by G. B. Gordon
Mark nudged his legs apart a bit farther, then started to spread lube across his ass cheeks and between, across his balls and along his cock. Jack’s legs trembled with the effort not to push into his hand. Mark’s fingers breaching him were a welcome distraction, but they did nothing to dissipate the tension in his body. On the contrary. He tried to get lost in their motion, but couldn’t quite suppress his anticipation of more than just fingers. Finally there was the hiss of the ripping package, and then Mark’s cock, gliding, pushing, sliding into him at a perfect angle. The sweet length of it skating across the most blissful spot in the world. Mark’s hands on his hips holding him.
If Mark had wanted him to stay still, he’d positioned Jack well, stretched out with no room left to rock back, so he could only stand there and take it. He might have been begging Mark to speed up, but if he did, Mark was deaf to his pleas. His rhythm never changed, but at some point, he closed one hand around Jack’s cock, slick with lube, and started fisting him loosely with the same excruciating rhythm.
Finally the hand sped up and tightened around his cock, the thumb flicking over his tip on every other upstroke. The whole fiery ball of tension exploded him inside out. He could hear himself shout, felt Mark slam into him hard once. His knees gave out with the sudden release of energy and the extra weight of Mark’s body on his back, and he collapsed onto the bed, gulping in lungfuls of air.
Jack woke up in the dark on his side, head on the pillow, and the comforter pulled up over his shoulders. He carefully felt around for Mark, trying to turn without startling him, but finding himself alone in the bed, he sat up.
The only light came from the window, maybe from a streetlight below. He could barely distinguish Mark’s outline against it.
“How long was I out?” His voice was as rough as if he’d been screaming his lungs to shreds. Lord, he hoped not.
“Not long. Maybe half an hour.”
“Are you okay? What are you doing up?”
At that Mark came over and sat on the edge of the mattress. He was still naked.
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“What? For what?”
“I can’t sleep beside you. I tried. I want to. But I can’t. Share a bed.”
He sounded so distressed that Jack wanted to hug him. But that would only make it worse.
“It’s okay,” he tried. “Honestly. We don’t have to sleep in the same bed. We’ll work something out. For now, I’ll leave you your bed and go home.” He got up and fished for his clothes in the semidarkness until Mark turned the light on, and they both got dressed.
“I would probably have woken up in the middle of the night anyway, worrying about Margaret,” Jack said. When Mark didn’t answer, Jack stepped into his personal space. “Hey. I love what you do to me, how you make me feel. This whole evening has been out-of-this-world fantastic. I promise you, we’ve got this, okay?”
“You think?”
“I know.”
Mark’s brows relaxed a little. “Okay. C’mon, I’ll walk you home. Show you the scenic route. Least I can do.”
The beach is the calmest place on earth tonight. No wind, not even the glare of moonlight on the waves to disturb the peace. And the white noise of the waves drowns the endless discussions in my head.
I can’t see Jack’s face in the dark, but he seems relaxed, lost in his own thoughts maybe. The music he made tonight . . . sweet, and slow, and sad, full of sunshine and heartache. It was as if life itself was pouring from that saxophone. All Jack, the essence of who he is. How can I want him so much and be so uncertain of a future together? And how can he be so scared of what might happen and yet so confident we’ll find a way?
Because it’s not about a bed, is it? It’s about shaking all our lives up, and just after Jack and Margaret seem to have settled down. I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t wonder sometimes what happened to them. What sent them running, by their accents, pretty much across the country. But I wasn’t lying when I promised not to pry. I reach for his hand in the soft starlight, surprising him, see his teeth flash in a quick smile. I knew he’d like that.
He stops when I do, and I gather him toward me. Now that I’ve started, I can’t get enough of kissing him, of how it makes him melt and pulls him under, breathless and wanting.
And I can’t get enough of running my hand through those wild, dark curls. I can’t get enough of Jack. Period.
I’m out of breath when I let him go, and so is he.
Even though we walk slowly, we’re at the marina too soon. At least now, past midnight, the town is almost silent.
I hope he’s right, and that we will find a way to work out the logistics of a relationship. Not sleeping in the same bed is not such a big deal after all. People in a lot of cultures don’t. But what if other things pop up that I can’t even think of at the moment? Can we have a trial run?
“There’s a cot in the spare room, you know?” Jack says. “It’s narrow, and probably not super comfortable. But if you want, we can bring it over to my bedroom. You know, see how two beds in the same room work.”
It’s stunning how closely along the same tracks we often think.
“I’d like that.”
When we reach his house, he pulls the keys out of his pocket but doesn’t use them. Instead he turns back to me.
“Kiss me goodnight?” He’s already breathless again just asking. I don’t need an engraved invitation.
I run both hands through his hair, messing it up thoroughly, not that that makes it look any different than it usually does. He tilts his chin up, wanting to be kissed. Wanting me. It’s heady stuff, to be wanted like that. Against all odds.
I just nip at his lips. Otherwise I don’t think I’ll be able to let him go. He sighs, but moves to unlock the door and go inside. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Try to keep me from it.”
I listen to his laugh as he closes the door, then stand there, staring at it, unable to tear myself away, and it doesn’t matter, because I doubt I’ll sleep. The streetlight above me buzzes in the silence. The clatter of a trash can hitting the pavement is followed by the screeching of a cat. A couple of car engines whine in the distance.
I’m about to go home, when all the lights on the second floor come on, one by one, and after a pause, those downstairs as well. Every window is blazing, and then the door is ripped open and Jack spills into my arms. Searing pain across my skin that needs to be ignored, because Jack is wide-eyed. Frantic.
“Margaret’s gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
He gives me a blank stare, then seems to register that it’s me. “Thank God you’re still here.”
“Jack?”
“Gone, as in not in the house.” He tries to push past me.
“Do you know where she is?”
“No, but I have to find her.”
I hold him by the shoulders, trying to make him pause, to make him think. “Are you sure she’s not in the house?”
“The TV was running when I came in. She never leaves it on. So I went to check her room, then her alcove in the attic, then everywhere else. She’s not in there.” He shouts the last sentence.
“Okay, then we’ll go find her. Do you have any flashlights?”
He takes a deep breath. “Yes, in the store. They’re the bright LED ones. I’ll get them.” I follow him inside, do a quick tour of the back rooms.
“Did you check closets? Cabinets?”
“No.” He stares. “I’ve been calling her name. She wouldn’t hide from me. I think.” His voice falters.
“If she heard you. She doesn’t even have to be injured. If something scared her into hiding, if she’s anything like me, she might put her earbuds in to calm herself down.”
“You’re right. She does that. Though she’s never hidden in the furniture.”
We search the house from top to bottom, every nook, every cranny. No Margaret.
Jack’s face is ashen when we meet again downstai
rs. The TV is still running. He switches it off.
“What do you think she was watching?” I ask.
“What difference does it make?” He’s impatient to keep searching, I get it. He quickly shrugs on a jacket, and without a word we head outside to search the delivery area, backyard, even the car. Back at the front door he checks up and down the street, clearly trying to decide which direction to go in first.
“Maybe if you knew what scared her, you might know where she’s run to?”
He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Whether to think or in an effort not to snap at me, I don’t know. “She doesn’t watch a lot of TV. Documentaries sometimes. If she didn’t want to have dinner alone, she might have eaten while watching something. Around six?”
“News?”
“Maybe. Though I don’t see wh— Oh hell.” The last word comes out as two syllables.
“What?”
“The scandal. That stupid asshole of a representative who fucked his way through half the state of Georgia?”
“Yeah, the guy from Atlanta?”
“The scandal must’ve made it onto the news. It was in the paper already, but I threw it out. I was afraid it might bring up bad memories for her.” He starts pacing up and down the street. “The guy who tried to rape her was also a politician. Small-time, local. I don’t know if that would be enough to panic her, but I don’t know what else there could have been.”
I don’t think he realizes that he’s told me more in these five minutes than in the months before.
“Jack, when she was attacked before, did she get away? Where to?”
His head rocks up. “The river.”
My heart skips a beat, but he’s already off, tearing down the sidewalk. I only catch up because my legs are longer. But he can’t hold the speed. After a few minutes he has to slow down, and I can hear his breathing from three feet away, it’s so labored. Finally he doubles over, holding his sides. “Where we swam,” he gasps. “Go, I’ll try to follow you as fast as I can. Go.” He repeats it when I don’t leave right away.
So I go. I stick to the streets as much as possible. It’s a slightly longer route than to directly follow the river, but it’s got to be faster than running between the trees at night. In fact, I miss the narrow path that turns off the road, and have to double back to it. Despite the flashlight, I soon have to slow to a walk, and not a fast one at that. It’s pitch-black down here except for the dancing beam of the flashlight. By day the fucking path seemed a lot shorter, but finally the light bounces off the surface of water ahead. I quickly scan the small public beach, then turn right toward the more secluded spot the pair of them took me last month.
She’s sitting on the same rock she sat on that day. But tonight she’s eerily quiet, as motionless as the rock itself. She doesn’t even move when the beam of light plays over her. She’s pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, holding herself together. No headphones. No jacket either.
I put the flashlight down, so I don’t blind either her or me, but can still see where I’m stepping. The beam throws every pebble into stark relief.
“Margaret? It’s Mark. I’m glad I found you.”
She doesn’t move, but after maybe a minute she asks in a thin voice, “Jackson?”
“He’s right behind me, running as fast as he can. He should be here any second.”
As if on cue, I see the erratic beam of his light flashing between the canopy. The fool is still running. I hope he doesn’t break his neck.
“Slow down, Jack. She’s here.” I want to tell him she’s okay, but while she seems physically unhurt, she’s at the very least badly shaken.
Jack crashes onto the tiny beach like a bull, but stops dead when he sees her. He starts to say something, but has no breath left. Hands on his knees, he takes a couple of seconds to fill his lungs, then, still panting, he says, “I’m here, love.”
There’s a short pause, then she says, “Margaret.” Jack’s eyes close in palpable relief.
“Yes. Margaret.”
He unzips his jacket and takes it off. He, too, puts his light on the ground, then steps around the rock, making sure he’s visible in the beam and not coming up behind her. He holds out the jacket like a muleta. When she doesn’t move, he drapes it around her shoulders, then hunkers down on a log near her feet. “You had us so very worried.”
She slowly grabs the edges of the collar and pulls the jacket more tightly around her.
“Jackson.”
“I’m here. God, I am so sorry I left you alone.” His voice breaks on the last words and cracks my heart right along with it, but there’s not much I can do. What I can do is straddle the log and pull him into my body. He moves one leg over the log as well, so his back can rest against my chest. It’s uncomfortable with a stub of branch poking my leg and Jack fidgeting, but he does settle down, and I know he needs this right now. To him touch is security. I can be his security for a little while.
I’m surprised he hasn’t asked her to come home with us, but he knows her much better than I do, so I’m not getting in the way.
“Was it the TV?” Jack asks. “Did you see something scary?”
At that she turns away from the river and faces us. “TV,” she says, then she raises her arms with her hands curled down into monster claws.
“Bad memories?”
“Bad.”
Jack’s body is rigid with tension. “I knew it,” he mutters. More loudly he says, “They’re just memories, though. They can’t hurt you now.”
“No.” It sounds fierce. I can’t make out her features in the dark, but I imagine her brows drawn together.
“I know they’re tough memories,” Jack says. “And I know they hurt, but Deaver’s dead. He can’t—”
“Nooo!” She screams it at him, and I can feel his slight recoil.
He takes a deep breath. “It’s okay.”
“No.” She starts rocking herself.
“Do you need a countdown?” His tone stays quiet and level, but the tremors running through his body continue into mine.
“No,” Margaret says. “No. No, no.” She rocks harder, then suddenly jumps off the rock right in front of Jack, grabs him hard by the shoulders, and with her face barely an inch from his, says in a deep, malicious voice, “Kiss me, you little cunt, or your daddy’s fledgling political career is toast.”
She scares the shit out of me. Jack flinches hard, and I have to brace myself against the log so we don’t both tumble into the sand.
She retreats to the rock, holding herself tight in Jack’s coat.
“He’s dead, Margaret.”
“NO!”
“Deaver. Is. Dead.” There’s both disbelief and shock in his tone now.
In the same deep voice she used before, Margaret says, “I am not suspending my campaign based on unfounded accusations.”
For a heartbeat Jack doesn’t react at all, then he asks quietly. “You heard Deaver say that on TV?”
She doesn’t reply, but her hands form into the monster claws again.
Jack didn’t know what to say. He’d seen Deaver floating facedown in the pool, in a plume of his own blood. He hadn’t stopped to check on the man because he’d gone straight after Margaret. He’d assumed whoever was running out the door behind him would.
But after they’d come back, after he’d tucked Margaret safely into bed, Charles had confronted him on the stairs. “She’s a menace,” Charles had said. “Dangerous.”
He hadn’t wanted to hear Jack’s arguments that it had been self-defense and an accident.
“How many bodies is it going to take before you’ll see your sister for the raving lunatic she is? But this is the end of it. This time tomorrow she’ll be under lock and key.”
Well, they hadn’t waited around for that to happen, Margaret and him. Jack had taken her to the bus station in Savannah that very night, left his car in the lot, and bought the next available ticket. He hadn’t cared where to, as long as it was away.
It had been a few days before they’d slowed down enough for him to check the papers, do a web search in a public library. There’d been nothing. He’d assumed the man’s death hadn’t been deemed important enough. No-name victims, or those close to no-name, didn’t last long in the news.
But Margaret wasn’t fanciful. He might not always understand or follow her fears, but they were never about nothing. She’d never before denied Deaver’s death. And she’d certainly never lied to him. If he hadn’t completely misunderstood her, she’d seen Deaver on the news, tonight, running in the election.
But “How many bodies?” How else had he been meant to take that, except that Deaver was dead?
“Charles said he was dead,” Jack said slowly.
“He lies, Jack.” Mawmaw had said that more than once, in that same, patient oh-you-sweet-summer-child tone of voice.
His father was an asshole, but would he really have let Jack believe that his sister had killed someone? To shut him up? Maybe. He had locked his wife in a room, and he had driven her to suicide.
Jack’s head felt like it was going to disintegrate any second—hell, his whole body felt like it was falling apart. Only Mark’s solid presence at his back was holding him together. He tried to rub the cobwebs off his face.
“We’ll figure this out,” he said. “I promise, I’ll check it out, Margaret. But right now, I need to get some sleep or my brain is going to implode.” He held out his hand to her. “Can we go home? Please? I’ll be there. Mark . . .”
He half turned, but Mark was already saying, “Me too. I’m not leaving either of you alone tonight.”
After a few minutes, Margaret pushed herself away from the rock and started walking up the path. Jack scrambled off the log and grabbed his flashlight. With a shrug at Mark that was meant to be half apology, half what-can-you-do resignation, he then hurried to keep up with Margaret and light the way until the streetlights began again.
By the time they made it home he felt as if someone had drawn and quartered him and sewn the pieces back together haphazardly.
