Cherry Blossoms

by KT Morrison

  “I almost got it.”

  “Did the pole come apart?”

  “No, I got it, it’s just tough.”

  “Use your muscles, Dad,” she urged.

  “Ha, I am,” he said, coaxing the flexible rod into the opening now and shoving it through.

  “Got it?” she called.

  “Yeah, O. It’s in...”

  “Is it square?”

  “Is what square?”

  “Oh my God, the base of the tent, Dad,” her little bossy voice sighed from the other side of the four-person, double vestibule tent they’d bought today.

  He laughed, “Yes, O, it looks good. Do I need some of those eye hooks or something...maybe the tent pegs...”

  She walked around the tent to him, happy, but her brow furrowed while she assessed his work. He’d done fine and she raised her hands over her head now, smiling to him, and he braced for it...she did a cartwheel to him, purposely too close, and he had to catch her. She collapsed in the grass at his feet, laughing. He held a leg still.

  “Look at your dirty feet!” he said.

  She was wearing a creamy camisole sleeping top and a pair of pyjama shorts. Her long legs were tanned, her feet filthy. “Odie, baby, you need to have a bath. Your mom’s going to kill me.”

  “Tomorrow morning, Dad,” she said, laying in their lawn with her black hair spread out all around her little angel face.

  “Promise?”

  She nodded, smiling, looking up to her dad with love.

  “Don’t we need those hooks, like, on a string?” he said, looking over at the tent and letting her leg down.

  “No.”

  “I’ve set them up before and I—”

  “Yeah, like in the olden days...” she said, and did a backwards somersault and stood up in a gymnastics pose. “Back when there were dinosaurs.”

  He lunged at her and grabbed her sides with his aching hands in tickling claws. She didn’t run away, just giggled and punched his arms and ran her brown legs in place.

  “Dinosaurs?” he laughed. “What good would a tent be if there were dinosaurs around? They’d just stomp us,” he said, and he pretend-stomped his bare foot over both her little feet and lowered her to the grass, holding her hands.

  “Mom’s snoring would scare them away.”

  Geoff laughed, “Mom doesn’t snore...”

  “She makes weird noises sometimes.”

  He shrugged that one off with a smirk. “You did really good, O,” he said, looking over at the tent. He was proud of his little girl.

  They were in their tiny yard under the sprawling, low, green canopy of the neighbour’s maple. Their new tent was pitched in the small square patch of grass below their kitchen window and behind the studio. Odie wanted to show him how to camp, wanted to sleep in a tent tonight, so after work was done and Winslow was sent home they took the subway out to Mountain Equipment and got a tent and ate at McDonald’s. Now it was late evening and he’d watched his smart daughter put the tent together, show him how it was done. She’d learned a lot at the sleepaway camp. He loved it but felt like he wasn’t part of it. That she now had a chunk of her life that he wasn’t in. It was meant to be, and he’d have to get used to it, but it still made his stomach hurt.

  “You want to roast marshmallows?” she said.

  “I don’t think we can start a fire in the city, Odie.”

  “We can do em in the oven,” she said and she put her arms up for him to help her, her skinny fingers wriggling to him.

  “You want to?” he said, helping her to stand.

  They made s’mores in the oven and brought them out to the tent. Nia texted and said she’d be really late. They were all the way out near Orangeville. Said to give Odie a big hug from her. She wouldn’t be home til it was probably dark. So he sat with his daughter in the fading deep orange light under the fly of their new tent and talked about where they might go camping someday and ate their s’mores and told jokes. She told him about canoeing again, and all her friends, and how she wanted to go to a sleepover at her new friend Ashley’s at the end of the month. Ashley was a rich kid who lived in Rosedale by the sound of it.

  They ended up laying on their backs and watching out the fly of the tent as the sky turned amaranthine with faded clouds rimmed with golden light. Odie told him you don’t touch the roof of the tent if it was raining cause the water would come in. She got sleepy.

  He asked her if she wanted to read and she said she did. She curled up on the top of her satiny sleeping bag like a cat on a bed, pillows bunched around her. He asked her if the light was enough from the LED camp lantern made to look like an old gas lamp.

  “I’m used to reading by it since you broke my lamp,” she said.

  “Sorry, O.” He’d told her he knocked it over when he was making her bed.

  She opened a book, corner dug in her chest, and he watched her beautiful eyes as they scanned from left to right. She was aware she was being watched and she said, “Why do you have to go away?”

  “It’s not for long, Odie.”

  “I know.”

  “You left me for ten days. Didn’t you miss me then?”

  “Yeah, but you were here at home. I don’t like you being so far away.”

  “I’ll be home on Sunday, O.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re going to have fun at your aunt’s.”

  “Yeah,” she sighed.

  “Hey.”

  “What?” she said and her head turned to him.

  “You liked making that book with me. Remember? The one with the ogre and the princess...”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Would you want to do it again? Like, for real though. Do it big and finish it and write it and draw it with me and everything.”

  “Yeah,” she said, her face turning bright. “Why?”

  “Maybe we could do that. Make a book.” He folded his hands together, pressed up under his cheek and lay on his side facing her.

  Odie’s little brain was already working. “Can we do a different one? Like one where—”

  They both stopped and listened. Their eyes rolled up in focus. A pulsing beat, throbbing bass getting closer. Then the treble, cymbals and synthesizers. It sounded like a night club was coming down their alley.

  “Mom?” Odie whispered.

  The music came down their quiet tree-lined way, came to their garage/studio, the side of the house lit up with headlights, the edges of the brick lined with white. They both got on their tummies and wriggled on their elbows til their heads were in the zipped open doorway of the tent. One lone BMW headlight shone down the path between the house and the studio.

  Nia shut her convertible down and the music stopped. Night-time cricket whirring and singing frogs returned. A car door opened, then thunked closed with German efficiency. Heels approached and just the sound of that little minx’s tapping put a stir in his belly right down behind his privates.

  “Sssh-sh,” he hissed, bubbling with excitement.

  Odie drew up the pink and yellow surprise she had laying next to her, hidden under the fold of a sleeping bag. Quiet and professional his Odie, like a true hitman. Or hitgirl.

  Nia’s slim and sexy black shape strutted their patio stones. Clicking, keys jangling, she was whistling. Unaware she was walking into a trap.

  Odie took even and steady aim with her SuperSoaker MD50 and Geoff was trembling with anticipation, so close to ruining it all with an explosive snort of laughter. He held it at bay, his face going red, his eyes bulging. Nia got in range, just two feet from the foot of the concrete steps that led up to the kitchen. Laying like this she looked ten feet tall...

  Odie let it launch, giggling and screaming as she shot her mom’s bare legs with powerful bursts of water from the pressurized water gun.

  Nia jumped a mile and threw herself against the wall.

  “Jesus Christ!” she yelled and she dropped her purse. Geoff burst out now too, losing it. The buildup leading to an explosive p
ayoff. Odie squirted her mom and Nia danced.

  “What the fu—what is wrong with you two?” she yelled.

  Geoff heaved for breath under his laughing, Odie cackled and she threw the gun aside like it was hot. They both scurried under their sleeping bags and hid, both laughing their asses off.

  Nia said, “Are you two—why are you in a tent?”

  It made them laugh harder. There was no reason they would be in a tent.

  The grass rustled with Nia’s approach and then his sleeping bag was ripped from him. Nia squatted in the open doorway of the tent. She was incredulous.

  “Why are you two in a tent?” she said.

  “We’re camping,” he said.

  “My fu—my heart is pounding,” she said.

  Odie peeled her sleeping bag down so just her big black eyes were showing, she said, “I love you, Mom,” behind the quilted nylon, her voice muffled.

  “Are you two going to sleep out here?” she said, peering around their setup. They had it nice and cozy with blankets and pillows and snacks and books.

  “We’re all going to sleep out here,” he said.

  “No way,” she laughed.

  He moved and showed her that there were three sleeping bags, three sets of pillows. He patted the one he’d made up for her.

  “Yes, you are, Nia.”

  “I have to work in the morning.”

  “I set an alarm,” he said, and he showed her his phone.

  She waffled, her face pained.

  “Please, Nia, baby, ple-ee-ease,” he pleaded, and Odie imitated him, howling along with his pleas and clasping her hands together, touching them to the tops of her mom’s high heels in ancient supplication.

  Nia sighed. “Let me get in my pyjamas.”

  She was gone for ten minutes and when she came back she was light and happy, dressed in a white T-shirt and blue pinstripe short-shorts, smelling like toothpaste. She brought her glasses and a book.

  She squeezed in between them and lay on a blanket with the zipped open sleeping bag over top of her, her pretty feet sticking out to keep her ventilated. They talked and they read and Odie fell asleep. They listened to the bugs and the quiet sounds of the neighbourhood, the busy sounds of the city quieter behind it all. When they were sure Odie was asleep she curled up to Geoff, pressed her back to him. They got a little frisky under the covers but mostly they kept it PG.

  23

  Reggie

  Thursday, August 10th

  GEOFF

  He had her at their bathroom sink, standing behind her. Watching her in their mirror. Both of them stark naked, early morning sleepy and warm. They’d made love last night but he was going away today, far away from her, and it scared him. He was hard, fucking her gently from behind, one bare foot on the cool tile, the other on the bathmat at the foot of the sink. Nia’s long thin legs parted for him, not as wide as his own. She writhed against him, her skin almost hot. She felt amazing. She was too good for him.

  Her body danced in the mirror, all her curves undulating while he fucked her, the muscles of her belly rising and falling, her bared breasts heaving and swaying with their passion and her lustful breathing. She’d broke a sweat, a glossy shine appearing right before his eyes on the flat between her breasts, white light sparkling along the ridges of her ribs as they pressed the skin there below her collar. She was so tanned. Bronzed, Mediterranean olive, paler where her bikini rode, but still so healthy and sun-kissed. His colourless sliver of a body peeked over her shoulder and at her waist. He was haggard, white, the colour of someone who sat at a drawing table all day and worked well into the night. Handsome, yes, in a cute, thin, bearded sort of way. But he could see the two of them together, and their difference was jarring. He looked so wrong with her when he was naked. He could pull it off when they were clothed and he wore a smart sweater and some cool jeans. Naked was different. Wholly different.

  She looked good with Rocco. Rocco’s body was frightening but he was all man. What must she look like next to Dino? The two of them were beautiful. And if you were handsome, built and well-hung Dino, what did you think of when you fucked Nia from behind and watched in a mirror? What went through your mind when you fucked her and knew you had everything she wanted? How did her other lovers see her? Did she frighten them too? Just because you were six-two, two-hundred pounds didn’t mean you didn’t have feelings. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they didn’t care. Maybe she was bad and that was why he got her. Lowly, undeserving Geoff. Maybe she was damaged goods. Maybe she was defective. She was too good for him. Too beautiful, too sexy. Was that why? Had she scared off all the rest?

  He watched that faint ghost of a man in the mirror, eyes locked on his, so unworthy of such a fine woman. He felt himself wither inside her. Felt his already unimpressive organ inside his wife soften as he saw himself from the outside. The more he thought about that softening the worse it got and his eyes trembled in the mirror. What would she think of him? Would she realize what a dud he was? She liked hard cocks. Guys who got hard fast. Rocco and his monstrous member. What did his little dick feel like to her? His cock buckled against her, his thrust and his hardness not enough now to pass her tight ring. His soft squirmy penis mashed between her legs, then fell down between her thighs.

  “Oh, no, baby, what’s happening?” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Nia, I don’t know...”

  “Baby, don’t stop, please,” she said, and she pressed her butt against his hips. She needed a fucking and maybe he wasn’t the man that could do it.

  “Geoff, please...” she urged again.

  His arms went around her waist and he hugged her as her friend. Put his face in her neck and breathed against her. She clasped his wrists, said, “Baby, what can I do?”

  “I’m sorry, Nia...”

  “You’re not going to go to New York without coming inside me.”

  He laughed into her skin and breathed her hair. “I like that,” he said, held her tighter, “talk dirty to me.”

  “Yeah?” she said. “You’re going to be so far, I need my boy’s seed in me. Keep me company, down here,” she said and she held his hand from the back, her fingers through his, and led him down between her legs. He felt her little sex, felt her heat and her wet. How turned on she was. His dirty girl. She needed sex.

  “You need it, don’t you?”

  “I need my Geoff.”

  “No, you need it.”

  “Oh, yeah, Geoff I need it...”

  “I like that...”

  “Yeah?” she said, a hopeful little gasp.

  “Can I trust you when I’m gone?”

  “You know you can’t.”

  “I know. My little whore.”

  “Will you clean me when you get home. When I’ve been bad?”

  “I will, baby. I love you.”

  “You’re good to me, Geoff...take care of me when I’ve been with my lover...oh, ha,” she laughed, “somebody’s getting hard.” She wiggled her butt against him. His slippery cock had got some new life and it was swelling between her bare thighs.

  He whispered, “Humiliate me...”

  “What?”

  “Say something bad...”

  “No way, Geoff...”

  “I want you to, Nia...”

  “I love you, Geoff...”

  “Say something good then...about Rocco...”

  “Mmm...can I...talk about...Dino...”

  “Why?”

  “Ah...the other day...”

  “Oh...Nia...”

  “No...please...”

  “What?”

  He pulled her to him, held an arm across her chest and his hand clenched her breast. Her badness had him hard again. He thought if she talked about Rocco he’d be aroused. One word of Dino...who he hadn’t even thought of...and her badness had every nerve in his body tingling again.

  “Oh, Geoff, I can feel you,” she said, her hand was between her legs, touching herself, reaching under and rubbing against the chin of his swollen erectio
n.

  He grabbed his cock and slipped it along her wet sex. She gasped. He entered her, dipped his knees and stroked it up inside her again, hard now as stone. She smiled at him in the mirror, her eyes half-lidded, glazed and sexual.

  “I made out with him,” she said, in a bad girl voice.

  “You slut.”

  “Mm,” she moaned, lips curled, wink of light under her eyelashes. “He was hard, Geoff.”

  “He was?”

  “I could feel him through his pants.”

  “How could he not be hard...”

  “I wasn’t trying,” she laughed. “Ah...I didn’t touch him, he just wanted me...”

  “He wanted you so bad...”

  “I could feel how much he wanted me...”

  “Did you want him?”

  “No...but my body did...”

  He slid himself into her deeply, leaned her at the waist and put his hands on the bathroom counter, spread out on either side of the sink. He watched her pretty face and he slowly fucked her. Easy strokes in all the way and out, until he thought he might slip free, then back slowly all the way...

  He said, “Your body wanted his cock.”

  “He made me so wet, Geoff. But I didn’t touch him.”

  “Is this true?” he asked her. His heart raced and he couldn’t help a smile spreading his beard. She was bad but she wanted to share it with him.

  “Mm-hmm,” she nodded. “Geoff...ah, Geoff...”

  “What?”

  “He touched me...”

  “Where?”

  “Where your cock is right now.”

  “He didn’t...”

  “He did, baby...he threw me on the bed and he lay on me...he slipped his hand under my skirt and inside my panties...”

  “Holy fuck, Nia...God, you’re so sexy...”

  “He didn’t put a finger in me but he stroked my pussy and I could feel how wet I was...”

  His mind reeled. He clenched his eyes and pressed his cheek to her shoulder trying not to come right now and end this. Her big macho ex-boyfriend with his big strong hand inside her panties. Touching his wife’s sweet little pussy. She was the sexiest thing he could imagine. So bad, so dirty.