Moondance

by Judith Arnold

  Sometimes he would borrow his mother’s beat-up old Pontiac and they’d drive down to the beach at Narragansett, which would be empty in the winter, all that sand and surf belonging to them alone. Sometimes they’d catch a city bus to the East Side and wander around the campus of the Rhode Island School of Design, the art college Cory planned to attend. Or they’d hike up to Providence College, the Jesuit college where Talia’s parents hoped to send her after high school. Sometimes she and Cory would wander around Federal Hill and he’d show her some of his lesser street art, which was really just graffiti—but gorgeous graffiti, vivid in color, clever in design. On the rear wall of an Italian restaurant, he’d painted HUNGER, the letters fat and red like six juicy meatballs, and he’d framed the word with Italian bread above and below, turning it into a hero sandwich. Near the loading dock of the post office branch, he’d painted a bunch of little male symbols—circles with arrows aiming upward from them, pointing northeast—and then one male symbol with stick arms and legs, holding hands with a similarly limbed female symbol—a circle with a cross pointing downward. Next to this, he’d scrawled, “She’s got male.”

  “You should go into advertising,” Talia had told him.

  “Yeah,” he’d agreed. “Commercial art is how artists pay the bills, unless their name is Picasso.”

  They would stroll along the canal and steal kisses in shadowed doorways. They’d drive to the golf course after dark, when no one was there, and climb into the back seat of his mother’s car, and touch and kiss and suck and stroke each other until they were both shuddering and moaning.

  Remembering those crazy adolescent days of their courtship—maybe what turned Talia on were the memories, not the man. She dragged her thoughts back into the present and forced herself to confront the man he was now, not the boy he’d been then.

  He was still unbearably attractive. Still exhibiting that odd mixture of cockiness and diffidence. Still radiating charisma.

  But he was also the man who’d all but abandoned her and their daughter while he went off and lived the life he’d always intended: college, learning, growing, socializing. Independence. Not fatherhood. Not responsibility. He’d married Talia because he’d knocked her up. But they’d never had a real marriage. He’d stashed Talia and Wendy with his pot-smoking mother and proceeded to live his life as a college boy, off on his own.

  She’d gotten past the resentment years ago. But she didn’t trust him. And without trust, how could she possibly find him so alluring?

  She wasn’t as innocent as she’d been nineteen years ago, but she still wasn’t exactly overflowing with experience. She hadn’t dated much since the divorce. For the first few years, she hadn’t had the time. She’d been taking care of Grammy while Grammy took care of Wendy, and she’d been commuting down to Simmons—an all-women’s college, so it wasn’t as if she could have met lots of cute frat boys while she’d been a student there. Of course, if she had gone to a co-ed school filled with cute frat boys, she would have been too old for them. And a mother, to boot. Not what most frat boys were looking for.

  After completing her degree, she’d been busy working, volunteering her time for Wendy’s classes, carting Wendy to violin lessons, soccer games, and sleepovers. She’d been consumed with the labor of starting her own business. Dating had been a low priority.

  The few men she’d met were mostly divorced like her, usually living in Brogan Heights or one of the area’s other condo communities. None of the men she went out with aroused her passions. Some were nice, some not so nice. But they weren’t Cory.

  She used to tell herself that was a good thing. But the heart knew what it knew. Her heart had told her that if she couldn’t feel for those men what she’d once felt for Cory, it wasn’t love. It wasn’t real. It didn’t matter.

  He mattered. He would always matter. He was the father of her child. He was her first love.

  “Cory.” She lowered her gaze to the food on her plate. There was nothing wrong with it, but it looked pathetic to her, drab and dry. She had no appetite. “Let’s not do this.”

  He reached across the table and folded his hand around hers. “Do what?”

  “We aren’t the people we were back then.”

  “Thank God for that,” he said, then laughed. “The people we were back then didn’t handle things very well, did they.”

  “I don’t want to handle things now,” she argued, although her voice sounded weak to her, and she wasn’t even sure what things they were discussing. Warm affection? Hot sex? Nostalgia for the good times they’d shared? Whatever the opposite of nostalgia was, for the bad times that had followed the good times? “You came here for Wendy’s graduation. I think it would be best if we stayed focused on that.”

  “Come on, Tally. We can multi-task, can’t we?” She heard laughter in his tone, but the gentle motion of his thumb against her wrist wasn’t funny at all. It aroused her. She found herself remembering the way his hands had felt on her body. She and Cory had been so young, yet he’d known just want to do, how to awaken her, how to make her sigh and gasp and moan with desire. The hands that could create beautiful images with a pen or a paintbrush could also create something beautiful with her.

  Just from the quiet circles he was tracing on the sensitive inner flesh of her wrist, she could tell he still knew how to create something beautiful. She felt her nipples tighten into beads, her womb ache, her breath grow shallow. Somewhere inside her mind she heard the faint strains of a song. Every time I touch you, the singer crooned, and, as the lyrics claimed, she trembled inside.

  “Mom?” The clamber of footsteps on the stairs caused her to flinch. She tugged her hand free of Cory’s clasp less than a second before Wendy bounded into the kitchen, her snit over and her face bright with a smile. “Some kids are hanging out at the beach, okay? I’ll be back before too late. It’s a school night, blah-blah-blah.”

  “I don’t want you swimming at night,” Talia cautioned. “There are no lifeguards on duty.”

  “I won’t go in the water,” Wendy promised, gesturing at her outfit—denim shorts, a Brogan’s Point High School volleyball team T-shirt, a hoodie and sneakers.

  “Will Anthony be there?”

  Wendy rolled her eyes as if to say, do you have to ask?

  “How late is ‘before too late’?” Cory asked.

  His question apparently startled Wendy. Perhaps she wasn’t used to Cory setting curfews. She shrugged. “I don’t know. Eleven?” She turned to Talia. “Is that okay?”

  “Eleven is fine.”

  “You need your beauty rest,” Cory teased. “You don’t want to look like shit when you win your award tomorrow.”

  Talia stifled the urge to scold him about his word choice. She knew Wendy and her friends used far coarser language every day, but she never cursed in front of her daughter. Apparently she, not Cory, was the role-model parent.

  Giggling, Wendy dropped a kiss on the top of Cory’s head, gave Talia a wave, and pranced out of the house.

  Silence settled around them like a heavy blanket, the air warm and still in the wake of Wendy’s departure. “Alone at last,” Cory said, grinning slyly.

  Talia wished she could share his amusement. But the thought of them truly being alone in her house, with her bed just one flight of stairs away, caused panic to well up inside her. It was silly, really. She hadn’t been this anxious when she’d been a teenager, when Cory had persuaded her, date by date and step by step, to give herself fully to him. He hadn’t had to work very hard; she’d been so eager to experience sex with him. She’d been so crazily in love.

  She’d trusted him then. She’d believed he would never hurt her. She’d been certain he would take care of her. She’d also thought, however foolishly, that when two kids were so into each other that one time couldn’t satisfy them, but they didn’t have another condom, they could reuse the one condom they had and it would prevent a pregnancy.

  He caught her hand again, stood, and urged her out of her chair.
“Tally,” he murmured, circling his arms around her. “We had magic once.”

  “The thing with magic is, it’s really just a trick,” she argued, her voice muted with sorrow for what they’d once had, for what they’d lost. “It’s just deception.”

  “Then let’s deceive ourselves a little,” he whispered before covering her mouth with his.

  His kiss swamped her with sensation. The twinges and tremors she’d felt when he’d brushed his thumb against her wrist filled her body, magnified a thousand times. Her abdomen clenched, her thighs tingled, her breasts ached. Her body seemed to think that pressing up against him would ease the pain, but that only made it worse. The thin cotton of her blouse might as well have been the Great Wall of China, separating her skin from his, keeping her from what she wanted.

  She returned his kiss, opening her mouth, welcoming him in. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t keep herself from marching headlong into the seductive danger Cory represented. At least this time she wasn’t a naïve young girl, she reminded herself. She’d toughened up over the years. If he broke her heart again, it knew how to heal. Painful experience had taught her how to recover from whatever damage Cory could inflict.

  She wrapped her arms around him, appreciating the solidity of his shoulders and back. He was still slim, but he’d added some muscle to his frame over the years. She, on the other hand, had added padding. She weighed the same as she had in high school, but pregnancy had rearranged her curves in a way that didn’t thrill her.

  The softness, the weight of her breasts, the widening of her hips, the puckering of her belly where her skin had once been stretched—that was all Cory’s fault. He’d been the one to get her pregnant. If he didn’t like the way pregnancy had altered her body, he had only himself to blame.

  When their tongues met, he groaned. She remembered that sound, a low vibration in his throat, the purr of a tiger. That sound mingled with the music spinning through her soul. I want to make love to you tonight… She could hear the singer’s voice crooning, tempting, as vivid as if he were in the kitchen with them right now, not trapped inside an antiquated jukebox in a tavern.

  I want to make love to you tonight. Cory didn’t have to utter the words. His body was singing the song to her.

  It took enormous willpower for her to end the kiss. Enormous courage for her to slide her fingers through his and lead him out of the kitchen, down the hall, up the stairs. Enormous faith for her to accept what she was agreeing to, what she was acquiescing in. Cory would make love to her tonight. And in a few days he’d be gone—leaving her to deal with his mother once more.

  What was the saying? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

  But she didn’t expect a different outcome this time. She knew Cory would make love to her, and he’d leave her. This wasn’t about expectations. She knew the way the ride would end. That didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it.

  After stepping across the threshold into her bedroom, Cory paused. He surveyed the room, and she did as well, trying to view it through his artist’s eyes. Her bed was made with powder-blue sheets and a quilt with a hexagonal pattern of blue, beige and tan patches. She’d bought it at a craft fair two years ago—a fundraiser for the high school’s sports programs. Talia wished she could boast that she’d made it herself, but that kind of delicate craftsmanship was beyond her. At least the quilt wasn’t too feminine. Cory couldn’t possibly object to it.

  Her furniture wasn’t particularly girly, either. The dresser, night tables and headboard had all been Grammy’s—old, sturdy pieces Talia had refinished over many weekends. She didn’t need artistic talent to sand and stain and polish plain, well-crafted oak furniture. All she needed was a well vented space—her basement had windows—and a willingness to work hard. And a couple of strong neighbors who would lug the furniture up and down the stairs in exchange for beer and pizza.

  What the room lacked, she realized, was artwork on the walls. One of the things she’d loved about Grammy’s house was its lack of clutter. Tina Malone’s house had been dense with knickknacks, hanging plants, and so many paintings, prints and photographs that it was hard to tell what color the walls were. Some of the paintings were early efforts by Cory, and they were wonderful. If Talia hadn’t been so angry and bitter, she might have taken a few of those paintings with her when she moved to Brogan’s Point with Wendy. But a divorced woman didn’t take her ex-husband’s artwork with her.

  The sparsely adorned walls of her grandmother’s house had soothed her. No evidence of Cory existed in Grammy’s house.

  To him, though, her bedroom might look stark. There was a framed mirror above the dresser, and the clay bowl Wendy had made in an art class in middle school, a bit lopsided but precious to Talia. It held loose change, keys, and assorted other items that she didn’t want scattered across the surface of the dresser. A couple of scarfs draped over the closet doorknob added a splash of color to the room.

  Had Wendy ever given Cory a ceramic bowl from her art class? Were his walls covered with framed drawings she might have created during her visits to him? What was his apartment like? Talia hated herself for being curious.

  He pulled her back into his arms, and she stopped thinking—about his apartment, about the austere décor of her bedroom, about everything. Everything but Cory Malone.

  He wove his fingers through her hair, tilting her face so he could kiss the corners of her lips, the edge of her jaw, her temples, her forehead. Then he worked his hands down the front of her blouse, unfastening the buttons.

  Thank goodness she wasn’t wearing one of her old T-shirts, she thought as her blouse fell open and he slid the sleeves down her arms. Her bra wasn’t anything fancy, but then, she didn’t have to seduce him with elegant lingerie. Cory was the one doing the seducing. She was just standing, watching him undress her, telling herself over and over that this was all right, that she knew him, that a one night stand with her ex-husband while he was in town wasn’t such a crazy idea.

  Once her bra was gone, he made quick work of removing her skirt and panties. He made even quicker work of shedding his own clothes, yanking off his shirt and jeans with far less care than he’d used on her garments.

  Unlike her body, his had definitely improved with age. What she’d felt when she’d embraced him downstairs in the kitchen, she could now see. His chest muscles were nicely contoured, his shoulders strong, his abdomen taut. She remembered that thin web of hair just below his navel, his bony knees, the way his Adam’s-apple shifted when he swallowed. The way his eyes darkened whenever he gazed at her with lust.

  She remembered his arousal, that long, thick organ reaching for her. A faint sigh escaped her as he kicked his jeans and underwear away, and she reached for him, tenderly caressing the length of his erection, recalling the pleasure it had brought her.

  He caught her hand and kept it from moving, although he didn’t pull it away. “Here we are, older and wiser,” he murmured, “but I don’t have a condom.”

  “Oh.” Right. He wasn’t her husband anymore. He’d probably been with lots of women since their divorce. She had to protect herself from his sexual history—and from another accidental pregnancy. She was older, but she wasn’t that old.

  He gazed down at her for a moment, his expression quizzical. “You don’t have any on hand?”

  She was too embarrassed to admit how dreary her sex life was—so dreary, she didn’t need to keep a few condoms stashed in her night table drawer.

  He spared her from having to answer. “Any chance Wendy might have some lying around?” he asked.

  Just the possibility made Talia cringe. “If she did—” and honestly, Talia was pretty sure Wendy wasn’t sleeping with Anthony “—I would feel uncomfortable raiding her supply.”

  “Yeah. I guess that would be kind of weird.”

  He must be annoyed with her. What kind of single thirty-something woman didn’t keep contraceptives on hand? Wasn’t a package of prophylactics someth
ing you were always supposed to have in stock, like shampoo and dental floss?

  Maybe it was just as well that the raciest item in her night table drawer was a romance novel she’d been reading. If her lack of condoms brought things to a sudden halt, it might be for the best. She was insane to think she could fall into bed with Cory and suffer no repercussions once he left. He was going to leave, she knew that. He lived in Brooklyn, he didn’t love her, she didn’t love him—

  “You’re such a St. Agatha girl,” he murmured, then touched her forehead with a light, sweet kiss. “Come on. We can improvise.” Before she could stop him, he took her hand, led her to the bed, and urged her down onto the quilt.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, a ripple of apprehension laced with excitement coursing through her.

  “I’m going to make you smile,” he whispered, rising above her and bowing to kiss her throat. He grazed his way down her body at a leisurely pace, nuzzling the hollow between her breasts, nipping at her swollen nipples, running his thumbs along the ridge shaped by her lowest ribs. She twined her fingers through his hair, but when he ducked lower, she released him and sank deeper into the pillows, her body growing heavy with thick, warm sensation. The bed surged gently beneath her as he shifted, gliding his hands across her belly to the twin protrusions of her hip bones, then following his hands with his lips and tongue. He paused to tease her navel, paused again to part her legs, which felt limp, unable to resist anything he did to her. He knelt between her thighs, stroked the damp folds of flesh at their apex with his fingers and then with his tongue. One lick, two, and she was gone, her body arching, seizing, convulsing in a dark, delirious pulse of ecstasy.

  She’d come too fast, too soon. This climax had been waiting inside her for too long, trembling like a delicate bubble, needing little more than a single touch to burst.

  She groaned, and Cory hesitated for a moment, then resumed what he was doing—flicking his tongue against her, playing his fingers over her flesh, teasing, arousing. She felt her body arch again, her hips rising up to him, her thighs tensing on either side of his torso, her heels digging into the mattress. And then she was gone again, another lush cascade of spasms taking her, conquering her.