by Chase Connor
“So, can we please not talk about this anymore?” He looked up at me with an easy smile. “Because I want you to eat and fuck me some more.”
“Fuck you?” I scrunched up my face.
“Did that not sound right?” He asked way too innocently. “I mean, we weren’t making love, so fucking is the right term, right?”
I glared at him.
“You don’t love me, Rob.” He smiled sweetly. “You couldn’t’ possibly have made love to me. You fucked me.”
He wasn’t angry or even upset. He was taunting. It was so enticing. I wanted to have my way with him again. And again. And…well, lots of times.
“Maybe I’m not in love with you.” I relented. “And maybe that’s a ‘not yet’ situation. I’ll give you that. But I’m not fucking you either. I do care about you. Okay?”
“Okay.” He shrugged nonchalantly, flipping potatoes.
“I mean that.”
“Okay.”
“Say ‘okay’ one more time,” I growled playfully. “I dare you.”
“What are you going to do?” He sucked at his teeth. “Fuck me some more?”
“You’re asking for it.”
“If you play your cards right, I might beg for it.” He grinned so evilly that my stomach didn’t care about food suddenly.
“I hate you.” I laughed.
“No.” Lucas moved so that he could lean over the counter and kissed me on the lips quickly. “You definitely don’t hate me. Do you want salsa for your hash browns?”
I reached up to run my fingers through his hair.
“Vegetarians have something against cheese on potatoes?”
“Absolutely not.” He kissed me again.
Then he was rooting around in the fridge and I was admiring his backside as he was bent over, fulfilling another one of my wishes.
Chapter 6
Other than the living room, the house was dark when I parked outside of Oma’s house that night. Lucas and I had had sex in so many ways so many times I couldn’t even remember how many times that was. My head was swimming with the thoughts still swirling through my brain, and the smells and tastes still clouding my limbic system. The smile on my face was genuine and not a single bit innocent as I got out of the car. Locking the car with my key fob, I climbed the stairs to the front porch and unlocked the front door, letting myself inside as quietly as possible. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, and Oma had the living room lights on, so it was unlikely that she was in bed. However, I didn’t want a fight to start first thing. I was too happy, too satisfied, to want to bring my mood down before bed.
“And just where the hell have you been?” Oma was waggling her head at me from the easy chair in the living room as soon as the door was shut.
I sighed to myself and flipped the lock.
“I’ve texted you fifty times today if it was a million.” She seethed but didn’t rise to her feet.
The T.V. was on but was muted and it cast an eerie blue tint through the room and on her face.
“At Lucas’ fucking again.” I shrugged.
Oma frowned at me.
“Shocker.” I raised my eyebrows.
“Surprising, maybe. Not shocking.”
I held my hands out in a “there ya’ have it” type of way.
“You two playin’ house now, are ya’?”
“Playing something.” I shrugged.
“Mm.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean nothing you little shit.” She waggled her head. “Just a response so you knew I heard ya’.”
“Charming.”
“Oh, fuck you, Mister High-and-Mighty.”
“Goodnight, Oma.” I turned toward the stairs.
“Get back in here right now, you little asshole.” She boomed.
That voice was the “Oma voice” from my childhood. I knew better than to ignore it. Not out of fear, but out of respect. It was Oma’s way of letting me know that the conversation wasn’t over. That she was my elder. That she, whether I liked it or not, was my grandmother, I was in her home, and I had to give her respect. I walked back into the living room and stood before her, arms crossing over my chest.
“Now, you look here.” She looked up me, trying to be angry, but her expression was too soft. “I don’t care that you and Lucas are seeing each other—”
“How kind.”
“—but, ya’ little asshole, you could at least return a text so I know you’re not lying in a goddamn ditch somewhere.”
“Or eaten by a wolf on the way home to grandma’s house?” I waggled my head this time.
“Or that.” She snapped.
“Got it,” I said evenly. “I apologize. I will text you next time.”
“Good.”
We stared at each other as the T.V. cast its blue haze around the room, casting eerie, late-night shadows even with the lamps on.
“You wanna watch some T.V. with me?”
“What are you watching?”
Oma looked at me for a second, then seemed to realize what was being asked of her. She glanced at the T.V. nervously and reached for the remote. She wasn’t quick enough. I spun to the T.V. and saw my face on the screen. It was one of the action movies I had made two years previously. Something about terrorists trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty. It was complete crap. I had made twenty-million-dollars. Before taxes. It was a fair wage. The movie made twenty-times that much domestically and even more internationally.
“I’m going to assume you just wanted to see my face.” I snorted as I turned to look at her again. “Because that isn’t one of mine that I would have picked. Unless you’re trying to go to sleep.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
I laughed.
Oma laughed with me.
“It was just on cable.” She relented. “And, well, I was flipping and there you were.”
I shuffled over and sat down, perching on the ottoman her feet were on, looking at the T.V.
“God.” I shook my head. “I have lost a lot of weight, huh?”
“Look like a damn twig.”
I nodded.
“You know they made me work out every day with a trainer for three months before I made this shit?” I gestured at the T.V. “They put me on this high protein, low-fat diet. I’ve never eaten so much salmon, chicken, and eggs in my life. I couldn’t drink alcohol or have sugar. And I worked out for three hours a day every day for the entire two months.”
“Well, you can tell.” I sensed her waving at the T.V. from behind me. “That shirtless scene was something to behold, Robbie. Looked like you were carved outta stone.”
I laughed.
“I felt like shit the whole shoot.” I sighed. “I was so unhappy.”
“Well, I’d be unhappy too if I felt like my neck was eating my head.”
The laughter poured from my throat.
“Who’s that wrestler fella?” She asked over my laughter, a few chuckles escaping her throat. “That guy who is always telling people they can’t see him?”
“I was not as built as John Cena.” I gestured at the T.V.
“Your neck was bigger than his, that’s all’s I’m saying.” She cracked. “Looked like you could drink peanut butter straight from the jar.”
“Yeah.” I cackled. “It was ridiculous. It’s the buffest I’ve ever been.”
“Then why did you feel like shit?”
“I was so unhappy.” I sighed. “I was lonely and miserable and bored and stressed and…I guess everything not good, Oma.”
“Well, ya’ can’t tell.” Her voice was soft. “Guess that’s a testament to your acting skills, huh?”
“I suppose.” I stared at my ex-body doing my possibly ex-job on the small screen in front of us. “I wasn’t acting. I was posing.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I was doing what was expected of me.”
“Isn’t that what actors do?”
“I’ve never won any acting awards becaus
e I can’t act, Oma.” I sighed. “I just know how to be anyone but myself. That’s what I do when I’m making movies or T.V. shows. Or I’m playing ‘rock star’ on stage. I’m anyone but Robert Wagner.”
“Robert the youngest.”
“Do you think mom and dad would be proud?” I didn’t dare look back at her.
“Oh, Robbie.” She sighed.
“It doesn’t matter.” I swatted my hand in the air over my shoulder. “That’s stupid.”
“Your father—even though he was a dumbass—was smart enough to be proud of you. And your mother—even though she was a triflin’ tramp—was proud of you, too. As long as they were around, anyway.”
I laughed. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Talk crap about them.”
“Doesn’t it make it easier to not miss them?”
“No.” I sighed. “It makes me wish I could argue with you about your opinion of them. But I can’t. Because I don’t know them. I have nothing I can use to argue. Other than my feelings. And I don’t even know if those are real.”
“Robbie.” I felt her scoot forward in the chair and then her hand was petting my hair. “Them feelings is real. We can have dumbass, triflin’, trampy parents and still love ‘em. I’m mean as a Pitbull with his balls in a vice and you still love me, right? And you ran off without a word ten years ago and I still love you. Facts don’t factor into feelings.”
“I suppose.” I sat there and let her pat my hair.
It was a kindness, a loving gesture, that we hadn’t shared since before I was in junior high. Though it wasn’t exactly comfortable, seeing that we hadn’t shared affection like that in so long, it was still comforting.
“Maybe you don’t know who are ‘cause you didn’t stick around long enough to find out?”
I just listened.
“Ya’ ran off when you was still figuring all that out and, well, that part of your growing up got stopped right at sixteen.” She said gently, her fingers running through my hair. “Can’t really keep figuring out who you’re going to grow up to be if you’re running all over God’s damn creation and pretending to be anything but yourself, can you?”
“I guess not.”
“And, well,” she sighed, obviously having some internal struggle, “even if you are a goddamn shithead, I’m proud of you. And that’s just gonna have to be enough, isn’t it?”
That settled on the air between us. I let it linger for a few moments as I felt her fingers sliding through my hair.
“What’s Lucas, Oma?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” I said at a whisper. “Andrew’s a werewolf. You’re…Oma. What’s Lucas?”
Her fingers froze in my hair for just a split second then continued their path downwards before starting up near the crown of my head again.
“I don’t know, Robbie.”
“But…he’s something, isn’t he?”
“I would say so. Yes.”
“Have you been trying to figure him out like you were trying to figure out Andrew before the other night?”
Oma’s hand left my head. When it didn’t return, I shifted on the ottoman so that I could turn and look at her. She looked troubled, but not concerned. Deep in a difficult thought was the only way to describe it.
“He knows things.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He saw you coming, Robbie.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think he knew you was coming back to Point Worth.”
“So…are you saying he’s psychic or clairvoyant, or…”
She chewed at her lip.
“He knew I was destined to be the love of his life?” It came out teasing, but it made my throat clench. “He knew I’d return and the two of us would fall in love or something? Because I’m not so sure he was one-hundred-percent right about that.”
“It had nothing to do with the two of you.” She shook her head.
Frowning was the only way I could respond to that.
“He just…said some things that let me know he was expecting you back.” She said, her voice measured. “Not that he knew when, of course. He just knew it would happen.”
My teeth chewed at my lip for a moment as the thoughts formed in my head. The right questions moving to the forefront.
“When he saw me that first day we met?” I asked. “He wasn’t shy, was he? He was concerned.”
“Might have been.”
“Concerned about what?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” She threw her hands up suddenly. “Talk to him about it. Y’all are so close now.”
I sighed.
“And we were having such a nice moment.”
I rose to my feet and started to walk away.
“Oh, don’t be so damn sensitive.” Oma huffed from behind me. “How the hell am I supposed to tell you things I don’t know? Someone needs to slap you upside the head.”
Turning to Oma, I said: “And someone needs to drop a house on your sister.”
Oma’s eyes turned to slits. I let that hang in the air.
“Goodnight, Oma.”
And then I went upstairs to bed.
Chapter 7
The house was on fire.
That’s what woke me up.
Flames.
Smoke.
Heat.
Oma and I needed to get out.
Except, when I sat up in bed, my chest heaving, my heart thumping, sweat beading on my forehead, everything was dark and quiet. I heard something scurry away. I glanced in the direction of the sound but saw only a shadow slip through the bathroom doorway. Clutching my hand to my chest, I smelled the air, listened for the crackling of a fire. Within the space of heartbeats, it became apparent that I had only had a bad dream. With mild trepidation, I pushed the covers off and slid my legs over the side of the bed.
My feet touched the icy floorboards but I didn’t even wince, instead, I focused all of my energy on other senses. What could I see and smell? The room was pitch black and I could smell nothing—other than how Oma’s house normally smelled. Wood and cinnamon and a faint undercurrent of the lavender cleaner she liked to use when performing the task. I pushed off of the bed gently and stood at my bedside, my head turning slowly, my nose and eyes laser-focused on their assigned tasks.
Nothing.
I was alone and everything was quiet and still. There was no fire. I had merely been dreaming. Nothing more.
Just as I was going to sit back down and slide my legs back under the covers, staving off the frostbite that was threatening my toes, I saw the light. A sickly, eerie green light slithering under the door. Something between a glowstick and radiation beamed from under the door and cast the room in an eerie, putrid glow. My eyes grew wide as I stared at the crack under the door where the green light was coming from. As I watched, the light grew brighter by the second as my eyes grew wider at the sight. Within ten seconds, the room was filled with the color of the light and I had to reach up to shield my eyes in an effort to keep from being blinded.
When I opened my eyes, the sun was rising in the sky and was filling the bedroom with light. I was comfy, cozy, snug as a bug in a rug in bed. I had only been dreaming. I sighed to myself as I pulled the covers more tightly around myself. Spring was looming in the background, but upper Ohio had decided that one more really severe cold snap was necessary before winter would give up the ghost. I shivered slightly, tempted to roll up like a burrito and attempt to go back to sleep. As I rolled to my side in the bed, my phone on the bedside table caught my eye.
Text Lucas and tell him to come over and crawl into bed with you. He’ll make things warmer.
Shaking my head clear of the thought, I gathered up my nerve and got out of bed, wincing and hopping from foot to foot on the icy floorboards. After making the bed and generally straightening up my room, my cell phone stayed in my mind. I wanted to text Lucas. But that wasn’t the right move
at this point in our…relationship? I needed to establish boundaries in whatever it was we had going on. Coming off as overly eager or ready to try and fall in love, or hell, even have an actual relationship wasn’t the best move. Well, maybe Lucas would have welcomed such a move, but I wasn’t so sure that it was something that I could commit to at the moment.
But you want to, dumbass.
Okay. So, yeah. I wanted to—for once in my life—jump headfirst into something besides my career and not care what consequences might come my way. Especially with a romantic relationship. As I went into the bathroom and went about my morning routine of getting ready for the day, I couldn’t help but consider my past relationships. I’d literally only dated two guys in my life—and I wouldn’t have categorized either as all that serious. Nice, sure. Serious? No. One was at the beginning of my rise to stardom in the industry, so we all know why that didn’t work out. The other one was a few years before I had come back to Point Worth looking for silence and, love, I guess. It just fizzled out.
Passion is important in a relationship. I hadn’t been passionate about either. The sex had been mediocre, maybe because I hadn’t been that into the guys I’d been dating, but I hadn’t been that interested in sex, truth be told. When I was a teenager, I was pretty sure that I was gay. I had even told Oma that I was gay. I found guys attractive—even wanted to express my appreciation for them physically from time to time. But when I went to Hollywood, and my career started, I found myself less and less interested in guys and sex.
Guys had always been more sexually attractive to me. I had never found a single woman attractive in a sexual way. Beautiful? Hell to the yes. Did I ever want to have sex with a woman? Fuck no. Nothing against women, but guys were my thing. Or, so I’d thought. When I got to Hollywood, started working hard, traveling, becoming Jacob Michaels, I suddenly wasn’t so sure about anything. No. I wasn’t questioning if maybe I was straight or bisexual or something…but maybe asexual? Sometimes the very thought of having sex completely turned me off.
Some of the hottest guys in Hollywood—sexual orientation is always debatable when it comes to a lot of rich and famous people—had tried to get in my pants. It was always a struggle to not throw up a little in my mouth each time. The whole concept of someone wanting to date me or have sex with me because they saw me as this “gorgeous movie-slash-rock star” made the bile rise from my gut and settle at the back of my throat.