Cut Short

by Julia Wolf

I smiled. Joe constantly amazed me, and now I saw where he got it. His mom was so friendly and sweet, and even though they were adults, she still clearly loved her children beyond measure. But not in the way David’s mom loved him, in a “my way or the highway,” conditional love. No, this was a mom who’d set her baby birds free, but was overjoyed when they chose to come back to the nest. The part of me that liked to jump ten steps ahead thought, She would make a great mother-in-law. But that’s just crazy talk!

  When Joe and his dad finished their project, the four of us grilled an early dinner on the back patio. His parents regaled me with embarrassing stories from his childhood and promised to show me pictures when I visited their house. They were both warm and funny, and I couldn’t believe I had been scared to meet them.

  Joe and I said goodnight to his parents, and he leaned his back on the front door when they left.

  “I’m happy you came, sweet girl.”

  I closed the space between us and leaned against him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He ran his fingers through the back of my hair. “What for?” He kissed my forehead.

  “For not staying this morning. I got scared,” I admitted.

  He laughed lightly. “You don’t say.”

  I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him softly. “I feel silly about that now. I should have known your parents would be great since their son is so incredible.”

  He kissed me back, slow and lingering.

  “Your mom said you used to talk about me all the time back in the day,” I teased as he kissed down my neck.

  I put my arms on his shoulders and stroked my palms down his biceps.

  “I told you I had never met a girl like you. I think I talked about you to anyone who’d listen.” Joe took my mouth again, his tongue exploring every crevice and corner. He backed us up, pressing me against the wall. I grabbed his butt and pulled his hips against mine, his hardness on my belly.

  “Why does that turn me on so much?” My hands snaked up his shirt, rubbing up and down the smooth, warm skin of his back. I wanted more of him. I wasn’t ready to tell him with words just how much he meant to me, but I needed to show him with my body.

  I dropped to my knees, popped open his shorts and pushed them down his hips. I lovingly ran my tongue all the way up his length and kissed the broad head of his cock. Joe held my head, running his fingers through my hair. Grabbing his ass, I pulled him closer to me and took him fully in my mouth, loving the feel of his silky-smooth skin against my tongue.

  He groaned, and I took him deep, sliding his shaft along my tongue. I hummed and sucked, thoroughly enjoying myself, wanting to please him. He pumped his hips forward, and I looked up to see his face scrunched up in pleasure.

  I loved seeing him so lost in what I was doing to him. He was such a gentleman in our everyday life together that it gratified me to see some of that control slip.

  Without warning, Joe pulled out of my mouth and yanked me up so we were face to face. “I want to be inside you.” He kissed me deeply, turning and pressing me against the wall again.

  I pushed the straps of my dress off my shoulders and shimmied it down my hips. Joe stepped back to look at me standing there in a pale pink bra and sheer boy shorts. He stood there for a long moment, his eyes feasting on me, making me feel like a goddess under his gaze. I reached behind me and unhooked my bra, dropping it to the floor.

  Joe touched my breasts reverently. “So beautiful.” He ran his tongue across one nipple and thumbed the other. I held his head to my chest as he sucked and licked the hard tips until I felt like I might explode if I didn’t have more. I pushed his shorts the rest of the way down his hips to the floor.

  “Joe, I have to have you now.” He stood immediately and slid my panties off, then hitched my leg up next to his hip. Without hesitating, he found my entrance and pushed inside, inch by delicious inch.

  I wrapped my other leg around his waist, and his hands moved to my ass, holding me up. His hips pumped into me, taking me hard and fast. I ground against him, his pelvis hitting me in the exact right spot.

  “You are so beautiful, and so, so sweet,” he panted into my neck. My mouth found his, and I kissed him hard, relishing his taste. I sucked his full bottom lip between my lips, then licked and sucked along his jaw.

  Joe pounded into me so hard, I felt like we were going to crash through the wall behind me, and I loved every second of it. He leaned down and took my nipple between his lips, licking it, then sucking hard. I gasped, right on the edge of pleasure and pain. I felt my orgasm building as I rode him. Then he bent his knees, changing the angle slightly so he went just a little bit deeper, hitting the spot deep inside that made my eyes roll back and whole body shake.

  “Uhhhhhh,” I moaned as I began to come around him. We kissed sloppily, all tongues and spit and teeth, as he pumped into me fast. My walls clenched around him and he threw his head back and let out of guttural groan, stilling as he came inside me.

  Joe’s hands gripped my hips hard as he leaned against me, both of us breathing heavily. I held him to me tightly, resting my head in the crook of his neck. “That was...wow,” I rasped out.

  “Yeah.” He sighed and let my legs down, then slowly pulled out.

  I hugged him hard, still needing to be close to him. Joe ran his hands through my hair as we stood there for a long time. I had never felt more connected to him than in that moment.

  I smiled up at him, and he kissed my nose. “I really like you,” I said.

  He chuckled. “I really like you too, sweet girl.”

  We went upstairs to clean up and get ready for bed. I looked at myself in the mirror and smirked at my reflection. I looked thoroughly satisfied, my lips swollen and puffy, breasts red from his stubble, my hair wild. The feeling of contentment and happiness flowing through me felt so unfamiliar, I almost didn’t know what to do with it.

  Part of me wanted to fast forward to see where this thing with Joe went. Would we stay this enamored and passionate for each other, or would it fizzle out in a couple months? Would he get tired of me, tired of small-town life and move back to New York? Or would we get married and have a million blue-eyed babies like I fantasized about at sixteen?

  The bigger part of me felt like I didn’t want to miss a second of these early days with Joe. Finally being with him allowed me to push aside the resentment I had carried for so long—after he rejected me, through my miserable marriage. I was happy. I was in love. I just wasn’t ready to tell him.

  Joe waited for me on the bed, and I crawled to him, wearing one of his T-shirts.

  “What was that about?” I asked when I rested my head on my favorite spot on his chest.

  He sighed. “Do you know what it felt like for me to see you walk into my kitchen? I really didn’t expect to see you today. I understood you weren’t ready to meet my parents. I was disappointed, but I understood. So for you to push past whatever waged inside your head and come here? I can’t really put into words how that made me feel. You have no idea how happy you made me.” He held me against him and kissed the top of my head.

  “Joe...I have never smiled more than I have these last couple months with you. You make me happy every day we’re together.”

  He laughed. “I’m happy you’re happy.”

  I grinned. “Then it’s agreed. We’re both happy!”

  And I was happy, happier than I had ever been, but as we fell asleep wrapped up in each other, that small doubt still lingered. The two questions I hadn’t been brave enough to ask and didn’t have the answers to remained: why didn’t he love me then, and does he love me now?

  Twenty-Seven

  The salon was closed and finally quiet after a bustling day. I sat in Eliza’s chair as she combed through my wet hair.

  “Rachel, your ends are an absolute mess.” Eliza held up my split ends in the mirror for me to see.

  “I know! It’s probably been at least six months since I got a haircut. Lately, I’ve been wearing it up all the
time because I can’t get it to look good when it’s down.”

  They say when choosing a hairstylist, look around the salon and pick the one with the worst hair. They’re the one who is probably too busy to get theirs done, and they’re also probably the one who did the cut on the one with the best hair. Eliza, Frannie, and I usually traded cuts unless we got too desperate. Then we’d hack at our own hair.

  “You should have seen her toes before her pedicure the other day,” Frannie said to Eliza. “It’s time to slow down and take care of yourself a little,” Frannie told me. She sat in the chair next to mine, swiveling back and forth.

  “I know. I know,” I said. “My two-day weekends start really soon. I’ll have so much time, I won’t even know what to do with myself.”

  “You’ve earned it,” Eliza said.

  She showed me the length of my hair in the mirror. “How much are we taking off?”

  With my hair all combed out and straight, it was practically down to my waist. I liked it long, but this length was ridiculous.

  “How about so it hits my bra strap when it’s dry? And layers! It’s so heavy. Make me pretty, E!”

  Eliza laughed and got to work on my haircut while the three of us talked about the latest salon and town gossip.

  “Did you guys see Abraham’s music shop is for sale? I guess he’s finally going to retire. About time. He has to be pushing ninety!” Frannie said.

  “He’s seventy-five,” Eliza said quietly.

  “Hey, E, that reminds me. Joe said he ran into you at Abe’s shop a couple weeks ago.” I had already told Frannie all about their meeting, but I hadn’t asked Eliza about it yet. I’d been hoping she would bring it up to me, but since she hadn’t, I decided to give her a gentle, but firm nudge.

  I looked at her in the mirror, but her eyes stayed on my hair. “He did. And I do want to take him up on his offer. I think I’d actually love that. I just wasn’t sure if it would be okay with you.”

  I gasped. “Are you kidding me? Of course it is. We’ll set it up. Joe told me he’s always excited when he meets other musical people. And while I love music and you know my love for awkward nineties dance moves, I’m no musician. I think it would be awesome if you guys had that connection.”

  “Joe’s a good guy, Rach,” she said.

  I sighed. “Yeah, he is.”

  I was completely and totally besotted with Joe. He played his guitar and sang any song I threw at him whenever I requested it. Sometimes I wondered how he knew so many Pink songs, but I didn’t ask and just thanked my lucky stars he was my man. He hung a swing on his porch, and we spent many evenings swinging and laughing there. We’d even had sex there more than once—to test the sturdiness of course.

  I loved him. Hard. And while I still hadn’t told him, he hadn’t said the words to me either. Every time he held me, I yearned for him to tell me he loved me. But that dark place in my mind I tried not to listen to kept whispering, What if he doesn’t love you? What if you’re just a placeholder too? Most days, I managed to smother that voice, to tell it to shut the hell up, but the lingering doubts were still there.

  “How’s Edward, E?” Frannie asked.

  Eliza kept her eyes on my hair as she pulled up pieces to cut layers. “He’s okay. He was really apologetic for how he behaved at the movie in the park, and I thought maybe it would be a turning point. But he’s back to being the same old Edward. We’re so wrapped up in each other’s lives, but I need to make a decision for my own sanity, if not happiness. I know you two hate him, but I’m not that easy to live with either.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, but I had goosebumps up and down my arms. How Eliza described Edward sounded exactly like something I would have said about David. Though I had never heard her talk about ending things with him.

  “You know we love you, no matter what, right?” I asked.

  “She’s right,” Frannie agreed. “Edward is a dick, but you, my sweets, are an angel. Don’t forget that.”

  Eliza giggled. “Thanks, friends. You mean the world to me.”

  We changed the subject and discussed the latest Real Housewives until Eliza started blow-drying my hair. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the relaxing feeling of the hot air on my scalp.

  “There you go, my dear!” Eliza exclaimed as she whipped the cape off and pushed my hair forward on my shoulders.

  I touched my hair gently. “Oh, Eliza, you’ve outdone yourself.” My hair was shiny and fluffy and va-va-voom pretty.

  “Joe is going to love that,” Frannie declared.

  I scoffed. “I’m not letting him near my hair! He’ll just mess it up with his boy hands.”

  We locked up the salon and walked toward the wine bar where Joe was meeting us.

  My heart swelled when I spotted him sitting in a booth. He stood up when he saw me, and I walked into his arms. “Missed you, sweet girl. Your hair looks stunning.”

  I pulled back and smiled. I had seen him that morning before work, but I missed him anytime we weren’t together. “You’re not allowed to touch Eliza’s masterpiece!” Joe laughed as I held my arms up like a shield.

  “Hey, Joe,” called Frannie from behind me. I stepped aside so he could kiss both of my friends’ cheeks, then we all scooted into the booth.

  The table was covered in small plates. “I kind of ordered one of everything,” Joe admitted sheepishly. I squeezed his thigh under the table and smiled.

  “Yum, and I will kind of eat one of everything,” Frannie said as she dug into the tapas. Eliza was daintier in her selections.

  Looking at Joe, I asked, “How’d tiling go after I left?”

  He scoffed and yanked at his hair. “I knew tiling wouldn’t be very enjoyable. But it turned out to be ten times less enjoyable than I thought it would be.”

  “What are you tiling, Joe?” Eliza asked.

  “I’m attempting to tile the laundry and powder rooms. Rachel played my assistant last night and this morning, but it wasn’t as fun without her there.”

  I laid my head on his shoulder as my friends swooned at his sweetness.

  “I thought I watched enough home reno shows on HGTV that I could easily figure out tiling,” I said. “Between that and all the YouTube videos we watched, I was pretty sure I was an expert. But what they don’t tell you is how tedious it is.”

  Joe nodded. “Yep. It’s boring as hell. But I want to get it done before I have to go back to school and life speeds up again.”

  “Wow, Edward can barely hang up a picture. I’m impressed at how handy you are,” Eliza said.

  He chuckled. “Wait until I finish to be impressed. I still have a long way to go, but hopefully, if this sweet girl will play assistant again, we can get it done faster.”

  I looked at Frannie and Eliza, who were grinning at each other, then turned their smiles to me. I knew they were really happy for me. I was really happy for me. Doing a project like tiling with David would have been torturous. We would have spent the entire time arguing—taking turns blaming the other for any mistakes we made. Joe and I had no idea what we were doing, but instead of letting it cause tension between us, we both looked at it as a challenge. We acted silly and goofed off, but we also worked well together.

  We’d been eating tapas and drinking wine for a bit when Frannie hit the table with her palm, and said, “Oh my god, I forgot to tell you Marco called me! Joe, Marco is this tiny little man with a giant package who rocked my world in New York. Anyway, he wants to fly me out to California to see him.”

  Joe practically did a wine spit-take on hearing about Marco’s “package.” I laughed and patted him on the back. Frannie’s bluntness took some getting used to, and I’d learned long ago not to take a drink while she told a story.

  “I thought he lived in New York,” I said.

  She nodded. “He does, but he travels all over for Wella. He’s in Cali for the month and said he’s lonely.”

  “Are you going to go?” Eliza asked. I snorted because I knew the answer before Fr
annie even spoke.

  “Are you kidding me? No way! I might bang him again if he were in front of me, but I’m not traveling for sex.”

  A deep laugh burst out of Joe, and we all watched him with amusement as he chuckled.

  “Frannie, you are amazing.” Joe looked genuinely appreciative of my girl.

  She smiled at him. “Thanks, I know.” Another laugh exploded out of him as I giggled.

  “Joe, I’ve been wondering, what instruments do you play?” Eliza asked.

  He grinned. Music always had been his favorite topic. “Well, guitar and piano are the instruments I’m most comfortable playing, but I dabble in a lot of others.”

  I laughed. “You should see his spare bedroom. Every instrument you can imagine is in there.”

  “Hey, you never know when you’ll need to bust out the accordion or a tuba.”

  Frannie nodded. “You don’t know how many times I’ve been in a situation and thought to myself, if only I had a tuba…”

  The funny thing was I actually believed Frannie had had a thought like that.

  Joe pointed quickly between himself and Frannie. “See? Frannie gets me. And Eliza, to answer your question, I can play decently on most brass instruments and have a cursory knowledge of percussion. I’m decent on violin too. I sort of have to be well-versed as a music teacher, but I’ve always been able to pick up an instrument and figure it out pretty quickly.”

  “My mom forced me to play piano as a kid and I hated it,” Eliza said. “But as an adult, I’m grateful. I love to sit at the keys and get lost in a piece.”

  “I hear that,” Joe said. “One of my favorite quotes I hang up in my classroom is, ‘Where words fail, music speaks.’ I’ve always been able to express my feelings through music, even when I couldn’t find the words.”

  Eliza nodded vigorously. “Exactly!”

  “So, are we going to jam?”

  “I think we should. Though, I’m strictly a pianist,” she said.

  Frannie and I traded glances and grinned. I felt warm down to my toes that Joe and Eliza were connecting over music since she normally stayed quiet around anyone she didn’t know.