Stroke It

by Ivy Jordan

  “A few weeks,” I said. “Maybe a little over a month.” I didn’t know the exact numbers, but it had been both forever and no time at all. I didn’t know why I didn’t just lie to Stacy and make up a number, but part of me knew there was no sense in trying to lie to her. She always saw through it.

  “A little over a month,” she said. “Cool. I’ve been out for maybe two weeks.”

  ‘Been out’ referred to her rehab, I supposed. I’d forgotten how open she was about her drug abuse. In this public space, I dreaded the implications of her talking about it. I didn’t want people to associate her with me. I didn’t want them to think of me as having anything to do with the lifestyle she promoted. I wanted her gone, dammit!

  “Right,” I said. And that was all I said, until she still didn’t leave, and so I decided to get slightly less polite.

  “Quinn and I were just having dinner,” I said. It wasn’t even really impolite. Stacy was the one who’d shown up and rooted herself to the table like some sort of parasite.

  Quinn wasn’t saying anything. She watched, though, like a hawk, and I expected her to swoop in and save my ass at any second. She didn’t, though; she merely watched.

  “Right, you and Quinn.” Stacy frowned. “So is that, you know, legal? Since she’s a doctor and all?”

  It was hardly illegal, but that wasn’t the principle that irritated me. “You want to argue with me about what’s legal?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice down. I hadn’t had time to deal with how angry I was with her, and now here we were, talking for the first time in years in a nice restaurant. This wasn’t fair.

  “Ouch, hostile.” Stacy raised an eyebrow. Her face looked drawn, pinched in weird places, like someone had dragged her cheekbones out too far and made harsh caricatures of her facial features. I remembered a time when she’d been beautiful, healthy and young, in blue jean shorts and t-shirts when we snuck beers from my parents’ fridge. Only now did I realize how long ago that had been, when I could see the years reflected back in the circles under her eyes.

  “I’m really happy for you,” Stacy said. “I mean, I think it’s great you found someone.”

  This made no sense. This entire situation set me on edge.

  “Of course,” I said.

  She left, and the waiter was by shortly after with the check. I didn’t say anything to Quinn because I was still processing the situation.

  “At least she said she’s happy for you,” Quinn finally offered in the car.

  I stared down the highway and tried to let up my iron grip on the steering wheel. “That’s what bothers me,” I said. “She wouldn’t have said she was happy for me unless she wasn’t. It means she’s focused in on the two of us together, not just me.”

  “That’s… you don’t think that’s paranoid?” Quinn didn’t sound so sure herself.

  “Absolutely not.” I turned off the highway. “Stacy always has an agenda. She’s always planning on something. I don’t want to think about it if she’s got us in her sights.”

  Quinn nodded slowly. “I don’t think I do, either.” She shook her head and I could tell that something else was bothering her.

  “You okay?” I asked. We pulled into my driveway, and when I helped her out of the seat, the only thing I could hear for miles and miles was the sound of crickets quietly chirping. It would get louder as the summer came on, but for now, it was only peaceful.

  Quinn twisted her mouth to the side. We walked to my front door, and she talked while I unlocked it.

  “I guess I worry about how she pulled you in,” Quinn said. “You know, there was that… appeal, whether it was drugs or young love or whatever. And I worry now that she’s back that there’ll be some kind of… I don’t know.”

  She was insinuating that I might leave her for Stacy. The thought was so absurd that I nearly laughed, at the very least nearly dropped my keys.

  “Quinn.” I held the sides of her face and kissed her for a moment. “Quinn, I can’t begin to describe to you exactly how good you are for me. How good you are to me. How I can’t begin to return the favor.” I kissed her again and realized I hadn’t said all I had to say. “If I’ve got you, what else could I possibly need?”

  Chapter Thirty

  QUINN

  I could not have possibly measured the effect that his words would have on me. I nearly melted on the spot, and when Sawyer leaned in to kiss me again, I welcomed that as something to ground me. He needed me, I’d known that, but to know that he considered me something he cared about in a romantic way and not just as a convenience was a big deal to me. I curled my fingers up in his shirt and bit his bottom lip.

  He broke away to smile at me, and he pressed his mouth to mine again. I nudged my head to the side when I needed to breathe and kissed the side of his neck, wrinkling my nose when I felt the hard scratches of whiskers forming on his cheeks. His hands came around to my legs and I wrapped my arms around his neck, soundlessly agreeing to what he suggested without words.

  He hoisted me up like I didn’t weigh anything, and I was more than happy to continue to bite and kiss my way down his neck, along his cheek, as far as I could reach to his shoulder. He led us to his bedroom, at least I presumed as much, and set me down gently on the bed.

  Getting our clothes off took almost no time at all. I sighed at the feeling of his skin against mine when he pressed himself over me. When we pulled away from our kissing, breathing heavy, sometimes our stomachs or chests would touch. The swell of my breast matching the hard line of his chest, my mouth to his, I wanted to be covered in this feeling.

  Where I’d wrinkled my nose earlier at the feeling of his stubble against my cheek, now I gasped at the feeling of it rasping on my neck. Scratching along the base of my throat while he rubbed slow circles into my thighs, I was taken aback by the affection in his touch. He felt like he was only trying to feel me, as much as I was trying to feel him; as much tension as there was in the room, I got the feeling that we could just as easily go to sleep now and skip everything else.

  But I wanted everything else. I slipped a hand below his waist and he took that hand and lifted it up, above my head, and held it there. We made eye contact for a moment. I was surprised at the suddenness of his gesture, but I was also completely helpless in his hold.

  He broke our eye contact to kiss down my torso, moving not in a straight line but covering all the skin with his mouth, tracing my navel with his tongue, leaving me a maze of searing kisses. The palm of his hand rested between my legs, and he moved his fingers to trail innocuously, ineffectively, only reminding me that they were there and not providing release.

  His breath hit the side of my hip, and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t process the sight of him driving me insane as well as feel him do that. I expected him to trail slow, merciless circles around where I needed the most pressure, to agonizingly wait before delivering pleasure.

  He pressed two fingers inside me at the same time that he kissed me. I yelped, not expecting the sudden jolt of pleasure, and to eliminate any pain his thumb came down on my clit. My hips bucked up into his hand pitifully, and I moaned into his mouth, unable to successfully return his kiss.

  He said nothing, merely kissed down my neck and held himself up over me as he pumped his fingers in and out of me. It was his thumb, though, that I kept grinding up against, bringing me closer and closer until he hooked his fingers up towards my belly button and I shouted when I climaxed.

  I hadn’t expected him to do that so suddenly. While my heart began to calm down, he kissed me, and then released me once more.

  I could only lay there, dazed, utterly spent and yet craving more.

  He sat up and started going through his drawer. I snatched up a condom before he could and undid it carefully—as much as I appreciated the animosity behind taking off a condom with one’s teeth, I didn’t want to tear it. Instead of letting him do it, I rolled the condom down over his erection.

  “Quinn,” he murmured like he had more to say and didn
’t know quite what.

  I let him hover back over me, holding my waist with one hand and supporting himself on his elbow with the other. His weight over me was enough to make me feel drunk on the moment. I wanted to keep him there forever. I could feel him pressed against me, and slowly but surely, he pressed into me.

  The groan he issued as he seated himself inside me was enough to ready me for another orgasm. Oddly, I couldn’t force myself to feel the same rush to do so as I usually did. He moved slowly, carefully, but drove deep and hit his mark inside me often enough to have me disoriented, grasping at the sheets.

  I could hear him speaking, too, and it wasn’t long before his thrusts were deeper, faster, more insistent. The bed squeaked beneath us, and my eyes slammed closed as he burst with a shout, still moving, coming to a slow stop.

  I still had my lips pressed to his neck, to his cheek, to any exposed skin. He moved away from me with care and disposed of the condom in the wastebasket by his bed. I expected him to get up, then, to go and clean up as he usually did. I probably could use it, too—though the smell would air out by the morning, it wouldn’t do to revel in this dirtiness now.

  Instead of getting up, though, he rolled off me and pulled me closer to him. I inhaled the soap-sweet smell of his bare skin and tried not to think about the way that I felt. It was always easy to get lost in the moment, I knew, and I was guilty more than most of letting myself believe that anyone I slept with was someone special.

  I looked up at Sawyer’s eyes, drifting closed, exhausted. His hold on me didn’t lax. I thought of how familiar he was to me, and how I’d been trying to reconcile that with the fact that some part of me still wondered if I was supposed to be his therapist. He had come to his last meeting, after all.

  With the steady rise and fall of his chest, my head moved, too, but in a pleasant way. Rather than be disruptive and cause a problem with my going to sleep, it lulled me. I listened to his heartbeat.

  I’d been so scared when Stacy came to the table at dinner. I’d been so convinced that she would say something just right and Sawyer would run off with her. That, or he would break again, and all the progress we made would shatter. Instead, he’d held his own, talked to her without growing angry or making a scene, and then had done everything he possibly could to extinguish the idea that he might prefer her over me. And then some, in my opinion.

  I thought back to how she’d specified Sawyer and my relationship as a point of conversation. Sawyer hadn’t liked that—I couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but he didn’t like it, and it made him suspicious. Still, that was only all the more reason to feel at ease. If Sawyer were dismissive of the situation, I might be more worried.

  Now, I didn’t know if I could worry about anything, except maybe having to ever get up and leave. It seemed perfectly reasonable at that moment to never get up from this spot.

  Off to the side, on the bedside table, a phone buzzed. I thought at first that it was mine, so I sat up to look at it. My patients all had my phone number and permission to call me at any time if they were in an emergency. I’d calmed several suicidal patients down that way, and gotten CPS to some houses where kids needed help. In any case, it was good for me to check my phone when it went off, and so I sat up to look at what was going on.

  It wasn’t my phone, though. The screen was different. I glanced at the time on the digital alarm clock and was only more confused as to who could be texting him. I wasn’t going to go through his phone; that was hugely rude, and I wouldn’t breach his privacy like that. But I was curious, so I peered over to see if I could read what was on the screen from where I was.

  ‘Good to see you again. XO,’ from ‘Stacy’ in his phone.

  I wrinkled my nose. The first emotion that came up, try as I did to stop it, was anger. I hated that he still had her number, hated that she had his number, and didn’t want to know how it came to be that she was saved in his phone. I didn’t want to think that he’d added her back in recently, and I didn’t want to think that he’d never deleted her in the first place.

  I especially didn’t want to think that she was texting him regularly. There was no way for me to confirm or deny that without looking at his phone in-depth, and I’d already decided not to do that. But based on that text, I reasoned, I didn’t have anything to worry about. I thought about what Sawyer said, about not needing anyone else. He cared about me, and I was beginning to care about him far more than I’d intended to.

  What Stacy said didn’t matter. I laid back down in bed and shook my head to myself. I wasn’t going to be some ridiculous jealous girlfriend about this. She had his number, and she’d texted him—that wasn’t a big deal. He was obviously not interested in her, and he was obviously aware of how dangerous he was for her. If Sawyer knew those two things, he could keep her away. And he wouldn’t do it because I wanted him to—he’d do it because he knew he had to.

  I could help him, too, if he needed it. If Stacy continued to butt her nose into our relationship, I knew I would eventually need to do something about it. Now, though, there was nothing to be done. There were crickets off in the distance, chirping quietly. There was the sound of Sawyer breathing quietly beside me. When I set my head on his chest, there was the sound of his heart thudding. If I focused hard enough, I could feel mine, too, clunking along sure and steady.

  I knew the truth. Hell, maybe Stacy had sent that text knowing that I would see it. I knew her, and I knew Sawyer. There was nothing for me to worry about. There wasn’t ever going to be anything for me to worry about, not so long as I could continue to trust Sawyer the way that I did so unyieldingly unconditionally.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  SAWYER

  “How’s Quinn?”

  I looked up from the flower I was planting in the ground. Pete looked over at me from the porch, taking a drink from a bottle of water after he spoke. The sun had started to press the heat into the back of our necks, and I had one or two more plants to put in the ground, but he was done for now and had gone in for water.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Pete spat off to the side. “Well, you know. She stayed over at your house a week ago. You’ve been involved. How is she? How is it goin’?”

  “It’s going fine.” I patted the dirt around the flowers and frowned when I realized I’d forgotten to plant the cucumbers. “She’s out of town this weekend. Some kind of conference.”

  “A conference?”

  “Some psychiatry thing.” I wiped the sweat from my brow and leaned back onto my ankles. I couldn’t remember the details of what Quinn had told me about the conference, but it had something to do with psychiatry and pharmaceuticals. I’d told her she could go as long as she didn’t make me take any pharmaceuticals, and then we’d made out in the back of her car, and then I’d forgotten what she told me about the conference.

  Pete walked up to stand next to me. I turned to look at him and lifted an eyebrow.

  “What?”

  “It’s just strange you don’t talk about her more,” Pete said. “I’d expect you’d be chattering up a storm about her. You doing alright?”

  “We really are,” I emphasized. “I’ve always been kind of quiet, Pete. You know that.”

  “I suppose. Take a load off; we don’t need those cucumbers in the ground until tomorrow.” Pete clapped my shoulder, and I stood up.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, it’s supposed to rain tonight, and the roof’s got a tear.” Pete pointed at the tarp that he used to cover the garden when it rained. He liked to control the water in his vegetable garden, and since he maintained it regularly, he liked to keep the rain out of the equation. Unfortunately, he’d been unable or unwilling to have someone out to build a roof over the garden, or even put up a cheap tin one, and so he’d been using a tarp over some posts. With the rain straight on the ground, any seeds I put in would only get washed up. I didn’t like the thought of having all my work go to waste, so I didn’t protest.

&nb
sp; I stood up and pulled my gloves off. “Sun’s just now starting to go down,” I noted. The worst of the heat was over. “I think I might head back if I’m all done here.”

  “Well, shoot, Sawyer, I was hoping we could go to George’s.” Pete looked across the yard at his car, like he wanted to go immediately.

  I leaned against a shovel and raised my eyebrows. “Yeah, sure, we could go. What’s the occasion?”

  “I just want to,” Pete offered.

  It was as good a reason as any. I went to his bathroom to clean up a little so I wouldn’t smell, and then we left to go to George’s.

  Just like last time, the bar was empty except for a few people mulling around the back. A few people I recognized from my time as regulars still seemed to haunt the place, with longer beards and deeper recesses behind their eyes. I pulled my cap down onto my head and walked up to the bar.

  “You know, I don’t think I like the idea of you going off and getting married,” Pete said.

  I nearly spat my drink. “Jesus Christ, Pete. No one said anything about getting married.”

  “Well, it comes along!” Pete raised his arms in a physical defense at my protest.

  I shook my head and put a few quarters in the billiards table and watched the balls fall in a clatter. It bought me time to put them together in the triangle and formulate some kind of response to the escalation Pete was talking about.

  “It comes along in years,” I said. “Years and years.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Pete waved his hand and picked up a cue. He looked down the barrel of it, like it was a shotgun, and I ignored it; berating him for his odd habits never went well for either of us. He was a sensitive soul at heart, and I knew better than to poke fun at him for the little things.

  “Even if it’s years from now, I don’t like it.” Pete lined the cue up with the cue ball and licked his lips, cap covering his eyes from the angle I stood at.

  I shook my head. Pete had been eager to see me in a relationship, or so I remembered, and he’d been supportive of the endeavor. In fact, I could specifically recall him telling me to distance myself from Quinn professionally so that I could be closer to her romantically. Not to mention that when he’d met Quinn, it had been smiles all around. He didn’t seem to have an issue.