Thick Love

by Eden Butler

  This close. That’s how damn close I came to knocking Mike Richard out that weekend at my parents’ lake house. I didn’t know why him looking at Aly, mumbling to Ronnie Blanchard about the way she looked in that thin, wispy little sundress, set me off the way it had.

  “Shit, did you see her ass?” They’d been standing back away from the small crowd congregated around my father and our head coach at the fundraiser the coach insisted my father host. The boosters hob-knobbed and clinked glasses and we all stood around like debs on display, uncomfortable in our suits, getting the once over from rich, board, plastic-looking trophy wives and businessmen who had peaked when they’d played the game in high school. Richard talked behind his glass of beer, hiding that stupid smirk of his when Aly set out another tray of stuffed mushrooms, bending a little too far over the table to snatch up an empty tray.

  “Just a little bit further, baby,” he whispered to Blanchard and they both laughed. I was going to join them, wondered what had them giggling like two twelve-year-olds at their first slumber party, but when I followed their low-lidded gazes and spotted Aly’s round, perfect ass right in front of those two knuckle heads, I curled my fists hard, stepping in front of them to block their view.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  They kept smiling, grinning like jackasses and Richard shrugged. “Come on, man, look at her. She’s hot.”

  “And?” I said, moving right in his face, glancing once at Blanchard so he’d back off when he patted my shoulder. “That gives you a right to stare at her ass?”

  “Ransom, man, seriously?”

  “Seriously, asshole. You don’t get to stare at her like that.” My knuckles ached, had turned fainter than my complexion as I held my hand tight. It was Richard’s expression though, a little humbled, more than shocked by my reaction I guessed, that had me stepping away from them.

  “Man, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were hooked up with her.”

  “Hooked up?” What is wrong with you? That nipping at the back of my mind shook me, and I glanced over my shoulder, watched as Aly nodded to Kona when he spoke to her before I looked back at my two teammates. They weren’t looking at her. Instead they both frowned at me like my reaction was way out of character. It was and I scratched my chin, forcing my eyes to move away from Aly and her retreat into the kitchen. “I, I’m not with her,” I told them, rolling my eyes when I caught the doubt on their matching expressions. “I’m not.”

  “Well, shit, Ransom you’ve got that whole jealous boyfriend shit down.”

  “You…you know what? Fuck you both,” I told those two smug-smiling dumb asses, walking away from them to chug the warm beer in my hand.

  The night progressed much the same way with me acting like a dick anytime I caught Richard and Blanchard with their heads together, nodding toward Aly as she moved around the lake house. I knew what kept their attention. She looked beautiful with her hair down her back, just brushing her waist and her strong, toned arms and legs on modest display in that fitted patterned sundress. That still didn’t mean they needed to ogle her and it didn’t explain why I kept doing a little ogling myself.

  She moved around the room like she owned the world, not intimidated by all the boosters and their damn money or their shitty attitudes. Aly didn’t smile, but still had a friendly, soft grin on her face, one that drew the attention of others around her. She moved like no one could touch her, like just her swaying hips and the strong, confident gait told the world she knew who she was and no one could mess with that. Confidence goes a long way, and Aly was catching attention with hers. Me? I could not figure out why it made me mad that people were taking notice of her.

  The lake house emptied a couple of hours later and when the head coach and his wife finally left and just my parents, Leann, Aly and I were left, we all seemed to breathe a little easier. At least, we could get out of our church clothes.

  “Hope those bastards enjoyed that,” Dad said, coming behind my mother to rub her shoulders. “You should go sit down, Wildcat. We can take care of the cleanup.”

  “I’d say to leave it but Aly’s head would explode,” she said, smiling at Aly when she took a handful of plates into the kitchen.

  “Nope, we’ll get it.” Leann nodded for Mom to sit on the sofa. “Ransom will help, won’t you, little cousin?”

  “You know,” I said, rolling up the sleeves of my dress shirt, “I liked you better when Tristian was around for you to bully.”

  “Hush, I’m not that bad.” Leann turned my shoulders and gave me a push towards the kitchen, pointing to a stack of dirty dishes.

  We cleaned the mess as my mother dictated from the sofa, rubbing her belly with her feet propped against the coffee table. She paused in her supervising to laugh at Leann dancing in the middle of the room after she turned the music up to something that would have had the boosters covering their ears and closing their wallets.

  “Aren’t you almost forty, lady?” Mom asked Leann. “You shouldn’t be able to move like that.”

  “Please, you don’t outgrow moves like these.”

  That insane woman danced around the living room with a bag in her hand, shimming and shaking as she cleaned away the party mess and I rolled my eyes, heading back into the kitchen to deposit a stack of plates on the counter.

  “I can do that, Aly, you don’t have to,” I said when I caught her unloading the dishwasher.

  “It’s no big deal.” She moved to the music and I smiled. Leann had always done that too, most dancers did. It was something written into the genetic make-up, some weird instinctual coding that made them break out into a move, a twist, whatever compulsion it was that called to them. Aly did the same thing, I’d noticed, with or without music playing.

  She did that just then in the kitchen with her hands on forks and knives, and her feet freed from the heels she had been wearing. I laughed at her when she twirled around that kitchen and laughed harder when I stepped back into the living for more plates, catching Leann doing some sort of weird twist with her hips that made me think she’d completely lost it.

  “Work it!” Mom called, falling back against the sofa when Leann started twerking, moving faster the louder my mother laughed.

  “Some things never change,” Dad said, stuffing trash into a bag when I headed back toward the kitchen.

  “They were like this in college?”

  He glanced at me, shaking his head. “They weren’t this bad in college.”

  “Age gives you confidence, Hale,” Leann shouted.

  My father loved bickering with Leann, said it was some residual throw back to their CPU days when Leann thought he wasn’t good enough for her sweet little cousin and Dad said and did shit just to piss her off. That certainly hadn’t changed in the years since then.

  His laughter followed me into the kitchen, my arms weighed down with dirty champagne flutes, but then I caught sight of Aly and my mind went blank. She reached to the topmost cabinet with a cup in her hand, stretching, trying to get it onto the shelf. As she twisted up and lifted on the tip of her toes, that dress she wore caught on the countertop and rode up further than it should have, giving me a clear view of the curve of her naked ass.

  It was firm, perfectly round and I tightened my grip on one of the flutes, hearing it splinter as Aly cursed low under her breath. Then it became apparent that my mind wasn’t the only thing I had no control over as my dick got twitchy the longer I stared at her.

  Behind me, my father’s voice drifted, then completely stopped, but I didn’t hear him, was too caught by the sight of Aly’s bare, beautiful skin. My head moved forward and I nearly dropped the flutes when my father popped me in the back of the head, catching me in my creepy gawk and scaring the shit out of me.

  Dad’s glare was enough to deflate my twitchy dick and I deposited the flutes in the sink, barely hearing my father offer to give Aly a hand.

  Later Leann pulled Aly from the kitchen to dance with her, my parents laughing at them from
the sofa and me staring from the open bar near the den. It made the memory of her bare ass and my knotted up emotions worse. I laughed right along with them at first as Leann moved her hips, tried like hell to match what we’d all seen in the Shakira video when she sang about her hips not lying, but she couldn’t quite manage that twist and shimmy. Aly could and set about showing my cousin how to move her hips in impossible angles.

  “No, bend your knees more, cheri. Straighten one leg, then, boom…shimmy.”

  Jesus did she. That short little dress moved, flashed against her thighs, perfect, smooth tawny skin teasing with every shake, but my eyes were transfixed, unmovable as Aly turned in a circle and her hips went up and down, up and down. Boom indeed. Boom went my heart as she moved, boom went that thud in my stomach, the one that told me I needed to get myself together and stop acting like a little punk about this girl.

  She was hot. There, I admitted it, but that didn’t give me the right to stand around watching her like I couldn’t control myself.

  Aly turned in a complete spin and those hips worked faster, the shimmy so mesmerizing my damn parents clapped and cheered her on. My eyes went a little dry because I didn’t blink, couldn’t.

  Nope. I couldn’t control myself around her at all. So I disappeared to check on Koa as he slept, using the pretense of making sure the music hadn’t woken him to give me the space I clearly needed from Aly.

  You’re so weak, that voice hummed and I swore it sounded smug.

  “I damn well know it,” I said, brushing back the hair from my little brother’s face, wishing I could sleep as peacefully as he did.

  Maybe it was all of that—me acting like a jealous asshole to my teammates, me drooling after Aly in the kitchen, seeing that evil seduction her hips worked in me while she danced—that all led to what happened next.

  Maybe I was just a horny idiot incapable of any kind of self-control when I was around her.

  Whatever it was, I somehow ended up leaving Koa’s room later than I’d wanted, finding the living room empty and Leann’s Cadillac missing from the driveway. I figured Aly had driven back to Metairie with her. Guessed that she thought I’d crashed and didn’t want to wake me before she left.

  She’s not your girlfriend, dumbass. Why would she say goodbye?

  “Damn,” I said to the empty room, leaning against the piano.

  “Ransom?”

  She stood in the kitchen doorway, her feet bare, wearing an old Kona Hale Fangirl t-shirt and a pair of sleep shorts I knew were my mom’s. “I thought you left,” I told her, feeling like an idiot for just gawking at her the way I did.

  “Keira has an early doctor’s appointment in the morning. They’re worried about her feet swelling.” She walked toward me with her arms across her chest and that subtle brush of her hand up one arm had me realizing she wasn’t wearing a bra. “She asked me to stay the night since it was so late by the time we got everything cleaned up.”

  Son of a bitch.

  Nodding, I sat at the piano, trying like hell to block out the cluster of stupid that moved around my head. I wanted her to sit next to me. I wanted her to leave my house and never come back. I wanted to find out if she really went commando tonight or if she was wearing a thong.

  I really wanted to not to care about any of that.

  “You alright?” she asked me, coming closer toward the piano to rest her elbows against the lid. “You disappeared.”

  My fingers went across the keys slowly as I played something soft. Rhiannon. A song Mom always sang with me when things got too much for me and I was too angry for anything to make sense. I wasn’t angry just then, but Aly being there, Aly just being Aly definitely had sense out of my reach.

  “I’m good,” I said, coming to the chorus, keeping my gaze on my fingers.

  “You’re good.” She sounded like she didn’t believe me.

  “Yeah.” One glance at her frown and I looked back down at the keys.

  Aly wasn’t the type to coddle you. She was nice enough, could be downright sweet—at least to Koa, and I got that it wasn’t in her nature to get you to open up when you pretended you just wanted to be left alone. She wasn’t going to drag anything out of me because she didn’t pry. But she also wasn’t the type of person that would handle much bullshit. It was one of the things I liked most about her.

  You don’t like her, I told myself, thinking that if I said it enough, it might become true.

  “Night, Ransom,” she said, through a breath and though I’d just been thinking about wanting her gone, right then I could only think about how badly I wanted her to stay.

  “We could go over your song if you want.” I tried making my tone light, like I didn’t care either way if she left me alone or came and sat next to me on the piano. It was stupid and childish, but damn if attraction, a little bit of desire, doesn’t make us all act just like kids fumbling through their first crushes.

  I could do smooth, had done it plenty in the past, but didn’t quite pull it off that night.

  “I mean, I’m a little wired tonight and no one is here.”

  She looked down the hallway where my parents and little brother slept as though checking to make sure we hadn’t woken anyone up.

  “Won’t that bother them?” She moved closer, stretched her arm across the piano and I tried not to think about the silent chant in my head that urged her to sit next to me.

  “No,” I said, still attempting and failing to sound ambivalent. “Mom used to stay up all night writing songs so she doesn’t bat an eye when I play late into the night and Koa has been hearing music and loud-mouthed people since he was born.” I smiled at her when she sat next to me. “I’m sure you’ve caught on to the fact that he sleeps through anything.”

  “Alright.”

  Popping and stretching my fingers, I started to play the tune she’d become familiar with. Keyboards worked better when teaching chords, the transitions easier to follow than when I played this song on the guitar. Weeks into practicing and Aly already knew the intro to “Wild Horses,” the perfect pause and release of when to sing. And, she had gotten so much better, was a fast study and already her tone was solid and that natural, the high pitch didn’t wobbled nearly as much as when we’d first started singing together.

  It was that open, honest expression on her face, how she closed her eyes as though the lyrics, the melody were private, something she wanted to keep in her mind and behind the darkness of her close lids that had me slowing my fingers. She’d spun a web without even realizing it and had already caught me tight in that silky snare.

  Her body put off a warmth I could feel on my arms as I played, and that scent, that delicious, strong smell from her skin, her hair, hit me when she brushed her shoulder free from those wavy tangles. When my fingers slowed even more and the slow progression made Aly miss the chorus, she opened her eyes and stared at me as though she didn’t know if I’d messed up or she’d done something wrong.

  But she didn’t ask what had happened. Aly just stared back at me, because I’d stopped playing, because I’d created the awkward tension that started to fill up the room. I knew what she saw on my face. How could she not, but Aly couldn’t even take a compliment. No way she’d ask why I looked like I wanted to kiss her.

  Instead, she looked down at the keys, brushing my hands aside to play. She was a stronger singer than a piano player and it took me a minute, one I spent staring at her profile, watching her hard focus on the keys before I left bench, coming to kneel behind her and move my arms so that my hands were under hers.

  When she started to move her arms back, to move her hands, I leaned closer, taking in a deep breath. “Keep them there,” I said, trying not to groan at that scent I’d come to love so close to me. “I’ll show you the right tempo.”

  There was a small shake in her arms that I tried to ignore. Her long, slender fingers rested lightly on top of mine, moving when mine did like I was some sort of puppeteer guiding her hands this way and that. But no one would pu
ll Aly’s strings. In fact, if anyone was pantomiming it was me—acting as though the warmth of her skin, the smell of her hair and the sweet, lulling sound of her voice wasn’t affecting me.

  “It’s a rhythm you keep. Not just the notes. It’s got to be deep, Aly. So deep that it feels like a heartbeat.”

  We continued to play, her humming under the notes, giving up the pretense that she wanted to practice and I didn’t comment, didn’t point out that she wasn’t singing. Instead I shifted, moved closer so that my chin was on top of her head. I couldn’t help but notice how perfectly she fit under me, how the bend of her body filled the arc of mine.

  “Heartbeat,” I said again when she began to follow my fingers on the other end of the piano.

  “Like sex again?” she said, grinning as she glanced at me.

  “No, not like sex.” I looked down at her hoping that the grin would grow. “Like…like love.”

  “Oh,” she said, moving her hands into her lap.

  “Why’d you stop?”

  “That’s why I can’t play it right.” I didn’t move my hands from the keyboard and she didn’t ask me to. Aly shrugged, her usual unconscious movement and wouldn’t look me directly in the eyes. “I…I don’t know love.”

  “Everyone has been loved, Aly,” I said, not wanting to test the waters quite that much.

  “Not everyone, Ransom.”

  My chest ached a bit then and I wasn’t sure if I felt sorry for her or pissed off at any family that wouldn’t love a girl like her. She was smart and strong and beautiful, and so damn determined. What parent wouldn’t love her? Be proud of her?

  But I pushed back that anger and moved one of her hands back over mine. “Come on, slacker,” I nudged her free hand, “No rest for the wicked.” She followed my lead, her arms less rigid, like she was becoming comfortable being so close to me. “It’s not just being in love that counts. That heartbeat comes from the people who love us. The people who are important to us. Being in love is just a bonus to all that.”