by Tl Reeve
While he could possibly down two of the delicacies, he still wanted to fit into his jeans, and he also wanted to see Eden. They had crossed a major hurdle, and now they could talk without her snarky comebacks in the way. Together they would plan his concert, make Eden known for something other than a gas station for the desperate, and they could be together.
He gulped down his coffee, nearly choking when it was too hot, then stood, taking the plate of pastries with him. “I think I’d better go say good morning to my mechanic.”
“Oh yes.” Eden’s mother patted him and plopped another pastry onto the dish. “She’s at the garage. She had an early repair show up this morning, this time a doctor. Make sure he eats and tell him Eden helped make them.”
In a bit of a daze, he walked out into the fresh air. Was he now a conduit to hook Eden up? Any man would do? Had he been passed over because he didn’t have an MD after his name?
Before he ever spied the doctor, he made sure to take a bite out of each of the treats. At a strange sound coming from the garage, he skidded to a halt. What was that?
He waited a moment more, and the noise continued.
Laughter.
Female laughter.
Eden’s laughter.
In the three days he had spent here, he’d never once heard her laugh, and as soon as some doc hobbled into town, she was whooping up a storm?
He straightened up and stormed into the garage office.
Both Eden and a man, a tall man, one who appeared as if he was once a member of a boy band who’d grown up to be a rich and successful doctor, jumped away from each other.
“Perry.” Eden stared into his eyes, then looked away.
“You do know my name.” Fine, he snarled the words, but he wanted her to run to his arms, give him a kiss. Show him something that said they were moving forward.
“Seems like I’m not the only one stuck here.” The doctor flashed a cosmetic-surgery-perfect smile at him. “Eden was telling me all about you.”
“She was, was she?” An odd warmth taking over him, he set the plate aside and joined the happy couple. “What exactly did she say?”
“That your car broke down and it was taking a few days to get the parts.” The doctor took his seat at the desk.
Eden thumbed through her catalog. “Dr. Aronson has to get back to the city. He just left a medical convention.”
“Interesting.” Perry crossed his arms. Actually, it wasn’t that interesting.
“Yes. Cardiologists put a lot of heart into their work and their play.” The doctor laughed.
In response to a not funny, completely obvious joke, there was that noise again, Eden’s laugh.
“Yeah, well, I’m a concert promoter.” In an effort to finish the pun, he paused, but the only thing he could think to say was that he was all play, and that was not the impression he wanted to leave with the woman he’d pleasured the night before. Perhaps he should say he was the guy who made the mechanic orgasm.
The doctor pointed at him. “You always have an audience.”
Again, Eden chuckled, even punctuating her little outburst of joy with an adoring glance at the big-time professional.
“An audience doesn’t matter. All you need is one person.” There, the guy could take that. Perry leaned back against the wall.
At least his statement produced the desired effect, and once more Eden turned her attention to him.
“There’s not much more than that in this town.” The doctor lifted his phone and shook his head. “It must be nice to be able to take a break like this. I couldn’t get stranded for all these days. I have surgeries starting tomorrow morning. You don’t know how lucky you are.”
Lucky, as in loser with no life? It wasn’t lost on him that he had been gone for three days and work wasn’t gnawing at him. He wasn’t itching to return and beg Lyle for forgiveness. Even worse, he had no one else to miss him.
“We will get you right out of here.” Eden nodded. “I have all the parts you need in stock. We have to get you home.”
Perry glanced over into the main garage. The good doctor’s automobile was more exotic and pricy than his. Strange that she would have those items and not his. Maybe the town did give them what they needed, and they needed to get the doctor out of there so he could perform his important surgeries. The town could not give a shit about him. He could rot here and no one would care. “I have top acts waiting for me to get back. A-listers.” Now he lied. He had nothing. “Is there any update on my parts?”
“Nothing yet.” Eden’s voice fell flat.
Did she want him to leave or not? Why did it matter to him? He didn’t know why, but it had to be Eden. She needed him; he needed her.
“How can you even work on cars?” the doctor asked. “You’re using a telegraph to communicate to the real world and yet you can work on a foreign car.”
“The town provides what it needs,” Perry piped in. Strange he’d never thought to ask that question. He’d just accepted it. “Is the town providing what you need, Eden?”
She licked her lips and took a breath. “I’m not sure.”
“Really? You were the one who taught me that lesson,” he shot back at her. “Are you getting what you need or do you need more? Apparently you needed another repair, and here we are.”
“I’d better get to work.” Her voice came out no louder than a whisper.
“Excellent.” The doctor lifted his phone and shook his head. “Have you ever seen anything like this, with no cell site or Internet?”
“It’s coming,” Perry said.
“No, it’s not.” Eden pulled on a pair of work gloves.
He needed her to see the bigger picture, see the two of them together, see a future. That was what the town provided for him. “This is going to be an amazing concert venue. Eden will never be the same.”
Eden glared at him. “I have to get to work.”
“Yes, please. I have to get a good night’s sleep tonight.” The doctor continued to look at his phone.”
“I have things to do too.” Once more he lied. He had nothing but this town and life back in the city that didn’t need him. He had to do something that mattered, and he wanted to make her laugh.
The wide porch of the boarding house provided the perfect setting for sitting.
Pad of paper and pen in hand, Perry sat in a rocking chair and stared out at the town of Eden.
He’d spent the day, rocking, yes rocking, in the damn chair. For a while he’d watched Leah play with a ball. Yes; he’d watched the little girl play. She made up her own game and did her own thing and didn’t need an electronic or screen to tell her how to live her life.
When Leah went inside, he took in all the nothing that Eden had in store for him. Somehow it wasn’t boring. Rather, it was calming. After some lunch, he chatted with Eden’s mother and her father and then continued to rock right there in the outdoors. Something he couldn’t remember doing, ever.
Something about being alone with his thoughts, without a phone, without a contact, without a computer, freed his mind, and he recorded his thoughts the old-fashioned way.
He wrote them down.
First he made a to-do list. Everything that had to happen when he got home. Normally, he tried to keep these lists in his mind, but somehow seeing them written down made it official, as though he had to finish his goals. It was tangible.
Next, he started making plans for his Untethered Concert here in Eden. The unique town had some challenges, but with the right people working for him, they could pull this off. He only needed to mend some fences and keep some promises.
Lastly, he wrote a letter. The last time he’d written a letter to a girl had to have been to Polly Raymond in the second grade, and then it was only a superhero valentine. There were supposed to be lollipops attached to the keepsake, but Perry had kept them and then sworn the cut-out in the card was a manufacturer’s error.
Right as he finished writing his words, the doctor’s car rolled out of
the garage, purring like a baby kitten.
Eden had spent the whole day working on the doctor’s car. Perry had to admit that her familiarity with engines and autos fascinated him. Even from far away, he’d caught how she handled the tools, slid under the car with ease, did what she needed to get the machine running once more.
The doctor approached his driver’s door, and Eden got out of the car.
Perry sat up straighter, waiting for something to happen, but the doctor only shook Eden’s hand, then turned to him and waved.
He resisted the urge to give the man a one-finger salute and instead lifted his chin. It wasn’t that he disliked the physician as much as he was unsatisfied with everything the man was and what Perry lacked.
The doctor got into his car and drove away.
For a moment Eden stood in the middle of the street and watched the car disappear. She wiped her brow, brushed off her hands, and returned to the garage.
Time to get out of the rocking chair. Taking his papers with him, he pushed himself up, and moseyed across the street with the gait of any great hero in a Western movie. He found Eden back in the garage, standing near his broken-down car. “Howdy.” Since last night, they hadn’t really talked. The fact he even wanted to talk sent both shudders and satisfaction through him.
She barely gave him a glance.
“I take it you had a successful repair?” The sight of her before him in her dirty jeans with her hair pulled back and no makeup sent a jolt of electricity through his body. What was it about her?
“It was a simple job.” She hooked one straggling piece of hair behind her ear.
He joined her at her workbench. “I suppose with me it’s not that simple.”
“Not by a long shot.” Rather than look at him, she tinkered with a wrench.
“You know what’s always weird?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at him.
“It’s always weird when you orgasm with someone and then see them the next day.” He nodded. “Like, what do you do? What did the orgasm mean? Was it just lust or something more?”
She ran her fingers over the metal but still didn’t speak.
“I suppose it’s even stranger for you, because something tells me you never had to face the guy the next day.” In need of her full attention, he took the wrench from her.
At last she faced him.
“If this were a semi-normal situation and we’d hooked up last night, I probably would have texted you today and asked you out,” he admitted.
“I wouldn’t have been a one-night stand?” A bit of the snarkiness returned to her voice.
“I, like you, have had plenty of those.” Had he? He didn’t know. All he knew was she wouldn’t have been one. “Since I didn’t have texting at my disposal, I decided to write you a letter.”
“You write?” A little glimmer appeared in her eye.
“You would be amazed what I can do.” He held out the page. “Or then, maybe again you already know.”
After a pause she took the letter. “There’s not much written here.”
“What’s written is the only thing that matters,” he told her.
In an unexpected move, she pressed the letter to her chest. “It only says ‘believe in me.’”
“That’s all I want.” His voice came out low, serious. “Eden, believe in me. Believe that if I drive away, I’ll be back. Believe that we can do something together. Believe that this can be real, for whatever reason it is.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.” She let the paper flutter to the floor.
“Eden.”
Before he could continue, she held up her hand. “I don’t know if I can do all that, but I can believe in the here and now.” With her words out, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down for a kiss.
Her unexpected, yet welcome, action caught him off guard but ignited his body in an instant. For the first time, she took the lead. She wrapped her arms around him, and she made the moves.
Fuck, that turned him on.
She gasped, pulled back, and searched his eyes.
He couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, and he connected their mouths once more in a deep kiss, allowing his tongue to explore her mouth.
As he caressed down her side to her breasts, then cupped her backside, she let out a moan.
He had to have her. It had to be her. No other woman had ever generated the sensations and reactions he experienced by just being in her vicinity.
Like the night before, their kissing, touching, exploring took on a life of its own.
He snuck his hands under her shirt, palming each one of her glorious breasts. They weighed heavy, sexy in his hands, and his fingertips skimmed her hard, ready nipples. He had to indulge.
Once unfastening her bra, he buried his head between those magnificent mounds. Her scent, a mixture of soap, automobiles, and female, overtook him, and he slowly circled his tongue over her.
She twisted his hair in his fingers. “Perry.”
“You need me.” He pulled down the zipper of her jeans and slipped his hand inside. At her wet panties, he looked up at her. “You want me.”
Rather than let him continue his quest, she ran her hand over the throbbing bulge in his pants. “So do you.”
He placed his hand over hers and pressed down, needing the bit of pressure. “You don’t know how bad.”
“It’s my turn this time.” She guided him back against his car and pulled the fly of his pants open.
Before he had a chance to say a word, tell her he had a condom, ask her to go back to his room, she kneeled in front of him.
In order to keep some semblance of control, he gripped his door handle and braced himself. He’d quite literally dreamed of the moment she freed his hard cock from its confines, stroked up and down its length, then took him into her mouth.
Her soft lips skimmed over him, and she sucked, nibbled, and took her time. No, she wasn’t like some women who went about their job perfunctorily, as if it were their duty. From the way her head bobbed up and down on him, how she held on to his leg with one hand and palmed his balls in the other, with the little mews she let out, he could tell she enjoyed having this control and bringing him pleasure.
The sensations she created throughout him were beyond anything he had ever experienced. She alternated between taking his whole erection into her mouth and giving him light kisses and licks only on the head.
He panted, and the ecstasy built, growing and encompassing his whole body.
Right when he needed it most, she began a series of rhythmic sucks. He couldn’t last much longer. “Eden.”
She didn’t stop. Instead she moved faster.
His balls tightened, and his body shook, his desire threatening to explode. “I need to come.” The only thing better than having her suck him off would be to let go in her mouth, watch her swallow him down. The image alone pushed him over the edge. “Eden!” he yelled, and his body released in a wave of euphoria that washed over him again and again, leaving him weak, satisfied, and completely and utterly fascinated by the woman who now licked up every last drop of what he had to give her.
When he started to soften, she rose. Her lips glistened, and she possessed the knowing smile of a woman who knew how to please her man.
He opened his arms, and without resistance, she went to him. “You are incredible.”
She answered with a shrug.
“You are.” Somehow they were a match. He didn’t know why or how; he only knew he was enamored of the woman in his arms. “I was thinking of something.”
“All right.” Her voice came out a little abrupt for a woman who just gave him a mind-altering blowjob.
“As I sat here today, watching you and watching the town, I could almost see myself here.” He had to give her something to go on, a reason to trust him.
She stepped back and covered herself with her shirt. “Don’t promise anything.”
“Eden.” He held his hand out. “Come, spend t
he night with me, believe in me.”
“I believe in right now.” She leaned in, gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek, and tiptoed away.
He watched her go back to her office. After readjusting his clothes, he paced around the garage and glanced out at the Hanukkah candles glowing in the window. While he might not be here for tomorrow’s candle lighting, he had to prove to her that he would be back.
5
Night Five
Another morning after and another day with Slick.
Today, no matter what happened, she was going to get these parts even if she had to charter a jet or messenger pigeon to get them from a far-off desert island.
Rather than make the trek from the boarding house to her garage as an ultimate walk of shame, she held her head high. Yes, she’d let him do intimate things with her. Yes, she’d pleasured him yesterday. She was an adult, and she could do these things. People did them every day. That didn’t mean they had to run off and get married. That didn’t mean he had to stay. At the end of it all, it didn’t mean anything.
What was it about this man that made her forget everything she’d ever learned? Fine, he might be gorgeous and he might want her and maybe he even understood her town a little bit, but he wasn’t right for her. She barely even knew him.
In hopes of some sort of message, any update, she stomped into her office and straight to the telegraph in search of an answer. Hell, at this point she would take a junk telegram, if there were such a thing.
Nothing.
It was time to take action.
Done with antiquated technology, she tugged open the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out her telephone. No, not a cell phone, not a smart phone, but a real live phone. At least it had push buttons rather than a dial.
Once she’d plugged the cord into the wall and wiggled it until she got a faint dial tone, she pounded the buttons to her parts supplier in town.
“Positively Auto Parts. This is Ralph, how may I help you?” the owner answered.
At a fair amount of static, Eden flinched. The connections were never good. They literally lived in a bubble. “Ralph! It’s Eden!” She knew she had to scream for him to hear her.
