by Anne Martin
“You’re Horse,” my mom said once we had all settled down, said prayers, and filled our plates.
Horse nodded and tried to clear his mouth to say something, but she only elbowed my auntie to her left. “I told you. Those eyes. They have a fire that could light up any girl. Trix, have you been letting him into your bed? None of that here.”
Horse took a drink of water and smiled at her. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather share a bed with my wife than sleep on the couch.”
I closed my eyes and gripped my fork. What was he doing? Of course, the whole point of my bringing him here was so that my mother could meet my husband and pretended father of my unborn child.
“Are you pregnant?” My mother’s voice was already hysterical.
I smiled and felt sick. “Ten weeks.”
The whole table blew up in excited chatter, my mother loudest of all. I stood up and left, grabbing my jacket on the way out.
I walked down the bustling streets, the smell of flour and exhaust somehow comforting. I found my way automatically to the corner drug store. I went to the counter and ordered an ice cream. Peppermint and cookie dough.
“Trixie O’Hara? Look at you!”
I didn’t look at me. I didn’t look at Charlie and her band of swans either. I didn’t have to. They swarmed me, coming up on either side. “What are you doing in town?”
“We’re staying for a few days. I should get back.”
“Who’s we?” Gladys asked, eyes bright like a badger.
“My husband.” I lifted up my left hand. I was too tired to fight, too tired to pretend like the years of cruel jabbing hadn’t left a scar. And Charlie was the girl Lucas had picked to be his very public girlfriend while he kept me in the shadows of the backseat.
“You’ve let yourself go. I guess you don’t have to keep anything up now that you’ve got your man,” Gladys said, looking me up and down more objectifying than Horse ever had been.
“Unless she’s pregnant. That’s probably how she caught him.” Charlie smiled at me, something hard in her eyes. Girls like her should race and get in fights. She had way too much aggression and nothing good to do with it.
I stood up. “As fun as this has been, and it hasn’t been, you’re all turning me off my sugar rush. That’s low, even for beauties. If you could leave and make some other corner of the world feel like dying, I’d appreciate it.”
Charlie leaned closer, her twisted mouth cruel. “I know what you’d appreciate. You’ve always wanted me.”
I snorted. “If you mean tied to the tracks right before the evening commuter train, you’ve nailed it. Girls are fine, but you’re not a girl. You’re an evil demon possessing what could otherwise be a decent human being. Do you want me to care what you think of me? You do. You spend so much time making sure I know how much I disgust you in every possible way. I don’t care about your disgust or lack. Do you want to know what I care about? Cars. Your engine’s been knocking for years and it drives me insane. You need a complete overhaul or your life will be garbage like the word-vomit that comes out of your mouth every time you open it.”
“I’ve had mechanics. So good with their hands, but the grease isn’t worth it. Gets on everything. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.” Her eyes went harder.
I did know what she was talking about. She was the pretty girl Lucas had dated while we were messing around in secret. Maybe not so secret if she was looking at me like that. Was that her problem, that I’d been with her boyfriend before they were together? That was my problem, not hers.
“Grow up, Charlie. No one else can do it for you.”
I left without my ice cream. It was just as well. I didn’t need sickening sweet, just a pair of strong arms that would hold me all night in a too-small bed.
Chapter 10
Horse Demon a.k.a. Nathaniel David VanBuren
Trixie’s family was everything mine wasn’t. The level of noise took some time to get used to. There were children crying, laughing, or screaming, and then the women, all relatives on her mother’s side, talked while they gestured with their hands, all of them aggressive to the point where a few times I thought someone was going to get backhanded.
One of her brothers, Marco, handed me his baby, nine months old, while he followed the toddler around with a plate of food, trying to get her to eat instead of playing with her cousins. How many of them were actual cousins, I had no idea. Everyone was so warm, so open, so passionate. Trixie seemed completely cool with that undercurrent of temper that she mostly saved for racing, and her moments of chaos.
“You want to see her baby pictures,” her mother said, picking up Marco’s baby and trading him for a very heavy photo album.
“Of course I do. Thank you very much.”
She nodded. “That way you can get an idea of how your children will look. Do you think she can have more than one? She was seventeen when the doctor told her that she’d never have any babies. She cried for a week. That girl keeps her emotions buried and then when they come out, catastrophe! Don’t let her keep her anger inside where it will rot her soul.”
She gave me a hug, all soft and smelling of lilacs before she kissed my cheek and went to tell Silvia how to take tomato stains out of cotton.
I opened the book and several women gathered around me to lean on my shoulders while they pointed at pictures of an adorable cherub who absolutely never smiled for the camera. A few pictures caught her smiling when she didn’t notice, but every time someone wanted her to perform for the camera, it was this ridiculously adorable scowl. She was chubby, very chubby, all through her childhood. There were pictures of christening, weddings where she played the part of a bridesmaid looking very awkward and uncomfortable in her dresses, and the pictures of her racing. Her uncle was in a lot of the pictures, black-haired and green-eyed with a smile to make up for her own scowl.
“She didn’t lose the weight until she was what, sixteen? Sweet sixteen.”
“It was seventeen.”
“Eighteen, no, that’s just when she stopped wearing men’s clothes.”
They talked over each other, arguing companionably beside me.
I turned a page and saw a newspaper clipping showing a crashed race car and Trixie sitting on the ground, with a kid stretched on her lap, his chest bare because she’d wrapped his shirt around his head. The blood was soaking through the fabric.
“Do you remember that?” One of her aunts pointed at the check at the bottom of the page, stapled roughly to the clipping. “She refused to sign it. She saved his life, but didn’t want a cent from it. Strange girl. It’s not that she saved him because he was rich, but to refuse payment when it wasn’t any skin off their nose? Inconceivable. It’s probably not valid anymore.”
I stared at that check. One hundred thousand dollars made out to Trixie O’Hara. In the description, it read, ‘for saving my life.’
I bit my bottom lip and felt a little bit dizzy. I closed the book and stood up. “I’m going to stretch my legs. It was nice meeting you.”
I took the stairs down. Outside, I hesitated on the landing, looking each way for my wife.
“You’re looking for Trix?”
I looked over at an old man in a fedora leaning against the building, smoking a pipe. He stood with a group of smokers, all pipes or cigars.
“I am.”
“Did you really marry her?”
I nodded and tried to look confident.
“Why?”
I blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“Why did you marry our Trix? She’s not a marrying kind. Everyone knows that she’s more boy than girl.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I must have missed the memo. Trixie is a woman. A very beautiful, very good, very hygienic woman.”
“Also, he got her pregnant.” Marco slung an arm around my shoulder and grinned at me before he dragged me over to the men. “Congratulations are in order.”
The fedora wearing skeptic who didn’t think that m
y wife wasn’t womanly, handed out cigars. “Her mother was so beautiful when she was young, beautiful and wild. She kept Trixie fat and ugly so she wouldn’t be wild like her.”
“Trixie wasn’t ever ugly,” Marco protested.
Fedora hat laughed, raspy from his cigar. I didn’t light mine, but I tucked it in my pocket as a memento. These guys had to be mob. Maybe. “Here she comes. It’s hard to think of that woman being the Dragon who plagued our neighborhood. She’d stalk and beat up bullies. She beat up my grandson, Nino, and you know he deserved it. You also know he never picked on anyone again. Trixie! How did you get to be so beautiful? You make the streets sing when you walk over the pavement.”
“Hey, uncle, Nino.” Trix gave him a hug and then grabbed Marco’s ear, tugging him away from them. “Does your wife know that you’re smoking? Cigars count. You know that if you’re a smoker, your kids are likely to be too. You have to be a good example.” She turned and really noticed me for the first time. “Nathaniel.” She said it all stilted and confused.
I walked over to her and kissed her. Her hands were around me, her body pressed against mine as she kissed me back, like she wanted the world to see her as a woman desired by a man. I pulled away first because I wanted to kiss her for her, not for other people.
I shook my head. “Woman, we need to go to bed.”
She smiled slightly. “Everyone’s still awake.”
“Joey’s door locks,” Marco said helpfully with a wide grin. “Go on, you two crazy newlyweds. If you see Prissy, tell her I ran to the store for ice.”
Trix dragged me inside and to the stairwell. She started kissing me again, putting her hands under my shirt and pressing me against the wall. She was hungry, but for what? Being desired wasn’t enough. She had to feel loved.
“Hey,” I said, pulling away. I brushed back her hair and kissed her nose.
“Why do you do that?”
“It’s a cute nose.”
She frowned, fiercely. “I’m not cute.”
“Not you, your nose. You’re gorgeous. You didn’t eat. Let’s go out for dinner.”
She inhaled sharply. “Out for dinner? My mother would kill me.”
I leaned close and whispered against her ear, “Your mother doesn’t have to know.”
She gave me a wild smile and then was pulling me towards the back door. She took me to dinner in an Irish pub. We ordered sandwiches and coffee.
“I used to stop by here twice a day to get my dad a sandwich. He works at the gym around the corner. You should probably go meet him tomorrow.”
“I noticed that he wasn’t there tonight.”
She made a face. “He loves my mother, adores her, but her family? There’s some bad blood. It’s easier if he works late when she has the neighborhood over. He puts up with them holidays, at least half of them. Marriage is all about give and take.”
“What do you need? I mean, in a husband?”
She fiddled with the paper around her sandwich. “That’s funny you should ask. Seriously, you’ve been amazing. You just jumped right in there without a second thought. You must really want to win the race.”
I covered her hand with mine. “Which race are we talking about? The one where we see who lasts the longest? I’d rather it were a tie. A long, long race with a death tie.”
She grinned. “High stakes. I like it. What do you want in a wife?”
“Nope. You have to answer my question first.”
“I’d love you to rub my calves in the middle of the night when they cramp up. Okay? Now you. You’d better say sex.”
“I was going to say spaghetti, but okay, sex it is.”
She crossed her legs and leaned towards me. “Seriously, Horse, what do you need?”
What a strange question. I took my time before I shrugged. “I think that I’d like to hold your hand in public and private. Not like arm candy, but just connection in a way that isn’t hierarchal.”
She took my hand, slow, sliding over my skin tantalizingly before spreading my fingers apart. “Is this personality A, or B?”
“I like human contact with women. My mother died, and before that, she had to stay away so she didn’t get infected.”
Her hand gripped mine sudden and tight. “That’s why you let women hang on you, because you’re looking for your mother? That’s so sad. I don’t hate holding your hand, if you’re sure you’re not…”
She was feeling like she was the girl who no one saw as a real woman instead of the most desirable woman in the city. I looked deeply into her eyes so she could see that I was serious. “Trixie, I’m honored to be seen with you. Nothing could possibly change that.” I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed the back of it, taking my time because she was worth it.
After we ate, we left the pub, heading out into the city, lit by streetlights. She grabbed my hand and tugged on it. “It’s weird for me to hold hands.”
“You’d never know. You’re a natural.” I kissed her hand again.
“Why do you do that?”
“Why do I kiss your nose? I like kissing you, Trixie. I like kissing every part of you. Some parts are acceptable to kiss in public.”
“When we get back…” She frowned at me. “I think that I’m going to take off my clothes and either you’ll follow along or I’ll rip yours off you. Do you think that constitutes as rape?”
I raised my eyebrows. “There’s no rush.”
“Yes, there is. I’ve wanted you for years. Ever since I saw you hanging out of that assault truck bleeding all over Nix. You lost so bloody.”
“Thanks. It’s good to know that you’re impressed by something I do so well.”
She tugged me closer and put her arm around my waist, switching hands so we were still tangled together. “I didn’t sleep with anyone that year. I focused on work.”
“You could have had me any time.”
She shrugged. “So could anyone else. I’m possessive. It doesn’t seem like it because I don’t do relationships, but that’s why.”
“You mentioned it. I give you permission to be possessive of me. I’m not messing around on you with anyone else. If things aren’t working out, I’ll tell you. No games, no lies, no cheating. I’m an honest slut.”
She smiled at me, the soft shy smile that made me kiss her soft and sweet. She tasted so good, felt so soft and delightful.
When we got into the apartment, it was dark and quiet. She tripped on something and giggled then covered her mouth with her hands. We didn’t turn on the light as we made out way to the bedroom and the small bed.
Doubles were small. I was not small. Trix, well, she wasn’t the tiniest person in the world. It took a lot of fiddling to not fall off the bed. We started kissing. She didn’t take all of her clothes off. Maybe she’d changed her mind. That was fine. There was no rush. When she pushed up my shirt, I hesitated then slid my hand over her stomach, sliding her shirt up and over her head.
So sweet. So soft. So much better than anything I’d ever known before. Real. True. Trixie.
The next morning, Trixie was in my arms, still bare, warm, and willing. I couldn’t help but hold her and touch her. Her skin was as soft and delicious as it possibly could be. She opened her eyes and looked at me. Without a word, she pulled me even closer.
Something inside me uncurled a little bit. She hadn’t gotten me out of her system after one taste. We made love until she was utterly sated and then some. I held her in my arms, touching her, kissing her skin, cuddling, until her stomach growled. I rested my palm on the gentle curve of her belly.
“Someone’s hungry.”
She covered my hand with hers. “Mm. I haven’t done that sober for years. Is it weird that I don’t have the urge to disinfect everything?”
I nuzzled her neck. “It’s all that couch talk.”
“Or it’s you.” She stared at my chest, drawing a heart over my heart. “You’re prowess wasn’t exaggerated.”
I raised my eyebrows and grinned. “That wasn’t my pr
owess. This bed and my prowess are incompatible. Now give me a king bed without your parents through the wall, and you can sample my prowess.”
She lifted her chin. “Seriously? Such an ego.”
I kissed her nose. “It’s seen me through many humiliations. Last night wasn’t about ego or skill. Not to me.”
She frowned and started pulling away. “What was it about?”
I couldn’t say love. She’d kick me out the window if I said that four-letter word. “Companionship. Comfort. Friendship.”
She laughed and began the process of disentangling our bodies without either one of us falling off the bed. She glanced at me as she stood in nothing but the fall of her glorious dark curls. “Now I know what kind of friends you have. Aren’t you getting up?”
“Not just yet. It’ll take me a few minutes to recover. Oh, you meant getting out of bed. Right now I’m content to enjoy the view.”
She threw a sock at my head. It was her brothers and didn’t smell so good. I grinned anyway, because that movement, bending over, lifting her arm back, it all demonstrated the exquisite grace and beauty that was my wife in the nude. She was so beautiful. I’d finally had the woman I’d wanted for so long, my Everest. It wasn’t enough to have her body. Would she ever give me her heart?
She got dressed, trying to ignore me. Finally, she had on her support layer and then jeans and t-shirt. She crossed her arms and nodded at me.
“Go ahead, husband. Make the view worthwhile.”
I grinned at her and threw back the blankets. I did my best to make every move slow and worthy of getting tens stuck into my thong, if I were wearing a thong. Getting dressed probably wasn’t as naturally seductive as getting undressed, but the way her eyes danced and she bit her lip, my muscles weren’t exactly disgusting to her. Finally, I slowly slid on my shirt and grabbed her, pulling her into my arms.
“That show requires payment.”
“Of?”
I kissed her. She melted in my arms, warm, sweet, her lips rubbing against mine as silken and pliant as could be. Someone rapped on the door.
“Breakfast is getting cold.” Trixie’s mother’s voice was like a bucket of ice.
