“How’s she working out?” I gestured down the hall to where Idaho had disappeared.
“She’s one hell of a project manager. I think she’ll get us there under budget and early.”
Figured she was smart, too. “Good. I’ve been keeping an eye on her.”
“So I observed.” His voice was serious.
I faltered. “I meant around the rest of the guys.”
“I know what you meant, but honestly, she doesn’t need it. The woman can hold her own. Saw her put Stan in his place so fast he didn’t realize what had happened until the end of lunch.”
Go, Idaho.
EVERY NOVEMBER, LORI and Nick hosted a Leonid meteor shower party at their house down the road from mine. Hidden deep in the woods, the location was perfect for stargazing away from Seattle’s light pollution. A large open field held a pyre of wood for a bonfire on one side, and blankets, pillows, and inflatable air mattresses for meteor watching on the other.
I had been instructed, under penalty of death by purple-nurple, there would be no hanky-panky on those air-beds. Of any kind. For that reason, I usually went by myself to these events.
Rather than drive, I grabbed a flashlight by the door and headed into the woods, following the familiar path to my sister’s house. A few yards from the edge of the trees, the glow from the fire brightened the path, and I turned off the light. People walked toward the blaze or stood around its edge. Lori’s round belly stood out against the warm glow, so I aimed for her profile.
When I reached her side, I kissed her head. “Hey, baby sister.”
“My favorite brother!”
“Only brother.” I grinned and her smile mirrored mine.
“Same thing.”
I greeted other familiar faces, landing last on Idaho’s.
“Hey.” I gave her a slight head bob, not knowing if we were cool.
She rolled her eyes, but smiled, returning my gesture.
“Funny running into you here,” I said.
“Why’s that? Lori invited me. It’s her house.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re here. It’s just funny how we don’t see each other for years and now here we are again.”
“I’m living on the island, we work together, and I’m best friends with your sister. It’s inevitable we’ll be in the same place at the same time a lot. Like five days a week and some weekends.”
“Sounds like a custody deal.” I frowned.
“You have kids?” Her eyes widened.
I gave her a sly smile. “None I know about.”
“Right. There could be hundreds of Tommy boys running around out there.”
“Hundreds? You flatter me.” I rubbed the knuckle of my index finger against my jaw. She might have been fishing for her number. To be honest, I didn’t keep track. No notches in my bedpost or in the frame around my bedroom door. Actually, there wouldn’t be. I rarely brought women to my house. John joked I needed a “he-man woman-haters” sign above the door like we had in our tree house on my grandparents property. It wasn’t that bad. Women who were related to me visited all the time, much to my annoyance.
Idaho studied me.
“I swear, not hundreds.” Not sure why I needed to emphasize my point, but it mattered.
With a shrug and a small smile, she walked away, and joined a group standing on the far side of the fire.
What did her shrug and smile mean? I furrowed my brows and stomped out a glowing ember on the grass. The party had shifted and I stood alone. Fine by me. I found a Deschuttes in one of the coolers. Plates of hot dogs and sausages filled a nearby table, along with metal skewers and old school sticks for toasting marshmallows. I speared a sausage and joined the crowd around the bonfire.
“You should see a doctor if you have a burning sensation in your wiener,” Diane bumped my hip.
I gazed down at her and she pointed to where flames encompassed my sausage.
“Damn.” Pulling the flaming meat toward me, I waved it around and blew on it to extinguish the fire. What remained looked like a charred, black dog turd. “You think it’s still good?”
She waved the smoke away from her face. “No.”
I shrugged and threw the carbonized chunk of meat into the fire. “Want one?”
“Nah, I’m all set with meat right now, thanks.”
I smiled and glanced over her shoulder. “Where’s the big lumberjack?” These days wherever Diane was, my best friend was sure to be lurking close by.
“He’s over there somewhere talking about fishing with your grandfather. Those two could talk all night about lures and weights.”
I stared through the flames and found them. Pops sat in a folding camp chair and gestured broadly with his hands. From here it appeared he was telling the famous Sitka halibut story from ’84. There were the ones who got away, and then there was the big fish story. The biggest, baddest gilled monster that broke your heart and ruined you when it swam away. We all had one.
“I should go say hi.”
Pops was hands-down one of my favorite people on the planet. He didn’t talk a lot and he didn’t like most people, or things, but we had a bond. His eyes lit up when he saw me.
“Hey Pops.” I squatted down in front of him so he’d be able to hear me better. We chatted about nothing for a few minutes.
“I met John’s young lady. She’s quite the catch, I think. Pretty thing. Reminds me of Ellie when she was younger. Although, when I was your age, I’d been married ten years and was raising a family.”
John and I both glanced down and fumbled with our beers.
“Now, I know your generation does it differently, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what you boys are waiting for. Or running from.” The lenses of his glasses reflected the fire, but I knew he was giving me his patented Clifford stare. “Women keep their looks longer. Men? We lose our hair, get a paunch,” he patted his belly, “grow fur in our ears, and those pretty girls aren’t going to look our way anymore, at least not for the right reasons.” He paused to cough. “You wait too long, you miss the best titties.”
I choked on my beer. John stared at me with amused disbelief.
Clifford Donnely called it like he saw it.
I said a prayer of thanks he didn’t talk about trouble getting it up with my grandmother.
“At least now with those drugs, you don’t have to worry so much about losing your ability to salute your woman.”
Ah, there it was.
“I enjoy your company, but go talk to those young ladies of yours.” He pointed with his thick, gnarled fingers across the fire to where Diane stood talking with Idaho.
“Oh, that’s not my girl, Pops. She’s Lori’s friend, Hailey King. You know the Kings, over in Freeland?”
“She the one marrying the no good land-grabbing city boy with his big ideas about progress?” He glowered.
“I think she called off the wedding,” John said.
“Good. Came to her senses. The last thing we need is his kind destroying what took generations for this family to build. Now, one of you give me a hand out of this goddamn-cheapass-rickety-prick-chair. It’s past my bedtime.”
We each took an arm and gently tugged him out of the folding chair. He hacked again and patted the pocket on his chest for his smokes.
“You quit smoking. Five years ago,” I said.
“Damnit. One of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made. I miss the days when smoking was accepted and appreciated. Like a stiff drink at lunch. Nowadays nothing I do isn’t regulated by doctors or the government. Too many bureaucrats messing in my business.”
I had to laugh at his grumblings. He was a man of strong opinions and stubborn as all get out. Open-heart surgery with a quadruple by-pass had been the final push for him to quit smoking. Nearly scared us all to death, but he took it in stride like he did with most things.
“Nice to see Pops. The man never changes. He’s exactly as scary and funny as he was when we were growing up,” John said as w
e walked over to Diane.
“Man used to scare the living crap out of me as a kid, but he was a pussycat compared to Gramma Ellie. She had a spatula she kept aside special for us kids. ‘Go see your Gramma’ were the scariest words a Donnely kid could hear.” I rubbed my ass in memory.
“No date tonight to rub your ass for you?” Diane teased, wrapping her arms around John.
“Har har. You’re beginning to remind me of one of my sisters.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “And I don’t need another sister.”
“I tease with love. Speaking of dates, where’s your firecracker Ashley tonight? She was all over you on Halloween and I didn’t see you complaining. Or acting like you were being attacked by bees. What’s going on there?” She showed her teeth in what someone might mistake for a smile. The Cheshire Cat had nothing on her.
“No idea, haven’t talked to her. You know me, I don’t date.”
“Look!” Lori shouted and pointed to the sky.
A silver streak and then another flashed across the darkness. The crowd strolled over to the viewing area and claimed blankets and mattresses. Couples coupled together like they were animals on the arc. I found a spot on a blanket on the ground and lay down, propping my head on my arms. Another bright flare blazed and burned out above the tree line. On the mattress next to me, a body shifted under a blanket. Ugh. If people were making out two feet away from me, I needed to move. Lori would not approve of this becoming an orgy. Chuckling to myself, I sat up and folded my arms around my knees, trying not to glance to my left.
“Tom?”
Idaho.
I turned my head to see her. “Whatcha doing there, Idaho?” I whispered as I lay down.
“Watching the stars. You?” She rolled to her side to face me, and the airbed dipped.
Our faces leaned close together and her eyes sparkled in the dim light. I stared for a moment, maybe two. She didn’t break eye-contact, and she didn’t make a face to deflect.
“No, you’re not.” It was the first thing to come to my mind. “Stars are up there.” I pointed above her head, and smirked. “You should make a wish.”
“Maybe I already have.” She flipped on her back.
I couldn’t help it. Teasing her felt like breathing. I didn’t think about it, the words flowed out of me. “Scoot over a little.”
“I’m not spooning with you,” she whispered, crossing her arms.
“No spooning. I want a pillow.” I shifted my legs so my head could rest perpendicular to her hip. I kept my eyes on the sky and the stars streaked above me while I listened to her breathing.
Unlike fireworks, meteor showers didn’t have crescendos and encores. The frequency increased and the bright paths of meteors incinerating lit the sky, but there was no reason to ooh or ahh. Meteor watching was a quiet, mostly solitary activity. A few “look!” and “over there” pierced the quiet, but otherwise the fire crackling, murmured, intimate words and the soft rustle of branches in the wind were the only sounds.
Something about observing the stars blinking their limited light and lying on the ground combined into a creeping loneliness. I arrived alone and I’d be leaving alone to return to my house, alone. Would anyone mark my disappearance? Would anyone notice if I faded away?
Then again, I’d rather be alone than one of those couples that walked and ate in silence, and appeared more sad and lonely together than if they were solo.
The cold earth and wind snuck under my clothing. I shivered.
“Want to share my blanket?” her soft voice asked.
“Nah, I’m good.”
“I can see you shiver, and you’re jostling me. Come on, I won’t bite.”
“You can’t make that promise. I have a distinct memory, which would contradict your statement.”
“Shh. Someone might hear you.” She half sat up and peered around at the couples near us. No one was paying attention. I could have told her so.
I rotated so my body lined up parallel with hers, but remained on the ground. I plotted my quick escape in case I needed it.
She sighed and the blanket landed over my torso. “That didn’t come out right. I’m not ashamed of what happened. I’m a grown woman.”
I waited. Typically what followed “I’m not ashamed” proved otherwise.
“It’s complicated. Kurt, Lori . . . it would be a mess if they found out.”
“Don’t worry about it. No one will hear it from me, if you’re concerned. I’m not one to kiss and tell. Trust me, the last thing I want is to be the center of the gossip circle.”
“I . . . I wasn’t worried.”
“No problem. Honestly, I’m pretty clear about how things work. Don’t beat yourself up. From what I remember, we had fun, a lot of fun. Don’t taint it with some girlish guilt about getting off with someone you don’t love. That’s bullshit.”
“Will you hang on a minute?” Her voice rose above a whisper. “You’re putting words in my mouth, and you have no idea what I’m trying to say here. If you did, maybe you’d shut up for five seconds and let me get the words out.” Her voice trailed off in a frustrated huff. “Never mind.”
“Now you’ve piqued my curiosity.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, Tom.”
“I’ll take my chances.” I reached over and searched for her hand under the blanket. I found it resting on her stomach, tightly clasped with the other one. She didn’t unwind her fingers, so I lay mine on top. “Tell me.”
“I never said I didn’t like it. You know you’re good in bed. You shout it with the way you flash your dimples at every woman you meet, in your swagger, in the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude you have about relationships. And for the record, I did have fun.”
I didn’t contain my grin. “You mean these dimples?” I gave her both barrels.
“Stop. You already charmed me out of my underwear once.”
“And? You want another go?” I pried her fingers apart and wove them with mine.
She whispered something so quietly it got lost in the night.
“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to repeat that.”
“Yes.”
“Again, didn’t catch that,” I teased.
“Yes, I wouldn’t mind another go.”
I squeezed her hand. “They always do.”
She pulled her hand away from me and threw off the blanket, kicking at it with her feet. “Don’t be an asshole.”
Shit.
“Okay, I shouldn’t have said that.” And more quietly, under my breath, “Even if it’s true.”
“I’m going home.”
“Fuck.” I’ve messed this up. “Don’t. I’m sorry. Let’s hang out again.”
She didn’t respond.
“I’d like it, too,” I said.
“I don’t want to be a pity fuck. That’s the last thing I want. Don’t ever make me feel like I’m some sort of charity project for you. Just. Don’t.” She struggled to keep her voice low, the history of past hurts staining her words.
“Never. No way.” I held up my fingers in a salute. “Promise.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she relaxed again. I pulled the blanket up to cover us and leaned closer to her ear. “Come over after this. Better to drive over and park behind the shop than leave your car here, and have people ask questions. I’ll walk home on my own. Nod your head if you agree.”
In the darkness, with the sky burning up above us, I waited for her signal.
She was right. This could be a shit storm if people found out. On the other hand, we were adults. We had chemistry. They could mind their own business. She moved her head in a subtle nod with eyes fixed toward the sky.
After a few moments, I bounced up and stretched, yawning loudly. “Okay, kids, Tom Cat’s heading home. You behave yourselves. Or don’t. You know I wouldn’t.”
A few groans and good-byes responded. The spell of the night broken, others stretched and stood too, Idaho amongst them.
Lori shouted at everyone to leave the stuff on the l
awn for the morning, but I folded our blanket and put it on one of the chairs near the fire. With a wave and a sweep of my flashlight, I headed off into the woods. Leaving alone like always. Better alone than lonely, as Pops would say.
I SAT ON my porch in the dark and waited for car lights to slip through the woods surrounding my driveway. She should have been here by now. My leg bounced as I counted to sixty again and again. The light over the shop highlighted one of my works in progress: a six-foot otter rested across two sawhorses. I liked this project and lost myself in plotting the cuts I still needed to make.
Lights blinded me as her car bounced over the ruts of the unpaved drive. I stood and pointed to the side of the shop where she could park. “What took you so long?”
“I ended up folding all of the blankets to annoy Lori. Or that’s what she accused me of doing. Woman is almost nine months pregnant, I couldn’t leave her with a mess.” She strolled toward me on the porch.
“You’re good people, King.”
She took the steps two at a time until she stood in front of me. “Maybe I don’t want to be good.” Her mouth met mine, warm and wet.
I let her take control as she slammed our bodies into the doorframe. I reached behind myself to open the door, and pulled her inside with me. Still kissing, we stumbled into the living room and landed against the side of the couch. I lifted her by the hips and she spread her legs to wrap them around me. Her tongue stroked mine, and I let my hands wander everywhere, shoving fabric out of the way as I went. Her coat, sweater, and shirt flew across the couch, landing on the floor and coffee table. She reached around to unclasp her pink lace bra. My hands cupped her warm flesh while hers undid my belt and lowered my zipper. Cool fingers reached inside to grasp me. I jumped at the shock of the contrast between warm and cold. She leaned too far and tumbled over the couch, landing in a soft heap on the cushions. I jumped over to follow her, my laughter joining hers as we made out like horny teenagers, half-dressed and rounding second base for third.
Confessions of a Reformed Tom Cat Page 7
