by Megan Hart
“Wow,” Jen said quietly. “He hardly ever says hello to anyone.”
“‘Girls’?” I whispered, watching him, though he hadn’t done so much as glance back while he waited for his order. “‘Girls’? Like we’re twelve?”
She laughed gently. “We are a lot younger than him.”
I put my face in my hands and groaned under my breath. “Girls. Like we should be wearing knee socks and penny loafers with our hair in pigtails.”
“Maybe he’s got a schoolgirl fetish thing,” she teased.
“Gross.” I peeked at her through my fingers and watched as Johnny took his coffee to one of the back booths and settled into it, facing away from us. At least there was that. I didn’t have to make sure our eyes didn’t meet.
“He never said hi to me before, that’s all I’m saying.” Jen gave me a lifted brow. “And he said ‘girls,’ plural, but he was only looking at you.”
I didn’t let hope get a foothold. “Dude, I went all dead zone on him in his house, then I went to his gallery and tried to make out with him. He probably figures he’d better throw me a bone so I don’t, like, boil his bunny or something.”
Jen laughed, loud and long. “That’s a good one.”
“I mean it!”
The doorbell jangled, and a few moments later, Johnny was no longer alone in his booth at the back. The woman who joined him was the same who’d been there before. Glossy, glamorous…and looking annoyed. She didn’t order anything at the counter, just sat across from him and started peeling off her leather gloves as she stared at him with a sour look on her admittedly pretty face.
Jen had glanced up as she passed, now looked over her shoulder to see where she’d gone, and looked back at me. “He does seem to have a thing for younger women. But no wonder we’re girls, compared to her.”
“She’s not that much older.”
“At least seven or eight years, ten if she’s had work done, and, girl, those clothes say she has.”
I didn’t really feel better by picking apart the woman who might or might not’ve been dating the man I was so crazy for I was actually going…crazy. “Whatever. If they’re together, they’re together. It doesn’t make anything that happened or didn’t happen with us any better.”
“Does it make it worse?” she asked pointedly. “You said it would. If he were with someone.”
“Only if he really wanted to be with me instead, and wasn’t because of some other woman.”
“You know what?” Jen said with a sigh as she pushed her plate away. “I think you overthink it. Why not just get a bottle of wine, something sugary and chocolaty and take it over to his place. Wear something nice but not too nice, you know. Apologize to him for what happened, or what didn’t happen, and see where it goes from there.”
I snorted under my breath. “Yeah. How about not.”
“Why not?”
“I already tried to make a peace offering. See how well that went.”
“You’re so pessimistic!”
It was my turn to give her a look. Jen shrugged and gave another glance over her shoulder before leaning forward to whisper, “I’m just saying.”
“I feel like enough of an idiot as it is, Jen. No. I’m just going to avoid him. Totally avoid him.”
“Good luck with that,” Jen said as she looked over her shoulder again before giving me another wide-eyed, brows-raised glance.
Johnny had gotten up, his companion with him. He waited like a gentleman for her to sweep past us. She didn’t bother to even spare us a second’s attention, but he hesitated at the table. He didn’t say anything this time. Just met my eyes for the length of time it took for universes to be born from the dust of an imploding sun. In other words, half a second. Then he was gone, following her out the door and leaving me behind, breathless and sick-stomached and full of yearning.
“Oh, girl,” Jen said sympathetically. “You are in so much trouble.”
I didn’t get more than a few steps inside my front door when it hit me like a citrus tsunami. My eyes watered from the stench of oranges going soft and moldy. Always before, the smell had been fainter than this. Softer. Not a bad smell, for all it portended. But this was an assault on my nostrils, and I reeled from it.
I put my hand out, blindly reaching for the newel post, but my fingers slipped past the carved wood. I stumbled forward a couple steps and clapped a hand over my mouth and nose, trying hard to keep the stench from permeating me any further. The smell was on my skin.
Disgusted, I tore my hand from my face and rubbed it frantically on my clothes, but it only got worse. It rose all around me, a miasma. I couldn’t get free of it, because it wasn’t just around me. It was in me. It was on me.
It was me.
The world tipped and I went with it, onto my hands and knees, just like I’d been thrown off a merry-go-round, or jumped from a swing and landed wrong. Just like…just like…
Just like I’d fallen.
Chapter 14
“Hey.”
The soft, low voice shook me into opening my eyes. I knew that voice. I knew the touch of that hand on my arm, even though I couldn’t see him. I knew it was Johnny before I even opened my eyes.
“Hey,” I said, blinking in the bright summer sunshine.
Heat assaulted me, and a thousand different smells, none of them oranges. I gulped in deep breaths while struggling not to show how shaken I was, even as I wondered if it mattered. What would Johnny do, here, if I went to the ground shaking and twitching, if I babbled in a strange tongue. If I acted crazy?
He was carrying a paper sack of groceries in one arm, and he shielded his gaze from the sun with his free hand. “You’re just in time for the party.”
He sounded a little distant. Wary. The look he was giving me wasn’t much warmer.
“Great!” I, on the other hand, sounded too brightly warm, too falsely cheerful.
“You coming in?” He settled the bag on his hip, still shielding his eyes. He looked me up and down. “Get out of that coat, maybe?”
No wonder I was sweating. I still wore my winter coat, though not the one Johnny’d returned to me. Though it was my favorite and most flattering coat, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to wear it instead of this one. Residual and misplaced mortification. I wore a scarf, too. And gloves.
“Right.” My laugh was brittle. “I bet you’re wondering why I’m wearing this.”
“Not really, no.”
We stood there in silence while I sweated. Johnny took his hand away from his face. The sun beat down on both of us, but it lit him up like a diamond. Like the sun. Too bright and beautiful to look at head-on.
“Come inside. Get a drink before you pass out from the heat. Jesus,” Johnny said after another half minute. “C’mon, Emm.”
I followed him into the house and down the hall and into the kitchen, which for once was quiet and empty. It was cooler, too, though the breeze came in from the open windows, not from any artificial air-conditioning. I had to remember it was the seventies, probably during the energy crisis, when central air was a luxury even people who could afford it didn’t always use. I marveled again at the details my mind provided.
Johnny put away the contents of his bag while I took off my heavy clothes and sighed in relief. My shirt, a thin plaid with faux mother-of-pearl buttons, was fine once I undid a couple of the snaps and rolled the sleeves up to my elbows. I fanned my face and lifted my sweat-heavy hair from my neck, wishing for a clip or a hair tie.
“Here.” Johnny tossed me a thick piece of leather with a wooden dowel piercing it.
I looked up at him, not sure what to say. “What’s this?”
“It’s yours,” he said. “For your hair.”
I’d never seen it before. I turned it over and over in my fingers, feeling the smooth leather. It had a design embossed on it, some sort of flower with a vine. I looked up at him again. “It’s mine?”
“Yeah.” Johnny shrugged. “You left it here the last time.”
“Are you sure? Because…” I didn’t want to put anything like this in my hair, not if it belonged to someone else. And yet I did want to put my hair up, get it off my neck.
“I’m sure,” Johnny said with another shrug. “But you don’t want it, don’t use it.”
I remembered I had an elastic band in my pocket, and I pulled that out instead. “It’s okay, I have this.”
He shook his head a little, at last smiling. “Whatever you want.”
He leaned against the counter, watching as I twisted my hair on top of my head. He wore a bandanna again today, probably for the same reason I was tying mine up. I liked the way his hair fell into his eyes, but he probably didn’t.
“So,” I said after another long minute in which we stared at each other without speaking. “When’s the party?”
“When isn’t the party?” Johnny said with a laugh.
He still hadn’t gotten me that drink yet, and I needed it. I swallowed over sandpaper and winced. The sweat on my skin was drying. My heartbeat, which had been steadily thud-thumping since I opened my eyes, now bumped up a little bit when I looked into his eyes.
“C’mere,” Johnny said.
I stood, slow motion, and moved through the syrup of the air toward him. I drank his kiss as though it were water, though it did nothing to cool me. His hands stroked up my bare forearms to clasp me just above the elbows, and even that small touch forced shivers all through me. My nipples went instantly, almost painfully hard. A pulse of desire throbbed between my legs, insistent.
Johnny broke the kiss but didn’t pull away. “How come whenever you leave, I’m never sure you’ll be back again?”
I had an idea of why that might be, but I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
He licked his mouth, his eyes on my lips, then dipped in to kiss me again. Softer, this time tongue probing gently as one hand went to the nape of my neck. We fit together, his ins matching my outs. I slipped a hand inside his shirt, my palm flat on his gorgeous belly. The muscles leaped under my touch, and Johnny laughed under his breath.
“It makes me crazy,” he said.
I stopped kissing him. I cupped his face in my hands and looked into his eyes, searching for something. I didn’t know what. “It does?”
“Hell, yes. Every time you disappear, I think it will be the last time I ever see you. And I don’t want to never see you again, Emm. I don’t care if…”
“If what?” I asked when he didn’t go on. “What, Johnny? What is it?”
“I don’t care if this can’t last. I just want as much as I can while I have it.”
I blinked rapidly, my eyelids fluttering. I kissed him, then looked into his eyes once more. “I don’t understand…what makes you think…?”
“You told me,” Johnny said. “You don’t remember, I guess, the way you don’t remember you left the hair clip. But you did.”
I took a step back, but his hand snared my wrist as the other went to my hip, and I was grateful for the support. I might’ve fallen, otherwise. I might’ve gone sprawling on his none-too-clean kitchen floor. Instead, Johnny drew me close against his chest, his chin against the top of my head. He wrapped his arms around me, tight, as though he didn’t intend to let me go.
It was the way he’d held me in his office, the embrace the same, but without the shame. I knew this time if I tipped my face to his, he’d kiss me long and hard and slow and deep, and he wouldn’t push me away after. I shuddered again.
None of this was real. I would always go away. This could not last.
It absolutely sounded like the truth, though I couldn’t imagine myself telling him any of it. What purpose would it serve to tell a dream he wasn’t real? I knew this was only some strange mix-up in my brain, some impulse traveling from one nerve to another and getting diverted like a train off the rails. I knew none of this was really happening, that I was probably still on my hands and knees on the floor of my front hall, and if I were lucky I’d come back to myself there and not naked in a stranger’s house.
And then I knew something else. I didn’t want to lose this. I didn’t want the reality in which Johnny pushed me away or, worse, looked through me. I wanted this time, this place.
When he loved me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him, and offered my mouth again.
He kissed me, murmuring, “Yes, you will. You always do.”
“Then let’s enjoy the time while we have it,” I whispered into his mouth.
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Time.”
It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d laid me on the kitchen table and fucked me right there, but before either of us could even move that way, the back door swung open and Candy, carrying two bags of groceries, barged in followed by Bellina and Ed, also carrying food and bottles of wine.
“Looky-look,” said Bellina, her voice husky from too many cigarettes. She raked me up and down. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
She hadn’t said it with malice, and I only smiled into Johnny’s kiss before I reluctantly pulled away. “Hey, Bellina.”
“Give us a hand here. Candy’s got a lot of food. We’re having ourselves a real party,” said Ed. He looked stoned already.
“Yeah, a party in my house.” Johnny didn’t sound put out. “Nice of you guys to come over.”
They all laughed. Even I got the joke. This was Johnny’s house, but they might as well all live there. Like a commune. Or a hive.
We worked together putting away the food, every package a new surprise to me. Cans that didn’t have pop-tabs, brands I didn’t recognize. Everyone laughed and joked around me, and at first I joined in, but with every new item we pulled from the bags, or I spotted in the cabinet or fridge, I got quieter.
Normally, I’d never have made myself so at home in someone else’s house, but here there seemed very little regard for personal space or possessions. I went from cupboard to cupboard, looking at the boxes, bags and cans. I opened the drawers to peek at silverware. I studied the Tupperware containers stacked haphazardly on shelves. And then, as they all watched me and pretended they didn’t, I turned slowly in the middle of the kitchen and looked at all of them.
I checked the calendar on the wall.
“There’s so much,” I said aloud, not caring what they thought.
Because what could they think? Nothing but what thoughts I gave them. They could do nothing but what actions I provided. All of these people were puppets, this place the stage I’d built. And yet I stood and stared, sweat sliding down the line of my spine, and I shivered.
Johnny linked his fingers in mine. Held me tight. He kept me from shaking when I looked at him, his smile making everything else go away.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Johnny said. “C’mon, gorgeous.”
“Ooh, Emm, watch out. He’s going to ask if you want to see his etchings.” Ed snickered as he lit a hand-rolled cigarette with a familiar tangy smell.
“How about it, Emm?” Johnny tugged my hand, never looking away from my eyes. “You wanna go upstairs with me now?”
“Yes.” One small word, forced from a dry throat.
I didn’t care if they were all staring, or what they might think. I wanted to go upstairs with Johnny, of course. I wanted to strip him naked and kiss my way up from his ankles to his chest, and every sweet inch in between. I wanted to slide him deep inside me and ride him until we both came and collapsed, exhausted and sweaty.
When I lived with my parents I’d been responsible for very little. My mother, despite my protests, had insisted on doing my laundry. I gave them money toward the bills but didn’t have to spend the time paying them. I didn’t even cook for myself most of the time, and any grocery shopping I did was often done with my mom and thus only half the effort. When I lived at home, I’d had a lot more free time that moving into my own place had eaten up with mundane tasks like changing the toilet paper and cleaning up after myself. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything, but it had meant I’d forgone some of t
he time-wasting habits I’d had when I lived at home.
Playing the Sims was one of them. I’d spent hours at the computer lost in that virtual world—building houses, creating families, watching them live, work, sleep, eat, fall in love, marry, have children…even die. I’d been the God of that universe, sometimes but not always benevolent. The maximum number of Sims that could be played on any one lot was eight, but I consistently failed at keeping more than three of them happy, with all their needs met, and along a positive life path. I wasn’t a very good God.
I wanted to go upstairs with Johnny because suddenly being in that kitchen was making my brain hurt. All those pieces. All those details. All those people. I wasn’t a very good juggler, either. All the balls were in the air, and I stood there with my hands out, ready but not expecting to catch them all.
“C’mon,” Johnny said again. His eyes flashed. He backed up, grinning but ignoring the catcalls and lewd comments from his friends. “I want to show you my etchings.”
He wasn’t lying. In his bedroom he pulled a leather-bound sketchbook from a drawer and flipped it open to show me a pencil drawing, a series of lines and shading. I studied it. I wasn’t familiar enough with his work to know if this was something I should recognize.
“You’re good,” I said sincerely. Even I knew enough to see that.
“Nah. I’m just a scribbler.”
Johnny stretched out on the bed beside me as I sat cross-legged, flipping pages. He had photographs slipped into some of the pages, mostly small but a few eight-by-tens. I pulled one out and studied it with more familiarity than I’d been able to give his art.
“Nice ass,” I teased, waving the picture at him.
Johnny laughed and lay back with his hands behind his head. “That ass paid for a coupla month’s mortgage on this house.”
The photo, black and white, was of Johnny, nude, posed like a classic Roman statue. Minus any fig leaf. His face in profile was serious, his body tight and toned, his ass mouthwatering. I found another from the same series, this one a little creased and bent. Also full frontal.
