I suck in air, listening to her voice only and following its instructions. Pulling up slowly, I park in the street, not daring to do anything but look straight ahead.
“I love you.” Eloise’s voice is warm, and finally I can twist my neck.
The split-level where I spent my childhood stands a hundred yards back off the street, nothing special about it. “I thought memories would come spilling back, but … this isn’t where I had many memories. Thankfully, all of my best ones are from college.”
She grabs my hand. “It doesn’t have to hold any significance for you. That is okay, you know that, right? A year ago, my father shot a documentary on his life and we went back to our old apartment in Liverpool … I thought it would destroy me. But … I didn’t feel anything, surprisingly. You can build the memories that are important to you, that’s what I learned.”
I palm her cheek, needing to feel her lips. Suddenly my body is charged with heat, and I capture those full lips, my hands tangling in her silky blond hair. Eloise meets me, submitting to my desire and control. My tongue laps at hers, delving deep into her mouth. I use her body as my medicine, immersing myself in the kiss as a balm to my frayed nerves.
Pulling back, I press my forehead to hers. “Okay, I think I can get out of the car now.
I don’t say I’m ready, because who is ever ready to commit their mother to an institution? What kind of child would I be if I said I was happy about this decision?
We get out of the car and head up the driveway, and I try not to study the van with the county institution logo on the side sitting so close to my mother’s house. As I open the door, the stench of sickness hits me full force in the nose. Stale urine, medical supplies, and something sterile combine for a nauseating scent that makes me want to run back to the car and drive as fast as I can away from this place.
“Colton, thanks for coming.” Joelle approaches me, giving me an awkward hug.
I pat her back. “Of course I’d be here, thanks for setting it up. How is she?”
I don’t see my mother in the living room, and I suck in another deep breath as Eloise squeezes my hand.
“It’s not a good day. But we can’t postpone any longer, and they won’t intake her if we don’t move her today, so …” Her face contorts into an expression of reluctance.
“No, I know. It was always going to be a fifty-fifty chance of a good day or bad day.” I nod, trying to convince myself of that.
My head towers over her, and I feel too big here. I eclipse this house now, and I realize I’ve outgrown it both physically and mentally. After my prospects of playing professional basketball went up in flames, I knew that I had to commit my mother to the state facility I’d been killing myself to try and avoid for her. I had no more money to spend on expensive nurses or at-home treatments. And with no future set up, and having cut myself off from the lifestyle I’d had with Mac, there was no money coming in. She was far gone enough that they’d take her now, and I would only have to pay a minimal fee for her to receive care there for the foreseeable future.
“Mr. Reiter?” A woman in a business casual outfit walks toward me, and a male nurse stands just behind her.
“Yes, hi …” I extend a hand, feeling awkwardly formal and adult.
Having a mother like mine forced you to grow up quickly, from a young age. Even now, with some of the things I had to deal with in accordance to her disorder, I felt like a five-year-old taking a business meeting that I wasn’t supposed to be in.
“I’m Mary, the case worker who will be looking over your mother in transport and then when she arrives at our facility. This is Keith, the nurse who will be helping to keep her calm throughout this process. Once we start, things are going to move fast as your mother will probably become highly agitated, so I just want to prepare you as best I can.”
Her mouth moves faster than her words hit my ears, and I know that I have to remain in this fog-like state to have any hope of getting through this. She talks about the process, about paperwork and transport details. About my mother’s intake and seventy-two-hour examination period. About her residence, and filing for power of attorney. All words and descriptions that seem, again, too adult for me, too soon.
I should have more time before I have to watch my mother deteriorate. I should have had a full life with her, shouldn’t have to bear caring for the person who was always supposed to take care of me. Not this early, at least.
And then they usher me up the small flight of stairs to the hallway, the one I know leads to the last room I want to step into.
The light is muted as I walk in, the dust falling in lines through the air. It looks as it always did; dull peach carpet, simple bed with no headboard and a white lacy comforter, furniture that looked, and was, like it was out of the nineteen eighties. The mirrored vanity that held perfume bottles, the ones I’d sniff as she got ready to go out to one bar or another, too little to realize she should be home, helping me with my homework.
She sits at the end of the bed, staring out into space at nothing. Her frame is thinner, much thinner, than the last time I saw her with my own two eyes. Wrinkled skin, not that of a fifty-year-old, and tattered hair … she looks nothing like the smiling woman in our family photos, of just her and I, of yesteryear.
Walking to her, I kneel down so that I can look her in the eyes, or to see if she’ll acknowledge me.
The same blue-green eyes that I see when I look in a mirror take me in, her mouth contorting in a confused expression. She begins to nod, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from crying. She’s deteriorated so badly since I’ve been away, I could slap myself for being so selfish.
“It’s time to go, baby?” She looks so helpless, frail and small like a child who has just heard the news that takes their innocence from them forever.
I hold her hand and swallow the knot of emotion clawing its way up my throat. “Yes, Mom, it’s time to go.”
Thirty-Nine
Colton
Devastation hits deep, into the very core of my bones, as Eloise unlocks the door to our hotel room and I follow her in.
“Well, it’s not the Ritz …” Eloise trails off, her finger running over the plain dresser of the nicest Best Western in fifty miles. “But, I’m here with you, and that’s all that matters. And I’m very proud of what you just did for both you and your mother back there.”
I just want to crawl under those sheets and give in to the exhaustion threatening to take over my soul. I’m cracked, cleaved in two from having to send my mother to the one place I’ve always tried to avoid for her. For having to see the one person in my life who I know as blood, just completely unhinged. She was a shell of the person I’d once known, a ghost barely living in the shadows of her disorder.
“Thanks.” I pass her, setting my small travel bag down. The rest of my things, which I’d packed up last night after denying I was really leaving school, lay in boxes and duffles in the front hallway of my childhood home. But I couldn’t bring myself to stay there; it repulsed me, made me want to be sick every time I thought about how lonely and cold it was.
So Eloise had suggested we get a hotel room. I was so out of it, that I’d even let her pay.
“Why don’t you sit, love?” She touches my waist, trying to push me over to the bed.
The minute her hand reaches me, my skin ignites. And I know exactly what I need in this moment.
I move like a python striking its prey. One second we’re just two people standing in a shitty motel room, gloom hanging over us, and the next, I’m handling her jaw with reckless abandon, squeezing it too tight as I attack her mouth.
“Colton … wait …” Eloise struggles after giving in to me for a couple of seconds.
I ignore her, diving back in and shoving my tongue halfway down her throat. It feels good, to only act and not to think. To bury all of my energy into her, to feel the give of her body under my motions.
“Love, you should rest—” She cuts me off again.
“Don�
��t tell me what to do, goddammit!” I throw my hands up, walking to the other side of the room.
Silence follows, and I know she’s weighing what she should say to me. I beat her to the punch.
“I’m tired of letting things happen to me. Of being a product of my environment, a pawn of the system. I’m so fed up with everything going wrong, with things slipping out of my fingers before I can hold on to them.”
Moving in front of her, I take her hips in my hands, squeezing gently on what I know is smooth and warm beneath her clothes. “For just a little while, I need to be in control. I need to feel powerful, to not think about how my life in shambles.”
It’s honest, and harsh … but right now, it is what I need.
Her long lashes blink for a beat. “So control me.”
I stare at her, trying to gauge whether I can do this. Whether she can take this right now. “I need to use you, Eloise. You get that, right?”
She nods, and it’s a sure movement. Not half-assed, no doubt. “I want to help you in whatever way I can, and if you need to use my body right now, then do it.”
I pause. “Before I control every part of you, use you for my pleasure and to escape, you should know that I love you.”
That cheeky girl comes out to play for one second. “Of course I know that, otherwise I wouldn’t be so willing to give myself to you.”
With that out of the way, I snap back into control. “Take off all of your clothes and get on the bed.”
I see it the minute that the ripple of excitement rolls down Eloise’s spine, and she begins to gracefully, but quickly, get out of her shorts and sweater.
Unbuckling my belt and doing away with my jeans, I pull the shirt over my head with one hand bunched at its neck. I shed my boxers as well. This is not the time for whispered sweet nothings and slow foreplay. I don’t feel like undressing Eloise with my teeth at the moment, or for her to slowly peel my clothing away.
No, right now, I want us skin to skin in as little time as possible, our bodies slamming against each other.
She’s lying on the bed, waiting for direction, and God, she is fucking incredible. Pearly smooth skin, legs for miles, and I want to bite the dip in her navel as her chest rises and falls rapidly. I can smell her arousal, and I want to be balls deep in her about five seconds ago.
“On all fours.” I have to swallow to get the words out, but the control feels good.
It feels necessary, when everything else is slipping away, that I can direct this situation. And that she trusts me enough to let me do so.
That pert ass sticks up at me, and her core drips with the need to be satisfied.
I climb up behind her, my rigid dick poking at the smooth skin of her ass cheek. “I’m not going to be gentle, baby.”
She nods, and I see her hands grip the hotel comforter. Her silence pleases me in some deep way, like she knows that I need her to fully submit in this moment.
With my hands gripping her hips, the skin warm and just a little damp with sweat from her obvious excitement, I feel like the king of the world. She’s serving me her body on a silver platter, and I’m about to feast.
Feeling her smooth globes, my fingers dance up her spine and forward to grab her breasts. I roll each nipple in my hand, not softly, and Eloise sucks in a harsh moan. I don’t grab a condom, don’t even ask her if I need one. Her complicit silence is all the answer I need to move forward, and my cock bobs wildly as I register that I’m going to enter her bare.
It’s the only foreplay I give her. I move my hands back to her hips, and drive in to the hilt.
“Ah!” She cries out, the sound reverberating off of the thin hotel walls.
My cock twitches all the way inside of her, and pleasure consumes me. I love this woman, and I want her to feel good, but right now, this is about me. I see nothing but my blind gratification as I drive into her over and over again. Her screams echo off the walls, my pace punishing and rapid. My chest swells with raw hedonistic pride, the base emotion of a man exerting power over a woman.
The last two weeks play in my head over and over again, and with every disappointment I fuck Eloise harder. I use her, exactly how I told her I would, as my play thing. My pleasure doll, a body to work all of my stress out on.
I’m vaguely aware when she comes for the second time, clawing at the mattress as her body nearly collapses under me. But I just keep fucking, pounding into her from behind until I can’t see straight.
The muscles in my neck tense up, and I haven’t made a noise in the entire time I’ve been ravishing her. I know my orgasm is going to be earth-shattering, that I may be paralyzed by the sheer force of it.
But I give in, jackhammering my hips into Eloise as I feel my come begin to shoot out in jets, streaming into her. The climax takes me by storm, pulling at me and completely bulldozing my senses. I can’t breathe as I push once more into her, stilling myself and letting the sensations bombard me.
After it’s over, after I can suck air back into my lungs, I run a hand over Eloise’s cheek.
It’s a thank you. An assurance that I love her. And a gesture to demonstrate that she is the closest person to me, and only with her will I let myself fall apart.
Forty
Eloise
One Year Later
Paris at dusk is more magical than any other place on earth.
Twinkling street lights, bars and cafés filled with people spilling onto the streets, the scent of fresh baked bread, good wine and rare steaks in the air. The honk of cars and motorcycles racing through the streets, the smoke of cigarettes filling your vision and the music of street performers carrying on the wind.
I walk back to the flat with its Eiffel Tower view, my chef’s coat in hand, my hands tired and feet throbbing. But, the smile that marks my face is genuine. And the interest I take in the city I live in is now more thoughtful, I don’t just watch it pass by from the windows of a cab now.
“A rare evening off with my woman,” he calls from the kitchen when I close the door, the orange light of sunset filtering in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
In the last year, things in my life have changed in subtle, but dramatic, ways. Or should I say, things in our life.
I walk into the apartment that was once mine alone, now shared by Colton. It still has its feminine decor, the mirrored furniture, the creamy white couches, the pink throw pillows and chandeliers over both the dining room table and the king sized bed. But in the closet, on the rug next to the front door, in the shower, and on the bathroom sink, there are all traces of a man.
“So, it’s probably not as good as whatever you brought home from the restaurant, but I did make us an appetizer of pork wrapped in pastry crust.” He smiles at me, his dark hair a little longer, the stubble he’s been sporting now growing into a dark, handsome beard.
I round the kitchen counter, the entire room done in white marble and subway tile, and look at the pan he’s pulling out. “These are pigs in a blanket …”
Colton kisses me chastely on the cheek. “They’re pork with puff pastry, and that’s how I see them. Don’t be a downer.”
I roll my eyes at his attempt to cook. “Well, those wieners will go perfectly with our Jambon persillé, as that is pork as well. Can I have a glass of wine?”
“That I can throw together.” He winks at me, taking two glasses out of the cabinet.
As I watch him, I think about how wonderful it’s been having him here with me.
After we left Vermont, we spent a week and a half in West Virginia. On that first day, I honestly didn’t know if Colton would make it three hours. Putting his mother in the state facility nearly broke him after everything else he’d been through in that period of time, and I’d never seen him so devastated.
It hadn’t helped that I was returning to Paris just days after that. So when he suggested he have his first official visit to my second country at the same time I was moving back in and preparing for my apprenticeship, I didn’t hesitate to say yes.
Fate stepped in, and Colton’s agent finally did his job, and one of the French basketball teams who play out of the city of lights heard that he was coming over for a visit. They gave him a tryout the week he stayed with me, and signed him to a contract just hours after he’d left their practice facility. For the last year, he’d been riding high as one of Europe’s best basketball players. His team had even won the European Basketball League championship last season, his rookie year.
And with that contract came a paycheck … a large one. Colton now had enough money to set his mother up nicely, in a private facility, away from the sludge that resided in the state program. Not that money bought happiness, I knew that much, but it was a relief for him to be able to support his family in a real way.
He loved Paris, and Europe. It was the first time he’d ever traveled outside of the States, and he would say to me all the time that he didn’t plan on ever going back. Deep down, I knew his dream was still the NBA, but I didn’t bring it up. Some wounds were better left alone, scabbed over even if they weren’t healed.
I still talked to Blair through text constantly, and she let me know what went down on the day that Jade Mountain University launched an official investigation into what happened to Julia Henley. One of the local reporters I copied on the email I sent decided to run the story, and from there the news went national. The social clubs are all but extinct, and many of the top members at Charter House, including Gretchen, are being questioned by police.
My name has never been brought into it, but then again it wouldn’t be. I created a fake email address, had the help of a tech friend of Asher’s who routed it through some dummy IP address, so it could never be traced back to me. And since Gretchen and her minions had no dirt on me anymore, after Colton’s confession, it served no purpose to draw attention to my part in it.
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