“I’ll be staying here with my coffee then.”
“Safe choice.” She hopped up in the old desk and swung her legs back and forth underneath. “So, this is where the magic happens?”
“If by magic you mean the horny patrons sneak off for a quickie right where you’re sitting…then yes.”
She froze, her eyes stuck wide, and I couldn’t help but smile at the mix of revulsion and doubt on her face. “You’re screwing with me.”
“Well, they will do it anywhere dark and quiet. So not just right where you are.”
She started swinging her legs again as she peered around the room. The couch and the desk dominated most of the dingy space. A file cabinet with my old taxes sat in the corner, but I’d never needed much. It occurred to me, Mara couldn’t sit still if someone tied her down and sat on top of her. I didn’t even have the energy to let my mind wander to the filthy places from there.
“What else do you do all day?” she asked, shuffling papers in a pile.
I had no organizational system, and if it made her happy to move them, I wouldn’t complain.
She eyed me, making sure I wasn’t about to start raving like a loon before lining the sheets up and knocking them together vertically.
“What do we do in a bar? Generally, question our series of damaging life choices.”
“Are you always so sarcastic in the morning?”
“Only when people wake me up before a reasonable hour.”
“I brought you coffee.” She gestured at the now empty mug and sent her legs swinging again.
“Next time, bring the pot.” I shifted around on the couch intent on standing and getting on with the day.
She blocked my path with an extended leg. “Floor is still wet.”
“This floor is going to be more wet if you don’t let me get through.”
With a scowl, she dropped her leg, and I pinched her thigh before slinking out the door. The floor had dried mostly, and I kept to the matte spots so I could keep from messing up her work. Once I was groomed and dressed, I came back in to find her sweeping the office floor. “We don’t do employees of the month here.”
She didn’t respond, only kept on swiping the broom back and forth, into crevices, and under furniture.
“Mara?”
No answer. I clapped my hands, and she jerked to a halt and finally looked my way. She blinked a few times as if coming out of a fog before forcing a smile. I could tell she didn’t want to get into it, and I wouldn’t push her on it right now.
“I’m going to make something to eat. Are you hungry?”
I backed out the door to her quick nod. The sound of the broom started again before I ducked into the kitchen. The gleam on the stainless steel struck me first, and the fact that every glass was put away. That hadn’t happened since 1989.
She made me feel like a slacker, and I’d only let her in the door a couple hours ago. I quickly tossed some English muffins in the toaster oven and fried a couple eggs. Sandwiches were the go-to when I needed to eat, but didn’t really care what went down. Hopefully, she wouldn’t either.
I carried the plates back to the office, and this time, I found her sitting on the couch, the blanket now folded neatly over the back. Carte blanche for five minutes, and I return to an entirely new room. “Uh…did you turn into Mr. Clean overnight?” I handed her the plate as I studied the paper piles in a neat line across the desk.
“I don’t remember you being so neat and tidy before.”
I watched her gently peel small pieces of egg off the edges of her sandwich. “I don’t think I was. The motion and the activity give me something to focus on. It turns the other parts of my brain off. It helps me forget.”
I knew rocky terrain when it punched me in the face. Treading carefully might keep her talking. If I charged in, she might clam up and never speak on the subject again. Unfortunately, I’d never been known for my tact. “What are you trying to forget?”
She took a bite of the sandwich before glaring at me.
“Okay, bad choice of words. I’ll shut up now.”
She finished chewing. “It’s not that I have to forget. More like my mind goes quiet. It’s one of the only times everything feels still and silent. I don’t get that much. Between random headaches and ringing in my ears, plus the staring when I go out in public. I just long for these stretches of serenity, but I barely get ahold of them sometimes.”
“If it helps, that isn’t a brain injury thing, that is a life thing.”
Her forehead wrinkled, and she ate some more. I couldn’t help but watch her. These little things were the stuff we never got to do. The last time we ate together had been in the high school cafeteria. And we only sat together because neither of us could stand to sit alone. Solidarity in exclusion.
We never got to have a real first kiss. We never got to dance together. Wake up in each other’s arms and make love in the shower. An entire lifetime of things toppled through my mind. All the things I spent the year writing to her about. None of it ever happened. Was now our chance? Or had too much damage been done on either side?
When she finished, she stood and gripped my plate. “Are you finished?”
I nodded and watched her walk out the door. Even going to the kitchen, when her back faced me, it brought up something deep and dark I’d shoved down. The anger and the humiliation of falling in love and then being left with endless silence. I’d spent years assuming she didn’t want me. Now she’d returned, and I had yet to forgive or forget, even though it wasn’t her fault.
I didn’t have a doubt I loved her. But I also didn’t doubt a tiny part of me hated her for the years she robbed from me. The years of need and longing and empty silence.
How did I rectify the two emotions? It seemed simple enough, forgive and forget. This wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t my fault, but that excuse didn’t dull the edge of the pain. It didn’t just invalidate years of frustration.
So how could a man love and hate a woman at the same time?
My thoughts were stalled by the severe yank of a ripcord when I looked up to catch her entering the office again. This time, the only thing barring every inch of her skin from my eyes was an apple print apron.
Oblivion
Mara
I regretted walking in like this. Trying to force him into something he obviously held back on. Why the hell did I feel the need to push him? It started the second I saw him in the parking lot. The desire to stretch toward him and see how far I could pull him with me.
I didn’t run from the explosions. I didn’t run from the bullets. I didn’t run from the hospitals.
But I ran from him.
Fled back to the tiny bathroom in the corridor and huddled on the closed toilet shaking. Shame beat in me so deep, it turned my stomach over until I felt the sting of bile in the back of my throat. Who was this woman?
I wanted him, and yes, his touch helped bring some semblance of peace to the roiling in my brain. But I felt like a junkie hunting for her next fix.
A soft knock interrupted me before I started to sob loudly.
“Mara?” Murphy called through the sturdy wood door.
I wiped my cheeks and grabbed my jeans from where I’d left them on the floor. If he and I were going to talk, I’d do it clothed. I also resolved to stop throwing myself at him this way. He’d said he loved me. I supposed the declaration entitled me to some leeway, but if I kept acting like this, maybe he’d take it back.
“Mara?” he called again with another knock.
I sucked in a gust of air, trying to steady myself before I answered. “Yes?”
“Come out and talk to me. Don’t do this?”
I got my bra and shirt on then slipped into my boots. “Do what?”
He jiggled the knob but didn’t push the unlocked door open. I checked my red splotched face in the mirror before opening the door. He jerked back his hand still hovering from gripping the knob.
“Are you alright?” he asked while scanning
me from my wet lashes to my unlaced boots.
I shoved past him toward the office so I could get more distance between us. Exactly the opposite of what I wanted, but this was a test of wills now. I threw myself on the couch, and he joined me, crowding close, so I pushed him back.
“A minute ago, you were standing here naked. Without a word, you left, and now you want space? You are being impossible, woman,” he said then followed it with a groan and running his hands over his face. His fingers scraped along the stubble on his chin and cheeks, the scratching sound breaking up my pounding heartbeat.
“I shouldn’t have done that. It was stupid. This is your business, and I’m now an employee…” I threw up my hands trying to put into words what I wasn’t willing to say.
I’m an idiot. I can’t control myself. I need to be committed.
“You aren’t just an employee, and it’s never a hardship to see you naked. I just want to know why you are pushing so hard. We have all the time in the world.”
I started pointedly at a black scuff mark on the wall, ensuring he didn’t see the pain in my eyes.
As if reading me like a book, he hopped himself closer to me. “If you think for one second I don’t want you, then let me disavow you of that notion now. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about being inside you for five years.”
His pronouncement ricocheted through my head and into my chest, sparking against my heart. All the while leaving a trail of heat down to my core. He said he wanted me, and yet, he kept pushing me away. Because you’re fucking unstable.
He reached out and took the hand closest to him and brought my fingers to his mouth. I turned to face him now, my index and pointer finger resting softly against the muted pink of his lower lip.
“If you won’t hear what I have to say, maybe feeling the words leave my mouth will give you the assurance you need. I want you Mara Williams. I’d lay you down on my desk and take you right now if I knew you wanted it too.”
I opened my mouth to tell him I did, and he shook his head. “I know something is going on with you. And I don’t want us finally coming together to be some sort of mistake, or something you’ll regret later when you are feeling more like yourself.”
I tried to twist my fingers from his grasp, but he clamped his own tighter around my palm. “No. You aren’t running again. Not ever again, if I have a say about it.”
“And if you don’t?”
He licked his lips, his tongue grazing against my fingertips, and the banked inferno inside me roared to life.
Damn him.
“Then I’ll just have to learn how to be persuasive.”
He let me pull away, and I just stared at him. This beautiful man deserved so much more than me. A broken battered shell of a woman. I’d likely never have kids. I didn’t have any family. Hell, I’d been practically useless for the last four years.
“What do you want with me? You could have anyone.”
He didn’t touch me, but his hands shifted like he wanted to pull me in. “You’re not anyone. No one makes me want to laugh and throw things at the same time. No one has ever made me wonder what it would be like to not fight all the time. And no one has ever made me think I’d be happy spending the rest of my life arguing and making up.”
It wasn’t me he wanted. He’d longed for a ghost, a woman who was destroyed by a bomb and bullet. I couldn’t live up to her. How could anyone by the way his eyes went hazy when he talked about her. “You don’t want me,” I said, curling my arms around my belly. “The woman you knew is dead.”
He reached out and softly tiled my chin to look at him. “You might think she is because you never knew her, but I see her in you. Not just your looks, but by the glint of steel in your eyes. And how you keep pushing me away while trying to make sure I know you don’t mean it. You’re not as lost as you think you are.”
My next exhale stuttered out of me. I equally regretted coming back here and not running back sooner. Nothing I could do about it now.
“So, you were going to tell me what I’ll be doing.”
His brow furrowed up at the subject change, but he didn’t press me. Instead, he grabbed my hand, pulled me from the couch, out to the bar. “Do you know how to make any drinks?”
I shook my head. “Where would I have learned that?”
“I have no idea what you’ve been up to for four years. Maybe you went to Chicago and learned bartending. Did you?” He smiled gently, trying to coax one from me, but it would take more effort after how I shamed myself earlier.
“Nope, I don’t drink much. It doesn’t mix with the standing pain med prescription I have.”
He tipped his head and spun to face the liquor. “Clear liquor on this side and brown on that side. You’ll figure it out. Most of the regulars are beer drinkers anyway, and those who order liquor usually tell you the name of what they want.”
He squeezed past me, tapping his hands on my waist, while brushing his front to my behind despite the extra space on either side of us. Then he pointed to the cash register. “Money goes in there, tips in there. A price sheet is on the other side. We don’t serve any food besides peanuts. Easy enough.”
I blinked at him a few times. “Easy enough,” I repeated, hoping he bought it. “What time do you open?”
He checked the clock on the wall. “In about twenty minutes, and we stay open until midnight. If you need a break, just let me know.”
Once I got the rhythm of the place, it didn’t seem so overwhelming. People filtered in and out, and while the place was never actually busy, I stayed mobile for most of the afternoon and evening. It helped occupy my mind, and I fell into an almost trance of peace while I stayed in motion. Feeling useful for the first time in years shaved some of the anger I’d been holding on to so tightly.
I wiped one end of the bar down, and Murphy came over, bumping into me, like he had been all day. At some point, I realized it was his way of having an excuse to touch me, and I didn’t mind it. His skin burned warm every time it grazed mine, and I thought about how good he’d feel behind me in the shower.
“You should take a break,” Murphy said, pulling me from a dangerous spiral.
“I’m good.”
He trapped my hand under his over the wet rag. “Please, go sit down for a minute. Drink some water. I’ll come bring you a sandwich in a minute.”
I didn’t like men bossing me around, but arguing with him seemed like it might take longer and ensure I’d spend more time sitting, so I relinquished the cloth and went to the office. It was dark outside, so I flipped on the light. The silence enveloped me, and I didn’t like it.
Murphy followed me a few seconds later and threw himself on the couch next to me, a sandwich wrapped in a napkin in one hand. “Are you hungry?”
I shook my head, and he sat the sandwich on the desk before turning to me again. Something in his eyes drew a hot line through me, sizzling all the way to my toes. “What…” I began.
He cut me off by smashing his lips into mine one hand on my cheek, the other clawing at my hips to shift me onto his lap. A pressure built in my belly and fell into him, releasing the pent-up arousal that he’d stoked all day with every look and every touch.
He kissed me hard and deep, drawing my tongue between his lips with his own. Spearmint and cold ice flashed in my head, and it battled with the sheer heat of his hands moving up my bare back under my shirt.
I jerked back trying to catch my breath, my chest heaving. Damn, I wanted to unbutton his jeans and have him right here.
“Don’t do it,” he whispered. “We are taking this slow. That means we are only making out.”
I didn’t recognize the whimper that came out of me, and he pressed his forehead to mine. “I know,” he said. “I want to bend you over the desk so bad, I can barely keep still. I want to push into you from behind while your hands clutch tight to the edge. I want to fuck you until you can’t think about anything except me inside you.”
He wasn’t helping my sudden br
eathing problems. My entire body beat with wanting him.
“But I can give you something,” he added.
Before I registered what he was about to do, he delved his fingers into my jeans, and his finger reached my clit in seconds.
It took less than a minute for him to cause me to grind down on his fingers.
“Fuck, you look so good,” he murmured. “Come for me, right here, right now. Let me feel you let go.”
At his command, I did. I broke apart and held onto his shoulders as I shook. He slowed his massage until I came back to myself and then pulled his hand free. Through the haze, I reached for his zipper, and he stopped me, the scent of my deodorant, his cologne, and sex in the hot air between us. “No, this was for you. And if you’re a good girl, I’ll let you give me mine later.”
He shifted up, kissed me quickly, and slipped away back out to the bar. I sat there, my pants undone after my first orgasm in so long, trying to figure out why I wanted him even more now.
Yellow Submarine
Murphy
I carried her to her bed. Not in the way I might have wished, but in the way she needed. After last call, I sent her to take a break before closing up, and she lay down on the couch and passed out in the mere minutes it took for me to usher out the final round of patrons. Since she’d done so much cleaning earlier in the day, I took care of the rest and then gently pried her off the couch and out the door to her own bed.
We had to do something about the hotel situation, though. Once I made it through the door, I laid her down, took her shoes and jeans off, curled up behind her, and marveled at the way her ribcage expanded under my hands with each dreamy exhale.
I had to keep telling myself I didn’t dream her. Some imagined specter sent to pry me apart at the seams she’d ripped open years before which were barely sewn up after.
Despite her coming to find me after all this time, she held herself back. She didn’t realize she did, as far as I could tell. But all the machinations of her mind were tucked away tight, and she kept pushing me. Not in the way she used to do. What she did now felt darker, rooted in something besides pride or whatever reason she and I fought so much before.
Make Me Forget Page 6
