Something wet and hot drips through me, and my breath catches in a sharp gasp as awareness lances into me.
I clutch frantically at his face, tilting it up so I can look into his blue eyes. “Franco, we just—”
“I know.” He rolls with me and I find myself sheltered in the circle of his arms, and I’ve never ever in my life ever felt so small and delicate and safe as I do now.
“Franco, we can’t just—” I start.
“Can we not? Can we just…for one minute, please, can we just not? None of it.” His voice is ragged and raw. “Just for a few minutes. I’m just a guy, you’re just a girl, and we’re just having this moment. You and me, together.”
“Okay,” I whisper. Because…he’s perfectly right.
I just breathe, resting my cheek against the warm, firm cushion of his chest, feeling his arm around my waist, his hand resting on my hip. I settle a hand on his belly, and I listen to him breathing, listen to his heartbeat. It’s a soothing sound, the gentle susurrus of his breath, and the steady thump-thump of his heart.
But there’s the seeping of his seed sliding out of me, wet and hot. And I can’t just forget that. I can’t ignore it.
“I—” I shake my head, pushing away from him. “I need to—I have to clean up.”
Franco stops me with a hand on my breastbone. “Stay there. I’ll get a washcloth.”
I lie back down hesitantly, and Franco goes out into the bathroom, the pale firm roundness of his tight ass mesmerizing, even then. The bathroom isn’t en suite, so I only hear him. I hear water running, and I assume he’s cleaning himself up and then he returns to the bedroom, and even more mesmerizing than his butt is his cock as it dangles and sways between his heavy thighs. It’s not often I stick around long enough to get a look at the guy when he’s not erect, so this is kind of interesting for me, to be honest. And, despite the stress and pressure and fracturing intimacy and tense vulnerability of the moment, I find his flaccid member incredibly intimate.
He’s standing over me, a washcloth in his hands. His eyes fix on mine, and he hesitates. “I haven’t done this, like…ever, actually. So, um. I’ll be gentle.”
“You—what?” I ask, not sure what he’s talking about. “OH!”
This last is a gasp of surprise as he tugs my thighs apart, and then with an exquisitely gentle touch, he uses two fingers to splay apart the tender folds of my center and uses the warm, damp washcloth to wipe me clean, dragging the cloth upward, folding, and swiping again, until I’m clean.
My throat closes and the prickling in my eyes returns, and my chest is somehow tight as a drum and hammering like one.
Because that was, without a doubt, the most tender, most intimate, and most vulnerable moment I’ve ever experienced in my life and I’m in no fucking way ready for it.
It makes my heart hurt.
It makes my head spin.
It makes everything inside me tense up, freeze, paralyzed in a breathless panic.
When I’m clean, Franco straightens, holding the washcloth in one hand, his eyes on mine. His brow is furrowed in deep, troubled grooves.
The hand holding the washcloth shakes, almost imperceptibly. I know he was as affected by this as I was.
“We just had sex without a condom,” I whisper, blinking up at him—blinking, because I refuse to acknowledge the stinging blurring heat in my eyes as anything other than…something I don’t want to think about.
“I know,” he mutters back.
“I’ve never, ever, ever had sex without a condom. Not once, ever, in my whole life, even though I’ve been on birth control since I was fifteen.” I hesitate. “And, um, I get tested regularly, so I’m…you know, clean.”
“I haven’t either, even when I was married.” He meets my eyes briefly. “And so do I, and so am I.”
I sit up very, very carefully, not taking my eyes off of his. “You were…married?”
He closes his eyes briefly, as if he can’t believe he just said that. “Shit.” He opens them again. “I…yeah. I was. For almost six years, back in my twenties.”
“And you never once had unprotected sex with her?”
He is so visibly tense that I kind of wish I hadn’t asked. “No. She…um. She hated birth control. Said it whacked up her hormones, so we…no, we always used a condom.” He winces. “It’s weird talking about this with you. I’ve never talked about it at all, with anyone, let alone like this.”
“Like this?”
He indicates me, himself, and the bed, all in one gesture. “We’re still naked, we just had sex, and it was…”
“Something?” I suggest.
His laugh is disbelieving and amused. “Yeah, it was something all right.”
We are both silent. What do I say? I can see him trying to figure out the same thing.
“Audra, I…” Franco starts. Trails off.
“I can’t believe we did that,” I say just to fill in the quiet.
“I know. Me either.”
“I just…I got…I got carried away,” I say. I look at him again, after long moments of looking anywhere but at his eyes. “I never get carried away.”
He nods. “Me too, and me neither.”
“How did it happen, Franco?” I ask, tugging the blanket up and clenching it under my arms. “How did we…how did this happen? How did we get here?”
“I don’t know, Audra.” He sits on the edge of the bed, and I’m drawn into his eyes, into his lean frame, his tan skin and hard muscles. “If you’d known this was going to happen when you got into the Lyft with me, would you still have come with me?”
I’m having terrible difficulty breathing. “I…” I blink hard. “I don’t know,” I whisper.
“You don’t?”
I swallow hard. “No, that’s not right. The answer is yes, I would.” I’m somewhere between panting and breathless. “Okay? I would.”
“What if…” He turns his eyes to mine—don’t say it, don’t say it, please fuck don’t say it, I hear myself chanting in my head. “What if you get pregnant?”
“I’m on the shot, and I have been for years. I’ve never lapsed.” I’m swallowing hard. “I’ll swing by a pharmacy and get a Plan B, though, just to be safe.”
He clenches his jaw so hard I hear his teeth grinding in the silence. “Plan B.” Even his voice is hard.
“Yeah.” I’m confused by his reaction to it—the mere mention has him tenser than ever and almost angry. “Is that a problem for you?” I know I sound pissy, but if he’s going to turn all controlling about this, we’re gonna have problems.
“No…no.” He softens his voice. “No, it’s not a problem.”
“Then what’s with your reaction just now?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nothing. Just…a personal thing.”
I frown. “I’m naked in your bed. I still have your cum leaking out of me, Franco. I think I can handle some of your personal stuff at this point.”
He takes a deep breath. “I need a minute.”
He rockets to his feet, stomps across the room; yanks open a bureau drawer, snags a pair of shorts, steps into them, and exits the room in a skirl of male scent and pissed-off energy.
I’m not sure what just happened. Maybe he’s getting a drink, or taking a breath in the kitchen. He said he needed a minute, so I don’t want to follow him. God knows this is a crazy situation, and I understand he might need some time to process it all. But I’m confused. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
He was married?
We just had unprotected sex. It was the first time for both of us, even though we’re both over forty. I’ve never had sex without a condom.
And now…I have.
Despite all that, the memory of it makes my heart palpitate and squeeze because of …our connection. The kisses, and the sheer intimacy of the sex.
But I refuse to think about that other word that’s bubbling around in my head. I won’t say it, won’t think it, won’t even entertain the notion of it.<
br />
That’s not what it was.
I hear a door close.
He’s gone?
I feel a bolt of panic at the idea he might have left.
I tell myself to calm down. Just relax. Breathe. This is his house. Where would he go? Talking a walk, getting a breath of air?
Yet still, there’s panic inside me.
After all that just happened between us…he just walked out?
Several minutes pass and then the panic and anger and fear spur me out of his bed. I open his closet and grab the first button down I see—a white long sleeve dress shirt that looks nearly new. I slip my arms in the sleeves, button it up, and then roll the sleeves up. Just putting on the shirt, knowing he’s worn it, makes me feel calmer.
I take a deep breath and leave his room. Exiting the hallway, I find myself in the open-plan main area; it’s clear Franco has done major remodeling here. It’s simple, clean, neat, and beautiful. Dark floors, light walls, simple decor, with a few personal touches here and there—photos of Franco with the other guys in various stages of life: as kids, teenagers, young adults, adults, and current. There’s a woman in a few of the photos, and I assume it’s Renée, James’s wife and Jesse’s sister. I see no photos of Franco’s family, though. No siblings, no parents, obviously nothing of his ex.
I head into the kitchen, peering through the window over the sink, which overlooks the backyard—I see the garage door is open and a light is on. His workshop. I’m already out the side door ignoring the fact that I was giving him time. But I’m already across the driveway and standing in the open garage door, watching Franco. Still clad in nothing but his shorts, he’s bent over a mammoth slab of wood balanced across two sawhorses. He has a simple tool in his hand—damn if I know the name of it—and he’s running it across the piece of wood, moving with the grain in long, slow, smooth, precise strokes. Little curls of wood peel away, and he brushes these away between strokes. Every ounce of his attention is on his work, and each movement is as slow and precise and methodical as the last.
I don’t know how long I stand there, leaning against the side of the garage, watching him. But I realize I’ve calmed down, the anxiety and concern are gone, and I’m totally relaxed.
I could watch him forever, says a little voice inside me.
Chapter 10
After several minutes, he looks up and sees me. “Sorry, I just…” He lets out a breath. “You wanted to see my workshop, sometime. Well, here it is.”
I look around—the room is quite large and it is filled with all sorts of tools and equipment. Everything is arranged in the neat, obsessively orderly fashion I would expect of him. The tools are all old, made of wood and handworked metal. There is a stack of wood on the floor in one corner—a castoff pile, it looks like as all the pieces are different sizes and kinds and shapes. There are also several crates and boxes of metal parts—handles, knobs, pulls, hinges, hooks, knockers, locks, and other parts I don’t know the names of—as well as stacks of wrought iron spindles and sundry other larger pieces of metal.
“It’s amazing,” I say, with unfeigned candor. “I love the way it smells in here.”
He smiles. “Me too. Reminds me of Grandpa.” He crosses the garage and hangs the tool on a peg, making sure it hangs just so before leaving it in place.
I spy a stool tucked under the workbench, which runs along the rear wall beneath the pegboard of tools. I go to it, slide it out, and sit on it, crossing my legs as demurely as I can—this isn’t going to be a sexy conversation.
There’s a jar of rectangular, thick pencils that look like they’ve been sharpened by hand, and Franco withdraws one of these pencils and goes over to the wood on the sawhorses, standing back and staring at it for a long silent moment before leaning over it and dragging the pencil carefully and precisely around the perimeter, marking the new shape.
He says nothing to me, and I realize I’m going to have to ask.
“Franco…what just happened? Why did you react like that?”
He ignores me as he continues to draw an oval inside the rectangle of the piece of wood. When he finishes the outline, he stands back, tucks the pencil behind his ear, and turns to face me. He just looks at me for a moment, and then sighs. There’s another stool near mine, and he hooks it with a bare foot and pulls it out. There’s a small block of partially worked wood on the workbench, just a vague shape—he sits on the stool, takes a small fixed-blade knife from another little cup, and starts whittling at the wood.
He still hasn’t said a word.
“Franco?” I ask, wondering if he even heard me.
He just keeps whittling, but finally pauses and looks at me. “I was twenty-one. I met her at this big kegger. James and the others were there, too. It was a U-of-I party, lots of upperclassmen and lots of girls from several sororities. A real rager, out of control, the kind of thing that would get shut down by the cops if it wasn’t out in the middle of a damn cornfield. She was by the bonfire with her friends, nursing a cup of beer, just watching and laughing and sticking with her friends. Which I totally understood, because I didn’t really stray too far from Jesse, Ryder, James, and Renée either. Ryder knew I was crushing on her and dared me to go talk to her. So I did. Got a fresh cup of pissy-ass beer and went over.” He shrugged. “That seemed like it, for me. I liked her, a lot. I called her the next day and asked her out—”
“You didn’t wait three days?” I ask, teasing.
He snorts. “That bullshit is for pussies.” He whittles a bit more, and I start to see a recognizable shape emerging from the wood. “We went out, and hit it off. Went on another date, hit it off. Two dates led to three, and then we’d been going on dates for two months, and she finally asked if we were exclusive.”
“Were you anti-commitment even then?” I ask.
He twirls the knife in his fingers. “Eh…yes and no. Not as much as I am now, because of what happened, but yes, I was to an extent, even then.”
“Why do you think that was?”
He goes back to whittling. “Shitty example growing up, I guess.”
“Parents had a messy split?” I guess.
He shakes his head. “Nah, they’re still together, actually.”
“Something else?”
“It’s complicated.” He works the knife in a circle, digging out a little divot. “I’m from a long line of Irish Catholics on both sides. Real zealots, too. Not just Mass once in a while Catholics, but real-deal, super-committed stuff. You went to mass every Sunday; you confessed, you got confirmed, the whole thing. I have memories of going to Sunday Mass with Grandma and Grandpa and Mom and Dad, Dad’s brother and his whole family, Mom’s sister and hers…they’re all from this area. There was a time when I was a kid when we all went to mass together every Sunday.” He shrugs. “It was a big part of my childhood, to be honest.”
“So how does this translate into what you just said?”
He carves a little ear, long and rounded on top. “Catholics are vehemently against divorce, even under the worst circumstances. And my folks grew up in families that took the faith even more seriously than they did when I was growing up. Super stiff, formal, traditional backgrounds. You just did not get divorced, no matter what.”
“I see…”
He pauses, eyeing his carving with a critical eye. “My parents were…they weren’t suited for each other. Mom was super modern and forward-thinking, independent. Wanted a career, wanted to wait before having kids, wanted to travel, refused to wear skirts or dresses to Mass just to piss off her dad and grandfather. Dad was more traditional, wanted kids right away, wanted her to play the housewife and not work. They clashed a lot and, honestly, I’ve never been sure why they got married at all. I’m not sure if they ever even liked each other.”
“Were you the reason they got married, maybe?” I ask.
“You mean, was Mom pregnant so they were forced to marry?” He shakes his head. “No, I did the math. I wasn’t conceived until they’d been married almost six
months. And they never had any other kids—I’m an only child. I’ve never understood it.” Another sigh. “Things in my home, growing up, were…chaotic, at best. Dad was a heavy drinker, so was Mom. They were verbally abusive to each other, always shouting and calling names. Think of the stereotype for an Irish Catholic family from Chicago, and that was us. Dad was a die-hard Cubs fan, grilled in the winter, shoveled snow in shirtsleeves, drank Jameson as religiously as he went to Mass and confession. Never hit me, I should point out. Wasn’t like that. But he and Mom would go at it, you know? Like, bad. Mom would throw plates and Dad would smack her sometimes, and Mom would smack back.”
I wince. “Yikes. That sounds awful.”
He nods. “It was shitty. They loved me, though, and I never doubted that. Dad took me to ball games and taught me to ride bikes and all that shit, and Mom fixed my scraped knees and walked me to school and packed my lunches. But once they started drinking and fighting with each other, I couldn’t deal, so I’d ride my bike to Grandma and Grandpa’s.” He taps the workbench. “I bought their house from them when they moved into the nursing home.”
I blink. “Wait…so this is your grandparents’ house? This is the same garage where your grandpa taught you carpentry?”
He nods. “Yep. I haven’t changed this garage at all, except to replace the siding, roof, and garage door. Inside is the same as when I was a kid. Different tools, maybe a bit cleaner and neater, but mostly the same.”
“Wow. That’s…that’s really cool, Franco. No wonder it feels so…” I shrug. “I don’t know. Homey. Nostalgic. I don’t know.”
He smiles. “Yeah, exactly. I’ve never had words for it either…at least not hokey ones.”
I can’t help the soft, tender expression I feel on my face. “So, what are the hokey ones?”
He hesitates. “I just…I feel Grandpa out here. He’s here. I feel his spirit, his presence, whatever you want to say. When I’m out here, it’s almost like I’m with him again.”
“You must have really loved him.”
He laughs. “Oh yeah. He was a real hard-ass, though. Don’t get me wrong. Expected perfection. Probably where I get it. He’d make me redo a piece if I got one small thing wrong. An entire week’s worth of work, he’d just trash it if I got it wrong. But it was out of love, wanting me to do my best and expect the best from myself.”
Drilled Page 16
