The Layover

by Roe Horvat

  My mother’s eyes lit up suddenly, and I knew we were done talking about me. Thank fuck for that. “She’s good, very happy. Anna started walking two weeks ago. She’s adorable,” Mom enthused and started telling stories about her three grandchildren. She didn’t seem to care if I listened. Now she was animated, her eyes smiling in a way they had never done when she talked about me. It was fine. They were thriving without me. I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about not being there.

  Later, when Jamie came back, she politely admired the present he’d bought for Ginny, a pair of handcrafted earrings. She said they looked expensive and excused herself in the very next sentence, explaining she wanted to catch the earlier train because it wouldn’t be that crowded. We accompanied her all the way to the train station. Mom hugged me briefly, and all the time her eyes remained dry, her expression resigned.

  “When you’re in Bratislava again, I’ll be glad to see you.” But you’re not welcome in our home. “You too, Jamie.” She nodded at him and turned away, her skinny legs moving up the steep stairs with the strength of a young athlete.

  I expected some relief, something inside me to change, to fall into place. Nothing happened. If anything, I felt empty and exhausted. Apparently, closure is overrated.

  Jamie stood next to me, watching the train leave. I didn’t look into the windows of the passing carriages to see if my mom was there, waving. Instead, I looked at Jamie’s lovely, worried face.

  He lifted his eyes to mine and smiled sadly at me.

  “How are you?”

  I took a shuddered breath. “I so need to hold you right now,” I said, my voice breaking.

  Jamie looked around perfunctorily. “It’s a train station. I think it’s acceptable for people to hug each other on a train station platform.”

  I pulled him to me, breathing him in, feeling his warmth against my body.

  “Jamie,” I sighed into his hair, “I love you so much.”

  His arms tightened around me.

  “Love you too.”

  “YOU FEEL up to the next part?” Jamie asked when we were leaving the old, busy, dirty station, weaving through the throng of reckless taxis.

  I didn’t feel ready. Not even a little bit. “I don’t want to put it off.”

  Kristina was waiting for us at the bus stop. The trip seemed to last forever. Crawling through every little village, stopping at every corner and dragging behind tractors, we moved at snail speed. In the end, the barely thirty kilometers took an hour. I chewed on a tiny hangnail until my left pointer finger bled. Hidden between the seats on the bus, Jamie took my hand and kissed my palm. I didn’t have to say anything. He always knew when I needed him.

  It was early evening when we arrived at the cemetery.

  The grave was well kept with a tall, dark stone and fresh flowers in heavy ceramic pots. There was a row of candles in rainbow colors but most of those had tiny puddles of rainwater inside the cups.

  I heard Kristina and Jamie breathe behind me. Otherwise, it was eerily quiet. The air was still and the sun was low, casting long shadows around us. I’d seen pictures of the grave online, with much more outrageous decorations. Standing here, it seemed so… ordinary. I looked around at the other gravestones, and they were all much the same. Most of them had fresh or plastic flowers. Some had little lanterns, some candles in cups or small cases. Most of the candles weren’t burning, though. It had rained. The ground was still wet.

  I bent down and started pouring the water out of the rainbow cups on Peter’s grave. We should light them again. But I didn’t have any matches. Jamie had stopped smoking entirely. I should have thought of that. I should have taken a lighter with me. So stupid. I plucked the old leaves from the cold, damp surface and smoothed my palm over it. It felt rough and unpleasant. Harsh, unforgiving, unpolished stone.

  The cemetery was deserted. There were no people around, except for us. How often did someone visit him? Did strangers drop by sometimes even now when the referendum was over and Peter’s story wasn’t important anymore? Did his family come on weekends? His little sisters?

  My chest constricted, and I choked on my breath. My vision blurred, and my shoulders started shaking. Selfishly, I only thought of myself. I must never be alone like that. Please, let me never be alone like that.

  WHEN I resurfaced, I found myself sitting on a bench curled around Jamie, hugging his torso. His scarf was wet under my cheek. His fingers stroked my scalp and neck, and he murmured softly into my ear.

  Words of love.

  Kristina sat on my other side, still and silent, but her palm painted circles on my back.

  I wasn’t alone.

  An old man in green coveralls watched us from the path between the tombstones.

  “It’s seven o’clock. You need to leave,” he called in Slovak, hints of Hungarian accent warping his words.

  We stood and walked to the iron gate. Jamie held my hand in his, and Kristina had hers on my shoulder. For a moment, I forgot all about my fears of being seen. It felt so petty.

  Once on the street, I looked back over my shoulder. The maintenance man in green coveralls stood by the gate to the cemetery, watching us leave. He had a faint smile on his rugged face, and nodded at me as if giving us his blessing.

  IN THE evening, back at our hotel, I showered long and thoroughly. I scrubbed off the grime of the city streets and buses and past failures. Feeling moderately human again, I braved coming out of the bathroom only in a towel. I hoped we wouldn’t have to talk it all out, that Jamie would understand.

  Jamie led me to the bed, pushed me down gently, and took off his clothes. He pressed his lean, pale body close to me and dragged the covers over us, up to our ears.

  His nose was almost touching mine, and he traced my hairline with his fingers.

  “I want to make love,” he said. “But first I want to know how you feel.”

  I closed my eyes, overwhelmed. When I opened them again, I let go. I was safe. Here in our little hiding place, I could be vulnerable.

  “Scared. Hopeful.” Inhale, exhale. “Grateful and alive….”

  His smile was blinding.

  That evening, Jamie took care of me.

  “Jamie, Jamie, please, slow down…. Jamie! I want to….” He did slow down, but I still clearly felt the pressure of his tongue on the underside of my cock. Then I heard the little snick of a bottle cap, and my body melted deeper into the mattress.

  We’d only done it without a condom a couple of times. I still wasn’t used to the intensity of making love to Jamie without any barrier between us. Every time Jamie and I had sex in the past several months, some part of me felt undeserving. I’d tried to be worthy of him. I’d found a solid job in Edinburgh in record time, paid half of all our bills and for most of the groceries, I’d done the chores at home, cooked, prepared for my studies, taken care of him any way I could. I’d systematically worked to become a better person. Until Jamie told me to fucking stop punishing myself already.

  This time, though, I only felt loved. Grateful, hopeful, and alive and loved. All the layers of bullshit stripped away, and there was only the raw core left. I didn’t have to keep it together, didn’t have to try to prove stuff, didn’t have to pretend. I could just drift away knowing Jamie was there, holding me tethered to the real world, keeping the monsters away.

  Just like my body softened and opened up, so did my thoughts. All the tension and hard edges were gone. Even the arousal, though strong, felt warm and slow, not insistent at all. I could have lain there the whole night, spread out and helpless, my ass in the air, my face hidden in a pillow, and Jamie inside me, blanketing my body, circling his hips lazily, massaging my arms and shoulders, his warm breath tickling my neck. I’ve never been so happy just to be.

  But then Jamie tugged at my hips, changed the angle infinitesimally, and suddenly I couldn’t wait another minute. I needed, demanded, begged, and babbled nonsense. I must have said the right thing, or maybe Jamie knew, because his hand found my cock, and he
slammed into me forcefully. The bed, the nightstand, with the generic mushroom-shaped lamp, the four walls surrounding us, it all fell away like a stage setting made of cheap cardboard.

  I reached behind me blindly, grabbing at Jamie’s thigh. I felt sounds vibrate in my chest but couldn’t hear myself, much less control it. When it finally came, my orgasm barreled through me, disassembling and rearranging every cell in my body.

  Jamie was chasing his own pleasure a minute longer, his hard thrusts almost too much. In my state of total surrender, still shivering with aftershocks, I barely registered the faint discomfort. I felt his teeth on my shoulder blade, a stutter in his movements. His hands pulled at my side and shoulder, his cock pulsed inside me, and I was whole again, stitched together, serene and content.

  We were a mess of sweat and spit and drying come, but I felt cleansed and innocent. Because Jamie loved me back just as much as I loved him. I could feel it in the way his mouth was still open over the skin on my back, the way his fingers caressed my hipbone. I heard it in the sigh he made when his other hand reached higher and petted my hair.

  He stayed inside me until he softened. I felt my limbs come to life one by one. We rolled lazily and kissed, but then the exhaustion crept over us like mist. We showered fast and half-heartedly, not saying anything.

  “Better?” Jamie asked much later, lying on his side snuggled in my lap, naked, soft, and warm.

  “Mmm.” I nuzzled his nape. “Perfect.”

  “I told you it was going to be great,” he said. “I was right. It’s perfect.”

  ROE HORVAT was born in former Czechoslovakia in a time when everybody wore the same red and blue sweats and free thinking was a risky business. She endured a miserable adolescence in the postcommunist wasteland, mostly observing from afar and dissecting the pointlessness of being. It might have made her sophisticated… or bitchy. Equipped with ample sense of sarcasm, she left the Czech Republic to explore Europe.

  Roe lived in Germany and Spain for a while, reinventing her inner sweetheart. Finally, she settled in Sweden, where the weather is nasty but the landscape vast and freedom great. She works as a motion graphics artist and is the ultimate daiquiri junkie in her spare time. She grows her own strawberries and freezes them in small batches to survive the long and dark Scandinavian winter.

  Roe started writing her first novel at the age of seven. The time travelers finished their machine, but the child got distracted after two chapters, leaving the unfortunate explorers stuck in the stone age. Luckily, Roe developed a stellar attention span since then and never left a soul behind again.

  These days, Roe writes to gain control in the chaotic world, saving the lives of her fragile imaginary friends and sharing the love in all shades of the rainbow. Contemporary romance conveniently balances out Roe’s real-life pragmatism. One day, though, she might start time traveling again.

  Facebook page for Roe, the writer: www.facebook.com/roehorvat

  Say hi to Roe, the person: www.facebook.com/roe.horvat.98

  Website: roehorvat.blogspot.se

  By Roe Horvat

  The Layover

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Published by

  DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

  www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Layover

  © 2017 Roe Horvat.

  Cover Art

  © 2017 Roe Horvat.

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dreamspinnerpress.com.

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-63533-770-9

  Published July 2017

  v. 1.0

  Printed in the United States of America