by Sybil Swift
“Shit.”
Noah whipped on his socks and shoes faster than she thought possible and pointed toward the rest of her gear.
“Time to go back to work.”
Chloe took one last swig of beer, slipped her hands back into her gloves, and thanked god for verbal deflection. Noah shoved a long-handled, hard-bristled, push broom in her hand.
“Next up’s the hose.”
Four hours later, the sun dipped across the water and Chloe nursed her third beer with her feet draped over the side of the chair. A sweaty, hot mess was being gentle when describing her current state.
“After all that you ready to put on a housewife apron, lady?” Noah shifted in his chair and she tilted her head backward looking at him upside down.
“You’re so not working the right angle.”
“We got the job done. You’ve got to be starving.”
On cue, her stomach grumbled and she shot a glare down to her abdomen.
“Traitorous wretch.”
“Who? Me or your stomach?”
“Both.”
“It’s not like I’m asking for a gourmet meal here, sweetheart. A few microwavable meals wouldn’t hurt my feelings either.”
“But that’s such a copout,” she groaned and watched the world spin as his laughing eyes refused to stay trained on her face. There was no denying he had gorgeous, hazel eyes. The iris had a little swoop of gold along the edge, like the Nike symbol.
She wiggled in her plastic beach chair until she was right side up again. And they sat in silence watching the play of purplish-pink haze licking away the daylight. Their silence didn’t lend much to the atmosphere, but she was oddly comforted, curled into herself. He caught her eye once or twice as the sky turned so dark she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, but neither of them acknowledged that there would be no work ahead to distract them.
And there was only so many times Chloe could play with Noah’s ADD.
“What’s your favorite food?” Chloe asked rubbing her empty bottle into the sand so it formed its own little coaster.
“Promise you won’t laugh,” he asked, laughing himself.
“Sure.”
“I live off boxed macaroni and cheese like it’s my life’s blood.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Uh, no. Why, is it really that weird?” He scratched his fingers through his thick, brunette, Brillo pad curls.
“Not so much weird as fucking crazy. I make the best boxed mac and cheese with hotdog slices and green beans that you’ve ever tasted. Do we have all that?”
“Can we sub corn for green beans?”
“Psssh, we can sub any veggie. I will make it work!”
With an invigorating deep breath, she popped up from her chair, and snagged his forearm in an iron grip. Slightly drunk and completely sloppy with her thoughts, Chloe’s fingers tightened around his smooth forearm. Beneath her grip his muscles tensed. His eyes widened. Before she could take back her mistake—he probably didn’t want to be touched after their near miss of a kiss—he yanked her down into his lap.
“Cripes!” She tumbled to the side, half angled on and off his jean clad lap with both of her hands resting on his chest.
Against her palms his heart catapulted beneath his muscles. As if someone had pressed pause, they lingered, his gaze half-lidded. His arms moved to curl her up closer into his body. Adrenaline twisted to the toes of her feet. Her stomach nearly bottomed out as awareness twitched through her nerve endings. The fantasy of his skin beneath her fingers became her sole focus as the rest of the world dropped away.
Were there still complications? Always. But as her measured breaths brought in more oxygen to her lungs, she didn’t find herself getting any smarter.
“What are you…” Almost touching lips. A small divide—but one she wasn’t willing to breach again.
Their noses almost touched. A random image of Noah giving her an eskimo kiss flitted through her mind and she smiled while trying to measure his quiet, closed off silence. When his hand shifted up her spine and into her hair she gasped, taking in a quick drag of his citrus scent.
Though her mind fed her questions, her mouth refused to work. She wouldn’t start it—but she couldn’t stop him. Not with his body heat flaring up through his jeans and their limbs snug together like they’d always belonged intertwined.
Either way, when his lips tightened and resolve slipped over her. Chloe got ready to spring from his lap, tuck tail, and run to the phone to call a cab. Men only got one chance at rejection. There was no amount of groveling that would open her heart once she’d closed it. His thumb slipped across the side of her jaw. A shaky caress that left her throat tight and aching. This was—more. So much more.
The last thing Chloe expected was for Noah to separate the last inch between them. From the tip of her toes she was poised to bolt. But he didn’t move so much as a muscle. He nodded once as if waiting for permission. Before he took the last inch between them and smashed it into oblivion by taking her mouth quick enough she didn’t have time to draw breath.
An instant moan leapt from her lips. He matched the strokes of his thumb to the ease of his tongue along her bottom lip. She opened to him like she’d been longing to do for longer than she cared to admit. His whole body vibrated. Engulfed by his strength and anchored by his gentle slow, exploratory touch, she was lost to it all in a tide of contrasts.
The soothing murmur of waves became a dull ringing in her ears. She kissed him, matching the slow, steady thrust of his tongue while her hands explored the firm planes of his chest and shoulders. Noah groaned low in his mouth, nibbling on her bottom lip. Beneath the back of her upper thigh she sensed his cock—hard and oh, so promising. His hand smoothed into her hair, tilting her head back for a deeper kiss. She was…awakened.
“I shouldn’t—but I couldn’t—I can’t get enough of you,” he whispered against her lips.
How could her body be so tight and yet she remained mellow at her core? God, it’d been so long since she gave herself license to explore! Explore anyone. Explore herself and what she was feeling. If she’d stayed too long on any one aspect of her relationship she might have been confronted with the horrible truth that she hadn’t been happy in a long time.
But wrapped in his firm embrace with the will being kissed out of her—she was bliss incarnate.
He made a low, maddening noise in the back of his throat and his hips lifted against her ass. It was a feat that she managed to stay still. Her mind was screaming for her to react and grind back down on him while the rest of her loved the aching tease winding through her limbs. Noah’s lips eased away only a fraction and her eyes slit open to catch him watching her with a humbled, easy grin.
As his hand dropped away from her head she curled back into the touch. For the moment, unafraid to meet him stride for stride in their weird little ditty of a romance dance. Noah’s pleased noise only encouraged her as she bent forward and kissed his cheek. When was the last time she’d used so shy a move? Not even in second grade had she displayed any kind of wariness toward boys.
As her nipples hardened, a blush made her cheeks burn.
“Why didn’t we do that before?” she ventured figuring she could always claim the question was asked under tipsy circumstances later and leave it at that. Already the moonlight on his face shimmered too brightly and the world tilted. She took her first big deep breath in a bit.
“This is g-g-going to sound fucking psychotic to put-put-put it lightly. Bu-but, I made a promise to my-myse-myself that I’d consider myself abstinent while I’m at my sister’s place out of respect. Earlier, I was worried that once we got going—I didn’t know if I could stop.”
“There are other places to occupy ourselves than in the house, you know.”
It slipped from her lips before she could shut her big, fat trap.
“Good to know you’re thinking ahead.” He said with raised brows and a very masculine, very pleased with himself smile. “Shall
we go get dinner?”
“Sure, but, um…” Chloe looked in the direction of his lap.
“It’s a hard on, not debilitating. It’ll just make me walk a little gingerly and awkward for a bit,” he dryly remarked.
* * *
His heart was still leaping in his chest, her small kiss on his cheek a blazing heat that he wore like a proud brand. Sheer relief made his erection barely a blip on his radar.
“Uh, Noah?”
He glanced guiltily up from watching her ass, back to her slightly closed off expression when she looked at him over her shoulder. He grunted, not trusting his vocal chords. There wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t shaky with an odd concoction of emotions.
“What’s going on with the stutter? I mean, obviously, it’s totally cool and endearing…I just…I wanted to know…” She turned away from him right as he looked down at the fresh stain on the deck and took a step backward. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. I get it.”
She backtracked with every single second he kept quiet and each second seemed like a year to his scrambled brain. As if he’d been dumped in the ocean at it’s coldest, Noah shook and sputtered. No, he didn’t want to answer. It was a simple answer, he’d been stuttering since he learned how to talk, since he’d first opened his mouth and tried to imitate a sound his mother made to him. It had only gotten worse underneath his pretentious father’s guiding hands.
Noah turned his back on Chloe taking a few quick steps away. He blinked, chest tight. Time to fight off the memories. Even as he rose to do exactly what he’d done for years, shoving everything into a tiny box, he sensed her sharp gaze on him. She didn’t move closer. She didn’t have to when he sensed her intentions as clearly as if she’d spoken them.
“Do-o-n’t…ple-ple-please.”
“Don’t come closer or don’t make you answer, Noah?” Her voice was so soft, her compassion made him hate himself for not answering her simple question.
He shook his head. Once. Twice. So fiercely he thought his brain might have detached from his skull.
“I’m sorry…” There it was, the pity. His constant companion.
Noah didn’t think as his fist came down on the banister with enough force to make his teeth rattle even though they were set on edge. He barely caught Chloe’s gasp through the chaos of his own thoughts.
The door slamming shut twisting dust mites up his nose. The twist of the key being turned in the lock while the darkness reached for him and he curled into a small ball. Couldn’t apologize. Couldn’t beg. Couldn’t move as the blood in his veins turned to ice. Defeat and shame ate at him until he pinched himself, one for every time he’d screwed up. The sharp pain was better than the endless drills, the ruler that even now burned across his back.
He never showed any mercy. The day he did was the day Noah was cured.
Endless, expensive doctors knew nothing. Not when his son would someday take his place, be his right hand. Had he not saved them from poverty? From a whore of a mother too drugged up to crawl out of bed to get them formula or diapers? He deserved perfection. Compensation for the seven years of crap he’d had to put up with from Noah.
Drop the act. Stop playing dumb. I’ll do it again, don’t try me.
After six months his mother stopped trying to intervene and emptied out the basement closet for Noah’s personal use. Before then he could still recall the press of endless heels against his chapped ass. The scent of leather as he fought to breathe past his sniveling.
Rich eloquent people bred rich elegant children. Noah would man up or they would take him back where he belonged, in the gutter, while Polly sat on her pink throne and ate frosting from a spoon. Polly who would spend any free time she could get away from them sneaking down into the basement to knock on the closet door, carrying on small conversations through the beats on the wood.
Silence wasn’t an option. It wasn’t golden either. No, everything had been red.
“Noah…” A voice whispered through his consciousness. “Noah, are you okay? Talk to me, please.”
As if emerging from a deep pool he gasped searching for air and the oxygen burned in his lungs. He blinked past the fear that crushed him until he felt two feet tall. There was nothing in that story, nothing is his story, that he could say out loud.
“Tell me.” Her voice was thick with emotion, strained, and on the edge of an order.
Pain lanced across his shoulders from holding the weight of so many memories for so many years.
“For-for-forget it.” He stumbled and struck out again knowing the pain would at least eclipse the humiliation.
“No, I’m not going to forget about it, Noah. You clearly need to talk about this. Tell. Me.”
He made an incoherent rage filled noise. At his back he sensed her hand, warm and tiny through the dirty fabric of his worn t-shirt. Noah closed his eyes. Air pulsed out of his nostrils and came in long sips into his lungs. There wasn’t enough, would never be enough. Chloe’s no nonsense tone washed over his exhausted bones and opened a flood gate of crap he’d kept at bay. Everything wanted to come flowing out. Practically choking him with the pain of it.
“I ca-ca-ca-n’t…”
“I’m not giving you the option.” Her hand squeezed against his shoulder blade and he shook his head, balling his fists, hating the well of helplessness that dragged him deeper into darkness.
“No…” He bit off the word. Time to get old school. He pivoted.
Without missing a beat he mimed scribbling on a piece of paper with a pen.
“Right, you can’t talk right now. I can’t believe I would expect you to…” That last part seemed to be directed at herself as she mumbled before holding up a finger and going into the house.
Noah leaned against the railing letting his weight sag with the pure fear that soured the back of his tongue. He didn’t even know if he’d be able to write. Let alone write it all. Pieces. He would do pieces. Chloe was back with a pen and paper that sat in the kitchen. She shoved them at him as if they were on fire.
“Take as long as you need.” She snatched his hand and brought it to her lips. “I’ll be here.”
He fed her the struggles in small, digestible chunks. Neither shock nor horror played across her features, but pity wasn’t there either. For that he was thankful. She took every shaky sentence in stride. When he tore off the last page a part of him woke up.
He looked up, to the side, before he could meet her straight on gaze.
She extended her hand across the outside table.
Noah blinked. He took it and squeezed hard enough he sensed her bones crack and pop beneath his fingers. Still he couldn’t bring himself to let go yet.
“Let’s go inside.”
Noah rolled up the large hose allowing his mind to blank while he let his muscles do the work for him. Somehow, it had all come out. The shadows. Memories he’d kept corked up for years no matter how many shrinks Polly sat him down with that were friends of friends. For whatever reason, Chloe had wrestled out all the twisted details until he was light and more scared than he’d ever been in his life. He rolled his shoulders before finishing off the circle of the giant hose and dragging it to the shed that was planted on the cement block beneath the house’s many decks.
So much wrestled through his head that it was easier to blank out and refuse to think altogether. When he went to put the chairs back in their normal places, he took a step back. One thought blared louder than all the others he was desperately trying not to think: Chloe was different, special…and for bringing all that suppressed emotion out of him she should be rewarded. She deserved to know that even though she’d been screwed over by one of his gender, he wasn’t going to be one of those men. How easy would it have been for her to walk away? To avoid the awkward situation and ignore it?
She’d done none of those things, pushing him until he thought he would crack.
Chloe didn’t leave then either. She was stronger than most people gave her credit for and
she’d let him have his moment without one ounce of judgment. For that alone she deserved to be treated like a queen. He hefted the chair over his shoulder with a grunt and climbed the stairs to the first deck.
There was no denying it anymore. He had to know her, all of her, or at least have her in his bed. There were a million ways to say thank you with his tongue and Noah planned on doing them all. Words would never be enough. He put the shifted the chair onto the deck, wiping his brow with a forearm and looking out over the ocean. A plan was forming as he dealt with life’s little fastball. It may not be the best plan, but he had at least four chairs and a table to perfect it.
* * *
After she’d collected all the leftover beer, Chloe threw them in the recycling bin in the kitchen enjoying the sharp tinkle as they crashed together. While Noah moved all the gear back into the shed, she focused on lackluster menu for the night. She’d cut the pre-nuked hot dogs into little mini snakes and shoved them in the microwave slamming the door. She pressed the one minute button and watched as the little pieces puffed up like unidentifiable meat pocket mountains.
With a swing in her step, she navigated her way through the foreign kitchen. The space was thankfully sparse in terms of decoration, unlike the oceanfront kitsch that littered her room and the living room. There were still small attentions to detail. An air freshener hanging on the twist knob for the window, made the whole place smell like spiced cinnamon and candy apples. A hand-carved sign out of driftwood “Food is Life. Food is Love. Love Food”. And matching hand towels and potholders—red stripped and worn with use.
“You’re happy.”
His voice practically made her jump six feet into the air, but she managed to keep from throwing the dishtowel at him as her last weapon of defense—but just barely. She made an exasperated noise in the back of her throat. She shuffled over to the stove. With more ease than she felt, she stirred the spoon along the boiling water waiting for the macaroni to finish cooking.
The reason for her chipper mood had to be blatant and she still debated on how to handle the whole thing. Campaign Ignorance, for the win.