“Hey.” It was Heather coming up beside her this time.
“Hey. More Christmas music?”
“It’s the only playlist on her iPod. Sorry.” Then she lowered her voice. “You wanna hop in the shower?”
She shrugged. “Maybe later.”
Heather smiled with some secret innuendo perched on her lips and shrugged. “I mean…”
“What?”
“Do you want to take a shower…with Marcus?”
Ashley turned to face her.
“I mean, I know you guys didn’t get to in Quebec, so if you wanted some privacy now…”
Ashley blushed and shook her head. “Thanks for the offer, but we’re okay.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’re okay,’” she mocked. “You guys aren’t…you know…having trouble or anything?”
“No. It’s just that…” She looked up to the Christmas tree, averting her eyes. “Marcus wants to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“Marriage.”
Heather couldn’t keep the shock off her face. “You mean you’ve never—”
“With Marc? No, never.”
“You’re kiddin’ me, right? Why? His faith?”
“Hey,” Ashley whispered, looking over Heather’s shoulder and making sure no one was within earshot, “I’m okay with it. It’s different, you know? I know he loves me, who I am. He’s not like the others who just wanted to hit the sheets for a while.”
Heather stared at her blankly. “You know how cheesy that sounds?”
Ashley shook her head, not wanting to argue about it. “Don’t you have your own relational issues to worry about?”
But Heather wasn’t put off by the counterstrike. “Seriously? He’s a virgin?”
“No,” she whispered. “There was one time. But he says it’s one of the biggest mistakes he ever made. He wanted his wife to be the only woman who would ever know him like that, and now there’s someone else’s wife walking around out there with that knowledge.”
“That’s a weird way of looking at it.”
“Why?” Ashley chuckled. “How many husbands out there know you like that?”
“Shut up.” She hit her on the arm. “Fine. If you ain’t gonna take advantage of it, I am. We will be in the shower.” She turned and began walking away, and then added, “We’ll try to keep it down. Wouldn’t wanna tempt anyone.”
“Yeah, well, before you go fornicating in my friend’s bathroom, can you see if she has a house phone we can call Mom and Dad on?”
She pursed her lips. “Uh…don’t think I can wait that long.” She ran out of the room, calling for Ian as if everything was back to normal.
Twenty
“You sure about this?” Ian asked as he undressed. His Oxfords and socks were on the tiled floor, buried beneath his jeans, T-shirt, new Malcolm X sweatshirt, and coat. His boxer-briefs joined the pile.
“What? You don’t want me?” Heather teased with a crooked grin. She pulled her dark, twill V-neck with the lace sleeves up over her head and tossed it on her white peacoat and old lady sweater.
“I mean with your sister and Marcus downstairs.” He stepped toward her. “It’s weird.”
“I told Ashley we’d try to keep it down.” She unbuttoned her jeans.
“You did not.”
“I did.” She shimmied out of the pants, sexy-like and teasing.
Ian sighed. “Just feels…”
“Why? Because of Marcus?”
He started to say something but stopped.
“Marcus could have all the love he could handle if he wanted it. That’s his choice. Why should we feel bad about it?”
“I don’t feel bad about it. Not like that.”
She leaned into the shower and turned the knobs, sending precious warm water streaming down from the showerhead. Then she removed her own panties.
They held each other tight and didn’t kiss at first. Whether the pause was initiated by an awkward sense of shame due to Marcus’ awareness of their actions or just the sudden, overwhelming knowledge of what they’d been through over the last twenty-four hours, they didn’t know. Maybe a bit of both. In the end it didn’t matter, because the fires of passion left whatever had been holding the yield sign charred, crispy, and forgotten.
They kissed as if the level of intimacy might override the bizarre nature of their situation and win Marcus over to their side, a frenzy of lustful desire the mechanism through which the world might be set right again.
They stumbled into the shower, the hot water feeling almost as good against their skin as the friction between their bodies.
But just for a moment, Ian had a vision of a man in a trench coat throwing back the shower curtain and slashing them to ribbons with a kitchen knife.
When Ashley entered the living room, she found Marcus crouched in front of the fireplace. There was a small, black sofa positioned in the middle of the room facing the brick hearth, and half a dozen pillows beckoning her to it. As she settled into its cozy embrace, crossing her legs and leaning her head back, she let her eyes close as Marcus continued working to get the fire going. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” played through the tiny speakers fixed in the top corners of the room.
“Where’s Ian and Heather?” Marcus asked, not looking back.
“Taking a shower.”
He didn’t respond.
“I can’t even comprehend where I’m at right now, how we got here,” she said, her eyes still closed.
“There we go!” Marcus stood as orange flames began licking the underbelly of a dry log. “Hold on, I got hot chocolate coming.” He left the room.
Ashley sighed and had to fight to get the images of what was going on upstairs out of her head. Her sister and her fiancé were making love while her boyfriend was making her hot chocolate. It was times like these when she got to wondering how long she could endure Marcus’ faith. She needed—okay, that wasn’t fair…she wanted—that intimacy, that part of the relationship Marcus insisted they leave unexplored until after lifelong vows were made. But then maybe that wasn’t a fair assessment either…maybe she just wanted sex, plain and simple. She found herself jealous of her sister and growing angry at Marcus. He was withholding that satisfaction from her, refusing to give her what was a normal aspect of any twenty-first century relationship. Maybe Heather wouldn’t mind her joining them. That could be fun.
What the hell? She wondered where that thought came from. She shook it from her head, shocked at the split-second sincerity of it, and focused on settling herself down. If she just wanted sex, then she’d picked the wrong guy to fall in love with. Marcus was choosing to wait until marriage for any more hanky-panky, his goal in dating simply to find a wife. Not just a girlfriend or a good time, but the one woman he would share the rest of his life with. He’d told her that he wasn’t just obeying God’s Word, but that he felt it was what his future wife deserved. Why should the one woman he would eventually love more than any other—indeed, spend the rest of his life making love to—have to forever compete with a mile-long parade of sexual adventures experienced with other women? It was a way of looking at things she had never considered before, and as long as she imagined herself as “the one,” she appreciated it. But there were times, like now, when she didn’t care all that much about the long term, with whether or not she was the one. At certain times, there were just too many emotions swirling inside her for all that “waiting” crap to maintain any kind of sense.
Another thought came to her, a depravity-smeared portrait of her, Ian, and Heather all in the shower together. The feeling that came with the image was almost bestial, cruel and inhuman even, and she sat up. A cold chill swept through her body, immediately replacing whatever sensual warmth the perverse image might have hoped to spark. The fire dancing on the log in front of her flickered beneath a strong draft that almost blew it out, though she didn’t feel anything herself. The Christmas decorations lining the shelf above the fireplace stared at her, hollow eyes trying unsu
ccessfully to impose some holiday cheer.
“Here you go.” Marcus came around the couch with a mug of steaming chocolate in each hand.
She took one from him, appreciating the warmth of it in her hands. “Thanks,” she mumbled.
He sat down beside her and put a strong arm over her shoulders, pulling her against him.
A shout came from upstairs.
“Awkward,” Marcus commented.
Ashley took a sip from the Rudolph mug, staring intently into the fire. She could feel herself losing control of her thoughts as she stared at the writhing flames, sure she could actually see the scene upstairs playing out within them.
“You okay?” Marcus asked.
She didn’t hear him, didn’t hear anything but the sounds coming from the floor above, as impossible as that seemed. The Christmas music was gone, the crackling wood was gone, Marcus’ voice was gone… She set the mug down on the coffee table beside the couch and leaned forward out of his grasp. She’d hung up her jacket before coming into the room and now she pulled the Bills sweatshirt off.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s hot in here,” she said, suddenly able to hear him again. She turned and took his hot chocolate from him and set it down next to hers on the table.
“What are you doing?” he repeated.
She leaned into him and kissed him. He kissed her back.
Her passion was boiling, and all restraint was gone, washed away by the storm of sensual noises echoing in her head. She put her weight against him and forced him down onto his back. Then she sat up and took off her shirt.
“Ashley, what are you doing?” Alarm flashed in his eyes.
“Shut the hell up.” She started kissing him again, working his belt with her hands.
At first he didn’t fight it, but then his resolve refortified and he clasped an iron grip on her wrists, halting her movements.
She sat back again, her dyed hair falling over her eyes. She looked at him like some vampire prostitute drunk on blood-lust incapable of taking no for an answer.
Marcus looked confused, shocked. He was excited, repulsed, and terrified all at the same time. “Don’t do this,” he whispered.
She tried moving her hands, but he still had them locked in his grasp. “Heather’s pregnant,” she blurted.
“What?”
The shock of the statement and its delivery released his hold on her wrists, and she was free to reach behind her back and unlatch her bra. It fell away from her, exposing her for the first time to him.
For a second Marcus was unable to do anything, to respond in any sort of way. The news of Heather’s pregnancy and Ashley all of a sudden turning into some kind of sex zombie had him unaware that his hands were on her breasts. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to remove them from her body.
“Get off!” He was more scared now than anything else, and he used his strength to get out from under her, toppling her to the floor in the process. Once on his feet, and without another word, he fled the scene, leaving her half-naked and unfulfilled on the floor.
He locked himself in the downstairs bathroom and leaned heavily against the sink. What in the world was going on? He couldn’t get the image of Ashley’s topless body out of his head, the feel of her soft skin in his hands, but…there was more. If it had only been that, a sudden sprint to abandonment, then perhaps he would have faltered under the weight of such temptation. God knew most of him wanted to. But it had come so quickly, so violently. The look in her eyes…all lust, no trace of love or even romance. It was a look he’d never seen before, one that was completely alien to her face, and it scared him. He told himself to relax, to calm down. But he didn’t want to go back out there. While there was the very real possibility of yielding to so great a temptation, there was also the nagging, yet ridiculous feeling that it would be an altogether different Ashley waiting for him. One straight from half a dozen sci-fi horror movies he’d seen—black eyes, long fangs, and needing right now to be impregnated with an alien baby. “What is happening?” he whispered, sweat beading his forehead.
There was a knock on the door, and he jumped.
“Marc?”
“What?”
There was a long pause from the other side. “I’m sorry.”
He bit his lip and looked up to the glowing light fixture on the ceiling. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.” It sounded like she was crying.
“You promised…”
“I know, baby, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” Now she was definitely crying. “Can you just come out? I’m scared.”
“Do you have your shirt back on?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
Unsure, he unlocked the door and turned the handle, half-expecting her to barge in, completely naked, and take what she needed from him while devouring him whole. But she was clothed, and tears were running down her face. He held her tight. “You know I love you, right?”
She nodded against him.
“You know that I want you, right?”
She nodded again, but this time with less confidence.
“Believe me, it’s taking all the resolve I got to not have you right now.”
“I don’t know what happened,” she whispered. “It was like something just came over me…or through me.”
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“I scared myself.”
They walked back to the couch and sat.
“Can you forget that happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever forget what happened. Or what you look like without a shirt on.”
She smiled and dropped her gaze.
Needing to establish a new topic of conversation and a return to some semblance of normalcy, he changed the subject, even though part of him wanted to remain on that topic for quite a while longer. “You said Heather’s pregnant?”
Her eyes bulged. “I did?”
He eyed her curiously. “Yeah.”
She swore. “No one’s supposed to know.”
“Does Ian know?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“She’s not sure if she wants to keep it.”
Marcus looked away.
“Don’t tell him. She’ll never trust me again.”
He met her gaze and spoke evenly. “If Heather really wants any kind of future with Ian, then she needs to tell him right now.” He knew the seriousness of his tone would shock her, and it did.
“Why? What are you talking about?”
“That’s why he broke up with his last fiancée. She got pregnant and had an abortion without telling him.”
She fell silent and then swore.
“Yeah. He told me when you were in the bathroom at the diner.”
She swore again.
“You better keep her from doing anything until she talks to Ian about it.”
She nodded, more tears welling up in her eyes. “Why is this happening to us?”
For some reason, he thought of the ring she’d found in the glove compartment of the rental car. But Ian had tossed that into the gas station parking lot this morning, so he had no answer for her. As he rubbed her back, feeling the need for a cold shower like never before, he wondered about her recent behavior, the suddenness of it…could it have been mere flesh, desire suddenly unchained and perhaps enraged by what was taking place above them? Or was it something else? Something…sinister? The latter led him to nothing useful, so he comforted himself with the knowledge that his girlfriend was really attracted to him. Though deep down, he knew better. Desire and craze were two different things. And there was that look on her face, in her eyes…
Twenty-one
They were sitting around the kitchen table, staring at the Monopoly board. Plates sprinkled with sandwich crumbs had been stacked and set aside, though glasses of wine were still standing tall within their reach. They’d been playing for nearly three hours, and the sun was setting outside th
e window above the sink. Orange and red hues were lighting the oak cabinets and marble countertops, filling the room with warm colors that shifted in concert with the Christmas music. It was only a single moment within a strange timeline, but it was a good one. They were comfortable, or at least as comfortable as possible, their thoughts restricted to the limits of friendly competition.
But then Heather looked up from St. James place and the two green houses adorning it and asked Heather, “Did you try calling Mom?”
Ashley frowned. “I thought you were going to.”
“Are you kidding me?” She scooted backward in the chair and rose to her feet. There was a landline on the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. She walked over and removed the phone from its cradle, dialing her parents.
Ian was about to make a major purchase that would put him in the lead, and Marcus and Ashley were on the edge of their seats in anticipation.
Heather hung up the phone and returned to the table with a distant look on her face.
“What?” Ian asked, laying down multicolored bills across the table in front of him.
“Line’s busy.”
“So try again in a few minutes.”
Thinking about his answer while watching him replace green houses with red hotels, she picked up her wine glass and drained what remained in it. Their seeming inability to reach her parents was bothering her. Calls not going through, emails returning with failure notices, no incoming calls from them…
“Hey,” Ian said, leaning over and kissing her on the cheek. “We’ll see them tomorrow.”
She nodded, but there was no relieving her concern. She set her gaze on the window. “When’s the storm supposed to start?”
“Any time now, I think,” Marcus said.
It had been snowing on and off all day, but so far there had been no sign of the colossus everyone was anticipating.
Heather leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms. She thought she could detect something between Marcus and Ashley, something slightly off kilter. She wondered if they’d had a fight while she was in the shower with Ian.
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