Sunrise Fires

by LaBarge, Heather

  I snorted. “Oops.” My cheeks flushed as I scooted out from between his legs and moved behind him, sitting just above him on the ridge over his right shoulder. My left leg bent behind him, I laid my right leg out beside him and put my head on his shoulder. “Is that better?”

  He stroked my calf. “Mmmhhmmm.” I felt the rumble of his voice against my chest. I was going to miss that.

  After the sun set, we cleaned up the place a bit, and then the guys shooed us off, ensuring us that they’d get the girls, the coolers, and Chris back home safely. I gave everyone one more round of hugs, and then Ryan and I headed off for one last lap around the track.

  * * *

  The rock in the pit of my stomach grew larger and larger on the way home. I didn’t want to go and couldn’t imagine what I would feel like next week or next month. Never mind how I would feel by the time Ryan came to see me at Oktoberfest. That seemed like way too far from now, and the empty space between now and then felt like a vacuum of loneliness. My mind flew to the tentative end-date: Christmas. It had crossed my mind a number of times – trying to force myself to relax and at least give us until Christmas. But here, today on the eve of my departure, I thought it might be better to accept the end now, preempt the pain, rather than wait for it to land on me later when I wasn’t ready for it.

  We weren’t home for five minutes before Ryan said something about it. “Stop it,” he warned.

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me. Stop it.”

  “What do you mean?” I tried to sound innocent and confused, but Ryan was an ace at reading me.

  “Brooding. I can see you over there. Wheels running a mile a minute. Lord knows what terrible thing you’ve foreshadowed, but Jesus, hun. Stop it.”

  “Ryan, baby… I can’t stop it. It makes me sad. I’m so sad to be leaving. And still, I’m afraid.”

  “Thinking about it won’t solve the problem. It might, however, ruin the rest of our night together.”

  I clasped my hands on top of my head in frustration and took a deep cleansing breath. Exhaling slowly, I told myself that he was right. Besides, I had a long flight to catch in the morning and hours of time trapped in that plane. I would sort this all out. And then I smiled, remembering what he’d said at the track. “Wasn’t there something you wanted to taste one more time before I go?”

  I have no idea how he crossed the room as fast as he did, but he had me pinned against the wall, hands above my head, kissing me while his free hand reached under my shirt and pushed up my bra, massaging my breast. I wrapped one leg around him and responded just as ravenously to his kiss. His hand slipped from my breast and into my jeans, passing my mound and parting my lips with an investigative finger.

  “Mmmm,” I moaned as he entered me. It didn’t matter that his finger was dry going in. I was already wet enough to coat him thoroughly. And his hand was gone as quickly as it had come. My eyes shot open, only to see him sucking my juices off his finger slowly, pausing to circle his fingertip with his tongue before thrusting it back into his mouth.

  “Yep, there was something…” he smiled at me. “But I can’t quite put my finger on it.” He tapped his finger on my lips, and I could smell the tang of my sex. I tried to snap my teeth at it, but he withdrew and let my hands go. “Now, how about that chicken Marsala?” He slapped my ass for effect.

  “After you, sir. I might need your help in the kitchen, and surely I’ll need your company.” As he stepped away, I fell in behind him and pulled his hips to me, walking in step together as if we were one. And then I stopped us and rubbed the heel of my hand down his swollen zipper, reveling in the fact that he was as turned on as I was. He pushed my hand away.

  “Hands off the merchandise, lady. Unless you’re buying.”

  I pushed him forward. “Move along then. On to the kitchen. We’ve got work to do.”

  The next two hours were spent making dinner and eating by candlelight. We drank wine and listened to music, talking of when he’d visit in late September and how we’d spend the three months between now and then. I told him to keep an eye out for Chris and see that he’s still doing well at the store. He laughed at my mothering tone.

  “He’s a grown man, y’know.”

  “I know, hun, I know. But I worry about him.”

  Ryan just shook his head.

  By the time the kitchen was clean, it was time to head to bed. “Tomorrow’s gonna be stressful…for both of us,” he said. I didn’t argue.

  This man had been my lover for three years and a friend since two before that. He was all that I had wanted in a man but never found until now. I couldn’t imagine leaving him. We lay together tenderly, stroking and massaging each other’s bodies to the point of frustration. And then he made love to me. He kissed me tenderly and lovingly, moving on top of me, and pushing my legs apart with his knees. He took his time kissing my breasts and neck, nuzzling my collarbone and my hips. And when he entered me, he looked into my eyes, and we stayed there in exquisite intense pleasure, never breaking eye contact, maybe not even blinking. Tears fell slowly; he kissed them away. He moved on top of me as if we had the rest of our lives, as if this night would never end, as if tomorrow could be stopped if we just didn’t stop making love.

  I didn’t rush him. I didn’t want to. I wanted to rest on the edge of oblivion for as long as he could keep me there. Long, slow strokes in and out of my sex, rubbing the underside of my clit as if it were a violin and his cock the bow. Tiny orgasms rocked me over and over again, until I was nearly exhausted. He kept kissing me, telling me he loved me, meeting my stare with strength of conviction, a dare to doubt him. And when at last he began to move faster and in a rhythm my body knew well, I met him thrust for forcible thrust and grunt for groan. I screamed as he tore into me, my legs up on his shoulders, his legs bucking, ramming into my already tender lips and clit. He leaned over, I gripped the headboard with my toes. He fucked me even harder. His arms and neck strained with the force of each thrust. I felt his belly and chest tense on my hamstrings. We reached such a force that I was bouncing off the bed each time he lifted off me. Every muscle in my body ached for release. And when it finally came, it was pure bliss; his cum splattering the walls of my pussy with hot streams of ecstasy. My legs tightened, toes curled, I released the headboard and wrapped my legs around him, holding him inside me to the hilt, filling me, stabilizing me, loving me.

  We fell asleep almost immediately.

  Chapter Eleven

  And then it was gone.

  Life in Munich was like everything I’d imagined and nothing I’d ever experienced.

  The company apartment was functional enough. On the day that I walked in, the front door swung open, and it seemed that the entire place opened in front of me and to my left. The kitchen was immediately on my left on the same wall as the apartment door; in fact, if I opened the door too wide, it might’ve smacked into the side of the kitchen cabinetry. Immediately to my right, as I stepped inside, were two book cases built into the apartment’s wall, abutting one another in the corner. There were books already on the shelves, some in English and some in German. A nice touch, I thought, immediately feeling like picking one up and settling in. To the left of the book cases and diagonal from the apartment’s main door was a balcony. I stepped outside and immediately noticed the trees in the courtyard, lush and green. After living in Las Vegas for so long, this shade of green felt surreal and nearly unnatural. I thought of reading books sitting here on this balcony, allowing the cool Bavarian breezes to waft unfamiliar smells of nature in my direction.

  Stepping back inside, the main space of the apartment laid out before me. It was a modest functional space with a sitting area and coffee table on one end nearest the balcony, and a dinette set on the far end nearest the kitchen. The grey carpet was thin and functional. It was so tough and meager that it almost felt like indoor/outdoor carpet. T
here was an opening in the wall to my right, in the space separating the dining and living rooms. I assumed it was the studio’s bathroom, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover a hallway with a bedroom door on each side and the apartment’s one bathroom beyond them. Each room was furnished with the basic needs, nothing extravagant, lush, or even homey. I made a mental note to shop for more personal linens and things just as soon as I got the chance, a task I eventually asked a bright young employee to help me with as weeks had gone by, and it seemed I’d never have the time.

  The day I moved into the apartment was the last day I remembered having any time for myself. I was busy most days, too busy to fully experience Germany, too busy to even know where in the world I was living. I might’ve actually been living back in Vegas if it wasn’t for the drastic difference in climate and greenery. Watching the seasons change for the first time in over a decade was done through the windows of the store. I checked stock, worked inventory, and opened the Huntington’s Sport chain for Europe—their first ever and a flagship store at that. The store was 200,000 square feet of retail floor space and activity areas, about 50,000 square feet larger than our store in Las Vegas. I worked hard to ensure that I stocked the shelves and arranged the store according to my best possible marketing plans. Some areas of the store were decided for me—the indoor golf driving range, the shooting range near the gun displays, and the water feature near the fishing gear. But the rest of the store was mine to design, stock, manage, and maintain.

  The differences in culture and activities originally had me flustered, and sales floundered for my ignorance. Europeans required less gear for camping and spent more money on mountain biking and hiking. Setting up sales displays to focus on Volksmarching and minimalist camping was where I finally started to see sales picking up and customer throughput increase. I was exhausted by the time I got home each day.

  And the time difference made talking to Ryan more difficult than we had anticipated. Daily video and phone calls faded to weekly, and by August, it was haphazard and random. We touched base in e-mail but it was unfulfilling and became more of a method for empty check-ins and attempts to schedule our next video or phone rendez-vous. Sadly, each of us had cancelled so many times that the other began to get frustrated, more ready to reschedule than to risk disappointment.

  I missed him just as much as I had expected, and I resented him for making it sound like it would be a walk in the park. He knew before I ever left that I was afraid of this—these quiet moments, this time to think about our disconnectedness, about losing him forever. And still, he was letting it happen. He said we’d compensate with these calls, he had promised it, and yet he rescheduled or canceled more often than not. It was as if he didn’t want or need them.

  I needed them. And without them I missed him wretchedly. In the quiet times when there wasn’t some obligation pulling at me, when my mind was at rest, I ached for his touch, his kiss, his sex. Just the sound of his voice would have made our separation more bearable.

  Sometimes I lay in my bed in the quiet of the night and try to remember what his breathing sounded like. I had old recordings of his voice on my phone from when we had used a walkie-talkie app, and I listened to those over and over again. I even researched a way to save them to my hard drive and rescue them from my phone; time wasted, as I never found a solution. He was trapped on that phone. I found myself clinging to that old worn-out thing, refusing to upgrade, refusing to switch to the company phone as my primary, just because he was there, on that crappy outdated technology. I cuddled with it at night, playing his voice and getting angry when there were hiccups. Sometimes the battery died surreptitiously or the phone unexpectedly reset itself, and when these things happened, I’d fly into fits of anger and want to fling it across the room. I knew better, though; breaking that phone meant losing him. No, I wept instead, and I waited until the phone cooperated, lying awake in the darkness and reaching for those moments when he held me, when he loved me, when his fingers stroked my hip, or when his hand passed over my cheek.

  And then the sun would rise, and Huntington’s was there. I was driven. I would whip the Huntington’s flagship into submission for making me leave him. The staff was afraid of me, but the store was immaculate. Corporate was impressed with the numbers and public impression of the brand name. I had redefined myself in the old way: professional success was my hallmark. I was good at that. Maybe I wasn’t so good at relationships. Maybe Ryan had been a fluke, I thought, as my old insecurities resurfaced. The distance between us had stretched my emotions to a tight thin hair, ready to snap at the realization of my deepest fears. In the back of my mind, a small voice wagged its finger at me and told me that it had been right all along, that Ryan would abandon me like so many men before him. I tried to ignore the voice. I buried myself in my work, and Huntington’s wasn’t in any shortage of that. I had to hold on just a bit longer. Soon enough, Oktoberfest would be here, and when I saw Ryan, everything would be clear. My fears would have to wait until then. They’d been standing on the edge, listening hard for any confirmation that they had been right in the first place, but I could keep them at bay, until Oktoberfest at least.

  And then he called.

  Unexpectedly, on a Wednesday evening, in the third week of August, he called. I nearly swallowed my Adam’s apple as I answered the phone with nothing more than a croak.

  “Jen?”

  I cleared my throat. “Ryan? Is that you?”

  “Yeah, babe, it’s me.”

  My breath caught in my throat, and tears instantly fell. It had been a week since I’d gotten more than a banal email checking-in, and his voice struck my ears with such warmth. I missed him suddenly, as if an entire decade had passed, and all of the missing from that decade had been added together and dropped on me in this one instant. “Ummm…” I sniffed, trying to compose clear ideas. “Uhhh…hi…hi, baby. Oh, my God, I’ve missed you!”

  “I’ve missed you, too. A lot.”

  My heart pounded in my chest, thumped in my ears, turned my legs to jelly. “I’m…uhh…wow…just…getting home from work and…hey…what time is it there? It must be the middle of the night.” I reached for some tissues and tried to covertly blow my nose. Breathing deeply, I slowed the flow of tears and began to regain control.

  “Yeah, it’s past three in the morning.” His voice cracked.

  “What is it?! What’s wrong, hun?”

  “Jen, there’ve been some things going on here…” He paused so long I began to worry that the call disconnected.

  “Ryan?”

  He exhaled heavily onto the line. “Babe, I don’t want to get into it. I wish you were here, though.”

  “Oh, hun,” I gushed, “I wish that, too.” My eyes burned anew. I blinked back the tears and took a deep breath. “Soon enough, hun. Soon enough. Oktoberfest in September. A couple more weeks and—”

  “That’s why I’m calling,” he interrupted. “Jen, babe…”

  The silence on the line was ominous. My stomach turned to lead, my throat tightened. “Honey, what is it?” I spoke slowly. This was it. I knew it. The end was happening, I felt it. He didn’t want to say it. “Tell me.” I braced myself and willed the contents of my stomach to stay put.

  “Jen, I’m not coming. I can’t—”

  I dropped the phone and stood there, stunned, frozen in disbelief. This really was it! Angry, furious, resenting him, hating him, abhorring the job, loathing Dullberth, devastated—I was crushed. I couldn’t breathe, and yet the sobbing began again, violently this time, choking my throat, aching to be released, but no sound came. My cheeks ran rivers, my nose a bog. I fell to my knees. Fumbling for the phone, I grabbed it and listened. All I could do was listen. My throat would not work for anything but to cough up more tears. The line was quiet. I sniffled, swallowing a noseful of snot and getting a grip on myself. “Ryan?! Ryan?” I was frantic. How could he do this? I
had been so vulnerable, so honest, so raw…and still, even knowing how it would hurt me, he had backed away anyway. It was too much for him. I knew it all along. I was stupid to come here. “Ryan!” I screamed into the phone.

  Silence.

  And for the next two weeks, still more silence.

  My life was so full of silence that it was deafening.

  I’d called him back that day three times, but twice, the call couldn’t go through, and he never picked up on the third time. I called in sick for three days, unable to get up, unwilling to participate in this charade any longer. Each day I would get up and try to get ready for work, but it seemed ridiculous. This job had cost me Ryan. Was it really worth it? How many fishing poles did I need to sell to make that okay? Eventually, a pert little German sales girl showed up to ensure that I was okay and see if I needed any medicine or if I needed to go to a hospital. I dismissed her, but the next day, a woman from corporate called, wondering what happened to me. The store. The store. The store. It was always about the profit margin. Fuck. Fuck this whole thing. I can’t believe Ryan made me come here. I can’t believe Dullberth twisted my arm. I can’t believe I let them. I cried incessantly. I spread the tissue paper company’s profit margin that week. That’s for sure.

  The apartment walls were thick with his voice, with the call: ‘I’m not coming.’ The grey carpet was fitting for the drab melancholy that seeped into my entire being. The rest of the world was muffled. I listened to it as it passed, but only heard it through the foreground of ‘I’m not coming.’ Why not? Why wasn’t he coming? He had fallen out of love in less than three short months. I was sure of it. I had been right all along. I knew this would happen if he didn’t come with me. I had said it would happen. And Mark! Damn him for saying it: ‘If you were my girl…’ But I wasn’t his girl. I was Ryan’s, and I wanted it to stay that way. If he had asked me to, I’d have quit this job for him. If he had asked me to, I’d have…I’d have…fuck…I’d have done anything to prevent this.