Lost Without You

by M. O’Keefe

  The way his hand had been in mine when we were kids. The way his bicep had curved to fit my palm. The back of his neck. The hard length of his cock under the fly of his jeans.

  I remembered every single body part of his body that I’d measured with my palm.

  On the bed were a stack of clean sheets he must have picked up from the front desk, wherever that was. Were we still in Arizona?

  Quickly I pulled the dirty sheets off and replaced them with the clean ones. And then I sat on the corner of the bed, brushing out my long hair. My red roots were showing. My nails were ragged. I was a mess.

  Tommy was too, I supposed, but all his rough edges only looked good on him.

  The blond stubble on his cheeks, the creases around his eyes.

  As I watched his chest lifting and falling with every breath, his head bobbed forward and he jerked it back, glancing around with blurry eyes before shutting them again. Beside him Pest whined as if asking me if I was really going to let her master sleep there so uncomfortably.

  I got up off the bed and crouched beside his chair.

  “Tommy?” I whispered, and his eyes opened at once.

  “What’s wrong? You okay?”

  I smiled, tenderness biting at my throat. “I’m fine. But why don’t you go lie down on the bed. You’re so tired and I changed the sheets.”

  “I’m okay,” he sighed, his eyes slipping shut.

  “No,” I said in a louder voice. I stood and grabbed his hand. It was hot and rough, that hand. So rough. “Wow,” I said, running my fingers over the calluses, every edge elevated to something erotic. I felt the texture of his hands on every part of my body he wasn’t touching. “You sand wood with these?”

  He smiled but pulled his hands away from me, clenching them into fists. “I could, probably.”

  “I was teasing,” I said, feeling like I’d wounded him somehow.

  “I know.” But still it felt like I’d crossed a line.

  “Tommy,” I whispered, unsure of what to say, only that something needed to be said. “We used to be—”

  His blue eyes met mine, and I think because he was so tired, he let himself look at me. Really look at me. And maybe he’d been doing that all night, but I doubted it. I felt keenly my lack of makeup. I had no more armor. No more Jada and not even lipstick to hide behind.

  All my freckles, it felt, were glowing.

  To my utter surprise he lifted a finger and touched the freckle at the top of my lip. The calluses, rough on my hand, were electric on my face, the sensitive skin of my lip, and I gasped.

  My lips parted and his finger shifted, from my top lip to my bottom, abandoning the freckle to touch, just barely, the damp skin of my lower lip, at the edge of my mouth. My heart stopped. My breath stopped. Conscious thought stopped.

  Tommy.

  Was.

  Touching.

  Me.

  My tongue tasted the salt of his finger. My body went wet in one wild cataract of lust. A wave I was swept up in.

  “I know what we used to be,” he murmured, his voice so low I felt the bass of it in my own chest. “And of course I remember everything we did in the art room.” His finger was at the edge of my mouth. Not inside. But not not inside. I was torn apart by the exactness of it, how I could feel, even as he touched me, his restraint. “I remember every second of the art room. I’ve turned those memories over in my mind a thousand times. I dream about the art room, too. So many fucking dreams.”

  “Tommy,” I breathed.

  My hair was down, water straightening out the curls into a long damp sheet on my back, making my shirt wet, and he leaned up in the chair, his finger leaving my mouth to touch my hair, to gather it up in his hands. Holding it in his fist.

  “I remember how you tasted. How you felt. I remember holding your hand down on the desk, not because I didn’t like you touching me. Never that. But because I liked it so much. I nearly came. If you touched me anymore, we wouldn’t be able to hide what we were doing. So I held your hand down and got under your skirt. Because I could make you come. I wanted to make you come—”

  I gasped, so turned on.

  “I knew it was a bad idea,” he whispered, “but I couldn’t stop.”

  “I couldn’t either,” I told him. “I never wanted to stop.”

  I reached for him, and he jerked back, pulling my hair, pulling me into him.

  “We got caught,” he said through clenched teeth. “And it was my fault. Everything that happened was my fault.”

  His hands in my hair clenched, and I swallowed a moan.

  “The Pastor—”

  “Tommy, stop.”

  “I can’t,” he whispered into my face. “Seven years and I can’t stop seeing what that man did to you.”

  “He didn’t do anything."

  “Beth.”

  We both flinched at the use of my name. Like we were being dragged around by these memories.

  “He scared me,” I told him. “And he would have done something evil and heinous, but you stopped him. All of you coming in like that. You guys stopped him.”

  He looked away, detangling his fingers from my hair, the tiny strands caught and stung. I grabbed his hands and held them there, in my hair, against my skin. Forcing him to see me. Hear me.

  “Part of the reason,” I said, “that I have any perspective on what happened that night is because of you and the art room.”

  He pulled his hands away, and I let them go. His cheeks flushed. His breath heaved.

  “You showed me it was supposed to be something sweet and exciting and mutual.”

  He stood up like he was going to run.

  “No.” I stood in his way. “I get to say this, Tommy. I need to say this, and I think you need to hear it.”

  “I don’t want..."

  “I’m okay,” I told him. “The marks that man left on my soul are far more shallow than the marks he left on yours, and you can stop worrying about it. Worrying about me.”

  He was turned away, and with my trembling fingers I cupped his face, turning him toward me. “What we did together in the art room was important, Tommy. Real important. And I never forgot it and I never forgot you.”

  “You should have,” he said. “I did everything I could to forget you.”

  It hurt. It was a knife slipped between my ribs right into my heart.

  “Every garbage pill I took. All the poison I put in my veins.”

  “No, Tommy,” I breathed.

  “It was to forget you.”

  He stepped away.

  “I never wanted to see you again,” he said.

  I turned aside, the distance between us a cavern, and it still wasn’t enough. I walked to the far side of the room, my back to him. I could hear the sound of his hands over his face, through his hair.

  I had thought that his memories had been like mine. Fond. Hot. I never expected that they hurt him. Couldn’t stand that they did. He took drugs to forget me. To erase us. Because the memories were worse than the poison of the drug.

  Oh God. I mean…

  “I need… I just need a little sleep,” he said, sounding so weary and broken. This big man at the end of his rope.

  “Of course,” I said, all business, jumping away from the land mines between us onto safer ground. “Lie down. The sheets are clean. I changed the pillow—”

  “I’m gonna close my eyes for a second,” he said in the coldest voice ever. “And then I’ll take you home.”

  “Home,” I breathed. The word was pretty fucking foreign. I had an apartment on La Brea. A one-room place with a den that I bought with my Katy Perry makeup money. I hadn’t been back there in almost seven months.

  Was that home?

  “Wherever you want to go,” he said, not looking at me. He crawled into the bed, lying down on his stomach, and Pest jumped up on the bed with him, curling up in the small of his giant spine.

  Pest faced me, her snaggletooth out—giving me fair warning that I shouldn’t get close.
<
br />   “It’s okay,” I told the dog and perhaps myself. “He’s safe from me.”

  That wasn’t totally the case. It seemed that even my being here hurt him. And I’d known that, but I’d ignored it.

  “Well, whose fault is that?” I muttered. It’s not like I kidnapped him.

  But even that situation wasn’t completely clear. He’d kidnapped me, yes, but at the same time he’d saved me in some capacity. I woke up this morning feeling better than I had in ages.

  I felt like myself, and that was thanks to Tommy.

  Nothing, it seemed, with Tommy was completely clear.

  My body curled in on itself with the bitter sweetness of all the memories. The pleasure pain of recalling them and that he only felt the pain was a blow I didn’t know how to handle. So I decided not to handle it. Not right now, anyway. Instead I would do what I always did when the past began to tie me in knots—I thought of the future.

  I thought about the people I should call and the life I needed to get back to. The dream I had to repair. If I could. Could I?

  Did I want to?

  For a second, white-hot and awful, I wished for Dr. John and his bullshit medicine so the stress couldn’t touch me. The shame and regret could be put away.

  But I sat still and I let it wash over me, I let my shame and my regret fill me. I forced myself to feel it. To just sit there and feel every awful inch of it. Every crushing ounce of it.

  I wanted to cry it was so awful. I wanted to scream. And to run.

  But I didn’t. I’d made that mistake already. I closed my eyes, and I did what I did when I was a kid in that hypnotherapist’s office. I took all that shit, and I added it to my armor. I took all my weakness, and I made it into a strength.

  I wasn’t going down that road with the drugs again.

  I had to figure this out. I had to figure me out.

  If the cost of this music career was losing myself to drugs, it was too high. I’d go back to makeup. I’d go back to YouTube. I’d do something…anything other than what I’d been doing.

  And the thought, the realization was like the best armor I’d ever had.

  I had choices. They weren’t easy, but they so rarely were. But they were there, past others’ expectations of me and my own pride.

  There were people I really needed to get in touch with, but I didn’t have my phone.

  Tommy’s phone was charging on the floor, plugged into an outlet by the fire. I went over there and unplugged it. There was no password on it. His screen just opened up and I saw all his texts from…oh my God, Simon.

  At once I was buffeted by memories of the intense boy with the eyes that could break your heart. He’d held himself so far away from the rest of us, studying all the time.

  But he’d broken in that door when the Pastor tried to rape me.

  How you doing? Simon had texted. I thought about how I was invading Tommy’s privacy and should really put down the phone. But then I reminded myself that he’d kidnapped me.

  Kidnapping trumped texting privacy.

  Ready to be out of here, Tommy texted back. How is the lice?

  Gone. Where are you going to go? You can’t go back to your place. Not with Bates looking for you.

  Thought I’d stay with you a few days.

  I don’t know, Tommy. If Bates is looking for you, he’ll look here too.

  Good point.

  Tommy didn’t have anywhere to go. I wondered what he’d do if I invited him to my apartment. I wondered what he’d do if I reminded him of that grandfather who lived just south of Santa Barbara.

  Well, I knew what he’d do: he’d drop me off, slam the door and drive away and never see me again.

  How is Beth? Simon wrote.

  Better. She’ll be fine in another day.

  Yeah. But how is she?

  The texts ended there. I swallowed against the lump in my throat. It wasn’t surprising how badly he wanted to be away from me, and I didn’t blame him. I really didn’t. I just had no idea I was such torture for him.

  I opened the phone app and called my manager, Sherman. It rang three times and went to voice mail. Which felt…ominous.

  “Sherman,” I said, my voice low, my eyes on Tommy in the bed to see if I was being too loud and waking him up. But he didn’t even twitch. The guy was out. “It’s Jada. I’m calling to let you know that I’m better and that I will be back in the city probably tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Can we have a meeting? Talk about how to salvage Europe? Let me know. You can call me back at this number.”

  After I hung up, I watched the phone for a few more minutes, waiting for, if nothing else, a text letting me know he was in a meeting and he’d call me back as soon as he could. But no reply came back.

  Demi Lovato had told me stories about what happened after her crash a few years ago, how hard she’d had to work to get back in the game.

  And I was ready to do that work. I was. I just wasn’t sure how.

  And my body still had the craving for the stress-free life of Dr. John’s medicine bag.

  My stomach roared, and I stood up from the chair and looked at the desk in the corner where Tommy had all our provisions set up. Crackers and oranges. Water and Gatorade.

  I remembered how I used to give him my lunch. How he’d try and refuse but he was so hungry all the time and in the end he’d take half my sandwich or the cheese string. His favorites were Doritos and those little baby carrots.

  All at once I wanted to bring him Doritos and baby carrots. And frankly, my body wasn’t interested in oranges anymore. I wanted food. Real food.

  I found the keys to the car in his coat pocket as well as a small stack of twenty dollar bills. I took two, and when I opened the door, Pest looked up at me, her ears perked.

  “I can’t, Pest,” I said. If I took her with me and he woke up, he’d be upset.

  And I was not going to be in the business of upsetting Tommy.

  It would seem I’d done enough of that. Without even trying.

  17

  Tommy

  I woke up slowly, piece by piece, the fog thick in my head. My body felt like it was carved from stone. Heavy and clumsy.

  “Move, Pest,” I muttered, shifting my hips so the dog would jump off the spot on my back where she liked to sleep. Why I encouraged that, I had no idea. Well, that wasn’t true. It was from the drug days, when I was putting shit in my body to forget all the shit that was in my head.

  I let her sleep on me so I wouldn’t feel like I was floating away.

  Pest yipped but hopped off me, coming up on the bed to lick at my nose.

  “Good morning to you too,” I said and rubbed her whole head with my hand, which for some reason she seemed to love.

  I rolled over, staring up at the wooden beams of the ceiling of the cottage. I knew between one breath and the next that she wasn’t here. I knew without looking that she was gone.

  The air was just air. The room was just a room. There was nothing electric or magic or waiting about any of it.

  Sitting up, I confirmed it. The room was empty. The chair, the cold fireplace, the stash of food on the desk.

  I had no fucking right to be surprised. I said some seriously mean shit to her. Of course she left. I groaned, the memories of what I said to her echoing in my brain.

  Why did I do that? I wondered.

  But I knew why. Because I was scared to say what I really wanted to say. When she’d been looking at me in the bathroom, talking about sex like it was nothing. Like it was a casual thing we could do and forget about, I’d been paralyzed with embarrassment.

  Because there was nothing casual about me and sex.

  And my instinct was to push her away, to make her stop wanting me like that, instead of telling her why I couldn’t fucking deal with her wanting me like that.

  “Beth?” I said, looking at the shut door of the bathroom. “Beth, you still here?” I stood up and knocked on the door. There was no answer, so I turned the doorknob, easing it open with my fist,
wondering what it was exactly that I wanted to find.

  What I wanted to feel.

  Happy she was gone?

  Happy that she’d stayed?

  The room was empty. The towel she’d used hung on the rack beside the shower. I touched the edge of it and found it damp and forced myself not to smell it. The sink was splattered with water, strands of her long hair clinging to the porcelain.

  I drove her away.

  And all at once I was…fucking crushed.

  Truly fucking crushed.

  She was gone. And it was over.

  The part of myself that I’d been ignoring for the last seventy-two hours, the feelings I’d been shoving away or ignoring altogether, they swamped me.

  I’d driven her away and I hated it.

  That was it. The last time I’d see her. The last time I’d have her in my life, and I’d done what? What exactly? Ignored her? Hurt her on purpose? So she’d stop saying those things to me? Stop looking at me like I was something delicious she wanted to eat.

  What kind of fucking coward was I?

  The worst kind. The kind that made a woman feel bad because I couldn’t get a grip on my own feelings for her. My own fucking memories.

  I acted as if that shit with the Pastor happened to me.

  “Goddamn it,” I muttered. She’d been here. Here. In this place, with her freckles and her beauty, and I’d pretended like I didn’t give a shit. I couldn’t even stand talking to her because I was an idiot.

  A fucking virgin. Who didn’t know how to go about not being one.

  Loss gutted me.

  I crossed the room and grabbed my phone. Simon would fucking never let me hear the end of this. He’d be ruthless. And I pretty much deserved ruthless.

  On my phone I saw there’d been an outgoing call to a number I didn’t recognize, and I hit redial. Two rings and an outgoing message kicked in.

  “This is Sherman Bliss. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you. If this is an emergency, call my assistant, Jason, at—” I hung up. She must have called her manager.

  That made sense. She had to be getting herself back to her life. She had responsibilities. Obligations.

  God. She was a worldwide pop star. Of course she’d left.