Moon Shot

by Tara Wyatt

  “It’s so pretty up here,” she said, slightly out of breath. “I had no idea there was something like this right in the city.”

  He nodded, opening the backpack and pulling two bottles of water free from the insulated pockets. She accepted hers with a grateful smile. “I love the outdoors, so I come here often to clear my head, stretch my legs, get some air.”

  She took a long pull on her water and squinted at him from beneath her Longhorns baseball cap. “How is it that we’re the same age, working in kinda similar jobs, and yet you seem to have your shit so much more together than me?”

  At that, he laughed and shook his head. He pulled a worn but soft blanket from the bag and unfurled it over the rocky ground. “Believe me, I’ve got my share of issues.”

  She arched an eyebrow at him skeptically. “Such as?” She sat down on the blanket, watching him as he pulled out plastic plates and forks and a few containers that held the lunch he’d made for them earlier. A caprese salad, chicken sandwiches, veggies and hummus, and some brownies he’d picked up at his favorite coffee shop that morning.

  “Did you make all of this?” she asked, her eyes roving over the spread.

  “Everything except the brownies and the hummus.”

  “That’s really…” She cleared her throat and shook her head. “Thanks. I’m starving.”

  “Dig in.” He grabbed a plate and tucked into one of the sandwiches. A hint of relief that she hadn’t pressed him on his own issues barely had time to take root before she spoke again.

  “So. Your issues.”

  He nodded, pretending his mouth was fuller than it was, buying himself a few more seconds. “It might seem like I have it all figured out, but I promise you, I don’t. I’m just really good at figuring out what other people need.”

  She seemed to sense he didn’t want to get into it and instead happily dug into her lunch, her eyes trained on the beautiful scenery in front of them. “You know, I thought I’d feel naked without my phone, but it actually feels kind of freeing. I feel like I can think better without it going off every five minutes. I should probably try unplugging more often.”

  “Good idea. It must be hard to get high level thinking done when you’re always getting interrupted and having to change gears all the time.”

  “It is. I have a lot of day-to-day stuff to manage, and it doesn’t leave me much time for bigger picture, strategy type stuff.”

  He shrugged and swiped a baby carrot through the hummus. “Well, if you ran your own agency, you could hire someone to take care of the smaller stuff so you could focus on the stuff that really matters to you.” When she shot him a look, he held his hands up. “Just saying.”

  She didn’t say anything, instead shoving a forkful of salad into her mouth. They fell back into silence, but there was an ease to it that made it comfortable. Enjoyable. Peaceful. As they ate, he kept trying to figure out the best way to stick his toe into the water and get her to open up, even just a little bit, but she beat him to it.

  Lying back on the blanket, she folded her hands behind her head, her eyes fixed on the canopy of leaves above. “Tell me about your daughters.”

  “Oh.” The syllable came out more like a cough than a word. Wiping at his mouth with one of the paper napkins, he took a long drink of water and then laid down beside her, mirroring her posture with his hands tucked behind his head. “Chloe and Olive. Chloe’s twelve and in sixth grade; Olive’s eight and in third. They’re great kids—smart and kind and fun. Chloe’s really into photography and loves taking pictures of everyone and everything. But she’s starting to pull away a bit now that she’s almost a teenager, which is hard. It’s so cliché to say, but they grow up so fast, and each milestone is so bittersweet. There’s something new to celebrate, but you’re also grieving something that’s gone.” He cleared his throat and paused for a moment, his chest tight with emotion. “And Olive’s a little dreamer. She loves anything to do with unicorns or fairies or mermaids, loves to draw, loves to make things.”

  “They sound like really great kids,” she said, and there was something, a tone or an edge to her voice that made him prop himself up on one elbow so he could see her better. Her face was tight, her mouth a firm line.

  “You were married…you guys never had kids?” he asked carefully, feeling like a doctor probing a wound to see just how deep it went.

  She shook her head. “We, um, we tried, but it wasn’t in the cards for us.”

  “Oh.” A pang of grief for her, for what she’d lost without ever having, sliced through him, and he reached out and took her hand, weaving his fingers through his. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Thanks. Me too,” she said, her voice a little quavery. “But then, it was probably for the best seeing as how…it all…ended.”

  “What happened?”

  At that, she propped herself up on her elbow, facing him. “Nope. You first. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  His muscles tensed with a wary energy, but he forced the reaction back. This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? It wasn’t fair to expect her to open up to him without offering her the same vulnerability.

  “Well.” He cleared his throat, drawing idle circles on the back of her hand with his finger, anchoring himself with that physical contact. His mind spun as he tried to figure out where to start. “Cara never loved the baseball life. It was always hard for her. She hated moving, and she was a little shy and struggled to make friends, so every time I got traded, her world turned upside down in a way she wasn’t good at handling. So we had that against us from the start.”

  “How did you meet?” Aerin asked, her eyes glued to him.

  “She’s from Pittsburgh, and I met her during my second year playing for the Pirates, at a bar. She was there with her friends, I thought she was cute, I bought her a drink, we started dating. Not exactly a romance novel.”

  “And you were together for a long time.”

  He nodded, memories slamming into him one after the other, all seen through the tinge of how it had ended. Proposing to Cara. Their wedding day. Buying their first house. Those pink lines on a pregnancy test announcing Chloe was on her way. But mixed in with the happy ones were the not so happy ones. The fighting. Cara’s neediness and loneliness that she always took out on him. His own frustration and resentment.

  “We were, but we had our share of problems. Probably more than our share. She hated moving. Hated how much I was away. She often accused me of putting baseball above her and the girls, which wasn’t a completely unfair comment. I think in some ways I did—it was a refuge from home and everything falling apart. We fought more and more; nothing I ever did seemed to be right. We’d already talked about separating when she got pregnant.”

  “Oh.” Aerin’s lips were perfectly round.

  “But we lost the baby. Cara miscarried at fourteen weeks. I was away on the road, and it was the last straw for her. We separated almost immediately after, and officially divorced about a year after that.”

  “I’m sorry. That sounds really hard.”

  “It was, and parts of it are still dragging on.”

  She frowned and pulled her hand away. “What do you mean?”

  Reaching out, he took her hand back. “I don’t mean that there’s anything lingering between me and Cara. We can manage to be civil for short periods for the girls’ sake, but that’s about it. What I meant was that we’re still fighting about custody. She won’t let me have joint custody during the off-season, barely lets me visit during the season.” He almost told her about what Cara had said, about protecting the girls from disappointment, but didn’t. He didn’t want Aerin to see him that way too.

  She bit her lip and nodded. “That’s really shitty. You clearly adore your girls.” She paused for a second, her brow furrowed. “Um, just putting this out there, but my brother Theo is a divorce lawyer. He’s one of the best, a total shark. If you want, I could put you in touch with him. Maybe he could help you with your custody problem.”<
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  “Really? Sure. That’d be great. I’ve been meaning to look for a new lawyer. I think mine’s out of ideas.”

  “Theo’s in Manhattan. Just let me know next time you’ll be there and I can set something up.”

  “We actually have a road trip coming in a few weeks. Would that work?” Javi asked, feeling buoyed by a new hope. The idea that he might actually have a fighting chance to have the girls in his life more made his chest feel light. Lighter than it had been in a long time.

  She nodded. “I’ll call him tonight.”

  “Thanks.” He gave her hand a squeeze, hoping she could feel his gratitude. He had the feeling that kids were a tricky subject for her, given her own history. Which, come to think of it, she still hadn’t shared with him.

  “So. I showed you mine,” he said casually, not wanting to scare her away. Wanting to have more of her. To know more of her.

  She sighed heavily, chewing on her bottom lip. “Eric and I met in law school at NYU. But, to really tell the story, I need to rewind a bit. See, growing up we had money, which can make life easier in a lot of ways. But you can’t buy your way out of dysfunction. My dad was a serial cheater, and my mom drank and popped pills and immersed herself in society life to escape how miserable his wandering dick made her. She was so focused on trying to keep herself together that she didn’t have much left for me and my brothers—I’m the second of five kids, only girl.

  “Anyway, inevitably my parents’ marriage imploded and it was ugly. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it was bad. And I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to repeat their same mistakes. That I’d rise above their failures and find my own Prince Charming. I’d prove to everyone and to myself that the fairytale wasn’t the anomaly. They were the anomaly.”

  Javi watched her as she spoke, scared to move, to breathe, to do anything to disrupt the moment. Hearing her talk like this felt far more intimate than anything they’d ever done in bed.

  “When I met Eric, he checked all the boxes. Handsome, smart, from a good family. He wanted to get married and have kids. He wanted to make a life together. So we did. And for the first few years, everything was great. We were happy. We worked, we traveled, we lived our lives. But then…” She shrugged, weaving her fingers through his. “Something shifted. We both started working more. We talked less. We grew apart. I was worried that I’d fallen out of love with him, or that maybe I’d never really loved him in the first place. It wasn’t like I had a good model growing up to base that on. Maybe I’d liked the idea of him more than the reality. Maybe I’d been so desperate to prove to everyone, including myself, that I could have that fairytale ending that I’d latched on to the first possibility without examining whether it was the best choice for me.”

  She sighed and sat up, taking a long sip of her water. Javi laid a hand on her lower back, rubbing in a small circle. “I thought we should have a baby. I’d always wanted to be a mom, and maybe having a baby would bring us closer together again. I wondered if the distance I was feeling was simply a sign that we were ready for the next phase in our relationship. But he kept putting me off and putting me off. Work was too busy. The timing wasn’t right. On and on. When we did finally start trying, we didn’t have any success. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because we’d waited too long. I don’t know.”

  Javi moved his arm up, sliding it around her waist and holding her close to him as she spoke. His throat felt raw and tight, his chest heavy as he listened, as he imagined her going through all of this heartbreak and disappointment.

  “He started traveling more. I became fixated on getting pregnant. He pulled away. I wanted to go to marriage counseling, but he didn’t. And then…then he cheated. He had an affair with a doctor from our fertility clinic. He got her pregnant.”

  Javi closed his eyes, a wave of pain rocking into him. “I’m so sorry, Aerin. Fuck. I can’t even imagine.”

  “He confessed everything and left me, starting a new life with her.” She paused, her fingers twisted together, her gaze fixed ahead. “He started the family I’d always wanted with someone else.”

  Javi didn’t say anything. He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound patronizing or trite in the face of what she’d gone through. So he sat with her, his arm around her, trying to give her what comfort he could. Marveling at the strength within her—both the strength to share this and the strength to move on with her life after such a heartbreak.

  After several moments, she let out a shuddery sigh. “Needless to say, any illusions I had about the fairytale were shattered.”

  He nodded slowly, fitting all of these pieces of her together, puzzling her out. Knowing what she’d been through, the fact that she kept everyone at arm’s length made a lot more sense. She wasn’t cold or withdrawn or bitchy. She was hurt. She was protecting herself. So much of what she projected to the world wasn’t the real Aerin—what the world saw was her armor, carefully honed and crafted, designed to keep anyone who might add to her scars at a safe distance.

  Needing to connect with her, Javi turned to her, slipped a hand under her chin and kissed her, a soft, gentle brush of his lips over hers. She sighed quietly and leaned into him. Something in his chest glowed and expanded, taking up all of the available room. This wasn’t just a kiss, and wasn’t just two friends exchanging war stories.

  This was trust, and he understood that it wasn’t something Aerin gave out freely.

  “I believe sex was also promised as part of today’s agenda,” she whispered, nibbling along his jawline. With a low growl, he slid his arms around her waist and pulled her down on top of him, burying his face in her neck.

  “God, you always smell so fucking good,” he murmured, trailing kisses over her throat, down to her shoulder. He pushed his hands up her back and into her hair, knocking her hat off. She lifted her head and kissed him, and he could easily taste her hunger, her need because it echoed his own. After laying himself bare, he needed to connect with her. Needed the reassurance that even though he’d fucked up in the past, she still wanted him. And more than anything, he wanted to give her that same reassurance. He still wanted her, probably even more than before.

  In that moment, he knew he was falling for her and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He’d become addicted to all of her contrasts—her strength and her vulnerability, her warmth and her sharpness, the way she held herself back and the way she gave herself over to him every time they were together. It was a heady mix that only made him want more. He could drown in her and it probably wouldn’t be enough.

  With her mouth working hungrily against his, she slid her hand down between them, wrapping her fingers around his aching cock and stroking him through the fabric of his athletic pants. His hips jerked into her touch and he bit back a groan. The idea of fucking her here, out in the open where anyone could find them heated his blood, sending it pounding through his veins. He tangled his hands in her hair, holding her in place above him.

  “I want you to ride my cock, right here, where anyone could see us.”

  “Oh God, Javi,” she panted, writhing against him. He could feel the heat of her through her leggings and his pants, scorching him, making his cock weep at the thought of burying himself inside her. She kissed him again, and this time it was frantic, a warring clash of lips and tongues and teeth, begging and claiming and needing. Slipping one hand from her hair, he trailed it down her back, following the crease of her spine, her ass. Caressing her hip with a hard, possessive squeeze, he slid his hand under the waistband of her leggings, cupping her and parting her, stroking her. She grew wetter under his touch, her arousal making even more blood pound into his cock. She whimpered when he plunged two fingers inside her. Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she sat up, riding his hand. He watched in awe through a haze of lust as she ground herself on his fingers, using him, clenching at him, soaking him. With his free hand, he managed to fumble for the backpack, pulling a condom free.

  With an almo
st anguished cry, Aerin rose up onto her knees, pushed her leggings down over her ass and then pulled his cock out of his pants. She tore the condom wrapper open with her teeth and practically shoved it down his length. Holding his eyes, she worked herself down onto him, inch by inch, taking him deep with soft sighs and desperate moans. It was all he could do to breathe through the pleasure already throbbing in his balls, at the base of his spine. He gripped her hips, urging her to take more of him with each sweep of her pussy up and down, up and down.

  She arched her back and slammed the rest of the way down, crying out, and Javi was almost certain he’d never seen anything so gorgeous in his life. This, right here with Aerin, was perfection. It was pleasure and connection and a little kinky, all rolled into one. He knew he’d never forget the sight of the sunlight streaming through the leaves, dappling Aerin’s skin with sun and shadow, her eyes closed, her face relaxed in bliss as she rode him. It was a highlight reel moment, and one he’d cherish.

  Leaving one hand on her hip, he moved the other between them, finding her swollen clit and rubbing it in smooth circles, just the way she liked. She gasped and rode him harder.

  “Your hand was good, but God, nothing compares to this. To you inside me. I need it so much, all the time,” she said breathlessly.

  “Aerin,” he groaned, working his hips up to meet her. Her words landed somewhere near his heart, settling in, taking root. He clenched his teeth against the hot pressure coiling low in his spine, not wanting this to be over. But then she started to come, her pussy rippling, her hips faltering and it was enough to push him over the edge. She let out a strangled sound, half-moan, half-sob, her hips bucking as he pulsed inside her. He felt like he was exploding, over and over again, coming hard buried inside her.