Hard Time

by McKenna, Cara

  I touched his face as he caught his breath, tucking his sweat-curled hair behind his ears, loving how heavy his eyelids looked and the pink stain to his cheeks.

  He laughed softly and muttered a happy, “Goddamn.” Securing the condom, he eased out, leaving me to trot to the bathroom, back seconds later.

  With the calisthenics over, the chill of December reasserted itself, and we came back together beneath the covers.

  “Let’s just hide in here for the rest of the day,” I said.

  He turned me onto my side and spooned me, his mouth close to my ear. “Deal.”

  As our bodies came down from the high, I didn’t think I’d ever felt so calm, ever in my life. With this awaiting me at home a few nights a week, I could handle anything my job decided to dish out.

  After ten minutes or more, a thought slipped through my lips. “Does this feel . . .”

  Fingertips skimmed my arm atop the blanket. “Does this feel what?”

  “Does it seem crazy to you . . . the way we met, and the way we’ve connected?” I asked. “Like, what are the chances?”

  “No, not really.”

  “No? It seems so unlikely to me. How we got to talking, and the fact that we’re here now, still into each other, when the backdrop to everything has shifted so much. Awesome, but unlikely.”

  He took my hand, kissed each of my knuckles in turn. “Bear in mind, you met me your first day on the job. But for me, I didn’t meet anybody who made me feel something like what you have for almost five years. It doesn’t feel like a fluke to me. A miracle, maybe, but not a fluke.”

  “Huh . . . And the fact that what we started while you were inside is actually translating, out in the real— Not the real world, sorry. I know that place was plenty real to you. But the big, wide, larger world, or whatever. That doesn’t surprise you?”

  “Surprise? No. My body knew the second I saw you, you made me feel more than just . . . you know.”

  “Horny,” I supplied.

  “Yeah. I mean sure, I was pent up in every way a man can be, but I hadn’t forgot how it is, outside, when you meet somebody you’re just really into. That spark. I felt that the second I saw you. And I felt it in return, when we got close. Felt that energy coming off you, too. So I’m not surprised we’ve found it out here. Not at all.”

  I let his words sink in, awed to hear these thoughts. Ones I’d never have expected. “That makes sense. I guess you must trust your body’s judgment better than I do mine. I was worried after all those letters, all that buildup, one bad kiss would wreck all the chemistry I’d invented between us.”

  “Well, I’ve got a suspicion you think way harder about stuff than I do.”

  I laughed. “Too hard, sometimes.”

  “I like that about you . . . Can I ask you something though? About what does surprise me some, about us?”

  “Sure.”

  “What is it about me? Not counting how bad we want each other. What about me is . . . I dunno. I don’t know if you see me as boyfriend material or anything like that. But what makes me good enough to be with you, this way? To get made pancakes by you, or wake up in your bed?” His voice was tight, shot through with some hopeful breed of skepticism.

  “Believe it or not, that’s one thing I haven’t put too much thought into. The why of it. I fell for your aura, first. God, that sounds so stupid. But I fell for this energy you throw off, and it makes me feel so much, now that you’re out, the day-to-day details can just be whatever they are.” I paused for a breath. “Did that make any sense?”

  “I think so . . . I know why I like you,” he added, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Why?”

  “Because you care about things. Like helping people.”

  “Like at Cousins?”

  I felt him nod. When he spoke, the words came out slowly, chosen with care. “We live in a really apathetic world. And in a really hurting, extra apathetic corner of it. And you met me in such a shitty place, full of mostly shitty people. And I know you’re paid to pretend you care, but I can tell you really do care. I could see how excited you were, to read that book to everybody. You really hoped they’d like it, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and my throat felt tight all of a sudden.

  “And when you helped people, even though they were rude to you, or creeps . . . Well, I’m sure you didn’t love that, but you helped them, anyhow. And you helped me. You were excited to help me, the first time we talked. I could tell.”

  My sinuses tingled.

  “And it had been so long since anybody looked in my eyes, and I saw that inside them,” he added. “Or that I felt, like . . . I dunno. Felt like they saw some potential in me. Something worth polishing up, maybe. Something worth their time, even in a place like that.”

  I was afraid to reply, positive I’d start crying again. He stroked the back of my hand, then squeezed each of my fingers, one by one.

  “You all right?”

  “That’s just very sweet,” I said, a little sob swallowing up the eet.

  He made a happy sound, a sort of laugh-hum, and rested his head on my shoulder, hugging me closer. “I promised I’d try never to do this again—make you cry. But I can’t apologize, since I meant all of that.”

  “No, don’t apologize.”

  “I think you’re special,” he said softly, and kissed my neck. “Special to find inside Cousins, special in this crappy city. Special anyplace, though. Somebody who does what they think’s important, even if it scares them. Even if nobody appreciates it . . . or is willing to admit they appreciate it.”

  After a long silence I said, “I was wrong. I do know why I like you so much. Beyond the infatuation.”

  “Why?”

  “You say stuff like that. In your letters . . . You said the most beautiful things.”

  “You made me see beautiful things again.”

  “See? Stuff like that.”

  “It’s a sign of weakness to feel stuff, in prison. To care. To admit you’re lonely, or sad, or that you’re aching for somebody. Writing to you was the only time I got to get that stuff out of me. I just wrote down whatever needed to come out.”

  “I think you may be the most romantic man I’ve ever met.”

  “Give yourself some credit. I don’t write letters like that to just anybody.”

  “Write to me, while I’m away. Email me.”

  “I will. Whatever you want.” Eric kissed my temple. “How warm’s it gonna be in South Carolina next week?”

  “Fifties, maybe.”

  He rolled onto his back with a lamenting sigh. “Oh, man.”

  “I know. I’m so ready for it.”

  He shot me a grin. “You gonna tell your father who you’ve been seeing?”

  Guilt cooled me and I met his eyes. “Probably not. But not because of your . . . past. Just because I always take ages to tell my folks about boys. Oh God—it’s been so long since I was seeing anybody, it really was a boy I’d been dating. Anyway, no, I probably won’t. They’ve been waiting so long to hear about me meeting somebody, I don’t want to—” I cut myself off.

  “Get their hopes up?”

  Shit. How the fuck had I stumbled into that hole? “Sort of. I guess.”

  “Don’t look so freaked,” Eric said, and smoothed my hair back. “We’re lovers, for now. I know that. And I know a girl doesn’t go telling her father about a man unless she thinks he’s . . . I dunno. Something serious.”

  “I don’t know what we are yet, I guess.”

  “That’s fine. Neither do I.”

  “But I feel bad. That was really tacky.”

  “Hush. It takes a couple months of seeing a guy for a girl to tell her dad about him. It should take a lot more for a girl to tell her state trooper father about the ex-con she’s sleeping with.”
r />   I laugh-groaned at that, shutting my eyes. “God, he’s going to have a heart attack.”

  “Let’s make it to the spring, okay? By then I might stand a chance at getting permission to leave the state. And by then I can legitimately introduce myself as a landscaper. I’m pretty okay with the lies of omission, as you might recall.”

  I gave his shoulder a soft whap, admonishing the self-recrimination I heard in his voice. “Fine,” I agreed. “We deal with that in the spring.”

  Spring . . . The season he so longed for. The end to all this snow and ice and biting cold, the promise of green. Of tee shirts and naps on grassy mattresses. Of swimming in still-chilly lakes, I bet, for this man who’d not felt that weightlessness in far too long. Too long to wait until summer. He’d been released from one prison, but the winter was so much the same, gray and dark and hard. But at least for now, I could warm him. I pressed myself deeper into his embrace.

  For the thaw he’d brought to my body, and the way he’d coaxed me to bloom again, I’d see him through the harshest months.

  I’d bring the energy of spring to him, between these sheets. Rouse the heat of summer between our bodies. Everything a man yearned to feel, and everything a woman yearned to be.

  All for a man who truly deserved every last bit of it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  For the next week, December became June. All the gloom was banished, ice replaced with warmth and vitality; the cold no match for the heat our eyes promised from across a room or a table, the fire our bodies created in my bed.

  I wondered, was this how it felt? Falling in love with someone? Or was this still mere infatuation? Was there a difference? It felt so good, it was difficult to care.

  That following Thursday Eric let me come to his apartment. It was small, located on the second floor of an anonymous brick four-story on a shadier side of town. Every unit in the building was subsidized, he’d told me, so his neighbors were all struggling in one way or another, and you could feel it as you hiked up the thinly carpeted stairs. It was noisy in the common areas, and there was a certain scent of desperation to the place. I could understand why he was eager to move out, once his fines were paid off and his wages no longer garnished.

  But his actual apartment was nice enough. Nothing luxurious, of course, but a medium-sized bedroom, small living area and bathroom, galley kitchen. Not that much smaller than mine, really, just a touch . . . utilitarian. The walls were painted the predictable tired white, and the fixtures and cabinets were all economy. But he kept it fairly tidy, and his windows looked out over a concrete courtyard with a basketball hoop, currently frosted white. A thick old black laptop sat on the kitchen table, looking space-age beside the ancient word processor I’d given him.

  “You kept it,” I said, laughing. Delighted.

  “Course I did. It was a gift. From you.” He mumbled the last bit, hiding a smile.

  The biggest surprise was his plants. He kept them in his living room, mostly in pots; some in small, covered aquariums on milk crates and cardboard boxes, veiled by the fogged glass, arranged at precise distances from the radiators. He even had an orchid—though it wasn’t thriving, to his dismay.

  “How did you afford all this?” I asked.

  “You can get plants real cheap at the garden store, if they’re looking kind of beat. And the fish tanks I got at Goodwill for like a buck apiece. Potting soil was more expensive than the rest of it put together.”

  “Huh.” I imagined him rescuing all these specimens from Home Depot, fretting over them on the unheated drive. Coaxing them back to life.

  “My mom gave me the orchid.” He eyed it with renewed worry. There were gardening books all over, two dozen of them at least, with Post-its sticking from their pages like rumpled feathers. Hand-me-downs from his boss, he told me. He’d placed several gooseneck lamps around the makeshift garden, and the small inventory of lightbulb boxes told me he’d splashed out for full-spectrum. Watering cans and spray bottles and bags of soil, sticks of plant food, twist ties and slim wooden stakes. The clutter of a man obsessed. It charmed me. So many things a man in Eric’s position might choose to throw his precious little spending money at—a nicer phone, car repairs, a TV. Yet he’d chosen this.

  This was what had occupied him, his first weeks out of prison. Not women. Not any other thing a man might miss, locked up so long. Just life, and the challenge of fostering it, here in this rough little corner of a rough town. Green against the white walls, under white bulbs, before the flat, white winter sky.

  He made me dinner in his narrow kitchen—pasta shells stuffed with ricotta cheese that he insisted he’d overcooked, but that I thought were just fine. We made love on his small bed in his noisy building, and though it wasn’t like it was at my place, it was authentic. It was what it was, and the intensity was there between us, same as always.

  The next day he drove me to the airport directly after my shift at Cousins. Only two full days in Charleston, plus most of Sunday, but Eric and I said good-bye as if one of us were being shipped off to war, never to return. Kissing one last time for thirty minutes or more, standing just inside the terminal door. We said good-bye so many times, I had to run from security to my gate with my shoes in my hand to make my flight. And it was totally worth it.

  It was a late flight, landing just after ten. The sky was crystal clear, the air feeling balmy as I waited along the pickup curb, coat folded over my arm. My phone buzzed in my pocket, having found a signal. I pulled it out, expecting a voicemail from my mom. But no, two text messages.

  One from her, reading, Let me know when you’re outside.

  And one from Eric.

  Text me before you go to bed. Give me something to think about while your body’s a thousand miles away.

  Something to think about. I was pretty sure I knew what that meant. It warmed me more than the climate ever could.

  I wrote back, Just landed. Give me an hour or two and I’ll send some inspiration.

  Then I stood there like a dope for two minutes before I remembered to call my mom.

  We were back home inside twenty-five minutes, the house I’d grown up in feeling smaller somehow, after six months away. My dad had to get up for work early the next morning and had already passed out in his recliner, but once roused he stayed up to chat for a half hour. My mom taught fifth grade and was already on school break, so she had nowhere to be anytime soon.

  After Dad made his way up to bed she asked, “You about ready to crash, baby?”

  “Nah, I napped on the plane.”

  “I’ve got a bottle of Riesling open in the fridge . . .”

  “Well then,” I said, perking up, “let’s get this vacation underway.” I might not get her all to myself again like this during the visit. I had a lot of family to see, and not much time to see them.

  She poured us each a healthy glass, and we curled up on either end of the big couch in the den, hugging mismatched afghans. She was wearing a pine-colored velvet button-up, and Christmas settled around me like a spell.

  She smiled with that mom-pride, eyes crinkling. “You look absolutely gorgeous, Annie.”

  I waved the compliment aside, rubbing the heel of my hand across my forehead. “I feel all gross from the flight, but thanks. You, too. I like your highlights, and that cut.”

  She smoothed her hair, faking outlandish pride. “Highlights? I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

  “No, my mistake. Just the natural effect of all that December sun, I’m sure.”

  “You do look great, though,” she repeated earnestly. “I was worried about you, with all the stress of your new job . . . Well, not so new anymore, I guess.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Funny how quick I got used to spending my days in psychiatric wards and prisons.”

  “And everything’s okay, at work?”

  “Yeah, fine. I mean, it’s hard.
I won’t lie. But nothing scary’s happened—nothing dangerous, I mean. It’s way easier now, since I’ve gotten used to the routines, and all the people I work with have gotten to know me, and vice versa.”

  She sighed, staring at her glass. “I worry about you, every Friday. With all those inmates.”

  “They’re just people.”

  “Just people who’re impulsive enough to make violent mistakes and get themselves locked up in prison.”

  I shrugged, squirming on the inside. “They’re not all in for violent stuff. In fact most are in for drug offenses. Anyway, the ones who don’t behave have their enrichment privileges suspended. All the guys I work with have good behavior.”

  “Do they . . . Do they leer at you, at all?”

  I nodded. “Oh yeah. Constantly.”

  She blinked, mouth falling open. “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Mama, some of these guys haven’t been with a woman in years. Of course they’re going to leer at me. That’s like expecting a starving man not to stare at a glazed ham or something.”

  “Still.”

  “Seriously, I’m over it. It felt personal for the first few shifts.” Very personal, with one inmate in particular. “But after a while you chalk it up to a biological distraction and get on with your work. Honestly, there are some days when I’d rather be at Cousins than dealing with the annoying crap people try to get away with when I’m manning the reference desk.”

  She shook her head, took a deep sip. “Well, I just don’t know how you do it. But good for you. It’s very important work. And your father and I just think it’s so brave.”

  I blushed at that, not comfortable with the compliment. After all, it was arguably cowardice that had sent me to Michigan in the first place. I’d fled my shame over the abuse I’d put up with, staying with Justin, only to end up surrounded by violent men on a weekly basis. Some of the shrinks at Larkhaven would surely have a grand old time figuring that one out. Perhaps Cousins was my exposure therapy. Perhaps Eric was my therapy. Some deep and driving need to prove I could trust a man again—and one who looked so woefully untrustworthy, on paper.