by Naomi West
At some point I move onto the couch, shifting aside so that our legs are touching. She turns to me, and I turn to her. I don’t know who leans in first, but I reckon it’s me. And then we’re kissing, hard, our teeth mashing through our lips, my hands smoothing up her leg. Her leg is warm, burning, as though the heat of her pussy is moving up and down her thigh. I slide all the way up to her pussy, wanting to press my hand down on it and hear her moan.
Then she breaks it off, jumping to her feet. “No,” she says. “I … no. I’m sorry.”
I follow her. She backs away. We end up in the bedroom, me pressing against her. She kisses me and then breaks it off, kisses me and then breaks it off. She’s panting. I can tell she wants it. Her hand moves to the front of my pants and then she snatches it away, like the fire is between us, too hot for her to take.
“No, Diesel,” she says. “People could’ve died in that fire.”
“But they didn’t.” I’m not angry at her. I’m angry at the life I lead which means we can’t do what we want. “In my line of work, people die every goddamn day.”
“That doesn’t make it all right!” she snaps, pushing me in the chest.
“You want a kid, don’t you?” I kiss her again, and she kisses me back. She kisses me and wraps her hands around my shoulders, her body trembling against mine. We make it to the bed before she breaks it off again.
“No,” she says. “Please.”
I roll aside. I’m not about to rape her. But I keep my hand on her leg, between her thighs, and every so often she wriggles so that my fingers brush up against her pussy, ripples of pleasure making her wriggle even more.
“I never said I wanted a kid, did I?”
“You did. And so do I. Let’s make one.”
“You’re drunk!” she exclaims. “You must be drunk.”
“From three beers? No, Willa.”
“We’re not going to have a kid together, Diesel. That’s insane.”
“Then let’s be insane!” I lean over her, looking down into her brown-flecked blue eyes. “Who the fuck wants to be normal?”
We kiss, we wrestle. She rubs the front of my pants until I feel like my balls are going to explode. Then she slides away and jumps to her feet, moving to the other end of the room. “Just stay over there a little while,” she says, struggling to get her breathing under control. “I can’t have you near me right now. I can’t trust myself.”
“Then why try?” I stand up and walk toward her, but she shoots her hand up.
“No!” she barks. “I’m serious.”
I take a step back. She wants me. I want her. But she won’t let it happen because of that damn fire.
“I’ll take the couch.”
I go onto the living room, get myself two more beers, and switch over to the movie channel. The Departed is playing. It’s about one-third in. I try and focus on the movie, try and ignore the sounds of Willa climbing into bed.
All I can think is that I should be in there with her.
Chapter Seven
Willa
Springs turns to summer and LA cooks as LA always does. People walk around in skimpy clothes and still complain about being hot. And I sit in Diesel’s apartment wondering what’s actually going on between us. The past few weeks have been crazy and yet routine at the same time—crazy in that I’m living with a man I’m almost certain is an arsonist, an outlaw, and routine in that the same thing happens every day. I go to work; I return to his apartment; I want us to fuck, and we don’t. We get pretty close several times, writhing on the bed, his hand between my legs, my hand pressed against the front of his pants, and then I remember the smoke kissing the sky, the flames devouring my apartment, and I can’t. I just can’t.
Some nights, we drink. Some nights, we drink hard.
As I sit at work, tapping copy into oblivion, AC blasting, I remember one night in particular.
It was about two weeks after I’d moved in when Diesel came home—home, as I’ve come to think of it, even if it doesn’t make sense—with two bottles of wine under his arm in a brown paper bag. The image will always stay in my mind because it was so contradictory. There he was, six-foot-four, looking like a muscleman with his leather jacket squeezed tightly around his biceps, with two fancy bottles of red under his arm. He placed the bottles on the counter without saying a word and then went for a shower.
It’s always difficult when he goes for a shower. He doesn’t lock the door, leaves it slightly ajar to let the steam out … or that’s what he tells me, anyway. The door is never open enough for me to get a look at him, but as I sat there, listening to the water, I couldn’t stop thinking about his naked body, the water dripping down it. Just go in there, I willed myself. Just go in there and do what you want to do. But there had been another fire in the news, a warehouse. Nobody was hurt, but I knew it was him; it had to be him. The news said the warehouse had belonged to a man named Chino, and a few nights before I’d heard Diesel on the phone talking about the same man. He’s an enemy of the club, I learned.
He emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. The first time I saw his scarred body, it was a shock. His body is toned and tight, his muscles well-defined, his chest hulking, and his abs a hard pack of muscle. And overlaying all this are the scars, dozens of them, most of them faded but some of them newish, white and pink, so many that from certain angles they all disappear into his skin. They aren’t ugly, at least not to me. They make him seem manlier. Maybe that’s a terrible thing to think, but it’s how I feel. He came out of the bedroom dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and then nodded at the wine bottles.
I’d been watching a Netflix drama about cowboys, but I paused it when he nodded.
“Aren’t you going to pour us some of that stuff, then?” he said.
I knew where wine could lead, but I poured it anyway. Part of me wanted—always wanted—to let myself go that extra step, to give myself to him, to stop playing the games. I poured two glasses and brought the bottle into the living room. When the drinking began, I didn’t stop myself. I drank too quickly. I drank eagerly. I drank like that because despite everything, even if I should feel the opposite, I felt safe with Diesel, safer than I’d ever felt with any man. We finished the bottle as the TV screen faded and then went black, and we were drinking twice, once on the couch and again in the reflection. My head started to get woozy, my body tingly. I looked at Diesel and wondered why I hadn’t just jumped on him yet.
“It came as a surprise to everyone.” It was my voice, but it was distant, as if it was coming from across the room. “Me and Mom couldn’t believe it. It was so random. That’s how it seemed to us, anyway.” I was leaning forward, one hand on his shoulder, looking into his eyes. I wasn’t so drunk that I didn’t know I was drunk. But I was close. “One day Dad was Dad, you know? He was a tall man, not as tall as you, but a giant to me. He worked as a builder, one of the foremen, and he was strong. Strong as an ox, as they say. And then one day he and Mom sat me down and explained to me that there was a tumor in his head and there was nothing the doctors could do except pump chemicals into his body and hope it got smaller. The chances were low, because it was so big, but Dad wanted to fight.”
“He wasn’t a quitter,” Diesel said, his voice softer than it normally was.
“No,” I replied. “No, he was never a quitter.”
He put his hand on my knee. Tingles moved up my leg, as they always do when he touches me like that. I wanted him to slide up to my pussy, but I knew if he did I’d just stop it in the middle of our passion. There was a roadblock in my head. I couldn’t stop seeing those flames.
“It’s a really strange experience, seeing someone so strong become so weak in a matter of months. I didn’t really know what was going on at the time. I was ten years old and my father was becoming a skeleton before my eyes. I learned as much about cancer as I could later on, but back then it was like if I searched the Internet about it, I was making it real. I remember sitting up at night wishing that
tomorrow morning I’d go downstairs and Dad would be there, big again, healthy again, and all this had been a dream.
“I was there in the room with him when he died, holding his hand which was as skinny as mine now. He couldn’t speak. He could hardly open his eyes. He just lay there, and I held his hand. I wouldn’t stop holding it, even when it became cold.”
I was too drunk. I was burdening him. But he was listening like nobody else ever had. For the first time, I saw a different side to Diesel, a side which wasn’t just interested in me for my body. His green eyes were full of sympathy, not boredom or pity like I’d seen in other people’s eyes when I’d told them.
“That must’ve been pretty damn horrible,” he said. “Fuck, Willa.”
“Fuck,” I agreed.
I should’ve stopped there. I’d burdened him enough for one night. But the wine had made me talkative and there was nothing I could do to stop my tongue from waggling.
“Mom was devastated. They’d met when she was in college and he was just starting work. She loved him more than I’ve ever seen anybody love anybody. Even though I was there, they were still a couple, you know? They weren’t just Mom and Dad. They were Michael and Trixie. They still went on dates and made an effort. Mom was horrified, but she had me to look after and that’s what pulled her through. She told me that all the time.”
I swallowed a large sip of wine, head feeling light, lolling from side to side. Stop talking, I told myself. I couldn’t, though.
“And then almost exactly a year later, Mom was driving on the freeway when a flatbed truck carrying a totaled car veered too quickly. The ropes, or whatever they use to tie down cars, came loose and the car slid right off the bed, through the front of my mom’s windscreen, killing her instantly. The police and everyone said there was no pain, that it happened so fast she probably didn’t even know it was happening. But I think there must’ve been a moment, a few seconds, where she saw the truck veer and saw the car slide off the bed, where she thought about me and Dad, where she screamed out in terror.”
I wasn’t sure when I had started crying, or when Diesel and I had climbed into bed side by side, his arm wrapped around me. I nuzzled in, feeling safe.
“My grandmother raised me, my mom’s mom, but she wasn’t really all there. I was alone.”
I stopped myself then, sitting up in bed and propping myself against the headboard.
“Can I have a glass of water?” I asked.
Diesel brought it to me, and when I sobered up we fell asleep together. There wasn’t any kissing or moaning that night.
I asked him about his childhood, hoping to make it so I wasn’t the only one exposed, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. Except one day, about a week ago, when he came home smelling of smoke from the warehouse fire—I think, even if he wouldn’t admit it—he stripped off his jacket and shirt and sat on the couch, moving a hand over his scars.
“I know a thing or two about pain, Willa,” he said.
“What?” I urged. “Tell me. You can talk to me.”
He just shrugged and turned on the TV. If I’d learned one thing living with Diesel, it was that he didn’t like talking about what was going on inside that scarred chest of his.
“Willa?”
I look up, waking from my reverie. It’s lunchtime and Peter is standing over my desk.
“Yes?”
“Can you join me for a coffee? I want to talk.”
I don’t know why I say yes. Maybe it’s because part of me wants to go with him.
Chapter Eight
Willa
Peter is wearing a suit as gray as his eyes today, looking like nothing more than an unremarkable businessman as we sit in a booth at the coffee place around the corner from the station. It’s one of those hipster LA coffee joints, with vinyl records instead of photographs on the walls, soft jazz playing in the background, hipsters galore sitting in the seats, some of them nursing coffee in mugs they brought from home.
I get a latte and Peter gets a white coffee.
“So,” he says, “how’ve you been?”
There is no way for me to explain the cacophony and ever-shifting nature of emotions I’ve experienced since spring became summer, so I just answer with, “Fine, and you?”
He grimaces as if that’s not the answer he was hoping for. “Fine,” he repeats. “The last time I checked, your apartment building hasn’t been rebuilt. Have you found a new place?”
I don’t have much reason to use the word “irk” in my life. I remember in college when I sat down to write my great American novel, when that word would materialize on the page and I’d cross it out immediately. But when Peter asks me this question, I have to admit that I’m irked. It’s not just the question itself. It’s the way he says it, too, as if he has a right to know everything that happens in my life. I remind myself of the slack he’s given me this past month, letting me follow up on the warehouse fire story instead of writing copy, and letting me take time off last week to deal with the insurance people.
“No,” I say. He’s just being friendly, I tell myself, even if his eyes look between my chest and my face, never settling.
“So where are you staying, then?” He hasn’t touched his coffee, I notice. When I don’t answer straightaway, he leans his elbows on his knees. “Do you have any family in LA?”
“No.” I shouldn’t even be answering these questions. It’s like he’s interrogating me. I glance at the clock. It’s still twenty minutes until we need to head back. Even if I have my doubts about this career path, I don’t want the decision made for me by annoying my superior. I’m in a very awkward position, between a rock and a Nice Guy.
“So then …”
I fold my hands in my lap, keeping my voice as civil as I can. “Peter, I’m not sure I have to tell you that.”
“Whoa, whoa!” He laughs, holding his hands up. “I didn’t mean any offense, Willa. I was just making conversation. Of course you don’t have to tell me. I never said you had to tell me. Did I? If I did, I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean it in that way.” He takes his first sip of coffee.
This is the trouble with men like Peter. Maybe he really didn’t mean it in any kind of way. Maybe he’s just concerned. I have to admit, he hasn’t been as strange to me around the office these past few weeks. “I’m sorry, Peter,” I say, thinking, I can’t sever this bridge.
“No need to apologize!” He laughs again. It sounds somewhat forced, but I don’t know if that’s just my imagination.
“I’ve been building a motorcycle,” he says, after a minute of silence.
I narrow my eyes. Does he know something?
“Oh, right …” I trail off, waiting.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s no big deal.” He shrugs. I get the sense he thinks it’s a very big deal. “Building it myself, ordering the exact parts I want. It’s going to be a real beauty. Harley chassis.”
“Okay.” Latte scolds my tongue. “That sounds interesting.”
“Yeah, yeah, I guess it doesn’t, doesn’t it? I’ve always been interested in bikes. I love the feel of them between my legs, you know? Do you get that?”
He’s watching me strangely. He must’ve seen something, somewhere. I search my mind, trying to figure out what it could be. Sometimes, instead of catching the bus to work, Diesel will give me a lift on his bike. He drops me down the street, out of view of the station, but maybe …
I decide to lie to see how he’ll react. “I’ve never ridden a motorcycle,” I say.
“Sure, sure.” He waves a hand. “But you get the same experience being a passenger, too.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I’ve never been a passenger on one, either.”
The look on his face is something between disgust and rage. It appears quickly and vanishes just as quickly, making me wonder if it was actually there at all. He offers his bland businessman smile. “Oh, I thought you said you had.”
“I don’t think so. Maybe you’re confusing me with somebody else.”
“Right. Hmm. I don’t think so. Hmm.”
“Well.” I half stand, grabbing the handbag Diesel bought for me. “I better get going.”
We’re both standing, and then Peter lurches forward, his face coming at me like a 3D movie image. “Willa, why would you lie to me?”
I sit, mostly to get away from him. He sits down as well, folding his legs, gripping his knee, looking far more feminine than I think he knows.
“Lie to you?” I say. “What do you mean?”
His forehead creases. I’m not sure if he knows his fingers are drumming against his knees. “Why would you tell me you’ve never been on a motorcycle when you know you have, and I know you have?”
