by Pamela Morsi
She was squinting again, but it wasn’t about the light, her brow was furrowed in disbelief.
“You let me stay here the other night,” she said. “Our first night I stayed.”
He’d forgotten about that.
“I didn’t sleep a wink, though,” he declared adamantly. “I lay wide-awake all night.”
“Then why’d you let me stay?”
His first choice for answer was I was trying to be nice. But he quickly rejected that. Jerks didn’t really try to be nice. They just tried to please themselves.
“Well, I...I thought I might do you again in the morning. I’d let you spend the night and maybe I’d get a b.j. with my breakfast.”
Her eyes widened at that. She was certainly awake now.
“O-oh, well...” she stammered. “I’m...I’m okay with that. You hadn’t asked, but if that’s what you want I—”
“Rain check,” he answered. “It’s not worth the lost sleep tonight. But I’ll tell you what...” Eli grasped the covers and threw them off the end of the bed, revealing both of them in their nakedness and his newly risen erection in evidence. “I’ll give you a quick doggy poke as a send-off.”
“A what?”
“Hands and knees, babe. I promise you’ll like it.”
In fact, he didn’t intend for her to like it. He entered her without so much as a whistle to foreplay. He’d decided that he was going to be totally sexually selfish. This was, after all, his favorite position, and this was not about what was good for her, it was about being all for him. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to maintain very long. Which was also in his favor. It would be all him. That was something he was sure that Driscoll, and the guys like him, would have no problem with.
After little more than a minute, however, Eli did have a problem with it. Her body felt wonderful. The angle was perfect. The sound of flesh against flesh was erotic. But where was his Mazy? He knew she made noise, but her silence was even louder. He might as well have been masturbating. He couldn’t stand it.
He reached around her body to caress her intimately. He heard that wonderful catch in her voice as soon as he touched her. He wanted to make it good for her and he loved that he could. He used the depth of her response like a game of Hotter/Colder to find the perfect place, pressure and approach to please her. He had to grit his teeth to hold off until she caught up. But she did. She made that wonderful sound as he felt her body clenching his. It wasn’t the best of the night, but it was still great.
She collapsed on her stomach and he on top of her for long enough to catch his breath and roll over. He pulled her onto his chest and planted a kiss against her hair. He needed her with him. He could never let her go.
“I love you,” he whispered before he could catch himself.
Horrified that he’d let the words slip, he immediately rolled her off him and hopped out of bed. He went into the bathroom and shut the door.
He gazed at himself in the mirror. He was more than naked and sweaty. He was weak. He had wanted to be the kind of man his father was. A good man. A dependable, responsible man. A generous man. Somehow his father managed to be those things without knuckling under, without giving in. Eli gave in.
Mazy couldn’t love him if she couldn’t respect him. He was going to end up losing the woman that he loved if he didn’t learn to be made of sterner stuff.
He turned on the cold water tap and splashed two handfuls on his face. He dried off with a towel and looked himself in the mirror one more time. He raised his chin and hardened his jaw. This time, he was not giving in.
He opened the bathroom door.
“That felt great. I’ll sleep like a baby,” he said as he gathered her clothes and handed them to her pointedly. As soon as she was dressed, he ushered her toward the door. “I’ll call you,” he said. “I mean, I really will. I’ve still got to cash in on that b.j., right?”
21
Mazy woke up on her mother’s lumpy living room couch. She groaned a little as she rolled over and stretched her legs out over the armrest. For sleeping, this piece of furniture was about three inches too short. Or maybe Mazy was three inches too long. She thought of Eli’s big wide bed with longing. That would have been nice to wake up in. And there would have been the added bonus of Eli. She’d gotten plenty of sex last night, but she felt a little short on her cuddling quota. But that’s how men are, she reminded herself. All the men she’d known were that way. Somehow she’d remembered Eli as being different. But that was a long time ago.
Her mother and Tru were both still sleeping. The gray light of dawn in early fall meant it was probably around seven-thirty in the morning. She’d had fantasies all week of sleeping until noon on Saturday. She would have been very pleased with nine o’clock. But seven-thirty was going to have to do.
She made her way to the bathroom and decided to get her shower while the rest of the house was still in bed.
As the hot water rolled down her body, she lathered up and allowed her thoughts to wander to the night before. It had felt so good being with Eli. They could have conversations about anything, everything and nothing and they both enjoyed them. So many men she’d been with got a little bored when the conversation wasn’t about them. Oh, at first they’d seemed interested in what she had to say. But it didn’t take very long before they’d be texting or gaming or tapping a foot on the floor with every word. Gable Sherland certainly had been that way. Her former boss had so little time for her, anyway, so most of that was spent in bed. If they were talking and it wasn’t about him or about money, he’d quickly make an excuse to leave. Mazy had learned not to converse so much as entertain.
She pushed her face into the water as if she could rinse those memories right out of her brain. She was never going to be that woman again. As God was her witness, she vowed never to be a pawn, a trophy or a fool for love.
She had wasted so much of her life chasing after men. And not a one of them could hold a candle to the great guy who lived right next door. She was so glad she’d finally realized that.
And she was proud of the way she’d stood up to Tad at the office yesterday. In the bad, old days—basically a year ago—she would have cowered in the face of a man’s anger. She would have cried and pleaded for him to understand. She would have believed, even if she knew better, that somehow she was in the wrong.
She was determined never to be that woman again. And she knew how lucky she was to escape her former self. If Sherland hadn’t been caught, if she hadn’t been implicated, if she hadn’t pled guilty on a deal with the D.A., then the judge would never have added counseling to her probation sentence. And without the doctor helping her lay it out all out, how much longer would she have lived like that?
Still, it was like being an alcoholic or a drug addict or a cigarette smoker. She had to be very careful to completely avoid those bad-news boyfriends. She had to watch for the signs of inequitable relationship and guard herself against involvement, because she was pretty sure that if she let herself get a taste of it, she’d end up right back where she’d started.
She felt optimistic as she got out of the shower and toweled off. It was a lot easier to avoid the bad guy when the good guy was so wonderful.
She smiled to herself as she thought of Eli, her Eli, working congenially with Tru. This could actually work out better than she’d imagined for everyone.
And he’d said he loved her.
The memory of that brought a delighted blush to her cheeks. Of course, she was experienced enough to know that postcoital declarations weren’t exactly currency you could take to the bank. Some guys actually felt that way when they said it, but it was only one fleeting moment. Others said it because they thought it was what a woman wanted to hear. For some it was simply more polite than voicing, “I’m a stud and I totally nailed you!”
Eli, though, she though
t, Eli probably does love me. He always has.
The fanciful romantic that still lingered inside her, no matter how hard she tried to dampen that enthusiasm, soared into a blissful imagining of the two of them. Finally she was beginning to overcome her demons, gird her self-esteem and be able to care for a good, decent man who could love her back. It was such a breakthrough, such a blessing, such an achievement. It was wonderful. It was perfect.
She sighed with sweet contentment.
Of course, there was that sleeping thing.
Mazy caught sight of her furrowed brow in the mirror. Eli had been downright grumpy about getting her out of his bed last night. Sleeping alone must be a new thing. She certainly didn’t remember that about him. But then, they’d had no options before. She was living with her mom and he was living with his parents.
It was a surprise. And a disappointment. She liked the idea of lying in his arms through the night. But nobody was perfect. Humans have issues. And she’d known other guys who didn’t like women to stay over. Those guys were probably just jerks. Undoubtedly Eli has some kind of little phobia. He was a loner kind of guy. An introvert. He was never going to be the life of the party. And he was apparently never going to sleep with Mazy in his arms.
“Okay. You can deal,” she told her image in the mirror.
It was probably for the best, she decided.
At least that’s what she told her mother as the two of them walked through the Walmart in West Jefferson that afternoon.
“I think it will be a good thing for Tru,” Mazy said. “He probably suspects that we’re more than friends, but if I come home to the couch every night, that’s plenty of deniability.”
“So, you don’t want him to know,” Beth Ann clarified. “I’ll need to be careful not to let something slip.”
Mazy shook her head. “It’s not so much that I don’t want him to know. I mean, the poor kid already knows way more about my personal life than I ever did of yours. It’s more like I don’t want him to worry.”
“Worry?”
“About how and when it’s going to affect him.”
Beth Ann was trying to retrieve a giant container of generic detergent from the bottom shelf. Mazy squatted down and shooed her away.
“Let me do this,” she told her. “That’s why I’m here. To do the heavy lifting.”
Beth Ann didn’t argue.
“Do you think Tru wouldn’t want you to get involved with Eli?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. Tru likes Eli. At least for now. I think he’s the kind of man Tru would want me to get involved with. But I don’t have a good track record, you know? And every time I start up with a new man, Tru’s life gets turned upside down.”
“I’m sure that’s not so,” Beth Ann said. “Maybe when you were younger and more...more flighty. But he was a baby then and didn’t care where he was or why, as long as he had his mommy with him.”
“That’s nice of you to say,” Mazy told her soberly. “But we both know that it was worse than that. I’d move in with some guy. We’d pretend that we were a family. Then one night we were just out, moving on. It’s hard enough for kids who go through one family breakup. Tru went through one about every other year.”
“Nonsense. You’re exaggerating. Remember, I’ve known you your whole life. By my tally, there’ve been only five men you’ve broken up with.”
“You didn’t know about Sherland.”
“I counted him in the five.”
“Did you count Eli?”
“You haven’t broken up with him yet.”
“I’ve already broken up with him twice,” Mazy corrected. “And you know there were guys between those guys.”
“Well, I’m thinking of the ones that you lived with,” Beth Ann said.
“I quit moving in with them after Coby Dax,” Mazy said. “He got mad at Tru and slapped him. I couldn’t believe it. I was incensed. Coby said an openhanded slap was no big deal. That it was his house, where he paid the rent, so he had a right to enforce the rules.”
Beth Ann made tutting sounds. “I never really liked him. He seemed very common.”
Mazy gave a humorless chuckle. “Well, he certainly was the kind of guy who became a common choice for me.”
“But you left him,” Beth Ann pointed out. “And that was a good thing. And very brave, too. Moving from Charlotte to Wilmington where you didn’t have any friends or family and starting night school. Not every woman has the gumption to do that.”
“Not every woman gets her life in such a mess that she needs to do that,” Mazy said. “Anyway, I made a pact with myself not to move Tru in with any man who wasn’t officially a legal stepdad.”
“Very sensible of you. You always try to be a good mother.”
“I do try,” Mazy admitted. “But I also fail.”
“Honey, we all fail.”
“You didn’t fail,” Mazy said quickly. Then she stopped short. “Oh, wow. I’m your screwed-up kid, so I guess you did fail.”
Beth Ann stopped and grabbed Mazy by the arm. “You are my smart, beautiful, generous and giving daughter. You are so full of love, it just pours out of you. I couldn’t be prouder of you. And don’t you forget that. Now grab one of those bags of noodles. No, the really big one. Winter is coming and we have a giant teenager to try to feed.”
Once they’d gathered the big bulk groceries they intended to buy, the two women wandered through the rest of the store. Touristing, her mother called it. When she was a girl, Mazy remembered going window-shopping with Beth Ann. It was the same kind of activity. Looking at things that were available to buy, knowing with certainty that they were not buying any of them. They did not seem to be the only people with this pursuit. The store aisles were crowded with whole families for whom a day at Walmart was inexpensive entertainment.
Amid the bustle and the noise, Mazy didn’t find touristing as fun as she had at age fifteen, but she knew that her mother did. For Beth Ann, the monthly trip to Walmart was the only time she got out of town. In Brandt Mountain she saw very few people. Her outings there were to the church, the grocery store and the doctor. She rarely met anyone new or had conversations with strangers, and she liked getting the opportunity to do that.
Mazy deliberately chose not to rush Beth Ann. If her mother wanted to spend five minutes telling a harried parent she’d never met that her child had the prettiest brown eyes and coaxing a smile from the cranky tot in question, then it was little enough for the roof that Beth Ann provided for Mazy and Tru.
Anyway, all she had waiting for her at home were loads of laundry. Eli had said that he would call. And she’d hoped that maybe, for Saturday night, he’d ask for an actual date. It had been so long since she’d gone out to dinner or to a movie. That would have made it feel like a real weekend.
Beth Ann was now sharing stories of falling down with an older woman who was trying to find the least slippery nonskid bathroom rug.
Mazy was, more or less, trapped in the aisle. A huge set of temporary shelves had been set up with a big red Close Out sign attached. She casually glanced in that direction and spotted something that brought back a sweet memory to make her smile.
She reached down to the bottom shelf and picked up a heavy white ceramic mug. It was very ordinary, yet similar to one her father had used for shaving. Daddy’s had a line crack in one side and a big chip on the lip, but it was exactly the same style. Mazy remembered watching him as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror in his undershirt, whisking up the lather of shaving soap. As he spread it on his cheeks and neck and chin, she asked him a question.
“Do you like shaving?”
“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s like washing your face and brushing your teeth. It’s something you gotta do.”
“It looks like fun.”
He smiled at he
r, creasing the white suds on the lower part of his face. And his tone turned teasing. “You know, when I was a little girl, just like you, I thought exactly the same thing.”
“Daddy! You were never a little girl.”
“I wasn’t?” His expression feigned astonishment. “Oh, you know you’re right! I never got to be a little girl. I am so lucky to have my own little girl to let me know what it is like.”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“I’m counting on that,” he answered. “I want you to know that you can always talk to me. Whether you’re four or fourteen or forty.”
“Forty? Isn’t that really old?”
Her father laughed and used the shaving brush to press a dollop of soap on the end of her nose. “When I get to forty, I’ll let you know.”
He hadn’t made it to forty, of course. Mazy and Beth Ann had buried him at only thirty-eight.
“Oh, that looks like the old coffee cups they used to have at Schmeltz’s Diner,” Beth Ann said beside her. “I miss that old place. Coffee always tasted better there. Maybe it was those cups.” She laughed. “Do you remember?”
Mazy did not. She stared at the cup as an idea took shape. She turned the mug over to view the price.
“The sign says thirty percent what it’s marked,” Beth Ann told her.
“I’m going to take this,” Mazy said. “Wait, how many are left there?”
“Three.”
“I want all of them,” she said. “And we need to visit the art supplies.”
22
Eli spent the early-morning hours lurking on internet forums where women were venting about the lousy men in their lives. If Tad the Cad was now in the competition, he was going to have to crank his behavior up a notch. Picking his favorite sex position was not in the same league with actual yelling.
He took more notes from the furious and frustrated strangers online. He discovered the need to write his strategy in code. Going through their boyfriends’ pockets looking for scraps of paper with clues to the men’s behavior seemed a major pastime for some women.
