Down & Dirty

by Ashley Johnson

  She makes a tsk sound before she leans closer to the table to speak to me, her arm s folded and sitting on the tabletop.

  “He tells people that he wants to live a crazy life while he’s younger because he doesn’t want anyone to know the truth.” She shakes her head and lets out a huff of air before continuing with her explanation.

  “When Nixon and his younger brother Jaxon were little, probably seven and five, Nixon’s father told me he wanted a divorce. He said he was done living a lie and that he hadn’t been in love with me for quite a while. What he failed to tell me and the boys was that he had another family with one of the women he worked with.

  “When our divorce was finalized and things were divided on paper, then he decided to tell us that he was now engaged to this woman and they had five girls together, the oldest being just a few months younger than Nixon. I was so blind I had no idea. He would tell me he had to go to some conference or travel for work and would instead be staying with his other family three towns over.”

  I can see the tears forming in June’s eyes but she’s holding them back like a trooper. I reach out and grab hold of one of her hands but say nothing, waiting for her to finish her story.

  After taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, she continues on. “So now that he had a new set of mouths to feed and new children to focus his attention on, Nixon and Jaxon were put on the back burner. Nixon learned to ride a dirt bike from his father and instead of quitting that one thing that reminded him so much of his dad, he decided to prove to him that he could be better without his father there to teach him. I think the boys last saw James when Nixon was ten, but he let it slip once that James had called a few times after Nixon made it big and wanted to spend some time with him. Nixon said he refused it and never took another call from James.”

  I remember the first time I found Nixon on my track when he told me that he had talked to his dad the night before and was a bit upset. It didn’t seem like anything big to me because I have had a few tiffs here and there with my own dad, but this was something else completely.

  When June sounds like she’s finished with her story I give her hand a small squeeze and give her a weak smile. “That sounds awful June, but Nixon must have had a wonderful, caring mother to have raised such a great kid.”

  She smiles back at my compliment and then speaks again.

  “I do have good boys. I got very lucky. They didn’t have a father figure and I had to work so much to make up for the child support that I wasn’t receiving from James that I wasn’t around as much as I should have been, but they both turned out to be more than I could have asked for.”

  As I process her words, I realize that she didn’t explain why Nixon’s parents getting divorced would have anything to do with Nixon not wanting his own relationship, though I can guess it’s because of the divorce.

  “June,” I say hesitantly and wait until she lifts her eyes to mine, “this doesn’t explain why Nixon doesn’t want to commit.”

  “When we first separated I fell apart. I was devastated because I thought that James and I were doing fine. I never suspected that he had been cheating because I trusted him.” She shakes her head slowly, “silly me,” she mumbles.

  After a deep breath, June tells me the rest.

  “Well when everything settled and it was just me and the boys, Nixon had done all he could to keep me afloat. He would make me handwritten cards telling me how much he loved me and worked extra hard around the house so I didn’t have such a load on my shoulders. By the time the boys were teenagers they were trying to set me up with someone else because they thought it would make me happy.

  “I told them that my relationship with their father was the only one I was going to be in and that was that. What I failed to explain to them at the time was that I was happy to be by myself. I didn’t feel like I needed another person to complete me and I liked where my life was sitting. Nixon thought it was because James completely destroyed me, even though I tried to tell him that I was happy and even when I did, he didn’t believe me. So, Nixon promised himself that he wouldn’t let anyone destroy him the way that James had so easily done to the three of us.”

  I nod, finally understanding. I know what it feels like to be betrayed to the point of giving up on love, but never by someone so monumental in my life. My parents were deeply in love until the day my mother died, and they made sure that I and anyone who saw them knew the love they had for each other.

  My betrayals were of epic proportions, but I wasn’t as deeply connected as Nixon was with his father. I was in a deep state of “like” with both of my heartbreaks. Even being engaged to Pete I never felt the spark of something deeper. I never felt linked to him, not like I do to Nixon.

  And Nixon and I haven’t shared a whole lot about each other. I hardly know him. Not in the way I knew my previous relationships, but still I feel like there is something deeper going on between the two of us.

  “Oh dear, I didn’t mean to dampen the mood with all of our depressing family history,” June chimes in, breaking me from my thoughts. “Let’s order three of everything on the dessert menu and then we can head back to Nixon,” she adds making me laugh as I flag down our server.

  * *

  “Do I even want to know what happened after I left?” We hear Nixon grumble from the couch where he’s watching football when June and I return from the restaurant.

  “Awe, what’s the matter? Did you and little Willy miss us while we were gone?” I tease referring to the name June told me Nixon called his penis until he was a teenager.

  I try to hold in my laughter as I watch Nixon’s face darken and a look of anger flash across his face.

  “Damn it Mom. Why did you tell her about that?”

  June isn’t even trying to control her laughter. It’s spilling out of her in waves and it soon becomes contagious, making me laugh along with her.

  “Oh come on Nixon, I figured if you were getting into this sweet girl’s bed every night she should at least know how to refer to your best friend,” June laughs as she wipes tears from the corners of her eyes.

  “She’s not wrong about that,” Nixon mumbles to himself as he turns back to the television and ignores us completely.

  I have had so much fun with June today, but I don’t want to get to comfortable with her because I know what Nixon and I have. We aren’t a couple and we never will be, so I need to get out of here and go back to my life.

  I put my hand on June’s back and turn toward her. “Thank you for such a fun lunch and I hope you have fun with Nixon while you’re in town. I have had so much fun hanging out with you today, but I need to get going.”

  She leans in and wraps me in a tight, motherly hug. I close my eyes and savor that feeling because it’s been so long since I’ve had it. She rubs her hand up and down my back a few times before pulling away and looking me in the eye.

  “I had a wonderful time too Emmie and hopefully I get to see more of you soon,” she says.

  I just smile, not knowing what to say, and then turn my attention to Nixon who hasn’t taken his eyes off the game.

  “Later King Willy, I’ll see you around sometime,” I tease.

  Nixon waves a hand nonchalantly through the air once, but I do catch his face turning a bit red at the nickname.

  “Text you later,” he grouches, but turns his eyes to mine for a second and winks at me before moving them back to the television.

  I walk out his front door happy that I got the chance to meet his mom, even though we aren’t in that type of relationship. She’s shed some light on why Nixon is so closed off and has unknowingly given me a taste of that maternal love that I’ve missed for the past sixteen years.

  But it’s now time to get back to my own life, the one that Nixon isn’t involved in. I’m going to go home and watch the football game and drink myself silly.

  What a great Saturday afternoon.

  Chapter 14

  Nixon’s mom ended up staying in town for fi
ve days. In that time, she’d tortured my phone number out of Nixon and called me to hang out. We’d gone shopping for hours, had dinner and met up for coffee, all without Nixon in attendance.

  I’d heard more stories of Nixon’s childhood and found out that he grew up in a small town in Indiana, where she and Nixon’s younger brother Jaxon still live, though not in the same house. She had grilled me about my home life, learning more about my parents than Nixon and most people for that matter, knew. She hounded me until I gave up my story about Pete, giving her an insight into why what Nixon and I have also works for me.

  “You both need to move on from this childish game you are playing,” June tells me. “Love is a rare thing and sometimes it isn’t worth it in the end, but when that happens you just pick your heart up off the floor, glue the pieces back together as best as you can, and move on. When you meet someone who is truly worthy of you, they will fix your heart to the point where you won’t even see the glue that holds that beautiful broken heart together anymore.”

  “But June, last time it was enough to show me that giving people a chance to start a juggling act with that heart that you’ve just fixed isn’t worth the risk. What if they end up dropping it and it breaks your heart worse than it was before?” I ask her, trying my best to keep my tears at bay.

  “Then you glue it back together again and move on to the next. It might be broken a thousand times, but somewhere out there will be a good person who is a master juggler and will never drop that fragile heart of yours. Life is too short not to want to share it with someone and when you find that right person, you’ll want to spend every second of that short life cherishing their heart like they will with yours.” She looked at me with raised eyebrows like she knew she was right and dared me to argue with her about it.

  “But doesn’t the same go for you?” I retorted smugly, thinking that I had her there.

  She just nodded her head. “Yes it does. What Nixon doesn’t tell anyone is that I’ve been dating the same man for five years. His name is Henry and we met at a neighborhood block party when I moved into my new house. He asked me to marry him last year, but I refused. I will spend my life making that man happy, but I don’t think I could ever go through divorce again, and Henry accepts that. We’re happy.”

  The beautiful smile that lights up June’s face as she tells me more about Henry shows me that she is more than happy.

  Then I get to thinking more about Nixon and how she should be giving this advice to her own son, not some woman that she met a few days ago when she barged into her son’s home screaming obscenities.

  When I asked her over coffee if she wanted to invite him, she gave me a surprised look.

  “You want to hang out with Nixon?”

  “Well, it’s not a question of whether I would like to hang out with Nixon. You came all the way out here from Indiana to spend time with your son. Don’t you think he should be here to see you? Or better yet, I stay home while you spend time with him?”

  I knew that Nixon wasn’t very happy with all the time I was spending with his mom, proved by all the texts he’d been sending at night, first asking if I had a nice time with her at lunch and then asking if I bought any sexy lingerie while I was out shopping. When I told him that his mom had helped me pick out a very sexy lace bra and panty set and he flipped his lid, telling me to never wear that set while we’re together because it was too creepy that his mom had picked it out.

  The last straw was when he told me to say goodbye to his mom for him because I had seen more of her than he had. I felt bad and, although I’d been having a blast with June and it’d been nice having a mother figure to talk to, she needed to spend time with Nixon.

  “I can call him and invite him out here if you’d like sweetie,” she said, pulling her cell phone out of her huge purse.

  “Yeah, why don’t you call him and see if he would like to meet. We haven’t been here that long and we can wait for him.”

  She called Nixon and a smile lit up her entire face when he agreed to meet her, saying he was ten minutes away from the coffee shop, so I knew on some level she had missed just spending time with her son as well.

  When Nixon walked through the doors and saw that I was sitting with June his face fell slightly. I don’t think June had explained that I was here with her but my intention from the very beginning of this conversation had been to leave as soon as he showed up.

  After Nixon had ordered his coffee and sat down at the table with us, an awkward silence overtook our group so I took that as my cue to high tail it out of there.

  “Well kids, it’s been real but I’ve got to go home and ride. It’s been a few days since I’ve seen the dirt on my track and I want to make sure it’s still where I left it.” I walk over to June, lean down and kiss her cheek.

  “Hope the rest of your trip is awesome June. I’ll talk to you later,” I say through a smile then shift my eyes to Nixon, to see that he has a devilish smirk on his face. He knows what I am doing and he looks like he appreciates it.

  “Later King,” I tell him, giving him a half salute and walking toward the door.

  “Later babe,” he mutters and watches me walk all the way to my truck.

  A few hours later I received a text from both mother and son thanking me for giving them the time together, and even though I knew I would never get that time with June King again I will always cherish it.

  * *

  The day that June King got on a plane to head back home was a busy day for me. I’d called her earlier this morning to tell her how much I enjoyed her the past five days and hope that she keeps in touch. She promised she would and told me to glue myself back together so I could move on.

  After my phone call ended I took Otis for a walk to the dog park and let him play for a while before heading home to get my day started.

  I cleaned my house top to bottom which, since I had a slight case of OCD, didn’t take me too long. Then after everything was cleaned and dusted from top to bottom, I threw on some riding pants and went to my track.

  I was a bit surprised to hear someone out there riding it already, but I wasn’t surprised to find that person was Nixon. When I made it to the shed and got my gear on I felt a hand wrap tightly around my waist. I hadn’t even noticed that the sound of Nixon’s bike engine had stopped.

  “Hey babe, missed you these past few days,” he mumbles into my neck before he places small kisses along my shoulder.

  “Hey, missed you too,” I whisper back.

  “How about we skip today’s ride and go inside and fuck,” he says into my ear before roughly biting down onto my lobe. A slight sting of pain shoots through my skin before he lightens the pressure and then licks the offending area.

  My body is lighting up quickly and I’m about ready to yank him into the house and not let him out until the sun goes down, but I want to have a little fun with him before I do and make sure he’s as worked up as I am.

  “Well we could skip the ride, but I’m afraid I need to do some work. I’ve been slacking because all I do lately is fuck,” I lie. My riding has been near perfect and I’ve been practicing like crazy, but Nixon hasn’t been around to see it so he wouldn’t know.

  He runs his hands up and down my sides and then they each go opposite ways. His left hand travels up and latches onto one of my breasts, his fingers finding and pinching my nipple with an almost brutal, but so effective, force.

  His right hand moves down and curls around my sex. I can feel myself grow wetter by the second as he lightly runs his fingers back and forth along my sensitive core.

  “Unless you’ve been fucking someone else then I know for a fact that you haven’t been properly fucked for almost two weeks. Tell me Emmie, are you fucking someone else?” he growls.

  “Mmmm,” I say almost on a moan, knowing that I’m not answering his question and therefore possibly pissing him off, but my favorite way to have him is when he loses it and fucks me hard, so I provoke it a bit.

  “Answer m
e sugar. Are you fucking someone else?”

  I still don’t answer, enjoying the movement of both hands to focus on talking to him. He removes his hand from between my legs and shifts his body back so quickly that I don’t have any time to react before I feel his hand come down hard on my ass.

  “Did you just spank me Nixon?” I gasp, getting more turned on by the second.

  “Yes I did, now answer me or you’ll get another one.”

  “Promise?” I tease him.

  “You are such a dirty girl,” he tells me then moves the hand on my breast up to my jaw where he softly pulls my face toward his. “If you want me to spank you again all you have to do is answer my question.”

  “No Nixon, I’m not sleeping with anyone else. It’s just you,” I answer honestly.

  “That’s what I like to hear, now let’s go inside so I can turn that sexy ass of yours a nice bright pink color.” He grabs my hand, locks both of our bikes into the shed and chases me all the way to my house where he proceeds to turn my ass a bright pink and fuck me senseless.

  We’re lying in bed, both breathing heavily, when he brings up something that I never thought he would.

  “So I heard you and Harlow talking at the track about heading out to Moab to get some riding in before the season starts.”

  “Uh, yeah. It’s in three weeks. We’re all going after they get back from their mystery honeymoon and only staying for a weekend because Ryan couldn’t take any more time off work after,” I tell him, wishing we could stay there longer. Harlow’s husband is an accountant for one of her sponsors and used all of his vacation time for their two week honeymoon that he’s keeping secret from Harlow.

  “Well I heard a few of my friends talking about going too and wondered if you just wanted to go up there together,” he’s trying to sound nonchalant but his voice has a bit of anxiety laced into it.

  I think about it for a second before I answer him.

  On one hand it would be cool to spend a bit of time outside of a bed, or bathroom for that matter, and just enjoy riding together.