved over Conrad as I debated just what to say to him. Or whether to say anything at all.
“What?” His eyes narrowed as if he could read my thoughts.
“Nothing, I didn’t say anything.” I held up my hands in surrender.
“You didn’t need to. I could see it. But now I wanna hear you say it. I want you to hear you say it.” He shoved his hands on his hips.
“Fine. Here you go.” I sucked in a deep breath. “You know that Greek myth? The one where Zeus split four armed, four legged humans in half?”
Conrad rolled his eyes but he nodded all the same.
“What if he’s that person for me? What if the reason he’s etched inside me is because he was always meant to be there?”
“That’s horseshit and you know it,” he scoffed.
“No. I don’t actually. And neither do you.” I walked over and poked him in the chest. “You believe in big love, Cinderella, you just don’t know what it feels like to lose your balance and fall face first into it.”
With that I shoved past him and into the spare bedroom we’d converted into a studio space. His side was scattered with newspaper and magazine clippings of his various articles, his silent computer and the loose pages of his never-ending manuscript. I scowled at it the way I would have at him.
I slipped over to my side and grabbed my headphones, pulling them on quickly and pressing play on the first playlist that popped up. My pencil found paper and lines started materializing. I wasn’t thinking about shapes or shading, I just let it flow.
Cole still filled my senses. A part of me wondered if he’d ever leave. An even bigger part worried that somehow he would.
I pray to God you never know how much you mean to me.
Those words, those beautiful bastard words were proof it wasn’t a setup. Right? He’d felt that magnetic pull of myth, hadn’t he? I asked myself the questions over and over, tracing the words as they materialized in my mind the same way I had his tattoos. My hand scrolled against the paper and I bobbed in time with the music but I was a woman consumed.
It was probably an hour or so later when the speaker of my headphone pulled away from my ear.
“Are we fighting?” Conrad asked quietly.
I sighed dramatically as I put down my pencil and looked up at him. He stuck his bottom lip out and held his hands up like a begging puppy.
“No.” I drug out the word so it had ten syllables. “I just…” I didn’t know where to start. “You can’t…” How could I make him understand? How did I for that matter? Forty-eight hours of sex shouldn’t feel like a lifetime of right.
“Stop with the don’t, stop with the can’t, okay? You can’t stop thinking about his dick. You don’t want a smaller, weaker one. End of story, Belles. It’s literally not healthy to feel more than that.”
“It’s okay to need him,” I mumbled.
“It’s okay to want him,” he snarked back.
My eyes fell from his and found what I’d been doodling on my page. It was abstract, nothing I could ever carve but it was familiar all the same. The panther with glowing eyes looked back at me from the paper the same way it did from skin. Cole’s skin.
It was a snap decision, every bit as instinctual as every other interaction with Cole but the words were tumbling out of my mouth before I realized it.
“No. Need. I’m going back. I need to see him.”
12.
Cole
“Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck, Cole!” Horse bellowed over the corpse on the floor. “This wasn’t a hit, it was a shakedown. Mick’s gonna be pissed. He doesn’t want to provoke the Giancomos but
that’s what we just did.”
“He’s not part of the family or he wouldn’t have caved,” I grunted back. “No one in that family actually caves.”
“Why’d you do it? I mean you’re a fucking talented monster once you make up your mind, but we used to have to sit in the car and talk about all the reasons you needed to kill someone. It’s never been easy, you’ve never been reckless.”
That was the million-dollar question wasn’t it. The answer was Elle, but why Elle was an answer in the first place was beyond me. That she’d altered everything inside me in so short of time was stupid. But it was true.
“It’s her.” I finally tucked my gun away still staring down at my headfirst dive back into the made life.
Horse scoffed, making some noise that was exactly Horse-like before pulling out his phone and dialing. After just a few quipped sentences he slid the phone back into his pocket. Just like that, the family cleaner was on the way.
“What did this chick do to you?” he asked as the sun started to cast deep shadows in through the windows.
“Fuck if I know. Haven’t a clue how to explain it.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “It’s like she tore up everything inside me with a look, then smoothed it back over with a kiss. She saw everything about me, even this,” I gestured at the dead baker, “and didn’t flinch.”
“She saw you kill someone?” His brow creased, then his whole face crinkled.
“No but she knows about the Maloneys, she knows what her mom did, she knew what it meant when I said I’d been in with them.”
“I got news for you, Cupcake, she has no idea what monster’s lying in her bed. Until she stands like this, like us right now, she won’t.” He clapped me on the shoulder and started to pull me toward the backdoor. We didn’t speak until we’d walked a few blocks in the wrong way then circled back to the car from a different direction.
