by T. L. Hayes
“Rustle up? Who do I look like, a cowhand?”
Lou pretended to consider the question. “Hmm, not really. More like G.I. Joe’s younger sister who wanted to follow in her brother’s footsteps.” Lou laughed and mussed Steve’s hair.
“Kid sister? Kid sister!” She reached out to tickle Lou, but Lou squealed and scurried out of the other side of the bed.
She ran out the door to the bathroom, Steve chasing her the whole way, but Lou got there first and closed the door behind her. She opened it momentarily to say, “At least G.I. Jane has a nice butt.” Then she closed the door again among her giggles.
She didn’t lock it, but Steve didn’t try to open it. Instead she said, loud enough to be heard through the door, “Thank you. My ego and I are going to get dressed now, and then make breakfast.”
Lou opened the door and called out to Steve, who was walking out of the bedroom. “You’re not good with signals, are you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I left the door unlocked for a reason.”
“Oh.” Steve smiled shyly and Lou crooked her finger and Steve obeyed. When she reached her, she took Lou into her arms, moaning as their mouths met again, and Lou pushed her up against the sink. “What about breakfast?” Steve managed to ask.
“Oh, I’ll be having something.” Then Lou kissed her way down Steve’s body, until she reached her center. Now on her knees, she let her tongue explore, while Steve gripped the countertop.
“Oh God. Oh yes…yeah. Mm.” Steve put one hand on Lou’s head and ran her fingers through her hair, while she thrust her own head back and closed her eyes. The moan was now just a sound deep in her throat, with no actual words. When her moment of bliss came, her body went rigid for a moment, then began to shake and her knees started to buckle. Lou pulled away and stood and put her arms around her as Steve’s body shook with orgasm, and then Lou held Steve as she collapsed against her. Steve wrapped her arms around Lou’s waist and Lou placed little kisses on Steve’s neck.
Lou whispered, “I love you.”
Steve put a small kiss on Lou’s shoulder and whispered, “I love you too.”
* * *
Steve went to the kitchen to make Lou the promised coffee, while Lou was dressing after their shower, where Steve had been able to return the favor. When Steve walked into the kitchen, she noticed it was the neatest room in the house. There were no dirty dishes in the sink, and the floors and counters were spotless. Steve smiled. Either the kitchen was so clean because it was just the one room Lou cared about the most, since even the messiest people had one room they kept spotless, or it was because Lou didn’t cook. Steve opened the fridge to retrieve the breakfast supplies and saw the same thing in there. She retrieved the items she needed and set them on the counter next to the stove, then went in search of the coffee. Lou had an expensive-looking coffeepot that was somewhat intimidating to Steve. Steve’s coffeepot’s most technical features were that she could program it to make coffee in the morning and that it automatically shut itself off. Lou’s machine had several buttons Steve wasn’t even sure what they did. She was able to get the coffee and water in the machine, and she found the brew button, but she wasn’t sure how to make the coffee stronger. She knew some coffeepots had that capability.
She was still studying the front of the machine when Lou walked in. “If you push that button three times, it becomes industrial strength rust remover. Just the way I like it.” Lou smiled to see her, standing in front of the machine with her hands on her hips, looking over the buttons like she was trying to decipher hieroglyphics. She walked up behind Steve and purposely pushed against her, then leaned around her and pushed the button. Then she snaked her arms around Steve’s waist and kissed her on the back of the neck.
“So that’s where it is. Thank you.” Steve leaned into her, then turned her head slightly to kiss Lou on the lips.
“You’re welcome.” Lou released her and Steve began making breakfast again. While Steve cooked, Lou set the table and retrieved coffee cups and placed them near the coffeepot, then put bread in the toaster. She smiled at Steve’s back, thinking how natural this seemed, them working together in the kitchen. It was only their first morning. It wasn’t supposed to feel this comfortable this soon, was it? Weren’t they supposed to take months to get this familiar with each other? Then she shook her head, realizing she was starting to analyze it to death, and she didn’t want to do that. Instead, she went to the fridge for the blackberry preserves she knew she still had from the last time she had gone to the farmers’ market, back before school had started for the semester. Retrieving the jar, she asked, “What would you like on your toast? I have three kinds of jelly.” She held aloft the blackberry preserves as if for emphasis.
Steve took the jar from her and read the label. “That’s preserves. You shouldn’t call it jelly.” Then she grinned.
Lou did too. “I remember that commercial. Cute, but it doesn’t answer my question.”
“Fine. Do you have apricot?”
“Do I have apricot?” Lou asked, in the manner of an overenthusiastic salesman, then changed her tone to one of actual inquiry, “Wait, do I have apricot?” She moved bottles around in the fridge until she came up with the right one. “It appears that I do have apricot.” She held it up for Steve to see, and Steve leaned over and planted a kiss on her cheek.
“You are too cute.”
“Then I will work on my ugly face.” She screwed up her face, then asked, “How’s this?”
“Nope, still cute. I think it might be a terminal problem.” Steve scooped scrambled eggs onto their plates, then turned around to quickly make their toast while Lou got each of them a cup of coffee. She was enjoying being in the kitchen with Lou. It seemed homey and definitely something she could get used to.
They sat down to eat and were enjoying their meal, exchanging pleasantries. Steve started to think back to her little freak-out earlier that morning. She had started calling those moments little freak-outs because they never became full-blown panic attacks like they used to, back before she learned to control them. But she hadn’t done it without help. Once she pushed her plate aside and sat back to finish her coffee, she looked across the table at Lou and remembered something from the night before. She looked at her with concern and asked, “What did you mean earlier when you said that you’re a good actress?”
Lou looked up. “What? When did I say that?”
“This morning, after I got up to find my necklace. After we had climbed back into bed. You said it right before I fell back asleep. What’d you mean by it?”
“Oh.” She remembered the conversation now. They had been talking about their separate baggage. “Well, I guess…just that my way of dealing with my issues is to ignore them. Act like everything’s okay. Because I can’t change it and it’s over now, so why dwell on it?” She shrugged as if it was no big deal.
“But if you have to act, then it’s not over. It obviously still troubles you. And just because the abuse has stopped doesn’t mean it’s over.” Steve reached over and took Lou’s hand.
Lou gave her a small smile. “Steve, my father’s dead. It’s over. Now hand me your plate.” She reached out her hand, but Steve just sat there and looked at her. “Can I have your plate, please?”
Steve handed her plate over but said nothing.
Lou stood up and took the plates to the sink, then immediately started to rinse them off, not saying a word. She could tell the mood in the room had greatly shifted.
Finally, Steve stood a few feet behind her. Very gently, she said, “Lou, don’t shut down and don’t shut me out.”
Lou finished washing a plate and put it in the drainer to dry. She said flatly, “I’m not shutting you out. I’m just doing the dishes.”
Steve sighed. “Lou, I was just going to say that I think you might want to talk to someone about your past, maybe work through it.”
Lou went still a moment, then set the dishes she was washing back in t
he sink. She shut the faucet off, then turned around to face Steve, wiping her hands on the back of her pants. “Are you saying I need therapy?”
“Well, I think it would—”
“Help me?” Lou cut her off. “Do you really think it would help me to relive all that stuff again? To remember all the times he hit me? All the things he called me? It took me years to stop thinking about it all the time. I couldn’t sleep through the night without panic for five years after he left. Took me longer to stop looking over my shoulder, or worrying about not cleaning the kitchen up to his standards. Do you know what would happen if I left food on a fork or let food spill over in the microwave and didn’t wipe it up?”
“Oh, honey…” Steve reached out for her, but Lou backed away.
“No. I can’t go through that again. I finally like my life the way it is. I’m finally free of him.”
“Are you?”
“Louis Wayne Silver died on April 19, 2005. I’d say that’s pretty fucking final.” Lou cleared her throat. When she spoke again, it was with false cheer. “Now we need to get out of here. There’s this place they pay me to go to every day, so it’d probably be a good idea if I showed up. You too, trainer.” She smiled, then moved to leave the room, but not without swatting Steve’s butt on the way by.
Steve gave her a small smile. “Lou?”
Lou turned to look at her. “Yes?”
Several things came to Steve’s mind to say, but she feared Lou would shut her out again, or worse, become angry at her, so she thought better of it, not wanting to fight. Instead, she walked up to Lou and put her arms around her and kissed her on the cheek. She whispered, “Nothing, I just wanted to say I love you.”
Lou hugged her back. “That’s not nothing. That’s everything. And I love you too.” Lou pecked Steve on the lips, then stepped out of the embrace. “Come on, we need to go do our thing. Well, not that thing—the thing we get paid to do.”
Steve chuckled, but her heart really wasn’t in it. She let Lou set the tone for now, telling herself that this would not be the last time she would bring Lou’s past up.
Chapter Sixteen
When Lou got to campus, she went to her office, but only long enough to drop off her bag and the coffee mug Steve sent her to work with. Then she left and went somewhere she had never been to before. She walked across campus until she came to the back corner of the property, skirting the edge of the biggest parking lot on campus, which serviced three dorms, the football field, and the gym. It was to the gym she went now. The athletics office was just to the left of the door and Lou could see a blond student inside wearing a purple and gold school hoodie, her head bent over a book. She looked up when Lou approached the glass and smiled.
The girl opened the sliding window and asked, “Hi. How can I help you?”
Lou returned her smile. “Yes, hello, I’m Dr. Silver, a professor on campus. I was just wondering if I could work out here. Do I need to pay a fee or anything?”
“Nope, it’s a job perk. The only ones who have to pay are staff and alumni. The gym is down this hallway, to the right. You’ll see the locker rooms along the way. Make yourself at home. Oh, but you do need to flash me your ID.”
“Yes, of course.” Lou showed the young woman her campus ID, then followed her instructions to find the locker room. She quickly staked out a spot and changed into her workout clothes, stashing her gym bag in a locker and using the lock that she always kept in the bag. Then she headed out to the gym.
The room she walked into a moment later was huge. All the equipment was state of the art, some of which Lou was unfamiliar with—she wasn’t always sure what part of the body a machine worked out. It was clear the athletic department was well funded and could afford to buy nothing but the best. Lou walked around the gym, taking a silent inventory and looking for the gear she had come there for. She passed all the various cardio machines, the treadmills, ellipticals, the StairMasters. Behind them were the individual machines people could use to work out different muscle groups, each one targeting a specific area of the body. It all seemed so artificial to Lou. She preferred the older methods, the dumbbells and bench press, calisthenics. Sometimes she used the Universal, but only because it offered more resistance than the free weights. Her sifu had once jokingly called her a fitness Luddite, and she couldn’t refute the charge. She had laughed. “If I ever had to train to fight a Russian, I would much rather do it in a log cabin, using logs as weights and running up the side of a mountain,” she had joked, referencing one of the Rocky movies.
Finally at the back of the gym she found what she had come for: the heavy bag. On the wall next to it were gloves. She found a pair that fit her well enough and put them on, then set her stance, focused on the spot on the bag she wanted to shoot for, then started hitting. She started with light jabs at first, without much energy behind them, then, after a few punches, put more power behind them and just kept hitting the bag, over and over, not sure how long, just until she started to feel it in her shoulder and her hair worked its way loose from her clip. She could feel the sweat dripping down her back and she wiped it from her brow using her sleeve, trying to cut it off at the pass before it reached her eyes. Panting, she pulled off the gloves and hung them back on the wall, only then realizing she had forgotten her water bottle. She had noticed a water fountain when she had walked in, so she made her way over to it before heading back to the locker room.
Normally when she had something to work through, she went to the Wushuguan and worked out there, but now Steve was there and she didn’t want her to know that the morning’s conversation had gotten to her as much as it had. She knew Steve only brought up the idea of therapy because she loved her, but she hated the very idea of it. She didn’t need it anyway, she thought. She was mostly over the past. The man was dead, her body had long since healed, and she was no longer afraid. What was there to work out? Therapy was just one of those things, like getting married and having children, that once other people did it, they tried to get all their friends to do it too. Not everyone needed to sit on a couch and discuss their feelings all day with someone who was getting paid to listen to other people’s problems, probably while avoiding their own. Who needed it? It was self-indulgent navel-gazing and Lou didn’t have time for it. Her issues, what was left of them, weren’t so bad that a good round with the heavy bag, or a full body workout in general, couldn’t fix them. She just hoped Steve would drop it.
When she got back to the locker room she noticed there was a student in the same alcove of lockers where she had stashed her clothes. She walked past the student, who had her back to her, over to her locker and took out her bag. She had her T-shirt off and was retrieving her shirt for the day. She wasn’t nearly sweaty enough to warrant showering, as she kinda hated showering at the gym anyway. The student turned around and immediately blushed to see Lou standing there in her sports bra.
“Um, hi, Dr. Silver. Haven’t seen you in here before.”
Lou saw the girl’s distress and bit back a smile as she quickly put her regular shirt back on. “Hey, Melissa. Yeah, this is my first time here. Thought I’d check the place out. You work out here?”
Melissa gave her a nervous smile, then ducked her head. “Yeah. It’s free for students.”
Lou grinned. “Yeah, for me too. It’s a nice perk. I’ll have to come back more often. See you in class later.” Lou beat a hasty retreat, lest she embarrass the girl further, thinking about how traumatized she would have been to turn around to see one of her teachers standing behind her, half naked. Poor girl, Lou thought. Class that afternoon was going to be interesting.
* * *
As predicted, class that afternoon with Melissa was a bit awkward, with the girl avoiding eye contact as much as possible. Once, when Lou came up to her to demonstrate a parry move and touched Melissa’s wrist to put it in the proper position, the girl blushed so deeply, it made Lou falter in her demonstration. That’ll be the last time I work out on campus, if this is what comes of
it. She wondered why the girl would react that way—she’d been less uncovered than she would have been in a swimming pool, after all.
Later, as she and Steve were sitting around Lou’s kitchen table having dinner, Steve laughed at the gym story and said, “I’m surprised you don’t see it. I can see it, and I’ve never met the poor girl.”
“What are you talking about?” At first, she wasn’t going to tell Steve she had gone to work out on campus, considering why she had done so, but she didn’t want to start their relationship out by lying about such an insignificant little thing. Steve had looked thoughtful when she’d mentioned it but hadn’t questioned her choice.
“Baby, she’s got a crush on you, or at the very least, she thinks you’re hot. She’s been able to control her thoughts about that in class, until she saw you naked. I understand her problem. I can’t stop blushing around you either.” Steve took Lou’s hand, then leaned over and placed a small kiss on her lips before sitting back and smiling at her.
“I wasn’t naked. You really think that’s it?”
“I do. Is that so hard to believe?”
Lou shrugged. “I don’t know, just not used to it, I guess.”
“Oh, please,” Steve scoffed.
“What?”
“What about that other soldier in your life? She was hot for you. You got girls twenty years younger than you falling at your feet and you still don’t know how awesome you are.”
Now it was Lou’s turn to get all hot and bothered. She mumbled, “I should have never told you about her.”
Steve laughed. “I thought it was sweet. Makes me realize I’m going to have to up my game, though, if I want to keep you. Now that you know you have options, what’ll you need me for?” She grinned, then laughed when Lou threw her napkin at her.