Sweet Seduction

by Anthology

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes, as if that would stop the truth from being true. “When is Andy coming?” I choked out.

  “Not for another hour or so. He called. Said Bert got the part and was working on the car now.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “Maybe Tyler’s there?”

  Yeah. Right. I made a noise that said about as much.

  “How ’bout you take a shower and by the time you’re packed up, I’ll bet Andy will be here.”

  A shower. She was right. I couldn’t actually do anything other than curse Tyler out in my head. Might as well wash away all the traces of him from my body. God knew there was more than enough of him on me.

  I turned to do exactly what she suggested when she said, “I’ll brew you some coffee. Come on back when you’re packed up.”

  I nodded and murmured my thanks, then turned toward the cabin.

  He had gutted me. That note. Last night. This morning. My stomach growled and twisted, groaned and gurgled. I needed food. I needed coffee. Most of all, I needed answers.

  I needed Tyler.

  By the time I stripped down and climbed into the shower, I was in the middle of an ugly cry. The worn wood of the shower door reminded me of him. My hands on the soap dish were the same hands that stroked and lathered his back yesterday. The tiny space felt like a warehouse with only one body in it. My hands felt like lead balloons as they reached up and shampooed my hair.

  My tears mixed with the hot water and left me bathed in holy water of a sort.

  By the time I stood in front of the mirror, which had tiny spider cracks around the edges, I was red-rimmed and hollow. The comb caught in my tangled hair and as I pulled, a new wave of tears hit me. It took me a moment to really get the fact that I wasn’t crying because I was sad.

  I was just crying.

  Emotions can overflow and pour out. Without Tyler there to crack wise, or a dilemma to figure out, the feelings just were.

  A loud horn blast filled the air outside, and I grabbed my backpack and raced to the office, wiping my face. Andy appeared, driving the chug-a-long tow truck like it was the greatest machine on earth.

  “You ready? Bert’s got her done nice and early.”

  “Is Tyler with you?” I asked, trying to keep the shake out of my voice.

  “No,” Andy said, drawing out the word. “He supposed to be?”

  I just snorted and climbed in. By the time we hit the main road, I realized I never did take Rosita up on that offer of coffee.

  Tyler

  I was an asshole.

  But I was an asshole who wouldn’t be a burden to her any more.

  If she was smart, she’d read my note, cry, scream a little, go run in the desert and call me names—and then do exactly what I asked her to do.

  Maggie was a smart chick. She’d know I was right. And by the time she read that note, I was riding shotgun to this trucker, Bill, who wanted to tell me all about how Jesus Christ is his personal savior.

  And as long as he got me to the concert on time, he could tell me all about it. There was no way I was going to walk very far—my quads were killing me from pushing that car out of the road in the middle of the desert last night, and it hadn’t been easy to even climb up into the cab of Bill’s old truck.

  I just needed a ride.

  I just needed to make it there on time.

  And to stop needing her so much when I had nothing to give back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maggie

  They say “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” but hell really hath no fury like a woman patronized. Andy got me to Bert’s garage. I used the $200 Tyler left me to pay the $197.10 bill. He left me enough extra for a cup of coffee and a bottle of water.

  Perfect.

  Twenty minutes out of town and bars appeared on my phone. As soon as it got reception, it began buzzing with the accumulation of notifications. Darla messaged me thirty-seven times. I called her.

  “Oh, my fucking lord Jesus the dinosaur, you’re ALIVE!” she screamed. “Tyler needs to be here in seven hours. Where the fuck are you?”

  “About six and a half hours away.”

  “That’s too far! Tyler needs to get his ass here faster.”

  “Yeah, about that. Um...he’s not with me.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “YOU DON’T KNOW? YOU LOST HIM? You don’t lose people, Maggie. He’s not your car keys or a cell phone you can’t find. He’s an entire human being and you lost him?”

  I burst into tears.

  “Aw, fuck.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. There’s obviously a long story here, and I love you for everything you’ve done to get him here, but I’m breathing into a paper bag right now and ready to crush Xanax and shove the powder under my eyelids because this tour operator dude keeps telling me how they’ll lose six figures or more and Random Acts of Crazy won’t have a contract and—”

  I began wailing.

  “Fuck. Maggie, is Tyler...okay? He’s not in the hospital or dead, is he?”

  “Nooooooooooo.”

  “So he’s on his way here?”

  “Yesssssssss.” An armadillo came into sight way ahead of me. I swerved gently into the other lane. No way I was letting another one of those fuckers stop me.

  “What happened?” she asked with a sigh. “Go on and tell me all about it.”

  And so I did, maintaining an eighty-two mile per hour speed on the highway, hoping those fucking armadillos stayed in line.

  When I was done, I felt like a salt lick had taken up residence on my face, but I felt so much better for talking about it.

  “What a dumbass,” Darla said. “That man...”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s coming back to you, though.”

  How do you know? I wondered, but didn’t say.

  “He doesn’t have a choice,” I said instead.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m on my way to L.A. right now.”

  “Attagirl.”

  “I’m hunting that fucker down and making him talk to me.”

  “After the concert, though—right?”

  “Darla!”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I kinda have a one-track mind right now.”

  “I noticed.”

  “If you find him, just get him here in one piece. I got enough to worry about right now. Trevor, Liam and Sam’s flight is delayed.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” she said, her breath coming out in a ragged wave, like the sound a piece of paper makes when it’s torn in half. “So, no stress or anything, but I need someone who can play music to get their ass here in time for the opening act at eight. Because if no one shows up, I’m going out there with a pot and a wooden spoon, which is pushing my music skills.”

  “Maybe you could find a chicken, a snake, and a blow up doll—”

  She laughed. “Been there. Done that. Have the video to prove my boyfriend is in love with a chicken who is running for president.”

  “How’s Mavis doing?”

  “So far she’s beating Ted Cruz in the polls.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Depends on whose asking.”

  Our connection began to waver. “Darla, you’re breaking up.”

  “Okay. Just—here—now...”

  And out. Bars disappeared.

  I punched the accelerator to eighty-five.

  And turned off my brain.

  Too bad my heart didn’t have an Off button, too.

  Tyler

  Whatever words I didn’t have, trucker Bill did. By the time he dropped me off at the corner of routes 40 and 15 in Barstow, I knew Jesus’ middle name (the Lord), his favorite food (manna) and the little-known fact that Vikings were directly descended from Jesus. Bill Jorgenson was a fountain of information about Jesus.

  “Sorry I can’t get you closer, but good luck!” he called out, leaving me at 5 p.m., telling me I was about two ho
urs from the concert venue.

  A guy with just a guitar and a ton of tats isn’t a rarity in Los Angeles, but out here in good old Barstow, I might as well have been wearing a sign that said “Serial Killer” on it. Twenty minutes passed by and no one even glanced twice at me. I made it a mile down the road and just kept walking. What choice did I have? I was close. So fucking close. The concert started at 8 p.m. and forget sound checks and needing a bass. If my ass was there at 7:59 p.m., that still counted.

  Images of last night, of Maggie in my arms, her body curled against mine in pleasure and release, tormented me. Maybe I should have stayed. Maybe I should have asked her to drive me this last leg. Maybe I—

  Oh, shit.

  A car in the distance started honking and speeding up. I looked back and holy fuck.

  Maggie?

  I darted behind a giant sign with overgrown, dried out grass under it. Instinct kicked in and I hid.

  The car came to a screeching halt, sliding on gravel and fishtailing from the force of decelerating so fast. It swerved and I thought it was about to slide off the road and into the sign. It stopped a few feet from me and the driver’s side door opened.

  “TYLER! DON’T YOU HIDE FROM ME, YOU ASSHOLE!”

  Huh. Wonder who that could be.

  And then she tackled me, her body flying through the pale beige brush, her elbow slamming into my ribs and the weight of her ass banging into my knee. I was on the ground with her on top of me, punching me.

  Punching me.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I muttered, trying to catch my breath and not laugh. Her fists were about as powerful as being whipped by the long strands of dry grass we were rolling around in.

  “You think you can leave me like that?” Her streaks of hair caught in her mouth and she spat it out, eyes wild and furious. “You think you can just wake up and decide, three-quarters of the way into this journey, that you can send me home? That I’ll be a good little girl who will listen and wait patiently for you? What the fuck, Tyler? It’s not like I’ll just go home and do needlepoint until you come back for me!”

  She sucker punched me in the kidney. Okay. That one hurt.

  “Why are you hitting me?”

  “Because I had six hours to think about how pissed I am at you!”

  “It’s not my fault you chose to waste six hours thinking about me.”

  Punch.

  “Jesus, Maggie, ow!” I rolled her off me and stood, guarded. Those little fists had some power to them, but I knew from experience it was her feet I really had to watch.

  “Tyler Gilvrey, how the fuck dare you sleep with me and then dump me like that!”

  “I didn’t dump you! I said in the note I’d be back, and—”

  “Your note was pathetic!”

  That hurt, too, because I spent a long time making sure I said all the right things in that long note.

  “You can’t—” sob “—just leave me in the middle—” sob “—of this road trip and not let me get you to the finish line!”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way.

  “Good point,” I muttered.

  “GOOD POINT? That’s all you have to say?”

  I shrugged.

  “You didn’t run away to spare me,” she said through angry, gritted teeth.

  I just gave her a pointed look. I didn’t need to say anything because I knew she would continue.

  “You left because you needed to spare yourself.”

  “Spare myself what?”

  “The pain of finally being vulnerable. You finally told someone what happened to you. You talked about it. You— ” She hit my chest, right over my heart, and let out a giant, wailing sob. “You ran away because you don’t know how to talk about it. And you knew that once you crack that closed door open just a wedge, it means you have to open it even more.”

  A hawk flew overhead, its cry piercing the silence between us. Cars whooshed by going seventy miles an hour on the freeway just yards away. I stared at those brown, furious eyes, her chest pumping with confrontation, her face sweaty and hair wild.

  She threw a handful of dried grass at me. “So don’t you dare make your running away about me. About sparing me. You opened up and then you shut down. And then you took off.”

  Holy shit. She was right. I couldn’t admit she was right, but she was.

  “I didn’t take off. I said in the note— ”

  “That note is nothing but some kind of backpedaling after you slept with me. You could handle me being vulnerable, but God forbid you let someone else inside your inner world!”

  “That’s a bunch of bullshit,” I muttered, but without conviction.

  “No, it isn’t!”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “ARGH! You are the most infuriating man I know!”

  “Sorry. What time is it?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Yeah. I’m running late, and—”

  Bzzzz.

  Her phone rang. It was on the ground between us, on a patch of messy gravel, bits of sand stuck to the glass screen, which was now cracked along the bottom righthand corner.

  “FUCK! My phone is broken!” Maggie dived for it and answered.

  “Let me guess. Darla?” I asked. Maggie gave me a look that could cut ice. She put it on speakerphone.

  “You find him?”

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “FROWN! GET YOUR ASS TO THE CONCERT!”

  “I’m trying, but Maggie’s tackling me by the side of the road and holding me back.”

  “Seriously, Maggie—you two need to get here now!”

  “That is not what’s happening!” Maggie protested.

  “Yes, it is,” I corrected her.

  “I actually went out and got myself a chicken, Maggie. I have a fucking chicken in a little cat carrier sitting in the prep room, and if you don’t get Tyler here I’m gonna have to go on stage and do Stupid Chicken Tricks with Mavis.”

  “You have a routine for that?” I asked, half impressed.

  “Shut up, Frown. I don’t, but I will develop one if you don’t get your ass here now, and the first trick I’ll perform is shoving Mavis up your ass,” Darla snapped.

  “Ouch.”

  “I said that would be the first trick, Frown. Not the last. Be prepared for a world of hurt if you don’t get here on time.”

  Click.

  Maggie

  “Get in the fucking car,” I ground out, my jaw locked, nostrils flaring so wide they felt like twin garden hoses.

  “Only if you promise not to hit me.”

  “Is that really going to stop you?”

  He shut up and followed, climbing into the front seat.

  I looked at the clock. 5:27 p.m.

  I looked at my GPS app on the cracked screen of my phone.

  1:57 to destination.

  “Do you have any idea how close this is going to be?” I said as I sped off, not waiting for him to put on his seat belt.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  We both knew I wasn’t asking about the concert.

  “Hell, yes,” he replied without hesitation.

  “Then hang on.” I pushed the car to eighty-five until traffic thickened. An hour later, we had nothing but sixty minutes of thick silence between us and a forty-mile-per-hour pace as we reached Rancho Cucamonga.

  “Are we talking about last night?” I finally asked. An hour of silence had made me a sweaty, twisted mess.

  “Why do we need to talk about it?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that. Shit. Why was he so closed off? The guy is a piece of emotional granite.

  But you can make a fine sculpture out of a piece of granite if you have the right tools and skills.

  “Because you’re the first person I’ve willingly made love with since I was gang raped?” I could hear the hysteria climbing out of my throat like a morning glory growing on a vine, searching for sunlight. If the sun came in too fast, it might choke me. />
  “That’s all you need to say.”

  “I have a lot of other words on the topic, Tyler.”

  “I’ll bet none of them are as important as how you feel right now. Not what you think. How you feel, Maggie.”

  “Don’t get philosophical on me. You’re the one who left me.”

  “I didn’t leave you!” he shouted, exploding in the passenger’s seat.

  “When I wake up after making love and you’re gone, that’s leaving, Tyler! You left!” I exploded right back.

  “I was trying to spare you!”

  “Spare me what?”

  “More of my fucked up life, Maggie. Jesus. I dragged you into this mess and all you did was give, give give. A guy can’t take it after a while, okay? You just keep giving and I keep taking and even I have a point where I feel like a piece of shit for not having anything I can give back.”

  I stared at him in stunned silence.

  Before I could say anything, he continued:

  “I can’t even drive the fucking car. I can’t take care of my little brother so he doesn’t become a junkie. I can’t get a regular gig as a musician. I can’t make anything in my fucked up life work right. I’m in a car with you racing to the finish line of some marathon that turned into a sprint, and I have lost the reason. Why are we doing this? When I woke up this morning and saw you next to me, in my arms, you were so fucking beautiful. So pure.”

  “Pure?” I snorted, overcome with a numb emotion that made my body feel like cotton and electricity. “I’m anything but pure.”

  “No, you’re everything pure, Maggie. Everything. You’re goodness in the flesh and I don’t deserve you. You don’t deserve to be dragged out here on this mission from hell that only happened because I come from a life where everything that’s wrong with the universe comes crashing down, right on my head. Trouble follows me.”

  “I followed you.”

  “Yes, you did. And you shouldn’t have.”

  “You’d have done the same thing in my shoes, Tyler. The exact same fucking thing, and you know it.”

  Traffic opened up and I pushed it to fifty-five miles per hour. Forty-eight minutes to arrival.

  He ran a hand through his hair and looked at me with eyes so crystal clear, so open and aware that my heart stopped in my chest.