Red Light

by J. D. Glass

  “Angel, come, please,” I gasped, because she felt so good, and she felt so right, and she clasped me to her as she came, good and hard while her cock twitched and jerked beautifully as she sank it in me, and I let my body move with hers, any way I needed, she needed.

  “Yeah…that’s…oh…” was all I could choke out, unable to even tell her with anything but the arch of my back and the baring of my throat that I loved her because I burned, burned with liquid gold flame, the white hot of steel in the forge, the deliverance of earth as it burst forth, destroying, erasing everything that had come before it, creating fertile new land.

  “You’re my heart, Tori,” Jean said into my ear as she held me close and I shook beneath her. “My precious, precious heart.”

  Later when I reverentially slid my cock inside the loving warmth of her and she wrapped her arms and legs around me, she growled, “I love you,” as we rocked together.

  She’d been right earlier; I had dreamed about it, dreamed about fucking my wife, and I don’t know who cried harder when she came: Jean, because this was all so very, very new, or me, because she was my wife, and I loved her so much, in ways I could only express with my body—and hers was so beautifully open to me.

  It didn’t matter whose the tears were, though, because I held her to me tightly and used all the words I did have, kissed every tear, and simply loved her, loved her with tone and touch, until she knew she was on solid ground again.

  Over the next hours and days, Jean and I together explored the fresh terrain before us, the new internal geography that we would spend the rest of our lives learning to landscape; and then it was time to go back, back to the reality of moving Jean’s stuff over to what was now our place, time to really learn how to go from living by myself to living with another person, secure knowledge of today, tomorrow, and every day that followed.

  Living together was easier than I expected. I loved waking up with Jean next to me every day as much as I loved falling asleep with her every night. I’d never been happier.

  *

  It was a classically beautiful May day when my cell went off. Since Jean was comfortably sleeping with her arms and legs draped across me, Nina and Samantha were both safely ensconced in their home, and I had spoken to both my mother and sister the night before, I was pretty certain of who it wasn’t.

  I grabbed it off my nightstand before it woke Jean and flipped it open. “Scotty.”

  “Hey, how you doing?” Trace asked in the early morning light.

  “Fine, just fine. What’s up?” We hadn’t spoken more than a few times since our whatever-it-was-called had ended, although I’d seen her on crash teams when I’d done overtime in Brooklyn or Staten Island and we’d chatted here and there. I’d even told her about the wedding over a quick cup of coffee while our rig got decontaminated and had received a congratulatory hug. She’d sent a card.

  “Uh, Tori…” I heard her breath catch and, much to my astonishment, I heard her sob, “My grandmother died, and I…I didn’t know who else I could talk to and…Tori, please, you’re my friend. Would you come with me to the wake? I need you.”

  I hesitated only a moment. Yes, okay, we weren’t any sort of sleeping together anymore, but we were still friends, weren’t we? What we had shared, even though it was over, had been intense, even if it had been occasionally alarming. Besides, I knew what it was like to lose a beloved grandmother; I couldn’t abandon anyone who reached out to me for something like that. “Yeah, sure, just give me the time and the location, and I’ll see you in a little while.”

  “Thanks, Tori, thank you so much. You…this means a lot to me,” she said after she gave me the information.

  I checked the clock and knew I had to move fast. After kissing Jean I carefully got out of bed to shower and get dressed for the wake.

  “Hey, you look like you’re going to a funeral,” Jean said, smiling at me when I walked out of the bathroom.

  “Actually, it’s a wake,” I answered, then took a deep breath and explained the whole thing to her, a little nervous that she might misinterpret it.

  “Look, I understand, you guys are, were, sorta friends. I respect that.”

  I put my arms around her and kissed her. “Why don’t you think about those colors we’re going to paint over the plaid?” I teased. “We can start making those kids when I get back.”

  “Is that your way of telling me you love me?”

  “That’s my way of telling you I like your taste.” I tugged her closer and placed gentle kisses on her neck before I reached her lips again. “This…is my way of telling you that I love you.”

  “I think I need to be told again,” Jean murmured as her hands began to wander.

  “I’m going to be late,” I sighed, reluctant to leave her, “if I don’t get going.”

  Jean looked at me closely. “Tori, do you want me to go with you? I will if you do.”

  I considered that possibility. Part of me really did, because I was nervous, but it probably wasn’t a good idea, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that I thought the whole thing was probably upsetting enough without—well, it didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

  “I’ll be all right. Just…be here, okay?”

  “Always, baby, always.” Jean pulled me back to her, and I let the sound of her breath and heart under my ear soothe me for a few more moments before I had to leave.

  When I met Trace at the funeral home, she was composed if pale, her eyes reddened, but she held herself together through the hours of meeting and greeting, and when she asked me if I’d attend the funeral service with her the next morning, I couldn’t look into those pewter eyes with their unshed tears and say no.

  Jean once again offered to accompany me, and once again I told her I’d be all right.

  I’d lied. The funeral was horrible. I instantly flashed back to being a kid and relived the gut-tearing loss of Nana, so much so that my heart ached, at the memory, in empathetic sympathy for Trace and her family, and it was in that spirit that I held Trace’s hand during the service and let her rest her head on my shoulder during the burial.

  I drove her home after the whatever-it’s-called food thing at her parents’ home, and despite my own misgivings, because this whole thing felt so strange—the loss and sorrow that wasn’t mine but so echoed my own—when Trace asked me to come in for a bit because she didn’t want to be alone, I agreed.

  I held her while she cried, shared and listened to stories about the woman who had been buried, and finally, I had a glass of wine with her, because I thought it might help her calm down and relax.

  When my neck started to itch, I assumed the sulfurs in the wine were to blame, so I asked if she had any Benadryl, which she found and gave me with a glass of water.

  I wanted to get home soon, despite it being merely late afternoon. It had already been a long day, and when Trace said she was exhausted, I didn’t mind walking her into that bedroom I had walked into so many times before. I had absolutely no intention of staying, but when Trace asked if I would hold her until she slept…I felt so bad for her, I made the biggest mistake of my life: I said yes.

  I rocked her until the crying finally eased into a sleepy cadence and promised myself that I’d leave in a few moments, as soon as the world stopped spiraling around me.

  I was flying with Jean, who was a string of neon purple light spread across a midnight starless sky, and I reached for her, an aqua blue streak that blended with that light, amazing, intense, how incredibly wonderful it felt, an electric float, and then thunder roared in my ears, but it started in my head and I hurt, God, I hurt, and then I disappeared until the pain returned, stronger, sharper, like a pinpoint, precision bruise.

  I had a body, and now I was stuck in it—heavy, thick, and unresponsive as I tried to shift, to get away from that spot that hurt and back, deeper into the dream, the dream where Jean and I loved each other, but everything was so heavy I couldn’t move, and I resigned myself to the discomfort that had resol
ved into a small, dull ache.

  A fierce punch of almost agonizing flame shot through my groin and reverberated through my thighs and back, almost making my heart stop with its ferocity. My breath caught hard and fast in my chest, and I would have sat up except I couldn’t: I could barely open my eyes because they were so heavy too, and I felt more than saw Trace, her lips close to mine.

  “We needed this, baby,” she said and kissed me, slick and rough, as her legs slipped along mine, and it hurt, God, it hurt, but it also didn’t matter, because my eyes were so heavy, and I was tired, so fucking tired…my head was so damn heavy…and all I could think was how did I end up having sex with Trace when I was just with Jean? How was I going to tell her about this? And I passed back out.

  *

  I experienced no transition whatsoever—one moment everything was black, and the next, my eyes opened and I was awake. Judging from the light in the room, the sun hadn’t gone down yet but probably would within the next hour, which meant I’d been out of it about three, maybe four hours. I had to get home; it was later than I’d either anticipated or communicated before I’d left. What a bizarre dream I’d just had.

  I was still muzzy-headed, but without the bone-deep weariness I’d thought I’d imagined. Then I sat up. My muscles ached, the tendons in my thighs felt like I’d worked a double shift, and my arms burned. Then a cramp knifed through my belly, unlike anything I’d ever had before. And finally…it didn’t matter, not at all, because despite the pain, despite the confusion, I wasn’t there, not really. I was just floating through this heavy sack of meat I called a body, and the pain was strange, because it was absurd; I was a meat puppet.

  This meat sock had to go home, because Jean was there and I wanted to wrap myself around her and breathe in the scent of her skin, feel her hair slide against my face, let her know how much I loved and appreciated her.

  I glanced over my shoulder, a slow movement that noted every shadow cast by the sheets and the pillows, the hills and valleys of the various textures, but Trace was gone; and as I looked back at the chair next to the bed, I noticed my pants neatly folded over the back.

  Strange. I’d gone to bed fully dressed; in fact, I was still wearing the blouse and bra I’d fallen asleep holding Trace in, but wasn’t that weird? I stood up and could feel every individually fuzzy carpet fiber under the soles of my feet.

  The next cramp swamped over me like a wave at high tide, with an accompanying head-spinning nausea, and when it knocked me to my knees I noticed a faint gleam on my thighs. Blood. A light sheen of blood. That meant this meat sock was alive, and I would have laughed if the pain hadn’t taken my breath away, because I remembered the last time I’d felt like this, only…I glanced at my left arm, at a faint white line where I’d gashed myself months before, and the texture felt different, smooth, under the fingertip I ran over it.

  When I got dressed, I noticed I was bleeding. Two slowly falling deep red drops seemed to expand as one closed in on the carpet and the other hit my thigh.

  The nausea came and went like a giant glove that gripped me from my knees to my head in a spasmodic rhythm, but I managed to walk to the main hallway. Trace had left a note on the table there:

  Sorry to leave—I have to go to my parents’ house. Make yourself comfortable. I left you something in the fridge, and I’ll see you later.

  Trace

  The paper had tiny bubbles and bumps in it as I rubbed it between my fingertips and considered the black ink of the words, tracing the dents on the paper. I couldn’t stay. I had work the next day and a lot to do to get ready for it. Besides, I wasn’t really feeling well and I wanted to go home, curl up next to Jean, and not think about the ache that was the loss of my grandmother these past few days had brought back to me.

  The doorknob was so cool, so bright, the brightness translating into a message I couldn’t understand as I held it in my hand and twisted it a few times to understand until I remembered I had to go home.

  The ataxic pain and the accompanying nausea again forced me to the floor, and I suddenly realized, with an unblinking clarity, that I was definitely not okay. Sheer will got me through the door and forced me to my car.

  That same clarity that resolved itself into a small, faint voice between my eyes told me there was no way I could or should drive, and I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and hit the “last-dialed” button.

  Three rings, four rings. “Please answer,” I prayed silently as the fifth started.

  “Tori, are you okay?” Jean’s voice, the one I wanted to hear. Thank God.

  “Jean…I don’t feel very well,” I said through another round of pain and sickness. “I think I took too many Benadryl or something—I need someone to drive.”

  “Where are you?”

  I gave her the address. “I’m just going to curl up in the passenger seat, and I’ll leave the driver’s side unlocked, okay?”

  “Baby, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Hang up now and I’ll call you back in a minute, but don’t go to sleep, okay?”

  “Okay. Wait. Jean?” I asked, hoping she hadn’t hung up yet.

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she answered, her voice a soft reassurance in my ear as I climbed over the gear shift into the passenger seat. “Now don’t go to sleep. I’ll call you right back, okay?”

  “Okay. I won’t go to sleep.”

  I wasn’t, I really wasn’t going to go to sleep, but that light, fuzzy float was crawling up my legs, up my stomach, approaching my neck, an inexorable march to my head as I curled against the fleece cover of the seat, each whorl of softness a tiny hand on my face as I waited for the phone to ring.

  “Hey,” I answered when it did, and the sound came from so very far away.

  “Baby, what are you feeling?” Jean asked me.

  As I tried to find the word to describe my signs and symptoms, memory hit me like a blow to the mouth. Trace. Trace on top of me. She had said something, something…I couldn’t remember, but I recalled a quick flash of light and then the sharp sting that cut into my skin just below my navel, and I lifted my shirt to touch it as I remembered Trace fucking me, the way she’d always said she’d wanted to. Oh, shit. Holy fucking shit. I could feel the lines she’d cut into my skin. “Oh, my God…you’re gonna hate me…” was all I could say.

  My fault. This was my fault, I realized as light glanced off the ring I wore on my left hand, a ring that symbolized vows I’d shattered in one stupid moment. I should have never had that glass of wine. I’d led her on, let her think this was okay, and now, now I’d ruined my relationship with Jean because she’d never forgive me—how could she? I couldn’t. The whole situation started to spiral through my head, twisting me with it, and I started to shiver uncontrollably, my teeth rattling in my head. I could feel each one as it hit another.

  “I’m not gonna hate you, baby. I’m never gonna hate you. Now look out the window, because I’m walking up to your door now. I brought a little help, okay?”

  I curled up tighter on my seat, the caress of the fleece changing to a coarse sting as my face rubbed against it.

  The door opened and I saw her pants before her knees flexed and her beautiful face was in my line of sight. “Hi, baby,” she said softly and smiled.

  Samantha peeked around her arm. “Hey, Tor. Jean’s gonna drive you, and I’m gonna drive Jean’s car.”

  The skin of my face was cold and I realized I’d been crying, because I was pretty sure I’d slept with Trace, and if I felt sick, I deserved it.

  “It’s all right baby, it’s all right,” Jean said as she tried to put her arms around me.

  “No,” I said and struggled to push her away as the nausea kicked up with a vengeance, and she stepped aside just in time for me to heave my guts up onto the sidewalk, leaving my throat sore and my head light. Jean was holding me in a nanosecond, one hand against my face, the other grasping my wrist, and as sick as I felt, I tried to pull away. I was
n’t at all worthy of her.

  Jean’s expression changed from gentle concern to the professional look I knew so very well. “Sam, you drive, we’ll pick up my car later,” Jean said as she counted my pulse, and I heard the driver’s side door pop open.

  “Tori, are you bleeding?” Samantha asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, a little,” I said muzzily. “There wasn’t anything, you know…” The words disappeared from my head as another wave engulfed me. “I’m gonna throw up…”

  Jean caught me before I fell out onto the sidewalk, and once again I tried to struggle free of her embrace, the embrace I so wanted and didn’t deserve.

  “It’s me, baby. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to check you out. Let me see your eyes.”

  I lifted my head and leaned it against the soothing fleece of the seat as Jean’s serious brown eyes evaluated mine by shading them with her hand, then removing it to watch my pupil reaction.

  “Take the seat cover off carefully and throw it in the back,” Jean said over my head to Sam. “It’s evidence. Tori, you have to go to the hospital.”

  “I don’t want to. I just need a ride home. Please.”

  The unmistakable sound of my car engine roaring to life rang through my head, and the vibration settled into my gut, a shake that matched the tremor I felt bodily.

  Jean sighed. “Tori, your pulse is slow and erratic, you’re pale, your pupils are sluggish, you’re vomiting and bleeding. You have to get evaluated.”

  I shook my head in the negative. “Jean, I’m Ay and Oh times three. I know your name, my name, and Sam’s, I know it’s almost dusk, and we’re in my car in front of Trace’s—”

  I had no warning before I threw up this time, but nothing was left, and Jean climbed into the seat next to me, crushing me against her, an arm wrapped securely around my shoulder.

  “Sam, the closest ER,” Jean directed. “I’ve got my badge if we get pulled over.”

  I tried to protest. I wanted to go home, home to forget this whole thing had ever happened, to be sick in the privacy of my room and bath before I had to deal with the inevitable reality of having slept with Trace, but I was starting to drift again, and my only thought as I floated away into nothing was that I finally hated someone as much as I hated my father—myself.