by Joey W. Hill
His conscience was a persistent bastard. It didn’t help that every moment they stood in what was essentially her bedroom, he wanted to grab her around the waist, press her luscious body against the wall and kiss her until she was writhing against him in that nice, cock-hardening way she did.
This might be a date, but it couldn’t be that kind of date. She was skittish, relationship-shy. Even if he had to rubber band his dick in a choke hold, he was going to make sure she felt less skittish around him. Then maybe he’d reward his tremendous restraint by tying her up on that cot and fucking her brains out.
“Want to help me fold some towels?” she asked. “That way we can get out of here even sooner.”
“It’d be my pleasure.” He’d do his best not to think about how folding towels would clear the mattress. She was right. The sooner they got out of here, the better.
"Those are the biggest chocolate chip cookies I've ever seen," Julie said, pointing to a stall.
"Yeah. They’re hard as rocks and taste like crap. The lady you want is over here." He drew her over to a table where the cookies were much smaller but wrapped a half dozen to a pack, brightly colored curly ribbon tied around cellophane. "Trust me, they're worth every cent of your $3." He bought her a couple of them and dropped them in the tote she'd brought. He gave the bedazzled Tinkerbell design a bemused look.
“Everyone loves sparkly things,” she told him. “Even if they don’t admit it.”
“I’d bedazzle all my jeans if it wouldn’t blind the roofing crew and cause accidents,” he agreed.
“Safety first.” She chuckled and glanced back at his truck in the parking lot. “Weren’t you going to bring your cooler for the meats?”
"I buy perishables at the end. No fun lugging around a cooler when you’re looking at other things. This is all I need right now.” He gripped the strap of the pack he seemed to always have with him, now on his shoulder. Then he squeezed her hand. “And this.”
"Being a roofer must pay pretty well if you can buy food like this regularly,” she observed, covering the absurd desire to dimple like a teenager. They’d moved into the stalls where the organic, humanely raised meats were advertised.
“Well, yes and no. Subcontractors often get paid crap, but I’ve run my own roofing business for some time now. I hire the crews that work with me and pay them fair, and it works out well for all of us. Plus, meats are higher priced, yeah, but I don’t buy a lot of it. It’s a small part of my diet. And a lot of stuff here isn’t as expensive as you’d expect, like the fresh fruits and vegetables.” He shrugged. “I don't carry any debt. I rent a small place on my landlady's property and she doesn’t charge much because I help her take care of her horses.”
He cocked his head. “So, if you think about ratios of income to expenses, I'm doing a lot better than most millionaires. Keep that in mind if you're looking to be a kept woman. As long as your needs are small."
"It has ever been my goal in life to be a kept woman. I did offer myself as a sex slave to a very wealthy gay man and his partner, but they didn’t go for it. Even though they agreed keep me anyway, as a friend, I didn’t want to be a charity case. I wanted the sex slave job.”
"Well, that’s good news. I can offer you a sex slave position immediately. I have a current opening. I just didn't want to scare you off."
Julie made a face at him, then her attention was caught by something else. “Oh, look at all the colors.”
While she wandered into another stall, Des gestured. “I’m going to double back and tell the meat guy what to hold for me. I won’t be far.”
“Okay. Ask him to set aside a pack of the burgers for me. I’ll pay you for them.”
His noncommittal gesture as he walked away told Julie she’d probably have to stuff some money in his truck console when he wasn’t looking. She wasn’t going to let him pay for everything today. Especially since they’d walked through ten stalls and she’d already seen twenty things she’d love to have. A bunch of them were in front of her now.
The colorful kites, windsocks and chimes made a delightful symphony of rustling fabric and striking metal as she ambled through them. The proprietress, a stocky woman with brush cut hair and a giant tattoo of Snoopy on her biceps, was more than willing to talk to her about how she created her wares.
“Do you have a bunch of these where you sleep?” Julie asked at length, turning around in a circle. “I’d keep a fan running so they could make music all night.”
The vendor laughed. “It would be a little much every night, but I do have a hammock in my workshop to take naps there. I open up the windows in the fall for just that reason.” She winked. “There’s a ceiling fan for winter.”
Julie trailed her fingers through a field of filmy wind socks that looked like snakes, dragons and rainbows, and left the stall as more customers entered it. She found Des sitting under a tree, knees bent and head against the trunk as he watched her. His expression suggested she pleased him merely by giving him the opportunity to watch her, which brought back that silly teenage dimpling urge again.
“Tired you out already?” she asked, sitting down next to him.
“Just enjoying you,” he said. “I spend so much time on rooftops, I forget how nice the view is at eye level.”
“Hmm.” She linked her fingers over his bent knee and considered him. “I’d like to ask you a question. Conceptual, not personal.”
He cast her an intrigued look. “Okay.”
“If your dog was trapped in a burning house, and a little boy you didn’t know ran out into a busy street, who would you try to save?”
“My dog,” he said.
“Really? Why?”
Des ticked off the points on his fingers. “A kid runs into the street, cars will wreck to avoid hitting him, and other pedestrians will run after him to help. Very few might run into a burning house to save my dog, but lots will run into the street to save the child.”
“Do you think you’d think it through that fast?”
“My dog only has me,” he observed, “and I’m his person. By adopting him, I made a covenant to care for and protect him. He’s the most helpless one in that situation, so instinct would take me toward him.” He studied her. “Why did you ask me that?”
“It tells me whether you give expected answers, or if you give it straight from the heart.”
“Why else?”
“I like being surprised. You manage to impress a girl by not trying to impress her.”
“I’ve fooled you, because everything I’m doing is about impressing you. My turn. What’s your biggest fear?"
She tilted her head up to look into his face. “About relationships or life in general?”
“Your choice.”
“Typical stuff. Death, getting older, being alone. Normal for hitting the forty year range." She shifted uncomfortably. He touched her hand.
“Why death?”
“It’s the ultimate unknown, the biggest loss of control we face.”
“So how do you deal with it?”
Her gaze lifted back to his face. She’d been worried he’d zero in on the “alone” part, yet it was the death part that interested him. His expression was neutral, but she wondered how he’d dealt with it through his formative years. Death was a specter that usually grew in size as one aged. As a child, it was a barely understood concept; as a teen, a fly brushed away, inconsequential to their misguided sense of immortality. Yet he’d had to live under its shadow in a way different from a healthy child, teen or adult with typical fears about the ephemeral nature of life.
"I think about Skye Bartusick and James Garner."
"Excuse me?"
She grinned. "It's rare to see a clueless look on your face. It's cute."
“Annoying woman.” He snorted and flicked her fingers, still linked over his bent knee. “Who is Skye Bartusick?"
"She was in the movie The Patriot with Mel Gibson. She played his youngest daughter, Sara. The actress died at twenty-one, complica
tions related to seizures, or something like that. When I saw a picture of her on the Internet, she still had that sweet little girl's face she had in the movie. It upset me, thinking how panicked she might be, how afraid, when she wasn't expecting death to happen so suddenly. Then I found out that James Garner died on the same day.”
Julie paused as a man walked by with a trio of Australian shepherds. She went to her knees to pet the enthusiastic threesome, and asked the man for their names. When she settled back, she was feeling a little foolish about her complicated answer and was going to drop it, but she saw Des was waiting for her to continue, his expectant look asking for more.
“James Garner was so reassuring and fatherly in a lot of the roles he played later in his life. I saw the two of them arriving at the gates of Heaven together, this little girl from The Patriot and James Garner, maybe like in his older Maverick reprise role, also with Mel Gibson. Seven degrees of separation, right?” She plucked at a couple blades of grass, wondering if Des was thinking she was nuts, but she was going to finish the story, because he’d asked.
“When you get to Heaven I think you can be any age you need or want to be, so I could see James deciding to step into that reassuring fatherly role for Skye one more time. He’d hold her hand so she wouldn’t be scared. Even if he was looking forward to being young again in Heaven, and knew she had nothing to fear now, he’d want her to feel safe, and nothing does that like holding someone’s hand.”
"Hmm." He was looking at her, but his eyes weren’t focused, as if he was thinking about her words. So she finished her thought.
“I thought, if the Powers That Be took them on the same day, there has to be something making sure we're all okay, right? No matter how dumbass a theory it is, it makes me feel better.”
“It’s a good theory.” He stroked her hair away from her cheek. “I like it. I like you.”
Suddenly nervous, she rose to her feet and offered him her hand. “I like you, too. Want to go walk by the lake?”
He grasped her hand but used his own strength to pull himself up. He retained his grip on her, though. Holding hands. “Sure.”
“My turn again,” she said, seeking to fill in the silence. “Your most embarrassing moment?”
“Why would you want to know that?”
“Because I want to know you're not perfect.”
Des laughed. “I've never been called or considered perfect in my entire life.” He stopped and put his hands on her face in a caress, but like he was removing glasses.
“What are you doing?”
“I'm removing those rose colored lenses I must have accidentally put on you.”
She gave him an amused look. “You did tell me once if you touched me a certain way I would see an irresistible guy hung like a moose. Maybe the enchantment hasn't worn off yet.”
“Even after I yelled at you about Pablo?”
“Oh, well see, I’d forgotten that. Enchantment blown. And you still haven’t answered the question. Most embarrassing moment.”
He didn’t let her pull away, bringing her back to his side. “Just the stereotypical shit. In middle school I was the self-conscious skinny guy. I was always getting called out of class to handle stuff related to my diabetes and other health crap. The weak get targeted; it’s the law of nature. A bunch of guys stripped me down in the locker room at PE and shoved me into the girls’ area.”
As she winced, he grimaced. “That wasn’t nearly as bad as the epileptic seizure I had because of the stress. They all bolted, except this one girl, who called the coach and put one of her books in my mouth so I wouldn’t bite through my tongue. She had an epileptic brother. She was also one of the prettiest girls in the ninth grade.”
“Oh, Des.”
He shook her head. “That wasn’t the most embarrassing thing. Every time she saw me after that, she was really kind to me. Probably because she knew how her brother had to deal with the same thing, but I was a stupid seventh grader. The other guys would pat me on the head after she talked to me, mocking me, making me feel like she pitied me. One of them told me I was her little pet. When I denied it, he dared me to steal her bra out of the locker room and hang it over the school entrance with her name written on it.”
Julie stopped. “You didn’t.”
He gave her a pained look. “I did. I’ll never forget her face when she knew it was me. That was the most shameful, embarrassing moment of my life, because I’d repaid her kindness with being a shit, just because I wanted not to feel like a special needs kid. Which is exactly what I was, of course. I’d like to say I’ve improved since then, but I still don’t really like getting a lot of attention over it, as you already know. But at least I’ve evolved. I don’t retaliate with underwear theft.”
“Progress.” She linked arms with him. “Did you apologize to her?”
“I did. She didn’t forgive me, understandably, but I’ve always hoped when she became an adult, she understood better why I did what I did and realized I was just a dumbass kid who didn’t know better.”
“Or she morally disintegrated from your unkindness and now grifts old ladies out of their social security. Which she spends on heroin instead of caring for the three kids she’s had from all different fathers.”
“Oh, thanks for that. Come here.”
She shrieked and dodged as he made a grab for her, setting off an impromptu chase to the edge of the manmade lake. He caught her there as she tried to feint around him and he took her down to the ground, albeit gently, as if knowing she might still be sore from her Pablo experience. Julie had loaded up on ibuprofen, though, so she wouldn’t mind if he was a little rough. Des handed out a far more pleasurable kind of pain.
Her reaction probably showed when he pinned her wrists. She quieted as his hands closed around them, holding her arms to either side as he bent over her.
“I like how you get when I hold you like this,” he said. “Quiet, like a bird cupped beneath my hands. Waiting.”
Her breath went somewhere else at his intent look. But either he realized they were in a too-public venue for such intimate play, or he recalled they were supposed to keep this casual, because he eased off, though his fingers caressed her wrists.
“Want a snack?” He pulled out one of the sandwiches from his pack and offered her half. As they chewed in companionable silence, they shared a bottle of water while sitting on the grass shoulder to shoulder. He posed the next question.
“Worst moment of your life?”
“It’d be hard to top the one you just described.”
“That was the most embarrassing. Nowhere near the worst. My childhood is one big tragedy.” He winked at her. “It’s why I’m so warped now. You’re avoiding.”
“A little bit. I don’t really want to go there. Okay?”
“All right. But you can tell me sometime, Julie. It’d be okay.”
She met his gaze, and believed him. “What about you? Can you answer the question?”
He found a napkin in the tote and used it, offering her half. “I don't really think of my life that way. During a bad moment, I think of what's going to happen next, or what good I can get out of the bad, because there's usually something. I just don't think about things being a worst moment.”
“I like that.” She ate most of her sandwich, but gave some crusts to the hopeful mallards and sharp-eyed imperious Canadian geese gathering around them.
“I always imagine them as a biker gang.” She looked toward the geese. “Their wings like leather jackets, cigarettes dangling from their bills. I told Thomas that once, and he did a sketch of it for me.”
“Who’s Thomas?”
“One of my two best friends.”
“Ah. The ones whose approval any potential suitors have to have.” He had his arm propped behind her so she could lean on it as he ate his sandwich. When he looked toward her, their faces were distractingly close. “I know how women are about their BFFs liking their boyfriends,” he said. “Are they very intimidating? Just askin
g hypothetically, since this isn’t a date.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “They’re…well, a picture makes more sense.” She called up the photo she had on her phone. It had been snapped at a nightclub where Marcus and Thomas had taken her dancing. When Des glanced at it, his expression became far more speculative, giving her stomach a nice roll.
“You have two male BFFs?”
“Yep, that’s Marcus and Thomas. They’re the gay couple I mentioned earlier.”
“Hmm.” Des studied the photo more critically. “What I see is you in a sexy red dress, between two men whose body language makes it clear they think you’re amazing. And this one, he’s angled in front of both of you, saying he’s the alpha and he’ll fuck up anyone who messes with either of you.”
“That’s Marcus. You’re good,” she said. “Thomas can do good old boy Southern macho in a heartbeat when he’s riled, but otherwise he’s the lake. Marcus is the crashing ocean. Thomas’s storms come out mostly in his paintings. He’s an artist and Marcus represents his work. He’s also a gallery owner in New York. They keep a second house in North Carolina, because that’s where Thomas’s family is. You might get to meet them.”
She studied the picture fondly before tucking her phone back in her pocket. “They’re married. To each other, in case your superpowers didn’t pick up that they’re wearing wedding rings.”
He made a face at her. “It’s a small picture.”
“You got all that other stuff off of it.”
“That’s body language, easier to translate even in reduced size.” He shifted, his side pressing into hers, and bent his head to trail his lips along the tender flesh beneath her ear. Julie drew in a breath at the sensation and was glad she’d pulled her hair up.
“So explain one thing to me,” he said. “Why does Marcus have Dom vibing off of him, and the body language between the three of you suggests they’ve seen you naked?”
He caught her off guard. She prized her honest nature, but sometimes she wished she had a poker face, where she could avoid certain subjects without a single ripple on her countenance. Instead, she tripped over her own tongue or hesitated, like she did now, making it obvious there was something to tell.
