Fall

by Cora Brent

  I pushed his hand against me, hoping he wouldn’t ask me anything else.

  “Come on honey, are you a virgin or not?”

  Why do you have to make me remember?

  He hadn’t meant to. To Deck it was just a matter-of-fact question, one that required only a simple answer.

  “No.” I sat up and scuttled backwards as Deck stared at me. “No, I’m not. Okay?”

  Deck shrugged and tried to pull me back to him. “It’s fine, Jenny. Shit, I never preferred virgins. Come here.”

  “I’m not a virgin.”

  Deck sensed something had shifted in me. He stopped touching me. He sat back and waited.

  “Then what are you?” he finally asked.

  “When I was sixteen my father married me off to a sick liar who was old enough to be my grandfather.”

  I’d just blurted it out. I had no idea why. Once I started though I couldn’t stop. The words that I carried around with me every day broke through the thin layers I had spent the last three years constructing. They couldn’t be put away again.

  “I was raised in a place called Jericho Valley. It might sound familiar to you since it was sure in the news enough. It was run by a bunch of men who had twisted their perversions into religion. They made girls into wives whether they wanted it or not. Our only value was our ability to breed and to serve. I knew I would be given away, just like my sister, and I was angry. So before they could give me away I had sex with a boy. They found us. They beat the living shit out of him and turned him out into the desert. Then they forced me to marry a disgusting false prophet who already had a bunch of wives.” I paused for breath, hardly believing that I was saying these things out loud to him. “So that’s what I am, Deck. THAT’S WHAT I AM!”

  He was shocked. I could see it in his face. I felt oddly triumphant because I would guess that Deck Gentry didn’t shock easily.

  Ha! NOW what do you think of me?

  The silence that hangs there after a terrible confession is often worse than the sound of the words themselves. I was still naked from the waist up but I fought the urge to cover myself. This was me; Deck might as well see all of it. He was still frozen in place, kneeling on the other side of the bed. Then he shook his head once and casually reached over the edge. Deck didn’t look at me as he handed me my clothes and pulled his own shirt over his head. I got dressed silently and without turning my back, although he wasn’t interested in me anymore anyway.

  “You surprise me,” I said through clenched teeth.

  He stood up and held his jacket out. “Let’s go, Jenny.”

  I slapped his jacket out of his hand and to the floor. If he thought this was kindness then he was wrong. Or maybe he was just so disgusted that he wanted me covered and gone as soon as possible.

  “Don’t you want to know why you surprise me?”

  He didn’t pick up his jacket. “Sure.”

  I found my boots next to the foot of the bed and pulled them on. My face was hot but I wouldn’t cry. I absolutely wouldn’t fucking cry in front of this guy.

  “I wouldn’t have expected you to be this squeamish.” I stood up. I stalked right over to him. Deck saw what I was about to do and he grabbed my hand before I could reach for his crotch. He wouldn’t let me touch him. “So just like that I’m a total turnoff, huh?”

  Deck released my hand, bent over, swept his jacket off the floor and draped it around my shoulders. He went straight to the door, opened it and waited for me to walk through. It was beyond mortifying. I marched down the same stairs he’d carried me up only moments before. I would call Quent. He and Tevin were probably still over at Devil Lounge. They would come and get me.

  But Deck was following closely. He took my arm firmly and led me back to where he’d parked his bike. A male voice emerged from the darkness and called out foul things I knew were directed at me. I shivered and allowed Deck to slap a helmet on my head. I kind of hated him at this point but I held onto his waist to avoid falling off the bike as he rode right out of there.

  Deck had seen where I lived when he drove me up to Tempe the morning after Christmas. I figured that’s likely where he would leave me now, right in front of the building. Maybe he’d pat me on the head as if I were a sad puppy, then he’d roll away and go somewhere adults congregated in order to find himself a woman.

  But Deck kept riding, heading east through the choked mess of Friday night traffic. He stopped in front of a squat brick building with a flashing turquoise sign that read ‘The Ocotillo Diner’. I hopped off the bike before he did.

  “You like hamburgers?” he asked, carefully removing my helmet and stowing it in one of the side compartments of his motorcycle.

  I didn’t answer him. He nodded anyway and kept talking as if I had actually responded.

  “They also serve breakfast round the clock if you’re in the mood for pancakes, bacon, what the fuck ever.” He headed for the door. When Deck realized I wasn’t right behind him he turned around. He held his hand out to me and I took it.

  There were only three other patrons in the diner and they were all quietly minding their own business. The décor was dated, with a brown tile countertop and dark paneled walls. Yet it was clean, and charming. Deck ordered a ‘cowboy burger’ from a waitress named Bea and I chose a tower of pancakes. As soon as Bea had shuffled off to the kitchen he started talking. I just stared at him at first, unsure what he was getting at. He told me funny stories about growing up in Emblem, particularly about the wild antics of his triplet cousins and I could tell he cared for them very much. I’d gotten enough of a look at Emblem to understand it wasn’t the most idyllic setting for a childhood but Declan made it sound like it was anyway. He had a habit of running his right thumb across his chin as he spoke. I watched him as he lounged casually in the booth across from me, wearing a black t-shirt with a skull and faded letters of some band I’d never heard of. A dark shadow of a beard was visible on his jaw and I remembered the rough feel of it on my face and my breasts. Deck didn’t say anything remotely sexual nor did he give any hint that he was thinking about my earlier confession. Gradually I began to relax.

  “You used to collect what?” I asked with a giggle as I poured syrup over my pancakes.

  “Scorpions,” he grinned. “I’d keep ‘em in an old fishing bucket and amuse the boys by racing them down a track I’d lined with rocks. It’s a tough skill, to be able to pluck one of those damn things out of the dirt without it stinging the shit out of you.”

  “And did you have to learn that the hard way?”

  “Only took a few mistakes for me to get the hang of it.”

  “Pretty painful mistakes.”

  His eyes locked on mine. “Some are, Jenny.” He squirted some hot sauce onto his burger. “Anyway, I kept a loose lid on the bucket. Too loose, it turned out. I’d left it right next to the back door and next time my mom came outside she managed to knock it over and a whole mess of trouble came crawling out. My mom was barefoot and shit did she curse up a Spanish blue streak.” He let out a chuckle over the memory and I tried to imagine what the mother of Declan Gentry was like.

  “Does she live in Emblem? Your mom?”

  “Nah.” He lowered his head and exhaled. “She’s dead. Car accident.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, Deck.”

  We chewed in silence for a few minutes. It wasn’t uncomfortable though. It seemed nice somehow.

  “Mine’s not,” I said suddenly. “My mother, I mean. She’s not dead.” I didn’t want to say where she was. Deck didn’t ask anyway.

  We lingered long after our food was finished. Deck kept ordering coffee refills and I even had a cup of tea.

  “So do you like college?” he asked as he stirred sugar into his cup.

  “Funny. That’s the second time I’ve heard that question this week. This girl named Stephanie asked me that the other day.”

  He nodded. “Ah, Chase’s girl.”

  “Yeah. I forgot you would know that.”

  “What did
you tell Stephanie when she asked?” He appeared to be listening closely, as if he was really interested in the answer.

  “The truth. Some of it anyway. I can’t get used to being there. Feels like I’m wearing a costume, or a dress that was made for another girl, you know? No, you wouldn’t know. I don’t even know. Maybe I just need to settle on a major for good and all my problems will be solved.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Do you think it’s that easy?”

  “No, I know it’s not. But the pressure of too many choices might be my problem.”

  Deck let a slow smile stealthily creep across his face. “That’s not your problem, Jenny.”

  If he hadn’t been hypnotizing me with his sheer sexiness I might have gotten defensive. “So what do you think is my problem?”

  He ran his finger lightly over the back of my hand, then turned the palm over to trace the inside of my wrist, a place I’d never once thought of as erotic until that moment. He didn’t take his dark eyes from my face the entire time. “You’re smart, you’re beautiful and you can do whatever the fuck you want.”

  “All that equals a problem?”

  “Only because no one has ever told you so before.”

  He kept running a single finger up and down my wrist, extending his stroke slightly and making me wish he would take me back to his hotel and finish what we’d started. When he brought my wrist to his lips and planted a light kiss just beneath my palm I almost let out a moan.

  Deck kissed my hand one more time then abruptly stood. He threw money on the table, far more than the cost of our meal. “It’s late,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

  When he pulled into the parking lot of my building I was both relieved and disappointed. I couldn’t shake the memory of being close to him earlier and I wanted more of it. But going back to that sleazy hotel room would have somehow cheapened the connection we’d made. Deck kissed me for a long time before he let me go. His kiss had more than sex to it. There was tenderness too. I was almost afraid to ask him anything else.

  “Are you going back to Emblem tomorrow?”

  He yawned. “I think tomorrow is now today.”

  “Today then.”

  “No, I’m not.” He tugged on a strand of my hair. “You got some ideas?”

  “Maybe. I’d wouldn’t mind hanging around with you. That’s all.”

  He dropped his hand and stared off into the distance for a full minute. “That’s enough,” he said and then he kissed me again, this time with less sweetness and more passion. “Go on now,” he pushed me away. “I’ll pick you up here at noon.”

  “You will?”

  “I just said so.” He gunned the engine of his bike, a clear signal that he was done talking.

  “Deck?” I practically had to shout.

  He looked at me but didn’t shut off the engine or say a word. I blew him a kiss. It might have been a childish, weird thing to do but he smiled at me and my breath caught in my chest. The things Deck Gentry could do with a smile shouldn’t be legal. He idled there, as if he was unwilling to drive away until I was inside the building. He didn’t leave until I had closed the glass double doors behind me. As I slowly climbed the stairs to my third floor room I thought about how Deck Gentry sure as hell wasn’t what he seemed.

  But then, maybe no one was.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DECK

  Jenny.

  I knew there was something deeper there than just the standard college girl rebellion. It took her just a few terse sentences to tell me her story. While she was talking, only once did she raise her arms to shield her bare chest but then she changed her mind and defiantly faced me, the tips of her pale breasts reddened from where I’d been all over them a moment earlier. She still would have let me have her. When I silently refused she was angry, assuming I just didn’t want her anymore. She couldn’t have been more fucking wrong.

  And then when she was on the back of my bike I knew what I should have done. I should have just dropped her off without a word and let her think the worst. Jenny was a proud girl and she would never want to come near me again.

  But that’s not what I did. I did something else. I brought her to an old diner I liked to frequent when I made it up to the valley. Jenny seemed wary at first. She stared at me with her chin up while I talked more than I’d talked in a long time about things that weren’t really important, just the kind of small things that make people into what they are. Jenny listened. She asked questions and laughed in a sweet way. I discovered how wrong I’d been the first time we’d met, when I thought of her as just a kid. True, she was young. But she was beautiful, vibrant, complex, a woman in every sense.

  Instead of bringing her back to my room and fucking her brains out I brought her home. I kissed her like I hadn’t kissed anyone in many years and promised her I would be there tomorrow. It wasn’t a lie. I hadn’t lied to her yet and I wouldn’t fucking start now. It wasn’t until after she disappeared into the building that the air went out of my chest a little and I knew it would be a long night with Amelia haunting me.

  Funny; for so long I’d been able to avoid the pain of those memories but since meeting Jenny they were bobbing to the surface all the damn time. I pulled into the shitty motel and accidentally shined a light on a pale, skinny tweaker humping some stringy-haired chick behind the dumpster. Those two were worse than animals, didn’t even pause in the glare. I jogged upstairs to my crappy room, a little ashamed now that I’d brought Jenny to this shithole. There was still something I ought to take care of if I was going to get any rest tonight and I stripped off every stitch of clothing, kneeled down and imagined fucking Jenny as hard as I’d meant to do it earlier. It wasn’t until I was showered and lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling and awaiting sleep, that Amelia returned.

  The boys at the base used to caution against mixing with the local girls for anything other than a quick time. They said those girls had too many scheming ambitions. The economy was bad in the area and most folks were poor. To their daughters, the idea of a being a military wife was as good a prize as they could imagine. I’d never considered anything permanent while I was in Emblem, and I rarely considered anything my own age. But I’d never been as lonely back then. It might sound strange to say that life was lonely in the barracks because I was surrounded by people all the time but it was lonely. Even now though I didn’t believe that was why a pretty but otherwise unremarkable nineteen-year-old girl caught my eye. Amelia du Pray was the daughter of a fire chief in a nearby town and she worked behind the counter of a bowling alley right near the base. The first time she smiled at me I could have sworn I saw god.

  It was a story that happens a thousand times in a thousand places every day; boy looks at girl and realizes that right there just might be the salvation he’d never known he needed. Girl looks at boy, accepts his rough edges and offers him her heart. Sometimes it ends well I suppose, although I’ve never seen evidence of that. It didn’t end well for us and that probably was my fault. And if that was my fault then everything was my fault. Somewhere in the greenest part of the Carolinas was a chiseled stone that bore the heartbreak of a shortened life. It meant there was no one left to apologize to. I could be heartsick with sorrow every miserable day of my life and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. The only way through the fire was to forget; using women, using booze, using whatever could make the hours pass.

  Jenny had more damn guts than I did, that was for sure. She’d announced her torment and then waited for me to say something about it. I could have given her the real Declan Gentry history lesson, not the sentimental one filled childhood charms but the real one starting out in an ugly world, climaxing in a hideous betrayal and ending in the same soulless place I’d started out in. Then maybe we would have fucking cried together or something. That would have been a little bit too much though. I wasn’t in the habit of giving a shit what most women thought of me anymore, but those feelings didn’t apply when it came to Jenny. It was probably a bad
thing but as I drifted uneasily into my dreams I couldn’t get rid of it.

  The sun should have woken me up. When I opened my eyes I winced over the sharp brilliance peering in through the window shades. The light wasn’t what jarred me awake though. It was the shrill ring of the bedside phone. Lazily I put the receiver next my ear and it was only the front desk, warning me it was after ten and I would need to check out soon. I took my time anyway, showering and dicking around with my phone for a while. The one Jenny had returned to me still needed to be charged so I stuck it back in my pocket. Meanwhile, there was a text from Creedence on the other phone. He just wanted me to know that Cord had to take Saylor to the hospital last night and apparently she was on bed rest now. I didn’t like hearing that and made a plan to head over to Cord’s to see if they needed anything. I checked the time and realized it was nearly noon. My heart skipped around in a weird way because I would need to pick up Jenny soon. Dammit, I liked her. I liked her too damn much.

  She was already waiting even though I got there ten minutes early. That freaking killed me, how she was sitting on a low stucco wall swinging her legs slightly, looking up anxiously when she heard the engine of my bike. I grabbed her up when she ran to me and we kissed with the intensity of wild lovers instead of two people who barely knew one another.

  Jenny happily pushed a helmet on and swung her leg over my bike. I hadn’t eaten yet so I took her back to the Ocotillo. She was more cheerful than I’d ever seen her and I was happy just to sit back and admire the view.

  “It’s not fair,” she commented, pouring an unusually large amount of ketchup over her food.

  “What?” I asked, busily staring at the curve of her tits.

  Jenny looked down pointedly. She was wearing an open cardigan sweater over a tank top. It wasn’t revealing but that didn’t stop my imagination.

  “You keep looking at me as if you can see me naked.”

  “I have seen you naked, honey.”

  “Manners, Declan.”

  “Honesty, Jennetta. I remember every inch of what I saw last night.”