by M. O'Keefe
So we didn’t stop.
“What’s the deal with economics?” I asked. I didn’t know what day it was. Only that it was dark again and we’d gobbled up Chinese food hours ago. We were on his couch, I was lying in his arms, my hands tracing the dark outline of the crown of thorns on the inside of his elbow. Three of the thorns had blood on them.
“Like why did I pick it?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure I remember,” he said.
I pinched him and he squeezed me tighter in his arms. “Think back so long ago. Five whole years…”
“I was planning on being an accountant,” he said and kissed my hair. “Money and my family was always a disaster. Like every day my parents’ worry about having it and making it and keeping it and trying to make more—it was this black cloud. And being an accountant seemed like the best job I could think of to not just make money, but I could also deal with this black cloud of worry in my house.”
“Your dad—”
He shook his head.
“What?”
“I don’t… No talking about my dad. I don’t… I don’t want him here. With you.”
I felt the bite of tears behind my eyes and I had to look away.
I kissed the inside of his elbow, the crown of thorns.
“That’s why you scolded me about credit card debt and the Uber?” I finally managed to say. That I found that adorable was slightly disturbing.
“Old habits I guess,” he said.
“How’d you go from accounting to economics?”
“I took Intro to Economics, and we studied this guy Alfred Marshall and he said this thing about money and man, and it just…it blew my mind.”
“What did he say?”
“’Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man.’”
I rolled over so I was facing him, my legs parting over his hips. The soft warm center of my body settling against him in a way he clearly liked.
“Say it again,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. Kissing his ear.
He laughed. “You like that? A little dirty economics talk?”
“Yeah.” I took his ear lobe in between my teeth. “Give me more of that filthy economics, baby.”
“How about this,” he whispered, his wide hands sweeping up my back to my hair and back down again. “’Economics is the science which traces the laws of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object.’”
I wiggled against him, pressing my breast to his chest so I could feel him breathing and the soft happy gust of his laughter. “Say phenomena again,” I whispered.
His hands boosted under my ass and he put his feet on the ground and stood up, holding me like it was nothing. Like it was easy.
And it was easy. It was easy in these three days to be these people. I couldn’t say who we were, who I was.
But it was remarkably easy.
“You are a phenomenon,” he said, taking me to the bedroom and laying me out across his bed. And I came under his hands, his fingers and his body. Never in my life had I come so easily, like my body was simply waiting for him to arrive and show me what I could do.
Chapter Nine
ABBY
BEFORE
Hours later, the middle of the night, maybe—I couldn’t know, like we’d decided to ignore time, while being so tightly tuned to it. Aware, every passing minute that we were ticking toward our end.
I texted Charlotte because we hadn’t not spoken for so long in our lives. And I had about a thousand texts from her that I hadn’t answered and she was getting agitated.
Hey.
Jesus, she texted back almost immediately. Where are you? Are you literally locked in a closet?
No. I texted. I’m actually in the opposite of a closet.
Everything okay?
At the moment yes. But I’m going to need to cry on your shoulder soon enough.
You’re freaking me out.
I’m okay. I love you. I’ll call Wednesday night.
I went back Jack’s dark bedroom and climbed under the blankets, finding my way to his body by touch.
“Day drunk is the best drunk,” I said, handing him the bottle of tequila.
“Especially Monday day drunk,” he said.
“Monday day drunk is wrong in all the right ways,” I said.
“So wrong. Dirty, even.” He shifted, kissing my foot where it was balanced on his arm, and water sloshed over the edge of the bath.
“Careful,” I said, but he didn’t care. The bathroom was practically a lake. This bath was the best idea.
He handed me the tequila, but I didn’t drink. My head was already swimming. “Can I ask you something?”
“You can.” He nodded. “I can’t promise I’ll answer.”
“What’s the story with church?” I asked.
“Like the history of it?”
“No, funny guy. What’s your story with church?”
“All right. You can’t tell anyone.”
“Oh, this should be good.” I sat up, sending a little wave over the white porcelain edge of the tub. He lifted his hand for the tequila and I handed it over.
“Before economics, when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a priest.”
I gaped at him. Mouth dropped open.
He leaned forward and shut my jaw with his fingers, his thumb slipping over my lip. I opened my mouth and let him come in, just a little.
“My mom was so devout,” he said. “And because she went so often and it was such a big part of her life, I believed that she loved it. And so I loved it. She… I don’t think actually loved it. I think she just needed forgiveness and strength and guidance.”
“Why?” I breathed.
“My father was… a difficult man.”
I held my breath, waiting to see if he would break his rule from hours earlier, but he said no more about his father.
“What made you change your mind?” I asked. “About being a priest.”
“Melissa Cummings,” he said. Suddenly he reached forward and grabbed me by my hips, pulling me up into his lap.
Water everywhere.
“Yeah?” I asked, twining wet soapy arms around his neck. “What did Melissa do?”
He licked my breast, pulling my nipple into his mouth, I sighed against him.
“She let me do this,” he said, licking his way over to my other breast. I rocked against him, his erection slipping between my legs. Heat coiled through me. I’d spent the last hours in a constant state of simmer. Ready for him.
I reached between us, my hand cupping one side of his cock, the other side of his cock pressed up against me. Not inside me, just against me. Where I was hot and wet.
He hissed and I liked that sound so much I made him do it again.
“I want to fuck you,” he said against my neck, shifting as if to get up with me in his arms.
“No,” I said, because I liked the power. And I liked his cock against my clit and his mouth against my breast.
“You don’t want me to fuck you?” he said. He sucked the skin of my neck into his mouth and I was covered with these little bruises. Little love bites. Marked like an animal.
“Not right now,” I breathed. “I want you to come like this.”
He leaned back, his eyes burning in the white tiled bathroom. “Dangerous,” he breathed. “You are so fucking dangerous.”
I grinned, because I knew it. Because I loved it.
And I made him rut against me like he was an animal.
And I loved that too.
“I told you something I never told anyone,” he said, hours later. He was making me dinner. Which was leftover Chinese food. That had been our breakfast too. I was beginning to think I could live the rest of my life in this condo, eating lefto
ver beef and broccoli. I sat on his kitchen island, drinking a glass of wine. Monday day drunk was turning into Monday evening drunk. Which was all right with me. Everything was all right with me.
“Melissa Cummings?”
“No. Wanting to be a priest.”
“Well, it was very hot pretending to defrock you.”
The skin of his neck turned pink and blotchy when he was embarrassed. It was very endearing. I wanted to kiss the edges of that blush, the place where the pink skin faded into pale.
“Tell me something,” he said, bringing over the plate of spicy eggplant. “Something you haven’t told anyone.”
“I wanted to be a priest too. You should pretend to defrock me.”
“I will. Later.” He dug into his fried rice and I sat on his island, the eggplant cooling off on my plate. I was going to tell him, it was clear that I was. I just had to open my mouth and the words would come out. Like they’d been waiting for this moment.
For him.
In this wide world, I felt like I never fit. Only with my sister did I fall into some kind of place. But in my life, I was always just missing real connections, floating past people. Perhaps it was the chemistry thing and how I could manipulate it. Maybe it was because I had my sister and everyone else was second to that.
Maybe I was just an asshole, I had no idea.
But I fit with Jack. Like a worn puzzle piece, I fit him. And he fit me. And I’d never felt this before.
“I’m saving money to open a café.”
There. The dream. Out in the open.
“Really?” He nodded, like that made sense.
“I’ve been saving money for like three years.”
“To open your own place?”
“Yeah.” I poked at the eggplant with my fork. “My first job after high school was at this café run by this French woman, and it was really beautiful. She had coffee and pastries and beautiful platters of salads that she made fresh every day, and in the afternoon she sold wine and beer and people would come in and stay all day working on laptops. Or moms would come in with their babies. Or couples would meet there after dinner for a glass of wine. And her daughter would come there after school, and her husband met her there after work. It was like this… oasis in the neighborhood. And I loved it. I loved how everyone knew everyone. How all these appetites and needs were met in one place and she was orchestrating all of it. She was giving everyone what they needed.”
“Sounds beautiful,” he said.
“It was. It probably still is. But I was young and I wanted to make more money and be a sexy party girl I guess, so I left after a few months, but I… well, I never forgot that. And a few years ago I started to want something else for myself it kind of became all I could think of.”
“So you want to open a café like that one?”
“I have some ideas of my own, but yeah… yes. I want to open my own place. I want to give everyone what they need under one roof.”
“That’s a good dream,” he said. “How much money do you have?”
“Not enough. Not if I want to do it in San Francisco and…” I shook my head. “I don’t even know if I can do it, you know? I’m so shit at bank stuff and payroll and budgets. Like, I’d fuck it up before I even got it started. It’s stupid, really a dumb—”
He kissed me, stopping my words with his mouth.
“What are you doing?” I laughed, wiping his lips and my lips. We tasted like each other and oyster sauce.
He grabbed our plates and set them down on the tiled island. “Defrocking you.”
I woke up to the extra loud bings of a series of texts coming into my phone, and cursing I rolled over and grabbed it before the sound woke Jack up.
The texts were from a phone number I didn’t know, and instead of turning off the phone and going back to sleep against Jack’s back, my cheek nestled against his spine, I looked at the text.
This is Bates from the Moonlight. We’d like to talk to you about a management position at the club. After the other night Patty has been promoted to Manager and you would be working with her. Mr. Lazarus would like to meet you to discuss this in person. Notify me of your interest.
I rolled over in Jack’s bed, staring at the text. My heart high in my throat. Management position? Me?
“Everything okay?” he asked, kissing my shoulder. There was not a single part of my body he had not touched, kissed, laid his tongue upon. I was covered in him, just as he was covered in me.
“Did I wake you?” I asked.
He shook his head, his curly hair tickly against my shoulder.
“Patty got promoted at the Moonlight,” I told him.
“That’s smart,” he said and then cracked his jaw open in a giant yawn. “She text you?”
“Bates did.”
He went stone cold still against me, and I made the mistake of turning to look at him. To see his rigid face, the face I hadn’t seen since the first night I met him. It was scary, that face, here in his bed, in this safe place that smelled of our bodies.
“What did he say?” he asked through lips that barely moved.
“He wants to talk to me about a job.”
He got out of the bed, pulling on the flannel pants crumpled on the floor. He was furious, and I knew enough that his anger was really fear in disguise. And the fear was for me.
“Jack—”
“How does he even fucking have your number?”
“I don’t know?”
“Delete the text and block the number.”
“Please calm down—”
“Abby. You can’t work there.”
“That’s not your call!” I yelled, mostly because he was yelling at me and not letting me finish a goddamn sentence. I mean, I understood he was scared, but he couldn’t talk to me like this.
And frankly, I was pleased in a way to get this offer. Couldn’t I have that? Couldn’t I just have a minute with this?
“Do you think I get this kind of opportunity every day?” I asked.
“Opportunity? Are you crazy?”
“Don’t be mean!”
“You deserve so much better than the Moonlight.”
That took some of the wind out of my angry sails and I sagged in the bed. His sheets pulled over my breasts.
“I’m not,” I whispered with a kind of bone-chilling honesty, “very good at knowing what I deserve.”
He left the doorway to crouch in front of me at the end of the bed. “What do you think you deserve?”
I blinked at him, stunned maybe by the question, having never heard it before. What did I deserve? Who determines that? Who decides such a thing?
“I don’t even know how to answer that.”
“Can I tell you what I think you deserve?”
Oh God, this was too much. Too much. I felt like my heart was somehow in his hands. Like he was looking directly into my cringing self-confidence buried beneath all my bravado. He was looking at the young me, the sick me, the scared me, the dumb me.
And he didn’t blink. He didn’t glance away.
He could tear me apart with whatever he was going to say. He could wound me so much worse than I could wound myself.
I wanted to turn away from this intimacy. I wanted to say something flip or kiss him just to distract him, but somehow despite all those inclinations I said:
“Yes.”
“I think you deserve a job you love, that uses all your skills, not just your looks and your ability to read people. I think you deserve to try something hard just so you can see yourself succeed. I think you deserve to see yourself the way that I see you.”
My breath left me in a shaky exhale. I tried to turn my face aside but he touched my chin, holding me still with the warmth of his fingertips against my skin. My bone.
“How do you see me?”
“Fully fucking capable of doing whatever you want.”
I curled my arms around Jack’s shoulders. Hugging his neck, his warm bare skin all along my warm bare skin. We felt
like velvet together.
We felt just right.
“What do you think you deserve?” I asked into his shoulder. He stilled, so quick. So totally, I wasn’t sure he was breathing. It was as if he’d even stopped his heart.
But then he twitched away from me and I held on tight.
“Don’t,” he said.
“It’s just a question.”
“No. It’s not, and you know that.” He grabbed my hands, peeling them from around his neck, putting distance between us by force.
“Can I tell you what I think you deserve?”
“Abby—”
He stood and I stood up too, but he kept a foot of distance between us when I tried to get closer. He finally put his hand up between us, his palm against my chest.
“Abby, stop.”
“I can’t, Jack. I can’t stop. I don’t know what happened that made you get into this life you’re living. I don’t know who or what you’re protecting, but you deserve so much more. So much better.”
He stepped toward me, grabbing my shoulders, lifting me up on to my toes. “You know why I have these days off?” he asked. “All this time to fuck you and play house?”
“Jack—”
“Because I put a man in the hospital, Abby. I broke him so bad a machine is breathing for him. He’s eating through a tube. I am lying low from his crew and from the cops. And the only reasons I’m not in jail or dead is because he’s unconscious and because he deserved it.”
“No,” I breathed.
“I am punishment, Abby. I am the fucking hand of Lazarus, and if I walk in your door it’s because I am going to hurt you so bad you will never forget it and because you deserve the pain I give you.”
Tears flooded my eyes, spilling over my cheeks.
“Jack,” I whispered, reaching for him. But he put me down on my feet and pushed me away, smacking at my hands as I tried to touch him. “Jack. That’s not you.”
“Not me? You are stupid, aren’t you?”
I flinched but said nothing.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked, sneering at me. “What is wrong with you that you still want me? Don’t you fucking get it? You should run away from me.”
