by Kasia Fox
A crack burst in the stillness like a gunshot. A whizzing sound immediately followed. Then came the explosion of light in the sky. A golden chandelier hung in the air above them, tendrils of light waterfalling to earth.
“What?” Tessa sat up, grinning, her face tilted upward as a spiral of pink arched across the desert night sky. “Fireworks?”
“We got here a little early.” Cal sat up too, spooning her from behind, his arms around her waist. “This was supposed to be the date. I swear it wasn’t my plan to drive you out to the middle of nowhere and....”
“Have sex immediately?” Tessa laughed. “Are you sure?”
“Well, it wasn’t not the plan.” The fireworks lit up his smiling face. She couldn’t stop laughing.
“This is for us?” Tessa half turned her head and looked up at strobing polka dots of red and blue light.
“I mean, I hope the people of Boulder City enjoy it too, but, yeah. This is for you, Tessa.”
Five pops and the sky was painted with radiant color and light. She settled back into him. He kissed the top of her head. Their own Fourth of July show. Even as her prolonged smile caused her cheeks to ache, a black droplet of fear unfurled in her. How to go from this moment back to North Dakota and splitting the check with a boy at Applebee’s? Tessa willed the thought to dissolve. She was here with an amazing man and she wasn’t going to ruin another minute with him worrying about what could be. Twin chrysanthemums of pink burst in the sky. Tessa laughed with delight.
✽✽✽
As soon as winter was over I was going to leave him. I would move back to North Dakota and talk to my priest about an annulment and make my confession. I would tell my father that he was right and I was wrong. I would humble myself before the church ladies. After all, there is nothing Christians enjoy more than a repentant sinner.
One day the boy cashier at the grocery store (he was my age, not really a boy, but it felt that way because my husband was older than me) bagged my peanut butter and asked if I needed help out to my car. I said, “Yes. Please help me.” Neither of us laughed. The joke was over.
26.
This time when Tessa slept at Cal’s house, it was in his king-sized bed. At one point in the night he’d rolled over and kissed her bare shoulder. The motion stirred her from sleep but didn’t wake her. In the morning, the memory of that kiss was waiting, making her smile before she even opened her eyes. Unlike the previous morning, all the details of their night together were sharp as the photos in her phone. She lay still, blinking awake, staring at the ceiling fan until a mechanical purr distracted her.
Tessa sat up. The blackout drapes parted slowly on their own, revealing floor-to-ceiling windows with a clear view of rising sun on the tiled roofs below and, beyond them, the jagged line of a mountain range.
“Good morning,” Cal said. He was in bed next to her; he’d opened the drapes with a remote.
“Wow. You get to look at this every morning?” she said.
“I never stay in bed long enough to look at anything.” He laid back against the pillow, pulling her down with him. Tessa nestled against him, her head resting on his shoulder.
“I appreciate you lingering.” Tessa smiled, trailing her fingers absently over his chest and abs.
“Unfortunately I have to go to work. You’ve already eaten up my workout time.”
She flicked him on the stomach.
“Ow!” he laughed.
“I have to spend time with Ron anyway. Berkley is mad I’m gone so much.” As soon as she’d spoken the words, Tessa regretted them.
“Why would she care?” Cal shifted so they could see each other’s faces.
“I don’t know,” Tessa said quickly. “Probably she doesn’t.” Luckily, her stomach made a low grumble that distracted Cal. He asked if she was hungry.
“All you hear about Las Vegas is about celebrity chef restaurants and all-you-can-eat buffets in Las Vegas but since I’ve been here I’m constantly hungry,” Tessa said.
“I can make you a protein shake,” he offered.
“I already made breakfast, remember?”
He cocked his head and waited for her to explain.
“The banana bread.”
Cal winced. “I hate to break it to you, babe, but I don’t eat banana bread.”
“I sensed something was off when I gave it to you.” Tessa sat up, pulling the sheet around her chest. “So let’s see. You don’t dance. You don’t drink. You don’t eat banana bread. What other terrible secrets do I need to know about you?”
“Actually, it’s not that I don’t eat banana bread specifically. I don’t eat flour.”
Tessa gasped dramatically. “You don’t eat flour. No pancakes?”
“Nope.”
“Cookies?”
“Nope.”
“Pizza?”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t tell me you eat burgers with a lettuce-leaf bun.”
Cal covered his face with his forearms. Tessa flopped back on the bed and clutched her chest like she’d been shot. “This will never work out between us.”
“Hey.” He climbed on top of her. “Hey. Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear you say that.”
He bent down and kissed her slowly.
“It’s just that,” she said between his kisses, “those are all the best things in life. Why not enjoy them?”
“Listen. Something you need to know about me. A key thing to my success or… whatever you want to call it –”
“Call it success. We’re naked. Why be modest?”
“—is discipline. Before I got into boxing, I was running the streets like a hooligan. B&Es, drinking, smoking weed. When I set standards for myself and I followed them religiously – that’s when I started winning fights.”
“Yeah but you needed that in the beginning because you were a kid. I’m not saying change your life or anything, because obviously what you’re doing is working for you. But come on. If a cute girl bakes you banana bread, you eat a bite, man.”
“You think you’re cute, huh.” Cal tickled her a little and Tessa clamped her arms down, shrieking.
“You’re not the only person who’s disciplined. I exercise. I run almost every day.”
“I can tell,” Cal murmured, kissing his way down her neck and between her breasts.
“Mmm. And guess what. I eat banana bread.”
His mouth reached her naval. He looked at her and raised his eyebrows. “May I?”
“‘may I feel said he (I’ll squeal said she just once said he) it’s fun said she.’”
“What’s that? A tongue twister?”
“It’s a dirty little poem by e.e. cummings. He was in the middle of a scandalous love affair when he wrote it.”
“I’ll make you squeal,” Cal said. He wasn’t joking now. He kissed her bare stomach. He nudged her thighs apart. His mouth lingered over her until finally, mercifully, he helped himself to her pussy, parting her lips with one long lick of his tongue. Staring down at the top of his sandy head, she caught flashes of his pink tongue tasting between her legs. Cal lifted his face, checked in with her, caught her watching him, open mouthed, eyelids lowered. Then he focused on his own hands, on his index finger as it slipped inside her. He slid the finger in and out with agonizing leisure. Tessa closed her eyes as her breath grew heavy.
“More,” she murmured. It wasn’t enough; she needed more of him in her. Drawing one hand up to her breast, she played with the nipple of her right breast.
“You’re greedy,” he said.
The finger felt so good, aching and warm, that she spread her legs wider as if to invite all of him in. Cal put his mouth back on her, gently sucking her clit as he added a second finger. Tessa arched her back, pushing herself to his face until his stubbly cheeks glistened with her wetness, grinding his mouth until she was dizzy with lust. Stardust gathered in her vision as she quaked on the verge of orgasm. Abruptly Cal pulled his face back, withdrawing the fingers he’d been driving inside her.
“No,” she moaned. “No. Don’t stop now.”
Again, he inserted a single finger in her slowly, teasingly, inch by inch. When she thought it was all the way in, he pushed it deeper. Tessa’s exhalation was guttural.
He climbed up to her, kissed her full on the mouth. Their tongues interlaced and Tessa tasted her own body. When he reached to the bedside table to deal with the business of the condom she could smell the ripe, musk of his underarm. Cal pulled her left leg up over his shoulder and guided himself into her pussy. In one powerful thrust he entered her. Tessa cried out with pleasure. Her fingers clawed at his chest. Her nails dragged gently down the muscles of his arms, straining and tense as they supported the weight of his body over her. His abdominals were tensed and rippling from driving his cock into her. It was like fucking was made to showcase the insanity of Cal’s body.
“I’m going to come,” she panted.
“Not yet.”
“Yes,” she demanded, “I can’t take it anymore.”
With that he grabbed her by the hips and drew her body to him as he fucked her. Wet and slippery, he glided into in her. When their bodies met, her clit crushed against his strained Adonis belt.
“Come now,” he said. “Come for me.”
At his word, Tessa released control. Her orgasm was immediate, urgent. Hot white light speckled her vision. Convulsive waves of pleasure flooded her body. She grasped at her own breasts as if to wring the greatest possible satisfaction the moment could yield. She came and came again as Cal fucked her, loosening his own strangled cries until he released her hips. They both collapsed, spent on the bed. Together, they lay there, chests heaving. Tessa’s limbs burned with fatigue, like she’d dropped to the ground after a two-mile run. Running never gave her the relaxed, dazed glow she felt lying in the tangle of white sheets. Still inside her, Cal kissed her face.
“Pizza and hamburger buns are the best things in life? I call bullshit,” he said.
She laughed and they kissed. When they came apart, Tessa lay back against the cool pillows, her body sheened with sweat.
“I’m starving,” she said. “You can’t tell me a shake will satisfy you now.”
“Go get your damn banana bread.”
“Seriously?”
“If that’ll make you happy, yeah. Oh, and here.” He got a t-shirt from the padded bench at the foot of the bed and tossed it to her. “Better put this on.” The t-shirt was faded and gray, with a logo that said The Butcher Block Gym, Queens, New York. “It’s my favorite,” he warned her as she tugged it over her head.
They’d left the banana bread on the kitchen island the night before. As Tessa stepped back into the foyer to go upstairs, the dark-haired, olive-skinned security guard who’d questioned her on the golf course, came in the front door.
“Oops!” Instinctively, she tugged down the hem of the t-shirt with her free hand.
“Sorry, miss.” The guard shaded his eyes and turned his back to her.
Tessa bounded up the stairs, happiness making her light on her feet. When she was at the top she called down, “I wasn’t about to jump the fence the other day, I swear.”
“I never thought you were,” he said.
Closing the door behind her, Tessa announced, “Good thing you had me put the shirt on.” The room was empty, the door to the bathroom closed. She could hear sounds of running water. Tessa hopped back in bed and checked her phone. She’d already texted Ron the previous evening to tell him that she’d be out all night. Just as she was scrolling through her old messages, her screen went black, the phone buzzed in her hands and she was looking at the contact picture she’d assigned to Dev.
“Dev!” she answered.
“What is going on with you? You’re not replying to my text messages now?”
“I’m sorry, but –” Tessa lowered her voice as she walked to the balcony and let herself outside. “You’re going to be super happy with me.”
“You sound freshly fucked.”
“I am!” Tessa felt like twirling along the balcony rail like the leading lady in a musical.
And, Dev, this guy is so hot,” she whispered. “He’s so… everything! Take a sec and google him right now. His name is Callum Quinn.”
There was a pause, some good-natured muttering and then a string of expletives from Dev’s side of the phone call. “That’s who you slept with? Oh my god. Please lick those delts for me immediately.”
“Already done. I’m still in his bedroom,” she whispered.
The water in the bathroom turned off. The door to the bathroom opened and Cal stepped out and laid naked on his stomach on the unmade bed. His butt was so high and round, he looked like the naked statuary she’d passed at Caesars Palace yesterday. Unable to resist, she went back inside the room and ran her hand over the hard curve of his ass. Looking up at Cal, she widened her eyes in astonishment to show full appreciation. He laughed.
“Can I call you back, Dev? I’ll be home in two days and we’ll talk, okay?”
“Wait, wait, wait,” he protested. “Although all your news is, trust me, very much in my wheelhouse conversation-wise, the reason I called is because I talked to our super and he said no one had been authorized to go into your apartment for any work. There wasn’t even a leak.”
Tessa rose from the bed. “I forgot all about that.”
“Wow, you never get so drunk you can’t remember shit.” Dev told her he’d since gone into her apartment and it looked like it always did. Nothing appeared to be stolen.
“I don’t know what he would steal,” Tessa said, though she was too worried to fully commit to the joke. Maybe Dev had been drunk himself and had misread the situation with the guy.
Dev went on, his tone serious. “At first I thought he was nervous – he did seem nervous – but then I realized he had a bad stutter.”
Fear seized Tessa; the smile fell from her face as Dev continued talking.
“It felt like I should give him my card to help with that. If I had a card –”
“What did he look like?” she interrupted.
“Sixties maybe, greasy gray hair, old green coat.”
“Let me know if you see him again, okay? Like, the second you see him.”
Picking up on her tone, Cal looked over, listening with a worried expression on his face.
“Sure,” Dev said. “Let me know if you want me to do anything.”
She said she’d see him again in two days and hung up.
“What’s the matter?” Cal asked.
She explained who Dev was and what he’d told her. Because Cal already had some weird grudge or something against her dad, Tessa left out the part about how her dad’s friend Bert, the man who’d first told her Ron was dead, had a stutter and appearance that exactly matched Dev’s description of the intruder.
“It’s not safe for you to go back there,” Cal said when she was finished the story.
“Don’t panic,” she reassured him. “I’m still here for two days. Before I go back, I’ll call the super and have him change the locks.”
“That’s not good enough. You need a new place.”
“A new place? I can’t… right now I can’t afford a new place. I’m staying there because it’s cheap.”
“It’s not a problem. I’ll help you out.”
“Whoa. No thanks. Absolutely not.” Tessa brought her fingertips to her temple.
“Think about it as me spending money on myself. For peace of mind. If I don’t think you’re safe back home, I’ll worry. If I worry, I won’t be able to get any work done and if I don’t get any work done I’ll lose money. So basically if you don’t let me help you, you’ll be losing me money.”
Cal was trying to be lighthearted about it and Tessa couldn’t even consider his offer. “That’s so nice of you but for now let’s forget all about this. We only have a little bit of time together and the only thing I want to do right now is watch you eat banana bread.”
“That’ll do it for you?”
<
br /> “Oh, you have no idea how hot it will get me to see you eat flour.”
“Fuck it. Bring on the bread.”
Tessa unwrapped the plastic from the loaf and broke off a piece. She held the corner to his lips. Cal closed his mouth. “If I eat this,” he said, “you have to promise to come back tonight.”
“Easy. I promise.”
Cal opened his mouth and Tessa put the food inside. She ate a bite herself and chewed, watching him.
“Damn, that’s good.”
“Ooh, eat another piece baby.”
“That’s what you like, huh? Okay then.” He took another bite. “You’re a dangerous woman.”
27.
The t-shirt from Cal’s old gym back in Queens sat on the foot of the bed, neatly folded. Cal brought the thin gray fabric to his face and inhaled traces of Tessa’s shampoo: clean citrus and sugary baking. She’d left twenty minutes earlier. He’d skipped his work out. He was late for work. He felt fucking fantastic. The only thing bugging him was the phone call Tessa had gotten about the man coming out of her apartment. She’d looked troubled while on the phone, had tried to play down her worry when Cal tried talking to her about it.
Coming down the stairs, he found Nisai checking a security camera in the courtyard.
“Listen,” Cal said, after they’d discussed his schedule for the coming week. “I need a security detail set up in North Dakota.”
Nisai nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll make that happen, Mr. Quinn. Address?”
Cal drew up the address from the photo on his phone and read it to the security guard, who jotted it in his notebook.
“I don’t know if this is her current address but she did live there at some point. If not, I’ll need” – here he cleared his throat – “help in determining what her current address is. I’ll text you a photo of her driver’s license. For now she’s still in Vegas, but until she goes home in a couple days I want someone posted to monitor comings and goings of people at her place.”
