by S Doyle
“You drove! You are shitfaced and you got in a car!”
“Access road to here.”
Which meant the road on the property where there would be no other traffic. Not that it mattered.
“What about cattle? Deer? Did you think of that?”
He opened his mouth and then shut it. Then he shook his head like he was having a hard time forming thoughts. “Get your stuff. You can’t sleep here. It’s too cold. I want you in your room.”
“I was completely fine and you’re an idiot.”
“Yep. Now, Ellie.”
With nothing left to do I turned back into the cabin and found my boots. Then I picked my coat up off the chair and put it on.
“I can’t believe for as many times as you’ve railed at me about the horrors of drinking and driving, you would do this. Where are the keys?”
He patted his pockets. I realized he wasn’t even wearing a coat. He had to be the one who was freezing.
“Truck?”
Like that was one possibility. Great. I pushed him a little to get him moving in the general direction of the truck. It was a good thing he could still manage walking, because there was no way I had the strength to get Jake into the truck without his help. He was able to lift himself into the passenger seat and his head fell back against the headrest.
“Do not fall asleep on me or I swear to God I will let you spend the night in your truck.”
“I won’t. Need to talk to you.”
He was not in any shape to talk, so I had no doubt that whatever was going to come out of his mouth would be nonsense. But as long as it kept him awake until I could get us back to the house, then I was all for it.
“Okay Jake, what do you want to talk about?”
“Carol.”
Was he kidding me? “I don’t want to talk about Carol.”
“Did you know she was Bobby’s cousin?”
I didn’t. But I wasn’t sure why it mattered.
“Doesn’t matter. I didn’t fuck her. I know you think I did. I didn’t. I ended it.”
He didn’t fuck Carol? Was that true? Of course it was true. He wouldn’t lie sober, much less shitfaced. It shouldn’t have made me feel the way it did. As if I was suddenly ten pounds lighter. But it did.
Still. I had to say the words. “I hope you didn’t do that because of me.”
“I did.”
Swell. Yet another way I was messing up his life, and I didn’t need the added pressure. “Damn it, Jake. I know you’re drunk, but if you think you can make me feel guilty…”
“Nothing to be guilty about,” he interrupted. “I’m the one… I’m the one who hurt you. I don’t know why I keep doing that.”
“It’s okay, Jake.”
“It’s not okay. But I want to fix it.”
He was too late. I already had the plan to fix it.
At least Jake had been right about one thing. The access road that led from the house to the cabin had been completely empty. No cattle roaming. There could have been deer, but he’d gotten lucky. I pulled up to the house and parked in front of the porch instead of under the portico. Less of a walk for him.
“Are you going to be able to get out?”
His head basically rolled in my direction and really I had to laugh. I had never seen Jake like this. He looked almost… vulnerable.
“Yes?”
“Wait for me until I open your door.”
I didn’t want him falling face-first out of the truck and risking hurting himself. Like the good little boy he was, he waited. I opened the door and steered his legs around and although he was unsteady, he managed to get out and still be on his feet. I took the bottle from his hand, and he let it go as if he didn’t realize he was still holding it.
Then he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and I figured that was a good idea to keep him from falling over.
He wasn’t putting too much of his weight on me, just enough I could guide him up the front porch steps and toward the door.
Luckily the door wasn’t locked, so I turned the knob and pushed it open.
“Okay, you first. Inside.”
He stumbled but made his way inside. I followed and locked the door behind him, leaving the whiskey bottle on the small table in the foyer.
“Lockthedoor,” he slurred.
“I did lock the door. I’m not going to try and get you up the stairs, so it’s couch city for you, my drunk friend.”
I walked up to him and he put his arm around me again. I moved us in the direction of the living room. Then he dipped his head and smelled my hair.
“It always smells so good. I love your hair. Did I ever tell you that?”
“You like blondes,” I reminded him.
“I liked holding your hair in my hands when I kissed you. Like suddenly it was mine.”
Okay, I really didn’t want to talk about kissing Jake. It brought up too many memories that seemed pointless. I had to get him to the couch, where I could drop him and he could pass out.
Instead he bumped his knee into the coffee table in the middle of the room.
“Are you hurt?”
“All the time. It’s like this ache. You know?”
I didn’t. And I didn’t really want to speculate on anything. Finally I got him to the couch. I pushed him and he dropped, but then he reached for my hand and pulled me down on top of him.
Drunk Jake was still strong Jake.
His hands were wrapped around me and I was pressing my forearms against his chest, trying to get away.
“Jake, let me go.”
“Kiss me.”
I froze.
“You’re drunk,” I reminded him. “You don’t really want to do that.”
“No, it’s okay because I’m drunk. Because tomorrow I can say I wasn’t thinking. I’m tired of thinking so much, Ellie.”
His hand reached up to cup my face and then his fingers slid into my hair.
“Mine.”
I should have pressed harder against him. I should have wiggled away from him. He was drunk, he didn’t know what he was doing. And I was pretty sure given the fact that I was sober, if I did this I would be taking advantage of him. Not cool.
“Kiss me, Ellie.”
It had been so long. Months and months. One kiss. One kiss couldn’t hurt anything. He wasn’t going to remember any of this anyway.
I dropped my head and he did the rest. Cupping my face in both hands, tilting my head just a bit, and then he slid his tongue inside my mouth and my stomach dropped as if I had hit the downside on a roller coaster ride.
It felt like a ride, too. Fast and intense. He tasted like whiskey, but he also tasted like Jake. The same Jake from last time, who was all heat and slickness.
He was holding me and kissing me, and I could feel his erection pressing up against me, so I ground myself against it which made him moan into my mouth, and I thought, this is it. This is really going to happen.
Us.
My first time.
My first time with a drunk Jake.
I pulled away from him suddenly, and it startled him enough that he let me go. I scrambled off him until I was standing. That saying about being weak in the knees. So true.
“Ellie…”
I took a few breaths, and then I turned toward his feet and started working on the ties on his boots.
“You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re doing or who you are doing, and I don’t want…” I didn’t say I didn’t want to lose my virginity to someone who didn’t realize who he was banging, so I didn’t say anything else.
I got his boots off. I covered him with a blanket.
His eyes were nearly shut, but he wasn’t asleep yet.
“Kissing you is the best thing,” he muttered. Then he turned a little to get comfortable and passed out. Unable to help myself, I bent down and kissed him on the temple.
I got the trash bucket out of the downstairs bathroom and set it by him, just in case. I left a tall glass of water and two
Excedrin on the coffee table for when he woke up.
I made my way upstairs and not going to lie, it was nice to sleep in my bed. It smelled the way it should.
I got under the covers and thought about what had happened.
One thing he was right about. Kissing Jake was the best thing.
It was really sad to think that might have been the last kiss we would ever share.
One he might not even remember.
Twelve
Jake
I opened my eyes and then closed them again. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. Like I couldn’t think because all this white fluffy stuff was in the way. And my mouth—for the love of all that was holy in this world, I needed water.
I blinked again and saw the glass of water on the coffee table. I just needed to get up and reach for it. I sat up, noticed the trash can on the floor, and decided all I needed was the water and whatever two white pills Ellie had left out for me.
Ellie.
I started to put the pieces back together. The drive to the cabin. The drive back. I told her about Carol and…
I kissed her. It wasn’t like I was going to forget that. She’d pulled away. I remember that. Because I was drunk, she had said. Then nothing.
All things considered, it could have been worse. Awake now, I realized I smelled food. Sausage, which made my stomach grumble with hunger. Nothing like a greasy breakfast to work off a hangover.
I made my way to the kitchen to in fact find Ellie making me breakfast. It was strange the other day when I came down to find Carol… that had looked so wrong in my head.
I looked at the clock on the microwave and saw it was already eight a.m. Ellie had let me sleep off some of my hangover and now she was making me breakfast. I took this as a good sign.
“On a scale of one to ten, how bad did I screw up last night?”
She whipped her head around. “Ten. You drove drunk! That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen you do in my life. And while there would have been no other cars on the access road, you could have done something else to hurt yourself. Remember Janet last year? You were so pissed at her for doing that. It was not cool.”
I wiped my hands over my face and made my way to the fridge for more water. That first glass was only touching the surface of my thirst.
“You’re right. It was stupid. I don’t even know why I did it.”
That wasn’t exactly true. I did it because I wanted to not think about shit for five minutes. I forgot that sometimes when you get drunk you think about shit even more.
I had the idea that Ellie was cold and needed to come home, and in my drunken state I had to make that happen.
“Sit. I’ll feed you and you’ll feel better.”
Ellie was fussing over me. Ellie was taking care of me.
Because I broke up with Carol. Made sense. I was no longer hurting her.
I sat down and she filled my plate with half a pound of sausage, three eggs, and four pieces of toast. She set a jar of peanut butter in front of me and I went to town.
“Thank you,” I mumbled around a piece of toast. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, and nothing tasted as good as hangover food.
“You’re welcome. I have to head out to the grocery store. A little food and a hot shower and I’m sure you’ll be as good as new.”
She was about to stand up when I reached across the table and caught her hand.
“I meant what I said the other day. If you want me to move to the bunk house, I will.”
She shook her head and I watched the sway of her ponytail.
Had I talked about her hair last night?
“You don’t have to move. We had a fight. I misunderstood the situation and you were upset. It’s over now. Behind us.”
“We’re good?”
She nodded.
I smiled. “Did I say anything really stupid last night?”
“Not too stupid, no.”
I don’t know why I said it. Maybe because she hadn’t brought it up.
“I know I kissed you.”
“You did. You were drunk, you didn’t know what you were doing. It’s fine. No harm, no foul. You’re on cleanup duty.”
She slipped her hand out from underneath mine and got up. I watched her pull her stuff together, and she was calling out bye, and the whole thing felt pretty surreal. Like what had happened the other day had been a fight and she was over it. As if my apology had actually worked.
Or it was because she knew Carol was no longer a thing, but somehow I didn’t think that was it. It was like she was resigned to something. Something only she knew and I didn’t.
I didn’t know that I liked that. I did know that I didn’t correct her when she said I didn’t know what I was doing when I kissed her.
I knew exactly what I was doing. I was allowing my drunkenness to give me a free pass. Every day was an exercise in not kissing Ellie. The booze gave me cover to give into my basic instincts.
My stomach filled, my plate clean, my head feeling better now that the pills were doing their thing, I got up and handled the dishes. It wasn’t until I was drying the counter where I had splashed some water that I noticed the scales.
The other day I had moved all ten disks on the left side.
Ellie had moved six to the right.
Not five.
Six.
For some reason that made me feel better than I had in weeks.
Later that night, I was putting away the dishes from dinner.
“You’re rocking those casseroles,” I told her. “If someone in this town dies, you’re going to have start coming up with what will be your I’m-sorry-someone-is-dead food.”
She chuckled. Weeks of the silent treatment. Weeks of her barely acknowledging me, and now I had made her chuckle.
I was a king.
I decided to push my luck.
“Hey, there’s another season of that show you really liked last year out on Netflix. Feel like binge watching?”
I waited. I didn’t realize I was also holding my breath.
“Sure. I’m not loving the book I’m reading right now.”
We got everything put away and we took our normal spots. Me, in the recliner, her on the couch. It felt a little bit like walking on eggshells. As if I made any sudden movements she might bolt.
Then the show started and everything seemed to fall into place.
I had my life back.
I had my wife back.
I glanced over at her, but her attention was on the show. Her hair was loose tonight and a sensory memory of me running my fingers through it was intense.
Mine.
I looked back at the screen and tried not to think about it. Tried not to wonder what she would do if I sat on the couch with her. With her body tucked up against me so I could bend down and smell her hair whenever I wanted to.
Shit, I was staring at her. I forced myself to look at the TV, but if she asked me what I thought about what I was watching I would have no clue.
She didn’t ask. Just popped up when the second episode was over and said goodnight.
Yes, something was different. We weren’t who we were pre-kiss. We weren’t who we were pre-Carol. We weren’t who we were during-Carol (Thank you God!).
We were something else now. I wasn’t necessarily sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but the next day when I took a break to grab lunch I saw another disk had been added to the right scale.
Seven.
Progress, I thought. But progress towards what?
“Hey, I’m heading to Pete’s.”
I looked up from the article I was reading in Montana Weekly on popular bull sperm donors. Yes, sometimes I spent way too much time focusing on bull sperm.
“Okay.”
It was homecoming. I knew Chrissy, Lisa, and Karen were all home this weekend.
“It’ll be good, you seeing your girls.”
She beamed. “I know. I’m excited.”
“You know not to d
o something as stupid as what I did last week.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“You drink too much, call me and I’ll come pick you up.”
“I promise.”
I watched her leave and I tried not to stare too hard at her ass. She was wearing tight dark jeans and her cowboy boots. She’d curled her hair so it bounced around her shoulders.
Geezus, sometimes I forgot how freaking gorgeous she was.
She was going to be at a bar, looking like that. I didn’t want to think about it.
I went back to reading my article but the words ran together. I got up and decided I needed a shower. Something to do so I wasn’t thinking about her out with the girls while every guy at Pete’s ogled her.
Okay, not every guy. There would be some who had known Ellie her whole life who wouldn’t look at her that way. Like I had up until a year ago.
Fuck.
I turned the hot water on and I thought about maybe heading to Pete’s myself. I didn’t have to hang out with her. I could just be there. That way she would know if she wanted to let loose a little I would have her back. She wouldn’t have to be worried about calling me.
That was a solid plan. Done with the shower, I got out, dried myself off, splashed on some cologne. A birthday present from Ellie this summer. Did I consider the fact that I was picking out what I knew was her favorite shirt to wear?
No.
Okay yes, but I was in denial about it so it didn’t matter.
I jogged down the stairs and grabbed my good coat (another present from Ellie), not my working coat, off the hook.
As I got into my truck, I paused for a second.
Was this creepy? Was I going all stalker on her?
No, I thought. It was Friday night. I could head into town for a beer. And if I was there to give her a ride home, no big deal.
We were cool now. She had seven disks on the right side of the scale.
Except as I drove into town and pulled up to park on the street near Pete’s, the doubts came back. I didn’t want to hone in on her night. She hadn’t seen her friends since they went off to college. I didn’t want her to think I was shadowing her or something.
I should probably go home. I didn’t think she would like it if I was there. Just as I turned the engine on my phone rang. I reached for it thinking it might be her, thinking she might actually be calling me to join her.
