Grace Lost (The Grace Series)

by Lewis, M. Lauryl

  I buttoned the oversized shirt, and rolled the sleeves up. I heard the shower running again, so walked downstairs. I found Emilie sitting on one of the two loveseats in the living room. There was a fire going, and she had four mugs of hot cocoa on the coffee table.

  “Zoe!” She seemed excited to see me. “Come grab some cocoa! It’s hot. Gus said to not use any electric except the stove & oven to make the solar batteries last longer, but the candles and fire work fine. Kind of cozy, huh?”

  I sat kiddy corner to her on the other loveseat, and pulled an afghan from the back of the couch over my legs since all I had on was the shirt. Though not large on top, I had always been self conscious when not wearing a bra, so was glad for the baggy shirt. “It’s making me sleepy. I know it’s still afternoon but it’s so dark in here.”

  “Gus said you were really sick too, just before I joined you all. That can’t help.”

  “She was, very sick,” Gus said as he reached the bottom of the stairs. His face was clean shaven and he looked like a different person. I giggled because he was wearing a women’s light blue t-shirt that fell short on him and was too tight. It had daffodils decorating the front. He wore a pair of gray boxer briefs that did nothing to hide his manhood. Emilie choked on her cocoa. He came over toward us, turned a circle, and said “what?”

  “Sexy” snorted Emilie. Gus grinned and plopped on the couch next to her, the t-shirt riding up and exposing flesh. I could tell he worked out regularly. It was hard to look away, but I didn’t want to be caught staring.

  “You like it huh?” Gus asked, waggling his eyebrows at her. She blushed deeply.

  I recalled her question about his age and decided to find out for her. “Cool it you two. Gus you’re an old man and Emilie you’re practically a kid.” They both looked at me, in slight disbelief that I’d called out their flirting.

  “I’ll have you know I’m only sixty-three,” said Gus, laughing. “Old man my butt.” Emilie smacked his arm.

  “How old are you really Gus?” asked Emilie. He leaned over to her and whispered in her ear, making her laugh harder. “See, Zoe, he’s not too old.” I rolled my eyes and sipped my cocoa. I spit it back into the mug, not expecting what I tasted.

  “You lushes!” I said. They both laughed and high fived each other. The cocoa was laced with something much stronger than marshmallows. Boggs came down the stairs next, his lower half wrapped in a red terry cloth towel. His chest was still wet and the drops of water caught in the firelight. Something stirred inside me and I sipped at the alco-cocoa. Boggs’ chest was a great distraction from Gus’ abs. I hadn’t realized that Boggs had a tattoo of an intricate cross on his right pectoral.

  “What’s so funny?” Boggs asked and helped himself to the seat next to me. He took my free hand in his and squeezed, letting me know we were okay.

  “The Drunken Cowboy here claims he’s sixty-three and the redhead likes spiked cocoa,” I said and took a large drink myself. “I guess age is funny when you’re drunk?” I giggled.

  “Looks like she’s not the only one,” Boggs teased. “Nice outfit Gus.”

  “At least I have clothes, Bogsie.” Gus looked at Emilie. “Should I tell them?”

  Emilie shook her head no.

  “Tell us what?” I asked.

  “Nothin’” he said.

  Emilie started laughing in a girlish fit, and fought to catch her breath as we all stared. Boggs grabbed a corner of the afghan and pulled it over himself, threatening to expose my legs and possibly more depending on where my shirt was situated. I tugged back on it, so he lay down and rested his head in my lap, looking up at the ceiling.

  “He’s thirty eight, by the way,” whispered Emilie.

  Gus nudged her. “You weren’t supposed to tell, Miss twenty-something.”

  I swallowed my cocoa, starting to feel warm inside from the liquor. I absently ran my fingers through Boggs’ clean-but-damp curls. The topic changed to what we had all done in our adult lives. My story was the least interesting. Having only experienced briefly working in a coffee shop since graduating high school, there wasn’t much to say. Boggs mentioned his time away at college, skipping the part about his fling and its devastating consequences, and his major in computer engineering. Emilie had been raising her little brother, so like me she had skipped college, but had enjoyed a job during the daytime with special needs kids at an equestrian therapy camp. Gus had already finished nursing school before he joined the Army, and had enlisted in hopes of going to medical school on the GI Bill. He left after his first tour and fell in love with a married woman. He let it drop before offering any more information. So, we decided Emilie could teach us to ride horses we didn’t have, Gus could take care of us if we get sick, I could make coffee, and Boggs was just SOL.

  It felt good, having a semi-normal conversation while the world around us was falling apart. I eventually made Boggs return upstairs to find something decent to wear and he had come back in just a pair of shorts. Soon we were all sitting on the floor around the coffee table. Boggs had found a few decks of cards and Gus shuffled them in preparation for teaching us all how to play ‘Shanghai.’

  Emilie took our empty cocoa mugs to the kitchen. She returned with plastic tumblers full of bottled juice that tasted oddly like Vodka, although she denied any tampering, and a box of blueberry Pop Tarts. We sat playing cards, drinking, and snacking for a long while.

  I yawned, the alcohol making me sleepy. One by one my companions joined me in displaying fatigue. Gus stopped shuffling, and set the cards in the center of the table. “I think we’re all tired. We should head upstairs, try to get some sleep. We can regroup in the morning. Sound ok?”

  Boggs yawned in exaggeration. “Sounds good, Buddy.”

  Emilie chimed in. “Should we have a code word? Like if one of us wakes up and one of those things is trying to get in? Should we yell a word that means wake the eff up?”

  Gus stood, held his hand out to help her up, and chuckled. “Darlin’. If you wake up and one of those things is near, you should yell wake the fuck up!” She smacked him playfully. They were obviously hitting it off.

  “We should turn the fireplace off, and blow out the candles,” said Boggs. “Why don’t you guys head upstairs and I’ll double check window security? Zoe, can you put a candle at the top of the stairs so I can see?”

  I nodded, followed by another yawn. I was still feeling weak, and was ready to sleep for a long stretch. Gus followed Emilie up the stairs and they both went into the same room. The door clicked shut and I heard Emilie giggle.

  “You should head up Zoe. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Kay. I’ll do the candle. Boggs?” I paused and he looked at me. “Please hurry?”

  He kissed my cheek. “Ok.” I watched him walk toward the front door. I climbed the stairs while the firelight still illuminated the room, and fetched the candle that was still aglow in our bedroom. The first floor of the house went black when Boggs shut the propane fireplace off, causing my heartbeat to speed. I stood at the top of the stairs holding the candle and watched Boggs walk up toward me. He looked almost frightening as the flame from the candle I held flickered across his face and chest. He met me at the top of the stairs and took the candle from my hands.

  “Boggs?” I asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “When did you get a tattoo?”

  “At college. Do you like it?”

  “Actually, ya.”

  He smiled at me. “Zoe, go ahead and climb into bed and I’ll blow out the candle.”

  “I’m scared, Boggs. What if they get in and we don’t hear?” Even I could hear the fear in my own voice.

  We walked into the bedroom and Boggs set the candle down on the vanity and stepped closer to me. “Zo, I’ll keep you safe. If you want, I’ll stay awake while you sleep. I can sit up in the chair in the corner, or lay with you. You name it.” He took my hands in his.

  “Just stay near. You can’t stay awake, Boggs. You have circles under
your eyes that have circles of their own.”

  He straightened his arms out, still holding my hands, and kissed my forehead. “I promise I’ll sleep with an ear open, if I sleep.”

  I nodded. “Kay.”

  “Lay down, the candle’s going out.”

  Boggs had turned the covers down when he had come back to get dressed, so I climbed into bed and scooted to the far side with my back to the middle of the bed. I was too exhausted to care that I had probably just mooned the man who thought he was falling in love with me. The room went dark and I closed my eyes. I felt Boggs’ weight added to the mattress and the bed creaked. He pulled the covers up over me, and the heaviness of them was comforting.

  “Boggs?” I whispered.

  “Hmm?” he vocalized, sleepily.

  “My feet are so cold.”

  He scooted closer, and I could sense him above me, looking down in the dark. “Do you want me to warm you up?” he asked sleepily.

  “Can you just hold me?”

  I shifted my weight to my other side, facing him. He put an arm around me and held me close. I rested my head on his bare chest and listened to his heartbeat. “Boggs?” I whispered.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you think we’ll make it through this?”

  Boggs took a deep breath before answering. “If I have any say in it, Zoe Kate, we’ll make it through. One day at a time.”

  Chapter 8

  When I woke, the cabin was quiet and I was alone in the bedroom. I was afraid to call out for anyone so instead quietly got out of bed and walked to the hallway. I listened and heard Boggs and Emilie talking softly from downstairs. I walked to the bathroom where I found some toothpaste and used my finger to scrub my teeth. For the first time in many days, I looked at my reflection in the mirror. My eyes seemed different. If it’s true that the eyes are the window to the soul, then my soul had been forever changed since the dead had risen. My face looked thinner than usual. I was pale. I wasn’t very impressed with myself. I stepped to the claw foot tub I had admired the day before and saw that the dirty clothes were gone. I turned the old fashioned faucet on. It was the type that spewed cold and hot water separately, forming two streams of water. I had only seen a faucet like it once before, at a very old hotel in the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound. While the bath drew, I stepped back to the mirror and took my oversized flannel shirt off. I stared at myself in the silvered glass, wondering how I looked compared to other women. I had always thought my shoulders were too wide, my breasts too small, and my feet too large. My skin had always been pale, my hair an unremarkable medium blonde, and my features overall rather boring. For the briefest of moments I wondered what I’d look like if I was one of them. I shook the image of a living-dead-Zoe out of my mind as quickly as possible. I wrapped my hair around itself near the top of my head and secured it loosely with a hair band I had kept around my wrist.

  Done critiquing myself, I stepped to the bathtub and tested the water with my hand. It was hot, almost too much so, but I stepped in and lowered myself below the water line. It burned my hip, and I imagined that the pain of the hot water could only help the wound to heal. I realized I had forgotten to grab the Hibiclens that Gus had suggested I use to wash my hip.

  There was a light knock on the door. “Zoe?” called Emilie. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure, Em,” I called back. “It’s unlocked.”

  Emilie opened the door halfway and crept in. She was holding my undergarments that I had left in the bathtub. “I hand washed these. Hope you don’t mind?”

  I smiled. “Not at all, you’re awesome. Thanks.”

  “I washed everything and set it all by the fire to dry, but the heavier stuff’s still damp,” she said followed by a soft smile.

  “Oh, hey, can you hand me that cleaner Gus wants me to use? It’s next to the sink.”

  She turned and picked up the little blue bottle and handed it to me. “Want me to look at your hip?” she asked.

  I turned on my side just a bit, raising the wound on my hip just out of the water. “Think it looks any better?” I asked.

  “Hmm, there’s a worm coming out of it,” she said then started laughing.

  “Very funny,” I said with a snicker.

  “Seriously, there’s no worm and it looks a little less swollen,” she said. “I’ll grab a wash cloth and let you do the scrubbing. I don’t want to hurt you.” She walked to a cabinet located behind the door and found a faded pink rag, which she tossed to me. “Just holler if you need anything else, ok?” she said before leaving the room.

  I poured some of the red soap from the bottle onto the washcloth and gently scrubbed my hip, wincing from the pain. I found a bottle of bubble bath on the floor behind the tub and added some to the water. I enjoyed the floral scent that surrounded me. After several minutes of soaking, I stepped out and wrapped myself in a towel. I found a brush in a drawer and decided to not care who else had used it. I detangled my hair and wove it into a braid that wrapped around my left shoulder, resting on my chest. Once I was dry, I shimmied into my clean blue panties and bra and dabbed some Neosporin on my hip. Like Emilie had said, it wasn’t as swollen and seemed to be healing except for some faint green streaks spreading outward. I’d need to remember to ask Gus about that. I went to put my flannel shirt back on over my underwear, but it was gone. Funny, Emilie I thought to myself. I opened the bathroom door and peeked out. Seeing the coast was clear, I tiptoed across the hall to my room and walked in, shutting the door quickly. I sensed someone watching me and turned to see Boggs lying on the bed, his head propped on the pillows. He had his hands behind his head and a large grin on his face.

  “I’ve always loved you in blue,” he said, still smiling.

  I felt my cheeks warm, and stood there awkwardly. “Thanks,” I whispered.

  His smile faded and his gaze became intense as he watched me turn to walk toward the armoire in search of clothes. “You look like Heaven itself,” he whispered. I could feel him drinking me in with his eyes. I heard him shift his weight on the bed as I walked to the large cabinet. I opened the doors and looked at the various items hanging within. Listening to his footsteps approach, I was too distracted to focus on choosing something to wear. I concentrated on just breathing. I could sense him close behind me. “You smell like Heaven,” he breathed softly against the skin of my bare back. He used his arms to pull me around to face him, and kissed me deeply. “You taste like Heaven,” he mumbled as he moved his mouth to my neck and brushed his lips lightly against my skin, savoring me. He pulled me close, and I allowed my body to relax, not resisting this time. He moved his mouth back to my lips and kissed me with passion I had never known before. I wrapped my arms around him and found myself trying to explore his body through his clothes. He broke our embrace and lifted his shirt over his head, then lifted me into his arms and carried me to the bed. He set me down on the mattress and gently lowered himself on top of me. My breathing quickened and I used both of my palms to explore his bare chest, tracing the lines of his tattoo. I felt his hips pressing against me longingly and my body responded in kind, causing him to groan loudly. He moved to my ear, his tongue tracing its outline. The room disappeared along with the rest of the world, and all that was left was me and the man I had known all of my life. He latched onto my neck with his mouth, tasting my skin with his tongue. He moved his mouth to my earlobe again and his hands were suddenly on my back fighting with the hooks of my bra strap. He whispered softly into my ear, “are you sure you want this?” His hands paused while he waited for my reply. I nodded against his cheek, and he slipped my bra down my arms. My fear was leaving me as our bodies took over. My nipples were erect as he cupped my breasts in his large hands, taking me in with all of his senses. I hadn’t realized a tear had fallen down my cheek until he wiped it away with his thumb.

  “I can stop, Zo,” he said with tenderness in his voice.

  “I’m just scared…I’ve never done this before….” I whispered. “Don’t stop, Bogg
s,” I said, almost begging.

  “Zoe, as long as I live I promise I won’t hurt you.” He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me deeply again. With a free hand he sought out my panties. He slid his hand underneath, still kissing me. He caressed me gently, twisting his fingers through my pubic hair teasingly. I found myself responding by opening my legs to him, wanting more. It caused him to moan quietly and search deeper with his fingers. I felt a brief twinge as his fingers entered me and gasped quietly, pulling my hips away slightly. My reaction seemed to excite Boggs even more and his fingers searched for me almost frantically. I bit my lip while he pulled my panties down over my knees and finally my feet. He kissed my left ankle, then my knee, and smelled my inner thigh until he got to the place he craved the most. He kissed me gently there, and spoke quietly against me. “Don’t be scared, Zoe.” I felt his tongue enter me, searching wildly. I brought my hips up, inviting him to continue pleasuring me. As his tongue searched deeper and his mouth sucked wildly, I moved my hands to the top of his head and gently grabbed his hair. My breathing quickened and I pleasantly felt myself losing control.

  He moved up toward me, mirroring my body with his own. He unzipped his jeans with one hand while holding his weight with the other. He met my eyes with his own, then leaned down and kissed me hard. He whispered softly into my ear. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”

  I nodded and whispered back, “yes.”

  I spread my legs and felt him press into me. His erection was sliding between my legs, searching for entry. My breathing was heavy, and my hips searching longingly for him in return. His manliness was hot as it finally found its target and entered me deeply. He started gently by thrusting in short strokes.

  I put my hands on his biceps and squeezed firmly.

  His voice was breathy. “Does that feel ok?” He grunted lightly after he said it.

  I gripped his arms harder and answered quietly. “More than ok.” My hips continue to thrust against him in eagerness.