Alone

by E. J. Noyes

  That’s it. I can’t read any more. I leave some kibble for the boys, grab my coat and rush out to the garage.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The rain is back and has brought more howling wind with it. Fat raindrops batter my windscreen as I drive at a crawl and park outside the only motel in town. Pulling my coat over my head, I rush across the lot and duck under the covered walkway running along the inside of the horseshoe-shaped complex. There’s light showing through the drawn curtains of room twelve. She’s still awake even though it’s…shit, almost half-past one. Seems her nocturnal habits haven’t changed.

  I knock softly on the door and listen for footsteps. A pause. Chain dragging. The door opens. The raw relief on her face is evident. “You came.”

  “Yes. Sorry it’s late.”

  Without hesitation, Olivia pulls the door back to let me inside and we’re in one another’s space again. I shrug out of my jacket and hang it on the wooden hook beside the door. I don’t know if I should touch her or not. Do we hug? Does she want that? Less than nine hours ago, she kissed me then ran away. There’s an awkward beat, before she takes a half step backward. I don’t know if it’s because she doesn’t want to be near me, or if she doesn’t trust me…or herself.

  She’s wearing a pair of sweatpants that I immediately recognize from the habitat, the pair with the small tear above the knee. I gave her those sweatpants to wear the morning after we first met. “Aren’t those mine?” Well, technically not mine but they were mine when I lived in that place.

  “They are.” She averts her gaze for a moment. “We gave everything to charity as you requested but I wanted these. I…needed them.” Her hands smooth over the front of her thighs.

  Needed a piece of clothing. My brain skips. Needed me?

  Desperate for a distraction from the anxiety taking over my body, I look around the worn room. One queen bed, a table with two chairs, and a television bolted to the wall. Strewn over the table are papers and folders, a laptop and her tablet. Olivia makes a vague sweeping gesture as she walks across the room to the kitchenette. “Take a seat wherever you want. Do you want coffee?”

  Guess that takes care of my indecision about touching her. “Sure, thanks.” I settle onto a chair, running my fingers over the chipped Formica tabletop.

  “They’ve only got instant.” She grins and for a moment she’s the woman I remember from our time together. “What kind of establishment expects a guest to drink instant coffee? Though I guess it’s better than Al’s sludge. Just.”

  Her grin is contagious, but my answering smile is still shy. “This place isn’t exactly the height of sophistication.”

  “No,” she agrees, that grin still turning her lips up. “But I like this town. It’s got a good feeling and I think these people would actually stop for you if you were stranded on the side of the road. You chose a great place to settle, Celeste.”

  I stare at her tearing open a small packet of coffee and suddenly she’s my Liv again, the woman who loves few things more than lingering over coffee. I think of mornings by her side as we sipped from steaming mugs. Curled together on the couch, talking, laughing. I think of her favorite mug, the blue one with a white stripe ringing it and the chipped handle. The one she took from the dwelling and had on her desk in that fancy place.

  “Celeste?”

  I startle. “Yes?”

  “Would you prefer tea instead?” asks Liv, who claimed she’d never drunk tea in her life. I believed her, as I now believe everything else she told me before I knew about The Lie.

  “No thanks. Coffee’s fine.” I know I won’t sleep if I drink coffee this late. But then again, I was never going to sleep, even if I hadn’t opened that folder and read everything she’s written about us.

  There are no words between us now, just the sound of her making coffee with a plastic spoon and an old kettle. My fingers feel too long for my hands, like they’re going to fumble everything I touch. I peek at them. They are the same as always. I’m unchanged, yet I feel so different. Olivia sets a mug in front of me and I can tell it’s made just the way I like it—a mug that’s half cold milk and half coffee. I glance up. “You remember.”

  “I remember everything,” she responds, her voice a husky whisper.

  “Thank you.” I swallow a tepid mouthful. Instant aside, it’s perfect. “Why did you kiss me before and then run away from me?”

  Her lips part, as though the question surprises her. She only pauses a moment before answering, “I kissed you because I wanted to, because I’d wanted to from the moment I saw you.” She shrugs, her smile rueful. “And…I ran away because I panicked. I couldn’t stand that I’d done that to you again, sprung it on you and exposed you to my weakness. I guess I was just a bit freaked out.”

  “Okay. That makes sense.” I drink another mouthful then set the mug down. “I read those things you left me.”

  Olivia lowers herself heavily to the chair, like she started to sit but then gave up and let herself fall. “Oh. And?”

  “Was it the truth?”

  “Every word.”

  I’d suspected as much because what reason would she have to lie to herself in months of journaling? Slowly, I nod. “Olivia, I just don’t know how I feel. Even after all this time I can’t label it. I miss you, I miss the time we had but I still hate what you did and I hate myself for being such an idiot.”

  “Celeste—”

  I lift my hand. “Please let me talk. I hate what you did, even though I understand why you did it.” Deep breath. Relax. “I need to know something, away from your job. I just need you to answer me, truthfully with real spoken words. I need you to tell me, not you the Assistant Director of Whatever Corp USA, not you the scientist, but you. I think I deserve it.”

  “I can do that,” she says evenly.

  “If you felt that way about me then why did you do it? Everyone would have known that even if I hadn’t found out, coming in and being with me…that way, would make me fall apart after you’d left. If you love me, how could you do that to me?”

  Olivia blows out a breath, is silent for long moments. “Because I had to. Me, the woman who’d fallen in love with you. Not me the scientist.” She swallows hard, fingers tightening on the mug. “I regret the circumstances, deeply regret that I hurt you, but I can’t regret what we shared because it was one of the most incredibly intimate and fulfilling things I’ve ever experienced. I already told you, Celeste, you make me weak. But aside from that, I suppose I thought I could help you from the outside after I’d left, make it easier for you to deal with the absence.”

  “Nothing would have made it easier,” I insist hoarsely. “Because it felt so right and so real that the moment you left everything became colorless, empty, like someone had sucked everything good out of my world.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, the words taut with emotion. “It was all real for me too.”

  Slowly, I turn the mug in circles on the table. The grating of ceramic on Formica is oddly comforting. I glance at her. “At the start I thought what I felt was just because of the situation, like my thoughts had been warped so much that I only latched on to you because you were there.”

  “I know.”

  “But it’s not true. When you left, I knew it wasn’t false. It’s the truest, purest feeling I’ve ever had. I love you, Olivia.” My voice cracks, breaking up awkwardly. “I can’t help myself. I’ve thought about you pretty much every day since you left, and until I saw you, I thought I was doing okay, you know? I’d grieved for us, for what happened and I’d moved on. Really I had. But I know now that I was just existing. Everything was rushing past me so fast I couldn’t grab any of it.”

  “I know what you mean,” she whispers.

  “My biological mother died,” I tell her. Olivia doesn’t respond but she reaches out to take my hand, squeezing it reassuringly. I stare at my fingers curled around hers and am suddenly overwhelmingly calm. “She had some things she left for me, useless stuff mostly but
there was a letter.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No. Not about the specifics but…I do want to talk about what it made me realize.”

  “What’s that, darling?”

  Darling. I’ve missed that word so much. “I realize that for my whole life, I’ve held Mother up as an ogre, a monstrosity. I felt like she overshadowed and undermined everything, influenced everything in my life. Always there chipping away at my foundations. And I think I’ve built her up to be more than what she was. I mean, she was awful and she did awful things but I’m the one who gave her all the power to hold me back.”

  Slowly, she nods. “What you felt and experienced during your childhood was valid, Celeste. Is valid. The same is true of your feelings about what happened in the habitat, about…what I did. Don’t discount that.”

  “I won’t. I’m not. I mean I know I’m allowed to feel these things. But it’s like I can’t even trust my own memories about Mother anymore. Some of it I know is true but I wonder how much of it I’ve forgotten, maybe the not-so-bad stuff she did? It can’t have all been bad right? I feel like I’ve weighted my scales so that I can blame every bad or uncomfortable or upsetting thing I’ve ever experienced, everything that has ever gone wrong for me, on her. But now I think that’s not fair. Not fair to her, and not fair to me.”

  Using just her forefinger, Olivia pushes her mug aside. “Can I offer an opinion?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I think you’ve done what you needed to in order to live and move forward. You’ve lived in your reality, the same way your mother and sister lived theirs. What was true for you may not have been for them, but that doesn’t make it any less real. It just makes it yours.”

  I can’t help smiling. “When did you get so smart?”

  “I’ve always been this smart.” She laughs. Then the laughter fades, and she grows quiet and contemplative. “I just wasn’t allowed to let you see it.”

  The somberness of the second statement reminds me of everything that was in the way of us. “Mmmm.” My fingers tighten on hers. “Liv, I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I behaved badly. I let this thing expand until it took up every piece of me when I should have dealt with it and moved on. Hanging on to things like this causes nothing but upset. It eats away at you until there’s nothing left but misery. I thought I’d already learned that lesson but apparently not well enough. I should have let it go.”

  Liv’s eyebrows rise but she lets me keep talking. “What you did was cruel and it was underhanded, but it was also within the boundary of what was allowed. I signed up for the experiment and you stuck to the rules. I took all the anger I should have directed at myself for being so naïve, gullible, and ignorant out on you.” I draw a deep breath around tears that want to be free. “But you coming here is still unfair. It’s unfair to come back and then leave again. You can’t expect me to give you everything only to have it snatched away again. I can’t spend my life putting myself back together over and over again.”

  “I don’t expect that from you, Celeste. I don’t expect anything. I hope and I dream, but I have no expectations.” She doesn’t attempt to stop her own tears. They slide slowly down her cheeks, over her chin. “And I would never take anything away from you. Not even myself,” she adds hoarsely.

  “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.” Even as I say it I know that telling someone not to cry is the stupidest thing.

  Her mouth twists in a helpless kind of expression. “I just don’t know what to do. What to say to you,” she admits. “I tried not to come here, but it was the same as trying not to come to you in the compound. I can’t stay away.”

  “I’m glad you came. Maybe it’s too late, but I know now that being apart and not having you is infinitely harder than being upset with you. I can’t do it anymore, Liv. I’m so exhausted.”

  “It’s not too late.” Olivia slides off the chair and moves to me. She gently pushes my knees apart and crouches between them. Her cheeks are wet with tears, her voice choked when she says again, “I’m sorry, Celeste.”

  “I know. I am too.” Now I’m about three seconds away from crying as well.

  Arms slide around my waist and she drops her face into my lap. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, almost panicked now. “I love you.”

  “Come here.” I tug at her, trying to get her to stretch up where I can kiss her. “Please. Come here.”

  She pushes herself up and launches herself at me, almost toppling my chair over backward. Her arms loop around my neck and her body presses hard against mine. Our kiss is hungry, needy, almost consuming me with its ferocity. I pull back, trying to catch my breath. “Slow time,” I whisper.

  She tilts her head, blinking rapidly but the fresh tears spill anyway. “With me?”

  I nod and pull her onto my lap, kissing her again until the unnamed thing rises within me—the thing that’s more than arousal or desire. It’s stronger than lust or even love. It’s a deep need, the deepest I’ve ever had, to be loved, to be known, to be needed and understood. And she gives me all those things without even seeming to realize it.

  I’m content to just kiss her, to feel her hands against my face and the familiar press of her breasts to mine. Content that is, until she makes that groaning sound at the back of her throat I remember so well. When I hear it, I don’t care about anything except being naked with her. It doesn’t matter if we don’t make love, I just need to feel her bare skin against me. “Please, Liv,” I choke out.

  Her eyes swing back and forth, searching my face. “What, darling?”

  “Let me touch you, all of you, please.” My words tremble with urgency.

  She yanks me up and to the bed, where we frantically undress. I need to kiss and touch every millimeter of her until my lips and tongue and hands remember. My fingers move of their own accord, seeking and soothing. I trace the scar on her thigh. My scar.

  “You were always with me, Celeste,” she murmurs. “Even when you weren’t.” Her hand closes around mine and she pulls my fingers into her mouth. She sucks them like a piece of candy, her tongue sliding languorously over my skin.

  The movement of her tongue reminds me of other times and other places. Her eyes are dark and watchful with that look I know so well. She wants this as much as I do. We come together again, but we don’t fight for the upper hand. We move together and with every brush of lips and tongue, I know this is real.

  Looking down at her I have a sudden, unexpected feeling that I could bury my face in her neck and just cry. Cry for what I almost lost. Cry for the hurt and the wasted time we let come between us. Liv soothes me with soft words and caresses and when she reaches up and pulls me down for another kiss it’s sweet and gentle, as though all our urgency from earlier has evaporated.

  She rolls me over to reverse our positions. Her hands find my breasts, a thigh between my legs gives pressure and her tongue tastes the sweat sheening my skin. I know I’m saying things, but I can’t quite make sense of them with all the sensations she’s evoking clouding my thoughts. But Liv understands and she settles between my legs. She slides her tongue through my wetness before taking my heat in her mouth to gently lick and suck me.

  I can’t breathe, I can’t find words except endless yeses and I can’t think about anything, except how good it feels and how much I want to come in her mouth. Liv’s hand clasps mine as she flicks her tongue over the underside of my clit. A low moan slips from my throat and she does it again and again until I come on a strangled cry, soaring above pure physical pleasure to some plane far above what I’d ever known.

  She stays with me, hot breath on the inside of my thigh until I float back to solidify in my body again. “I’ve missed that so much,” she murmurs against my skin.

  I want to say something deep and meaningful, something that will convey just how empty I’ve been without her but the only words that come to mind are, “Me too.”

  Wet, open-mouth kisses make a pilgrima
ge over my belly and breasts. The weight of her on me is comforting, like a blanket in the winter. I wrap my arms around her waist and roll us onto our sides to face one another. Our bodies slip together, the sweat left from our reacquaintance removing all traces of friction. I stroke her leg, up the inside of her thigh to brush light fingers over damp curls.

  “I haven’t been able to come,” she confesses. “Not since you…”

  “I know, sweetheart. You told me.”

  An eyebrow scrunches down for a moment and then she smiles with surprising shyness. “I told you keeping logs was a good idea.”

  “Mmm.” I brush hair away from her eyes. In this light they are less caramel and more maple syrup. “I haven’t either, not until just now.”

  She swallows thickly. “What if I can’t?”

  Some gross cocky part of me wants to strut and swagger, because she hasn’t been able to climax since the last one I gave her, so of course it’s me who will be able to make her come. But she doesn’t need that. She needs sweetness and reassurance. She needs the words that she once gave to me. I kiss her softly and press my forehead to hers. “It doesn’t matter, Liv. It’s not about that. It’s about you and me, and it’s about this.” My hand finds her heat. “It’s about us.”

  Her eyes close partway and she pushes into my hand, begging me with her body. My fingers slip and glide through her folds and my own body clenches with fresh arousal when I feel how much she wants this. Wants me. “You’re so wet.” I kiss her neck, lingering as I murmur, “Is this for me, baby?”

  “Yes,” she gasps as my fingers brush her clit. Then in the next heartbeat she tenses, her voice tremulous. “Celeste, I’m…what if I can’t—”

  Gently, I shush her. Kiss her. Soothe her. “No more can’t, baby, and no more talking. Except to tell me what you want me to do to you.”