The next day, he folded all the seats in the back of the van down and, with the help of the motel handyman, who had a ramp in his shed, he crammed his bike in the back.
As he was packing up, he came across Juana and gave her three hundred dollars. More than he could afford, but less than he valued the help she’d given his flailing wife. He didn’t think it was an exaggeration to say that the kindness of that small, plump woman had saved Bibi.
Then he carried his old lady out of that motel, put her in the passenger seat of their van, and took her home.
~oOo~
At the end of that first day of reclaimed speech, Hoosier was exhausted. His room had been bursting with people all day long, and they’d all been in a party mood. It was too much for him to keep track of, too much to understand, and the effort had worn him down to a nub.
But when Bibi said, “I gotta go, baby,” and leaned over and kissed his lips, he felt loss. He hated her to go; he always hated her to go. He put his hand on the back of her head and held her to him, finding the focus he needed to really kiss her. When his tongue touched her lips, she flinched slightly. He guessed it was the first time he’d kissed her like that since the fire. He’d had to make an effort to remember how.
Then she kissed him back, and they made out like teenagers for a few seconds. He felt himself go hard, and he pushed his tongue deeper.
When she pulled away, they were both struggling for air, but she was grinning broadly. “I knew you’d come for me. I knew you wouldn’t leave me here alone.”
“I…l-love you. Ch-Cheeks.” He picked up her hand and brought it to his lips.
“I love you better.”
TWELVE
Hoosier was closing in on seventy-four years old, but he’d never felt old. His body and mind had been good to him. He’d never had much in the way of arthritis, his heart was strong, his blood pressure good, his mind airtight.
He’d been good to his body and mind right back, relatively speaking. Yeah, he’d smoked most of his life, but never like a chimney, and he’d played the drink and drugs pretty cool. He’d been a man of moderation.
He wasn’t a huge guy—Connor had eclipsed him before he’d graduated high school—but he was no slouch, either. He’d been strong, straight-backed, and powerful.
Six months out of circulation had made him realize that he wasn’t just old. He was elderly. Though it was coming back, his mind would never be as sharp as it was. He’d never live without pain again. He’d never come back to what he’d been.
Walking around the garden at the center, holding onto a walker, with his physical therapist at his side, then, was not a high point of his life. It should have been—he was outside, and the sun was shining down on him. He could walk; the walker was only a precaution for his first excursion outside. He could remember his life and his people. And he could talk—or was learning again how to. Six months earlier, he’d been in a coma. Six days earlier, he hadn’t been able to tell his wife he loved her. So today, walking in the sun, knowing his old lady would be there waiting when he got back, knowing he could hold her and tell her he loved her, should have been a great day.
But he was hunched over this goddamn walker, feeling the ache in his joints and the frayed edges in his mind. He stopped with a grunt and pushed the walker away.
Trish, his therapist, reached out and pulled it toward herself. “You want to live dangerously, go ahead. You land on the concrete, though, you’ll set yourself back.”
“Don’t…g-g-give…a…” What was the word he wanted? He stared out across the gardens and searched the cluttered mess of his mind until he found it. “Fuck. Don’t give…a fuck.”
Trish laughed and folded up the walker. “Okay then, you’re free range, tough stuff.” As they started forward again, she added, “You know, Hoosier, there isn’t a button you can push and turn all the lights back on. You go through a trauma like you did, coming back from it is a slow process. It’s not a straight line, either. You’ll take wrong turns, and you’ll backtrack. It’s a journey, and you only get where you’re going if you don’t quit. The failures are where the progress happens. You have to dare to fail, Hoosier.”
“Sound like…a…a…a…”
She smiled. “Self-help book?”
Yeah, that too, but it wasn’t what he meant. He shook his head and kept searching for the word for the thing he saw in his mind’s eye.
“Greeting card?”
Also that, but not what he wanted. He shook his head again, and this time, he glared at her. Already he was learning to hate the way people kept finishing his sentences. They were almost never right, and it made him feel like he had to hurry to find the word he wanted, which made it harder to find. This time, though, he found it. “P-poster. Like a poster.”
He’d been thinking of the posters in the physical therapy room, with platitudes written over photographs of people doing amazing and difficult things. He couldn’t read them now, but he remembered the type and knew they were supposed to be ‘motivational.’
“Sorry. But it’s true. Don’t put so many demands on yourself that you don’t notice the success you’re making.”
He wanted a miracle. For most of his life, he’d felt impatient to have what he wanted. There had never been a time when he’d looked out to the future and saw a limitless expanse. His impulse had always been to have what he could right now, or risk losing the chance to have it at all.
Bibi, on the other hand, was patient; she’d always lived as though there’d be more time. She’d never wanted to rush anything. More than once, that difference between them had caused friction. Truth be told, though, he admired it in her. She could take the time to enjoy the moment she was in—or, if the moment she was in caused pain, she could endure, because she knew there would be time to find joy again later. There was a rock-solid strength in her patience.
She’d lost that strength when she’d been taken, when he hadn’t come for her for so long. But when she found it again, she found the life she wanted with it, and she came fully back to them.
And she found patience again for him, too.
~oOo~
When Bibi came out of Connor’s room after putting him to bed, Hoosier met her in the hallway. He picked up her hand and kissed it. “That took a while.”
“He wanted to try to read to me first. Verrry sloooowly. But he’s asleep now.” She looked back at the door with a smile. “He was so good today. So gentle with the baby. I wouldn’t’ve thought he could be that calm.”
Serenity Marie Fordham was six weeks old. They’d gone to the Fordhams’ to meet her—it was the first time Bibi had been able to find the fortitude to visit her best friend and meet the child who was to be her goddaughter. Connor had been wonderful with the baby. He was fascinated by everything about her, but he hadn’t approached her with his usual take-no-prisoners fervor. He’d instead sat quietly next to his Auntie Margie and just watched, and when she’d asked if he’d like to hold her, he’d watched intently as she’d shown him how.
And then he’d sat like a statue for nearly an hour, staring at her pretty little face while she slept. When she’d woken and cried, he’d cried, too, afraid he’d done something to hurt her.
Bibi hadn’t held the baby. But she had watched, and Hoosier didn’t think anyone begrudged her the need to stay back. Pain and loss had been clear in her eyes.
She’d been back home for two months, and she was much better—taking care of Connor, trying to take an interest in life—but she wasn’t yet his Bibi. Hope had flowered, though; she was trying, finally, and Hoosier knew she would succeed. And she let him touch her again. At least to hold her, to offer her comfort. Being able to offer himself to her in that way had eased his pain, too.
He kissed his wife’s hand again and brought her close. “How are you, baby?”
“I’m okay.” She rested her head on his chest. “She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she? So tiny. Connor was a bruiser.”
“Yeah. But he was a g
entleman today, wasn’t he? I was proud.”
“Me, too. He looked at her like he was in awe.” After a heavy sigh, she added, “He would have made such a good big brother.”
“Hush, Beebs. Don’t get caught in that trap tonight. C’mon, I’ll make us a couple of drinks, and let’s go get comfortable on the couch and put a movie in the VCR.”
Still leaning on him for support and comfort, she said, “No. Hooj, I want to…I want to be close with you.”
He tightened his arms around her and kissed her head. “I’m as close as you need me, baby. You can sit on my lap, and I’ll hold you tight.”
“No, Hooj.” She pushed back and looked up at him. “I want to be close. Real close. I think I need that or I won’t ever be full.”
The first anniversary of the day she’d been taken was looming before them like a storm on the horizon. In all that time, they hadn’t been intimate. Fuck, she’d only allowed him to touch her for the past couple of months. Hoosier was afraid now to believe he understood her and to make a wrong move that would fracture the tenuous trust she’d given him.
“You have to tell me what you want, Bibi. I’ll give you anything. But you have to tell me straight out.”
She swallowed hard before she spoke; he watched her throat move with the effort. “I want you to fuck me.”
Remembering that night, another night after they’d spent time with Blue and Margot, when she’d told him she didn’t care if he fucked her, Hoosier felt a cold clench in his heart. “I need you to want it. I need you to want it for you. I need you to care.”
Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, but she held his gaze. “I do want it. I do care. Hooj, I’m still fuckin’ empty. Today, seein’ Margot holdin’ that baby, seein’ Connor lovin’ her…and the way Blue is? All puffed up and sweet? It kills me that I’ll never have it again. I can’t give you a daughter, and I can’t give Connor a sister. I can’t give myself the life I wanted.”
“Bibi, you’ve got—”
She cut him off. “I know. I know. I want what I have. I love you both so much. But I figured out that I’m still holdin’ myself out of the life I do have. I need it back. All of it. I need you to give me a few minutes where I can forget and just feel good. I need to feel you lovin’ me.”
Hoosier bent down and kissed her—lightly, gently, his hands threading into her hair as his mouth and tongue moved with hers. He pulled back and kissed her forehead. “I won’t fuck you, Beebs. But I will make love with you.”
He picked her up and carried her to their bedroom.
~oOo~
He didn’t ask her if she was sure; maybe a better, stronger man would have. But after nearly a year, his wife had asked for this, and he didn’t question. He’d be watchful, and he’d take care, but he wouldn’t question.
Standing where he’d set her down, in the middle of their room, she let him undress her. He did so slowly, gently, easing open each button on her blouse, brushing his hands over her shoulders and down her arms to ease the light fabric from her. When he unfastened her bra and eased that off, too, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, but she didn’t stop him. The skirt she was wearing was long and pleated, closed with a drawstring around her waist. He untied it and let it drop to her ankles.
Hoosier paused there and studied her. His beautiful wife. He had always loved her body: her full breasts with their firm nipples, the tuck of her waist and the sweep of her hips, the small birthmark over her ribs. He still remembered their first night together with perfect acuity—how the sight of her slender, soft body had thrilled him. So feminine, under that aggressive getup. And then, the next morning, he’d seen her without the heavy makeup, with her hair soft around her face. The tough punk girl he’d met at the bar had intrigued him. The sassy, sweet, soft girl he’d woken up with had undone him.
More than a decade, they’d been together, and her body had changed. She had changed. No longer was she the pert twenty-year-old girl who brandished a sharp tongue to shield her youthful insecurities. Now she was a woman, a mother, a wife, and she bore scars inside and out of pains and trials her attitude could not have shielded her from. And scars from the simple fact of living, too. From making their life.
He drew his fingers along a silvery line down her belly. She had been upset, at first, that carrying Connor had left her with stretch marks, but he loved these faint lines. She had grown their child inside her, and nothing that had happened since could take that fact, that astounding feat, away from her. She was a mother, the mother of his child. She always would be, and the lines Connor had left behind marked that truth.
She was shaking, her eyes closed and her breathing slow and full of effort. Hoosier cupped her face in his hands. “Bibi, look at me.” She opened her eyes, and he said, “I won’t hurt you.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I know.” Then the corners of her gorgeous, full mouth turned up in a hesitant smile. “That’s what you said to me our first night. Remember?”
He did remember. He remembered riding her back to her shitty apartment, and then standing outside, next to his bike, his body thrumming. He remembered looking down into her face, past that mask of dark makeup, and seeing youth and innocence and keen wit—and beauty that had made him ache. That still made him ache.
“I remember. I’m so sorry it wasn’t true.”
Her shaking body calmed, and she brought her hand up and laid it on his cheek, over his beard. “It was, Hooj. You’ve never hurt me. Not you.”
He could still hear her words the night she’d left him. Then, she had blamed him. And he deserved the blame. But she had forgiven him, and he set aside his guilt, at least for now.
Leaving her panties on, he picked her up again and carried her to their bed. After he laid her down, setting her head gently on her pillows, he stepped back and rid himself of his clothes as quickly as he could. She watched him, her focus complete. When he was stripped bare, he went around the bed and lay down at her side, and he pulled her close, into his arms. And then, for a moment, he simply held her and enjoyed the touch of their bare bodies entwined again after months.
When he felt her relax with him, her body becoming soft and yielding, he moved his hands over her, stroking slowly over the curves and planes he knew and loved so well. He meant to keep her feeling safe, to ease her back to him, but each sweep of his palms over her body helped him, too. The months without this, without being able to love her completely, had been eternal, and he gave himself over to a careful elation.
She moaned quietly and hooked her leg over his, and he took that invitation and rolled her to her back, pressing his weight onto hers. Tucking his face into the join of her neck and shoulder, he breathed in her scent, his hands still moving, one caressing her thigh, her side, her belly, the other tangled in her long, silky hair, holding her head to his.
Her hands came up and twisted into his hair, and he lifted his head so that he could see her face. She smiled, and a tear slid from the corner of her eye, making a shiny track down her temple. He wiped it with his thumb, but he didn’t ask if she was okay. She had said she wanted this, and he wouldn’t question it. He would trust her to tell him what she wanted.
He kissed her, and she canted her head and opened her mouth, tightening the seal between them. With that, she told him all he needed to know, and he brought up all of his need and desire and sent it to her in that kiss. He kissed her until her body moved under his, heaving with her erratic breaths. Then he released her mouth with a groan and eased himself down her body to her breasts. He licked and suckled a nipple, and his heart raced as the soft flesh puckered against his tongue.
Encouraged by her responsiveness, his own long-thwarted need riding him hard now, he smoothed his hand over her hip and inward, sliding his fingers through the soft hair of her bush and downward, between her legs, over her clit, between her folds. She gasped and twitched, going tense, and he stilled his hand.
But she was wet. She was so perfectly, alluringly, thrillingly wet. Le
tting go of her breast, he met her eyes again. Watching her intently, he moved his fingers, teasing lightly over the most sensitive part of her. She was shaking again, and there was fear in her eyes. But she gave him a tender smile, and he felt her love more in that smile than he had since he’d packed Connor into the truck all those months ago and driven away, unknowingly, from the life he’d had, the life he’d loved.
“Come back to me, Bibi.” His voice rasped over his dry throat. “Let me bring you back.”
Still smiling, still fearful, she spread her legs, and he shifted and eased into her.
If he’d let himself go, he would have come right then, before he was even fully seated inside her, and not simply because he’d been celibate for so many months. The explosive emotion of this act, having her again, not just her body but her complete trust, her reliance on him—it meant everything. It meant they would survive this. More than that—they would live again, have a life, make a future.
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