Preach to me Baby

by Hazel Parker

  My feet had started to ache and the sun was hanging low when I passed by a yard with its gate open. Inside, a tanker truck rumbled to life. From the street, I watched as an old man eased down from the cab, his body stooping slightly as he made his final inspection of his load. With the sun going down and no better options presenting themselves, I steeled my courage and called out to him. After the third attempt and half a dozen steps inside the gate, he turned. One fuzzy white eyebrow arched up and he nodded to me.

  “Lookin’ for a ride?” he asked, his voice gruff and weathered.

  “Yes.”

  He hitched a thumb to the passenger side and carried on with his inspection. I exhaled a hard breath, relieved that he took all the work out of it for me and saddened that in his time, he’d met enough women like me to know what it was that I needed.

  A moment after I was settled into the passenger seat, the old man climbed behind the wheel. With no eye contact and no questions, he shifted the truck into gear and we set off. Once we were cruising through the scattered remnants of city streets, the old man spoke up.

  “I head northeast of here until we hit the border. Can’t take you past that though. I keep the radio tuned to the country station and don’t intend to change that. I don’t need to know your name or your story. Tell me where to stop and I’ll let you out there.”

  There were no questions, still no eye contact. No way to humanize this misadventure I’d found myself on. I nodded at the man.

  “Understood. I’ll go as far east as you can take me.”

  He nodded in return before the silence and the darkening sky consumed the cab.

  The quiet wasn’t as disconcerting as I imagined it would be. My driver faded into the shadows and the hum of the engine and the quiet harmonies coming from the radio calmed me. I was in an untouchable bubble, being shuttled to a new time and place. I rested my elbow on the door and stared out into the dark.

  Of all the places my mind could go—the questionable decision I made, the two years preceding it, the humiliation of being used—the only place it kept coming back to was AJ. The fire in his eyes when he finally touched me and the way he held me afterwards played on a continuous loop in my brain.

  At some point I closed my eyes and let it happen, every look, every touch, preserved crystal clear. AJ always pulled a reaction from me. That part wasn’t new. Every time he came around I had to actively maintain a safe distance from him. Touching him held an ounce of familiarity; my fantasies of that very moment were so vivid it felt like it had happened hundreds of times already. And the real thing didn’t disappoint.

  I wondered what AJ did once he’d realized I had left. He wouldn’t have gotten mad. He didn’t have a temper like Jason. He was always the one smiling and laughing. Would he go tell Jason that I had left with his money? I didn’t want to think of that possibility.

  I knew I had fallen asleep by the way my body lurched forward suddenly. The constant replay of earlier today had seamlessly transitioned into a dream that I was pulled from with a start. I opened my eyes, squinting in the artificial light of a truck stop parking lot. The sign above the diner informed me we were just outside of Syracuse.

  I waved off the ten dollar bill the driver held in my direction. He had already given me what I needed and money was definitely not something I was lacking. I didn’t miss the sad smile etching the lines on his face, but I pretended I had and jumped down from the cab.

  I cast a longing glance to the diner. I was hungry and could use a minute to sit and map out the rest of my journey, but I couldn’t risk exposure now. With dawn breaking, I made out a picnic table on the far end of the parking lot. I headed there and pulled out a granola bar I had stashed in my bag.

  My new issue became figuring out the best way to travel east from here. Once I had that part figured out, I would be only a few hours from my refuge: the hunting cabin my family had inherited years ago and had since ignored and neglected.

  It was situated close to Lake Ontario, but not close enough to the water to be worth much of anything. Getting there was a pain in the ass, and finding someone to hitch a ride with who happened to be going there wouldn’t be easy to find. Besides, at this point in my journey it was best I didn’t attract a lot of attention or leave behind someone who knew where I was.

  I looked around the lot as I chewed, thinking. The sun was almost completely clear of the horizon now, the sense that I was wasting precious time building in me. The parking lot was a bevy of trucks coming and going, and weaving between the behemoths, a faded-blue Datsun caught my eye. A homemade cardboard sign occupied half of the back windshield. For sale.

  The cash in the bag at my feet called to me. A few bills from it and I would have my solution. Spending that first dollar, though, would mean I was in this for real. There would be no going back once that money left my hand.

  With only the slightest hesitation, I pocketed a few of the bills and made my way across the parking lot. The car had stopped outside of the diner and by the time I caught up to the driver, a tall woman with long hair and dressed in her waitress uniform, was crushing out a cigarette and gathering her purse up from the passenger seat.

  I stopped her as she was locking the door. “How much do you want for the car?”

  The woman paused and turned to face me fully. She made no disguise of her assessment of me and I could only imagine what kind of assumptions she was making about me, about the circumstances that brought me here.

  “Five hundred.”

  That was ridiculous. There was more rust on the body than paint and the muffler was hanging low to the ground. The smell of stale smoke wafted from it even with the door closed.

  “How much gas is in it?”

  “Half tank.”

  I nodded and pulled the money from my pocket, counting out the full amount. Her eyes widened and I smiled to myself. It wasn’t about the money. It never was. Letting it go felt better than keeping it anyways.

  “Do you need time to clean out your stuff?” I asked, handing it over to her.

  She curled her lips back over her teeth, tucking the money into her apron pocket and snorting a laugh. “Nope. I think you just bought yourself all the shit in it.”

  She handed me the keys and walked into the diner.

  I opened the car door and gave it a few seconds for the air to clear a bit. With my bag on the seat beside me I started it up and opened the windows. The engine sputtered a little, but that didn’t worry me. It shifted in to drive just fine and that was the important thing. Forward momentum was all that I cared about at this point. I exited onto the highway and headed east.

  The cassette in the deck was a mix tape with songs I didn’t recognize, so I filled some time tuning in a radio station. I killed a little more time rifling through the dusty glove box, coming up with nothing of interest. I did everything I could to not think of the half tank of gas that was quickly dipping down past a quarter, the knocking coming from under the hood that seemed to be getting louder, the fact that my sketchy plan hadn’t evolved any further than making it to the cabin.

  With the sun high in the sky, I turned onto a narrow dirt road. It was still marked and maintained, but it indicated the point in my journey where directions were useless and my memory would be leading the way. So far, my memory still knew the route well.

  When we first inherited the old place from a great uncle we came as a family, imagining a peaceful family vacation home. It was the only time we came together. At that time the place wasn’t even that run down, but it turned out my mother and sister weren’t into nature and it was a painful experience for everyone. For a handful of years after that, my dad and I made the trip out once a year. And even after that, unbeknownst to him, I made the trip out with friends or boyfriends enough times to have the route memorized. I hated muddling up the memories I had with the new ones I was bringing, but even so I was grateful to have a safe place to lay low for a few days.

  I turned off the narrow road onto one even more s
o, then again, until I was following an overgrown trail. The growth overhead was dense and blocked out much of the sunlight. The grass grew up between the ruts worn in the road, and tree branches dipped down low into my path, scraping against the hood and windows. At the approach to the cabin, a fallen tree lay blocking the path, and dense foliage blocked everything else.

  I stepped out of the car for the first time in hours. I stretched in the cool, damp shade before I pulled the tree limb from my way. I drove the car up to the cabin and frowned. The trees grew too thick around the building for me to drive to the backside of it. I would have to settle for parking in front. The remote location and the unknown vehicle would have to be enough to deter anyone who came snooping down this remote trail.

  The cabin looked just as I had remembered it, even though it had been years since the last time I’d been here. It leaned a little and the porch had sunk in the middle, but it was a welcome sight nonetheless. With bag in tow, I used my arm to clear cobwebs from the porch and reached behind the trout-shaped plaque to retrieve the key. The door swung open with a fair amount of effort and a loud protest.

  I breathed a relieved sigh as I inspected the inside from the door. The door opened onto the kitchen and living area where a thick layer of dust covered every surface and I was doomed to breathe in more stale air, but from first glance, it didn’t look like any varmints or vagrants made it their home recently. I was pleasantly surprised that years of neglect had served to preserve this old place instead of destroy it.

  I stepped in and closed the door behind me. Depositing the bag, and looking around I felt restless. The need to take control of the situation after sitting idle for hours was overwhelming and I set to work in a burst of ambition. I checked out the other two rooms in the cabin, a bedroom and a bathroom, searched through the cupboards for any supplies that would come in handy, and changed into a fresh set of clothes.

  Once I had finished, all the drive I felt had drained from me, replace by exhaustion. The couple hour’s rest I’d got on the road weren’t enough to sustain me.

  The closet in the bedroom contained a few moth-eaten sheets and blankets and a nylon sleeping bag. I grabbed the sleeping bag and took it out of its bag and unrolled it. It looked to be a way better option than the sheets, so I took it back to the living area and set up camp on the couch.

  I placed my bag on one end as a pillow and laid on top of the sleeping bag. With the sun still in the sky I closed my eyes, knowing that with a few hours’ sleep, I would be better able to figure out where to go from here. Despite all the uncertainty, sleep came quickly.

  I woke to the flash of light on the wall above my head. I froze in place, hoping that it was only imagined in my dream state, but when the quiet click of a door closing echoed in the silence, I rolled off the couch and dropped to the floor. My chest constricted and I realized just how unprepared I was for a confrontation. I hadn’t even brought along a weapon.

  I had only seconds to make a plan. I hated being such a horror movie cliché, but the lamp on the table beside me was all I had time to grab. Easing my way to the wall beside the door, I gripped the column of the lamp with white knuckles. My heart jackhammered, my breaths coming in short pants that I willed to quiet down.

  The door cracked open and I fought to keep still as it eased open wider. At the midpoint, the hinges called out their protest and only then did the person on the other side step through. I waited until he had walked enough paces in to be clear of the door, of my escape route, before lunging out towards him. The glint of the moonlight on the base caught his eye, though, and his arm shot out in front of his face before I made contact. The heavy lamp struck him on the forearm. Before I had a chance for another swing, he reached out and wrestled it out of my hand.

  “Jesus Christ, Lexie.”

  My grip on the lamp went limp as recognition flared. It wasn’t Jason.

  “What the hell are you doing here AJ?” I asked, exasperated and angry now that the fear was receding.

  He fumbled around for the light switch, temporarily blinding me when he finally found it. He turned back to me and shrugged.

  “I followed you here. Though I was expecting a warmer welcome.” He rubbed at the red spot on his arm that had already started to swell. “What the hell was with the lamp? You could have knocked me out if that hit my head.”

  “That was the intention. And what do you mean you followed me? You didn’t know where I was going.”

  “I had an idea.”

  It dawned on me for the first time that if AJ was working with Jason, he would have had plenty of time to slip a tracking device into my bag while I was in the bathroom. All of my efforts would be useless.

  I balled my hands and backed away from him.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I didn’t know for sure, but you’ve told me about this place a couple of times; you liked to sneak out here and have parties or something. I remember the way your face lit up when you talked about it. It was just a hunch, but it was the only lead I had.”

  “But this place is in the middle of nowhere. Even if I told you about it, you didn’t know where it was.”

  “Land ownership maps are easy enough to access. I knew your family inherited this place, so the land title would have been changed to your family’s name. A few dollars and an internet connection was all it took.” As if to prove his point, he pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. There on it was the landownership map and a few directions scribbled on it. “My GPS doesn’t work out here, so it took me longer to find you than I thought. I had to turn back to town to be able to write those directions down.” His mouth pulled up in a half smile, a shy smile.

  “Why go to all that trouble?” I asked, too exhausted to be angry anymore, but all too leery. “I’m not going back with you.”

  “I’m not here to make you go back. But if I knew where to find you, it won’t take Jason long to figure it out too. He hears a lot more than he lets on, and he remembers everything. I’m here to help.”

  “Why do you care? Shouldn’t you be on Jason’s side?”

  “I haven’t been on Jason’s side for years, since he’s willingly gotten himself deep into all this shit. When we were kids and he wound up mixed up with the wrong people or the wrong deal, it was different. He wanted different for himself and I wanted to help him. But it’s been a damn long time since he’s wanted to change. Now he wants to be in charge. I can’t respect that.”

  “But you were always hanging around. I know you weren’t into the same business he was, but I thought you were close.”

  “I was only close to him because I wanted to be close to you.” My eyebrows pulled together; I couldn’t let myself believe what he was saying was the truth. “Did you think it was just a coincidence that we always ended up sitting beside one another on the couch by the end of the night or alone in the kitchen?” He stepped closer to me, but not yet touching. I could feel the warmth from his body and I shivered from the lack of its closeness. “I couldn’t stay away. Even when I knew I was getting too close and tried to keep my distance, it was impossible.”

  This time he let me feel his touch, and it wasn’t hesitant. His fingers tunneled through my hair until he was cupping the back of my head, pulling me closer into him. Despite the uncertainty, I went to him easily, my body pressing against his. My body was still humming from the last time we touched, still craving more.

  “I didn’t want to have anything to do with Jason and his deals, but I couldn’t stay away.” AJ’s lips danced across mine, his teeth nibbling. “And now that I’ve finally had a taste of you, I don’t think I’ll be able to give you up.”

  This time when he kissed me, I met him halfway. My hands threaded into his hair, wanting to feel the soft stands between my fingers again. His hands had moved down to my waist, fingers slipping underneath the cloth.

  With only a little more effort, they slipped down to the floor and his hands were cupping my ass, drawing me up
his body. I wrapped my legs around him and he walked us to the couch, his lips straying to my neck. His rough stubble and sharp nips set my skin on fire and wetness pooled between my legs.

  He lowered me to the floor once we reached the couch, and I reached for the button on his pants. His erection pushed against the denim and anticipation danced along my nerve endings knowing what laid beneath. I tore open his pants and shoved them down barely to his knees before I pushed him back onto the couch. His hands never left my skin, even as I straddled him and took his erect cock in my hands between us.

  His eyes watched my hands move and his fingers trailed down to my thighs. I sucked in a breath when his thumb pressed against my clit. There were no gentle warnings, just a steady pressure circling the sensitive bud.

  My movements became quicker the wetter he made me. I bucked against his hand as the first moan escaped my lips. The urgency to feel him filled me, possessed me and I positioned him along my slit with no further desire to tease. Moving his hands to my hips, AJ helped pull me onto him, a simultaneous groan echoing between us.

  With my hands on his shoulders, I moved into him, a slow rhythm that picked up speed as I adjusted to him. As my pace steadied, AJ’s hands moved up under my shirt to feel my bare breasts. He rolled my nipple between his fingers. Heat followed by pleasure flooded through me, my fingers pressing into his shoulders. He smiled, pleased with himself for making me squirm, making me all the more wet.

  If only things could have been like this sooner. The hell we had both been putting ourselves through all these months could have been easily rectified. There had been times where we were close, so very close, to making a slip. A little less willpower and we could easily have found ourselves in this very position a long time ago. It was a good thing I didn’t know what I had been missing all along.