by M. O'Keefe
Us. Together. As basic as it could be.
I shifted my hand until I had her clit between my two fingers and I squeezed it until her eyes flew open and looked right into mine.
“Good?” I breathed.
“So good.”
Her hips were lifting and I could tell she needed more. Wanted more.
This pleasure of ours had been buried under the rubble of the last few days and we had to work hard to get it out.
I remembered what she said she liked, from the conversations months ago, and I rolled her carefully onto her stomach and braced myself over her, giving her just a little weight, a little pressure to push her pussy into the mattress. Her pussy and my fingers.
She braced her hands wide and pushed back into me. “Dylan,” she whispered, frantic and wild, grinding herself against the mattress and against me.
Against my fingers she was hot and wet and against my chest she was small and sleek. Warm and alive. My cock was squeezed between her ass and my stomach and it hurt. Ached. I imagined coming on her back. How good it would feel to let go, how hot it would look. The mess of me all over the beauty of her.
Her hips were moving in small, tight circles, my hand was beginning to ache from the awkward position, but I wouldn’t move. Not if the trailer was on fire. I was with her to the end.
Her hands grabbed the sheets, pulling them up off the edge of the mattress.
“Fuck, yes….Dylan,” she moaned. She was close, I could feel the tension of her body, every muscle taut as if she were wrestling the orgasm.
“Come on, baby,” I breathed, “come for me. Let me feel you. Let me feel all of you.”
She whimpered in her throat, excited by my words. She had a thing for filthy talk and I could get behind that.
I put my forehead against her shoulder and whispered how hot she was, how wet. How I remembered how she tasted, and she shook beneath me.
Close, I thought. She’s so close and I held on until she stiffened and shook and cried out into the folds of that pillow.
When it was over, her body replete and soft against mine, her hair and part of the pillowcase over her face, I slowly eased myself away, careful not to touch where I knew she was sensitive.
My hand glistened in the moonlight and if this were just a precursor, the beginning of a night of depravity, I would have held it to her face and told her to lick it. To taste herself.
My cock, hard as a rail, twitched against her. And I shifted away so I could press that wet hand against my cock, trying to get it to behave.
“Thank you,” she said, pushing the pillowcase off her face and rolling over to face me.
The bruises and her lip were highlighted by the moonlight and I hated myself all over again.
I pushed harder against my cock until it hurt. But the damn thing was insistent.
Her fingers against my face made me jump.
She touched the bruised corner of my lip. The raw scrape against my cheek. The corner of my black eye.
Aren’t we a pair, I thought and smiled at her weakly.
“I want to make you feel good, too,” she said.
“You already have,” I told her. I would have kissed her, but our mouths were a mess. And I was barely holding on.
Her hand slipped down over the fist I was using to try to control my cock. She pushed it away and replaced it with her own fingers. Small and nimble. Surprisingly sure.
“I’m not a child,” she said. “And I’m not ill. I’m a woman. And I know what I want. I want to give you what you just gave me. Nothing in my life has ever been equal. Ever. I want this…I want us to be equal.”
If there was a way to resist that, I didn’t know it.
I fell onto my back and dropped my hand to my side. She curled up over me, her fingers slipping down into my underwear. I jumped.
“Does that hurt?” she asked, with wide eyes.
I could only shake my head. Words were gone.
She pulled down my underwear, and my cock, eager and hard, lay long against my belly.
She shifted on the bed and I knew what was coming, I braced myself for it, but her mouth—wet and warm, tight—still shocked me. Still made my entire body twitch. The stitches in my side pulled and I winced, pressing my hand against them.
The pain took a chunk out of the pleasure, but she took more of me. Inch by slow, hot inch. I lifted my head and watched my cock disappear into her mouth and everything but her and this pleasure vanished.
At my side I curled my hands into fists, refusing to touch her.
The way I usually fucked had no place in this trailer. No place with her and what we were giving each other, and so I dropped my head back on the pillow and closed my eyes and concentrated on her touch.
Her hand found a rhythm with her mouth, with her tongue, and she got faster and harder. She did something fancy, curling the palm of her hand over the head of my cock for a second before slipping me back into her mouth.
The stripper, I remembered. She learned that from watching the stripper give that guy a blow job.
Affection flooded me, running headlong with my lust, and it was over for me. I felt the orgasm building in the base of my spine, in the nerves at the bottom of my feet.
“I’m gonna come,” I told her, curling my hand over her shoulder, giving her warning. She took me deeper, the head of my cock brushing the back of her throat, and I couldn’t stop myself.
I came in wild, thick spurts into her mouth. Down her throat.
Slowly, sweetly, she milked me with her hand and I twitched in crazy aftershock. My entire body felt like I’d been electrocuted.
She sat back, her face beaming. Her beauty like a fist in my stomach.
“Thank you,” I said to her.
“Felt good?”
“Felt fucking amazing.”
She lay back down next to me, both of us on our backs, smiling up at the ceiling with our split lips like a couple of goons.
“Told you that was what we needed,” she said.
I laughed and then groaned. The muscles in my stomach were sore. My side hurt. All the aches and pains came rushing back in the aftermath of that pleasure.
She held a hand to her lip and it came away with a little blood.
“Oh, shit,” I said and stood up, pulling my underwear back up from my knees. In the bathroom I found a washcloth. I ran it under water and brought it back to her. “Didn’t the doctor say don’t give head until your lip heals?”
“Surprisingly, no,” she said and pressed the damp washcloth to her mouth.
I didn’t know what to do, how to rest in this tenderness we’d created. I had an instinct to smash it, because that was what I was good at. Because that was what I usually did.
That utter, bone-deep relaxation from minutes ago turned to cement in my muscles.
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked, watching me with dark eyes. The laughter draining from her face.
Yes.
“Remember when you said you weren’t scared of me?” I asked her.
“I’m not.”
I shook my head. There were still so many ways me being in her life could screw things up for her. My dad, my brother. Rabbit. My past. All those things could come back and hurt her.
“Maybe you should be,” I told her.
As if to argue, she didn’t leave. Or fight. She just curled up on her side, away from me, and I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling. Listening to her breathe. The heat that had not been an issue five minutes ago was now suffocating and sweat gathered on the insides of my elbows. The base of my spine.
I counted her breaths as she lay beside me. Listened to them get deeper. Longer.
I spent the rest of the night watching the ceiling. Wondering what forces out there in the dark were going to fuck with me for this.
ANNIE
I think I got pity-fingered.
And she did not like it.
Though, truthfully, what did she expect? She’d sort of forced herself on him last
night. He’d said no, and she’d begged, and maybe…maybe pity-fingered is just what happens after that.
Annie lay on her side, her knees curled up, her hands under her cheek, and she watched a sleeping Dylan Daniels. He looked younger like this, relaxed and unaware. His dark hair flopped over his forehead, his boxer-brief underwear a little skewed on his thick body. Those lips of his, so full and pink, were marred by the bruise, the cut on his lip that he’d reopened in the night.
We didn’t even kiss, she thought. Today they would kiss. Tomorrow. They had hours of kissing ahead of them.
She hoped. She hoped there was kissing ahead of them and not more pain.
Certainly no more pity. She was waaaaaay done with pity.
But she would be lying if she said that hope wasn’t tinged with doubt. She could feel him pushing her away with the very same hand that he’d used to make her come.
“Why should I be scared of you?” she whispered. He’d told her about jail, killing that boy, sleeping with a prostitute, and none of it turned her head. None of it made her doubt.
What was making him doubt?
“What aren’t you telling me?” she whispered.
He rolled away from her, and she stared at his back, the freckles scattered across the wide, smooth skin of his shoulders. She itched to touch him, but she kept her hands to herself, curled under her cheek.
The fact that she’d forced herself into his RV, forced herself into his bed, forced him to touch her—well, it was all starting to bother her.
But he’d stayed. Some instinct told her it wasn’t only because of her.
Yet part of it was.
And she wanted to lean on that. She wanted to wrap herself in it and allow his feelings to give her worth. To dictate her own feelings about herself.
But that…she couldn’t do that again.
She deserved better; she required more from herself.
In his sleep Dylan twitched. The muscles of his back and shoulders trembled.
What did Dylan Daniels dream of? Work, maybe? The fire? Prison?
She wondered if his nightmares would ever push him into her arms. For comfort. For care. For a pity hand job. In her heart, she knew the answer was no.
He was used to handling his grief by himself. Or not handling it at all.
Where does that leave me? she wondered. Where does that leave us?
No one said a relationship with Dylan Daniels would be easy, but she was getting a pretty good look at exactly how hard it would be.
And it’s not like I’m a total treat, either, she reminded herself.
For a second the combined weight of their baggage seemed too heavy to carry.
But quickly, she pushed those worries aside.
Because the sun was just up, and the trailer park outside the window was slowly coming to life. Car doors were slamming as people went to work and got their kids to daycare before school.
There was a world out there that just kept spinning. A world that did not care about what she’d done. And that made her feel very small and oddly comforted.
And last night had returned something to her. Not just the sex, though that had helped more than she’d even thought. To pull herself back together, back into her body. Her own mind.
Dylan kept sleeping and twitching, dreaming his dreams.
You were this bright light. Pure.
That’s what he’d said about her last night. And she liked that description. She would like to be that kind of person.
He’d told her she was brave once, too.
She scooped that idea up in her arms as well. Cobbling together a version of herself that she could admire. That she could aspire to be. That could build and sail her own boat out of the darkness.
Maybe that’s how it began, this new life of hers. She’d decide who she would be.
Last night had been intense. And he was going to wake up soon, she thought, and he would try very hard not to show his worry. His pity. But it would be a lie.
And she would say that she was fine and she would pretend that she couldn’t see his worry. Or his pity. And maybe his guilt. But that would be a lie, too.
I can’t rely on him to make the ground steady for me, she thought. I can’t count on him to make me okay. I have to do this work on my own.
Today she was a bright, pure light—just like Dylan had said—and she was only interested in finding more of that.
And perhaps, if he would accept it, pulling him into her boat with her.
Last night he said that he was worried she wanted to talk about the morbid and dark things both of them had in their lives. But she had to in order to move on, to move through it.
And she worried he lived in that darkness. Up on his hill, with people who let him be like that. Spying on his father from afar, pushing away the memories that hurt him. Building a new life on top of the still-breathing body of his old one.
She rolled over and opened the bedside table. There were packs of gum and books and condoms. A pair of handcuffs. Lube.
Despite last night and every night with Dylan before, she still blushed. She might always blush.
Underneath it all she found a notebook and a pencil.
Quickly, she wrote a note and tucked it beneath his hand.
He wouldn’t like it, would undoubtedly resent her efforts to push him and his father together, but he was here. He stayed.
And there was power in that.
Power she never would have taken advantage of before. But these were new days. And she was a new woman.
Carefully, so she didn’t wake him, Annie crept out of the bed and out of his room. She needed a shower in the worst way; she smelled like sex and sweat, and the day was already hot.
The trailer was set up exactly like hers, only slightly bigger. Slightly newer. And Dylan was right: Joan must have left in a rush, because a lot of her stuff was here. There was a pile of clean laundry on the driver’s seat that had been turned around and what looked like a gym bag beside it.
Joan, she thought, with no small pang, and gathered those things up.
Maybe she’d go to the strip club and see if she was there. It seemed unlikely, but it was worth a shot. She really needed to be sure her friend was okay.
The wind blew and the breeze shifted a folded slip of paper across the counter, and she caught it before it fell off.
Annie.
That’s what was printed on the front. Her name.
Kevin, if you find this give it to Annie.
She set down the bag and clothes and opened it.
Annie,
If you get this it meant you came back to the trailer park, in which case, you’re even more of an idiot than I thought. I had to leave, sorry I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, but if you do get this and you are in the trailer park, we really need to talk. Call me.
Beneath the handwriting was a phone number.
Her heart suddenly pounding in her throat, Annie curled the note up in her hand, like a secret she needed to keep hidden.
ANNIE
It was strange using Dylan’s phone for anything but calling him. But once she got in her own trailer, she dialed the number on the paper and got a man’s computer voice telling her to leave a message. There was no name, no repetition of the number. Just leave a message. Beep.
“Ummm,” she said, slipping the note into the bedside table. “I’m looking for Joan. Joan, this is Annie. I…uh, I got your note. Call me back when you can. I ah…oh shit…I don’t know my phone number. Hopefully, it just pops up or something. I’ll call you back tomorrow if I don’t hear from you.”
Annie took the phone into the bathroom with her when she showered so she could hear it if it rang.
And then slipped it into the back pocket of her cutoffs when she headed out of her camper. The air was cool against her skin and the earth smelled new—damp and dark. Mysterious. A new day unfolding.
She glanced up at Ben’s trailer and saw him sitting under his awning. He lifted a hand in gree
ting and she walked over.
“Morning,” he said. “Need some coffee?”
“I’d love some.”
He began to rock himself up and out of his chair, but she stopped him. “I’ll go help myself.”
With a heavy sigh of relief he sat back down.
Inside, she poured herself a cup of coffee and noticed, lined up on the windowsill, a row of amber prescription bottles, glowing slightly in the morning sun. She turned the labels so she could read them.
Vicodin. Reglan. Decadron.
She had no idea what most of them meant, but it all sounded bad.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, once she was back outside and sitting on the splintered and weathered bench of his picnic table. She’d had to rearrange some pots out of the way to do it, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh no,” he said. “We’re not doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Starting every conversation with how I’m feeling.”
“But—”
“I have cancer, Annie. I feel like shit. All the time. Move on.”
She blinked at him, and at a loss, she took a sip of coffee. Thick as tar; somehow she wasn’t surprised.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “About the cancer.”
“Because I figure it’s not much of your business.”
She shook her head at him. “Are you saying that because you don’t want me to know or because you don’t think I care?” He blinked at her this time. “Because I care, Ben. And there’s nothing you can do to stop that.”
Clearly deeply uncomfortable, he shifted in his chair, turning away from her.
It was hard not to see Dylan in that gesture, the way he kept his face averted from emotion he did not want. Could not handle.
He’d learned it from his father, maybe.
Ben was losing his hair. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the gleaming silver was gone in large patches, revealing a shiny, smooth scalp.
