Between the Sheets

by Molly O'Keefe

  “So did men come knocking?”

  “No one believed Dean. At least that’s what they say to my face. I’m not sure what they whisper behind my back. But the town line is no one believes I would ever do that.”

  “Are you upset that your reputation is intact? Or upset that it’s not in ruins?”

  “Both. A little.”

  Nothing was ever easy with this woman. At least she was consistent in that way.

  “Can I ask you another question?”

  “You’re really chatty tonight.”

  “Well, considering how much you know about me, I think it’s only fair I know a few things about you if we’re going to continue.”

  “Continue what?”

  He smiled. Honestly, he couldn’t help it; she was so damn easy. “Fucking each other like animals.”

  That got the hoot laugh. “Sure,” she said. “Ask away.”

  “Your mom.”

  The words weren’t even out of his mouth before she was pulling not just her legs away, but her whole body. Her entire being was suddenly somewhere else.

  “What about her?” she said, so stiff and absent he was utterly disarmed. How did she do that? How was she here and then gone from one minute to the next?

  “Is she okay?”

  Her lip curled with something angry, and if she were any other woman he would brace himself for some kind of viciousness.

  I’m angry, that’s what she’d said earlier, and he saw very clearly that she was.

  And then that, too, vanished, her face once again schooled into calm and quiet lines. He wondered where she put that anger. Was there some pit she tossed it all into, all those things she tried not to feel?

  He imagined at some point that pit would swallow her whole.

  “Alzheimer’s,” she finally said.

  “Do you have help?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you have enough?”

  “We’re fine. Mom and I … have always been fine. Just us.”

  “Are you—”

  “I don’t want to talk about my mother.” She shifted on the sagging blue couch as if to stand but he pulled her back into his arms. Bourbon sloshed over her legs and she resisted him, pulling away.

  “Calm down,” he said. “Just sit here for a second.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  He shifted her back against him so she was leaning against his chest, her ass nestled up against his growing erection. As what she was sitting on finally registered, she stopped pulling away and he dropped his arms.

  “I don’t want to fight,” he whispered.

  “Me neither. But there are some things—”

  I don’t want to talk about. Things that hurt. Things I deal with on my own.

  She didn’t have to say the words, they were right there, strung like lights between them.

  “I get it. I have some things, too.”

  He felt her laugh. “Now I want to know what they are.”

  For some stupid reason his heart soared at her words. At her interest. Even if it was just callous curiosity, she was sitting on his dick, warm and heavy and beautiful, and they were just getting started. With everything.

  She leaned back against him and he lifted her hair out of the way so he could kiss her neck. Her cheek, the pink shell curve of her ear. Slowly, she circled her hips against him, and he brought his hands up over her breasts. She was round and soft in his palms and he wanted very suddenly to see her.

  “Take off your shirt,” he whispered. She leaned forward, and he hissed as the pressure on his cock got serious. Within seconds she’d whipped off her sweater and tee shirt. She shifted as if to lean back against him, but he undid the closure to her bra right between her shoulder blades. The straps fell away, revealing red marks where the elastic had bit into her skin.

  Must suck, this part of being a woman, he thought, touching each mark with his thumb. She was beautiful from behind. The muscles in her back shifted under pristine pale skin, and he ran his hand down her spine, his fingers spread wide to touch as much of her as he could.

  But then she leaned back against him and he looked down her chest at her breasts.

  “Ah, honey,” he sighed. “Look at you.”

  Immediately she put her hands over her breasts. “They’re—”

  “Beautiful.” As if to prove it to her, he lifted them reverently into his hands. They were big and soft and full and his hands were not nearly big enough, but he gave it his best shot. The pink nipples were buried in his palms, the blue veins stood out against her skin, and suddenly, he needed more.

  He shifted her back onto the couch and spread himself out over her, lifting those breasts so he could kiss. Lick. Suck.

  “Oh my God,” she breathed, and he sucked harder, feeling her grow wild under him, her legs shifting, her hips arching hard against him. She spread herself out a little so he fell right into the deep vee between her legs and they both gasped. Her nipple popped from his mouth and he looked down at her while at the same time thrusting hard and high against her.

  Her eyes went wide, her mouth fell open.

  Bingo.

  “You like that,” he whispered.

  She nodded, and to his delight her hands went under his shirt, ripping it off his body. He shrugged himself out of the sleeves and the shirt fell to the floor. His skin felt feverish from the inside. His whole body felt too hot. Her skin under his hands was cool.

  He sucked on her flesh while he set a steady rhythm between her legs.

  “Get a condom,” she whispered.

  “I only brought one.”

  “What?”

  He laughed against her breast, licking her nipple. “I did just come over to talk. Don’t worry.” He bit her, holding the hard pink flesh of her nipple between his teeth with just enough force. “I’m going to make you come.”

  “Like—” Her breath broke as he thrust against her again. He couldn’t feel her clit though the clothes, but the way she reacted, the jerk and jolt of her limbs, indicated he was in the right spot.

  “Like this.”

  He curled one hand over the arm of the sofa, burying his hips against her, giving her hard, fast friction until she began to tense against him. Her hands in fists in his hair.

  “Come on,” he breathed, licking the arched line of her neck, and as if she’d just been waiting for the go-ahead, she bucked hard against him, a long, low moan coming from her throat. He held himself against her until her hands dropped from his hair to his waist, pushing him away.

  He sat back, aware she was probably sensitive. He sure as hell was. The front of his jeans were damp, from her, maybe from him.

  “Did you …?” she asked, tucking her hair behind her ears.

  Really, the most he could do was shake his head. He was so close, so nearly a mess.

  She slipped to the floor between his knees and within breaths she had his pants undone and his cock out in her fist. Her lips slipped over him and his head fell back against the couch in ecstatic relief.

  Shelby Monroe was not like any woman he’d ever known. And he didn’t know what that meant for him.

  But he wanted to find out.

  Chapter 15

  Casey woke up with a start, his face throbbing in the blackness. His heart hammering in his throat.

  What was that sound?

  Moonlight fell in a big checkerboard across his bed and he sat up, blinking.

  CRASH!

  The sound came from outside. The dog, he guessed. The dog that had been sniffing around the garbage.

  After Dad left to talk to Shelby, Casey had put his leftover ribs outside on the trash can hoping to lure the skinny gray dog back because it had been a few days since he’d seen it.

  He scrambled up to his knees and looked out his window, which had a view over the garbage and the fields in back. The dog, skinnier than ever, was there, standing next to the spill of trash from the overturned garbage can.

  Before running downstairs, he glanced
at the digital clock by his bed. 2:10.

  Ty’s door was open and he was snoring on his bed. Ty slept like he was dead. At first Casey had been scared; the only people he ever saw sleep like that were the drunk guys that sometimes hung out with his mom. But Ty always woke up when Casey shook him and he never smelled like booze, and Ty never hit Casey.

  All good things in Casey’s book.

  He crept down the steps, avoiding the creaks and the rug, which bunched up on the second stair. From the fridge he grabbed some cheese and leftover potato salad. He had no idea if dogs liked potato salad, but he figured it couldn’t hurt.

  As quietly as he could manage, he slipped out the back door, making sure the storm door didn’t bang shut and scare away the dog. But as soon as he stepped past the grill and onto the grass, the dog must have smelled him or something, because it looked up, one of the ribs sticking out of its mouth.

  Casey stopped, one foot on the cement pad, one foot in the wet grass. Behind the dog was the field of tall weeds that he wondered if Ty was ever going to tell him to mow. That seemed like the kind of thing dads were supposed to do. Make their kids mow the lawn.

  But so far, all Ty really made him do was go to his room.

  The dog watched him for a long moment and Casey stood very still, he barely breathed, and finally the dog went back to eating, but its ears were up and it kept one eye on Casey.

  Very slowly, Casey just sat down on the lip of the cement. The dog lurched as if to run, but when Casey didn’t move anymore, it seemed to relax again.

  It was hard to say what kind of dog it used to be, because now it was just a sack of bones. But it was big and its fur was short and one of its ears was torn and it was covered in bloody, crusty cuts, as though it had gotten through some barbed wire.

  The dog was back at the leftover ribs like it was in a race to gulp them down.

  “What’s your name?” Casey whispered. The dog must not have heard him because it didn’t even lift an ear. Casey tried to remember some dog names. “Snoopy? Rover? Jones?”

  The dog picked up another bone between its teeth and began tearing the meat off.

  Not Snoopy. Definitely not Snoopy.

  He refused to call the dog anything but its name. He’d spent the last six months being called Buddy by various cops and social workers, counselors and intake personnel. All people who didn’t know his real name, so they used the generic catchall, “Buddy.”

  As if they were friends. As if they knew what his life was all about.

  He hated it.

  He really hated it when Ty called him that.

  “Scuzz?” He kind of hoped the dog’s name was Scuzz. Scuzz was a good name for a tough, ugly dog. That would be awesome. “Is that it? Are you Scuzz?”

  But no sign of recognition from the dog.

  Casey took a piece of cheese and threw it into the grass between them. The dog looked up, its super snout twitching, but it ignored the cheese.

  “You don’t like cheese?” Casey whispered and opened the container of potato salad. He could hold out the open container and hope the dog came to him, but in the book he read about a guy who got a hurt wolf to let him help it, the guy made a trail of food, luring the animal closer until he could pet it.

  He needed a trail. A lure.

  He wondered how to do this, and then he just scooped up some potato salad with his finger and flung it toward the dog.

  It splattered against the garbage cans, hitting the dog on the ear. The dog jumped and ran away.

  Great, Casey thought, watching the dog disappear into the tall grass behind the house. Just great.

  In the moonlight, everything looked super creepy and still. Like those scenes in horror movies just before the evil ax dude came out of the bushes to kill everyone.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw some movement and he turned, hoping it was the dog coming back, but it wasn’t. It was farther out in the field … something moving out there in the grass. Something white. Something tall.

  Holy shit, it’s a ghost!

  He stood up, dropping the potato salad and the cheese.

  Honest to God, it was floating. There was something white floating out there in the grass.

  He peed. A little bit he peed in his sweatpants.

  Slowly, he backed up toward the house, his mouth open to scream for help, but only a sucking whisper sound came out.

  The ghost thing turned, walking closer.

  “Ty!” the sound was a high-pitched whine in the back of his throat. “Ty!”

  But then … the ghost started to look like a woman. Which was still super weird and scary. And then he realized it was Ms. Monroe’s mom. Walking through the grass in her nightgown in the middle of the night.

  He didn’t even think about it, he just took off past the overturned garbage cans into the tall grass.

  “Mrs. Monroe?” he called out when he got closer, and the woman stopped. Her hair was down around her shoulders and it was silver in the moonlight.

  She looked super old. Like … really old.

  “Mrs. Monroe?” he asked again and she turned. She looked worried, and his stomach cramped with its own worry.

  But this was a little old lady freaking out in her nightgown in the middle of the night; he couldn’t pull up the bridges.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I lost my keys.”

  “Out here?”

  “No.” She looked across the field to the houses on the other street.

  “In one of those houses?”

  “I think so, yes.” She looked at him, her eyes sharp for a moment. “What are you doing up?”

  “There was a dog.” She nodded as if that made sense, and maybe it did to her. There were a lot of strays out here. “The gray one, have you seen it?”

  “He got caught in barbed wire.”

  “I thought so, too. Do you know its name?”

  “They don’t have names. None of them do out here. You shouldn’t feed him. He’s probably dangerous.”

  Casey didn’t think so, but he kept his mouth shut. “Do you … you need some help?”

  “Finding my keys?”

  He nodded.

  She shook her head and he looked down to see she was wearing rain boots, the big, serious kind. That was good, he thought. As if that one normal thing sort of made all the rest of the crazy parts of this seem okay. She has shoes, so it’s totally cool that she’s walking around in the middle of the night looking for her keys in a field.

  Maybe he’d just go in and wake up Ty and tell him about this. That seemed the right thing to do. Sometimes adults did weird things, and normally he had a pretty good idea of when it was just an adult being weird and when he should hide in his room, and this felt kind of dangerous.

  “I think maybe …” She looked over at the houses behind her. In the tall grass he could see her path, the broken weeds, the dew all wiped away. He realized her nightgown was probably soaked. “I think I’ve made a mistake.”

  “No,” he lied. “It’s all cool.”

  She smiled at him, but her eyes were sad. “You’re a good boy, Casey.”

  “You remember my name?”

  “We just met on Sunday. At church.”

  “Yeah, but you’re walking around in the middle of the night in your nightgown. Looking for keys.”

  She nodded, her hands running down the front of her old-lady nightgown. “I suppose that would seem strange.”

  “A little.”

  That made her smile, which made him smile, because he was a terrible island.

  “Don’t tell my daughter,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Oh man. Shit. Keeping this a secret was a bad idea; he understood that. Was totally aware of that. But she was asking and she looked so embarrassed. And sad. And sometimes life was really awful and you had to do some strange shit just to cope. He had a drawer full of little things that he’d stolen from school and the Art Barn and Cora’s and The Pour House. Little pieces of garbage that
most people wouldn’t miss. That was what he told himself, anyway, when he felt bad about that drawer, that he was collecting the inconsequential things, the forgotten things, the stuff people left behind.

  The stuff like him.

  So, Mrs. Monroe was walking around in her nightgown?

  He could totally relate.

  “All right,” he said. “I won’t tell. But you have to go home.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  She laughed, as if that were a totally ridiculous question. Just because she was wandering around other people’s houses looking for keys didn’t mean she was totally crazy. “I’m fine. You should go to bed,” she said. “It’s chilly out. You’ll catch cold.”

  She seemed a little obsessive about colds, but maybe that was just an old-person thing. He didn’t know any old people. Maybe all of this was normal.

  Yeah. Let’s go with that.

  It probably was totally normal, he realized, feeling a giant weight roll off his back. This whole forgetful thing she seemed to be doing—Ty did it sometimes; walked into a room and said, “Why did I come in here?”

  Casey took a deep breath and let it out. This was not all that scary or weird. It was just different.

  “You won’t tell?” she said.

  “Nah, Mrs. Monroe, we’re good.”

  She nodded at him, as if a deal had been made, and then walked away, the bottom of her white nightgown all muddy and grass-stained. But she wasn’t walking toward home, she was heading out to the highway.

  “Wrong way, Mrs. Monroe.”

  “I know where my house is.”

  He pointed across the field at the farmhouse, dark in the dark night.

  She changed direction and he watched, trailing after her until he saw her get into her house, and then he turned around and walked back home only to find the dog eating all the cheese and potato salad he’d dropped.

  But when he caught sight of Casey the dog vanished. A gray ghost into the purple shadows, as if it had never really been there at all.

  Taking Casey to work with him on Tuesday morning did not start well.

  “Let me use the saw.”

  “No way, Casey. You’ve got to earn using power tools.”