Landslide

by Jenn Cooksey

  A warm, sated smile spreads across her face as she looks up at me. Then, she stills…comprehending. And searching them, she traps my eyes with hers.

  “Nooo…”

  42

  “Lucky”

  —Erica—

  I stare up at Cole, shocked. Utterly. Shocked.

  “You’re not serious…”

  In confirmation, his eyebrows raise and with a minute shrug he sort of gestures with his hands palms up. “Surprise?”

  Uh… Yeah. Surprise is a huge understatement though.

  I sort of force him to lift out of me and roll to his side a little by pushing up onto my elbows to get a better look at him—or just because I feel like being more upright will help me process better, I’m not sure which.

  “Lemme get this straight. You are being straight-up, one hundred percent serious?”

  His brows raise again and he nods slowly, like he could be asking me why this so hard for me to believe.

  Well, I’ll tell you why it’s hard to believe. He’s twenty-seven! And even though it didn’t last long, that was hands down the best sex I’ve ever had in my whole entire fucking life! No pun intended. And, it’s Cole! Mr. I-could-have-any-girl-I-wanted-back-in-the-day! Probably still could too!

  Shifting again and still not believing that these words have any truth in them, I ask, “Cole, that was your first time? Ever? You were a…well, you know…”

  “Virgin, sweetheart. It’s okay, you can say it. It’s not an insult, it’s the truth.”

  I hear him, but my attention has turned to the uncomfortable, dribbling sensation between my legs. It takes me less than a second to process what it is and why I’m feeling it. Automatically, I catch my breath, freeze, and then try to get up.

  Cole’s arm tightens around me and he holds me still with concern lighting his eyes. “Whoa…where are you going? Are you really that upset about this? Talk to me…”

  I smack him on the chest. “You didn’t wear a condom!”

  His face squinches up. “Oh. Nope. Didn’t even think about it, honestly.” Then his expression sobers. “Do I have something to worry about now?”

  I feel my face heat and take on another slack-jawed expression of surprise. “Nothing that requires penicillin or an inevitable eulogy. However, I’m not on birth control of any kind right now, jackass, and your couch is probably getting ruined,” I snap and shift again.

  Man, this feels so gross…

  Comprehension finally dawns on him and the look on his face goes back to being a mix between apologetic and fearful of being hit again. “Well, grab something to put underneath you…my clothes are right there. Or, you want me to go get a towel?” Like me being uncomfortable is the only thing he’s concerned about. Exasperated, I blindly reach to the floor for something to use and just as my fingers find it, he flatly commands, “Not the sweater.”

  I roll my eyes. “I can’t reach anything else unless I get up. And, I don’t want to because, ew.”

  “Okay, so…tilt your hips up.”

  I smack him again. “Tilt my hips?! Are you nuts?! That’s what people who want to get knocked up do!” Then it clicks and I jump up. “Get it out, get it out, get it out!” I chant, doing this really awkward shuffle-walk thing where I’m trying to scurry as quickly as I can while also trying to keep my thighs together so that semen doesn’t drip down both my legs.

  So, so much gross…

  “Wait! Wha—where are you going?!” he calls after me, completely bewildered at my behavior.

  “Bathroom! I gotta get it out!” I holler and once in the bathroom, I throw myself down on the toilet, without even closing the door all the way, and heave the hugest sigh.

  A few minutes or several go by when Cole lightly raps on the door. “Um, you okay? You’ve kinda been in there a while…”

  “Yep, I’m fine.”

  He peeks in and sees me tapping my toes, still waiting… “Sugar, what are you doing?”

  I meet his eyes, not embarrassed in the least to have Cole see me sitting on the toilet naked, and quite plainly tell him, “I’m letting gravity do its thing.”

  He raises his eyebrows and nods in acceptance. “Okay… And, how much longer do you think before gravity is finished?”

  “No idea.” He’s the first bonehead I’ve ever been with to not wear a condom, so, I’ve never had to deal with this or worry about it before. Jesus, I hope his swimmers aren’t of the Olympian caliber in terms of speed and being goal oriented.

  “Alright, sweetheart, what I’m really getting at here is whether or not you need me for anything and if I have time to grab a smoke.”

  “Oh. Yeah, totally. Probably like, I dunno…seven of ‘em?”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Yes, I’m joking. But go smoke. I’m gonna give it a few more minutes.”

  He chuckles at me. “Okay. I think I’m gonna close up the house and open the patio up so I can smoke out there and not completely freeze or stink my house up. Come find me when you’re, uh…done with the paper work, I guess.”

  He’s such a guy. Why he couldn’t just say wiping, or simply when I’m done, I haven’t a clue. Although, what he went with instead is definitely worthy of a quiet laugh and an amused eye-roll. His head disappears but is back in a blink followed by the rest of him…with his Christmas tree skirt wrapped around his waist like a towel.

  “Nice skirt.”

  “Thanks.” He curtsies. “There’s probably glass hiding in your clothes and I have no intention of getting back into the Bermuda triangle of mine, so I figured I’d take this for now and you can wrap up in the blanket that’s on Prince Sparkle Bottom’s chair.” Bending down, he opens the cupboard under the sink. “Unless you wanna walk around naked. I won’t complain. You might get cold though.” Standing up again, he sets a brand new tub of flushable wipes on the counter next to me. “Here…Merry Christmas.” Then he’s gone again, leaving me alone with his thoughtful gift and my anti-fertilization prayers.

  I wait a few more minutes, reading the label on the wipes to pass the time, and finally after peeing, I figure I’m about as good as I can hope to be. I snag the blanket from the chair as I walk past it and wrap myself up in its chenille goodness before opening the French doors to the patio, quickly closing them behind me again so that cigarette smoke and the cold air let in from the windows and wide open sliding glass door doesn’t pervade the house proper. He doesn’t hear me, standing just inside the door with his back to me, and I take a minute to watch him. He’s just standing there, wearing nothing but his slippers and a cheery, fur-lined Christmas tree skirt with red satin ruffles on it as he blows smoke rings and watches them sail into the night. He’s such a nerd sometimes. An incredibly gorgeous, tender-hearted nerd. And he’s in love with me.

  The truth of that makes my heart beat a happy sigh.

  I think back and reflect on how long I’ve had the same feelings. I just didn’t recognize them. Actually, I don’t think I ever recognized love itself. Not in him and not in myself. I didn’t know what it looks like because it’s always been there in the form of friendship, and I didn’t realize that romantic love between Cole and me is, really, in its purest form an extension of the true love we’ve always had as friends. I also think there were times when I wanted to be in love with him, but I felt like I would be dreaming if I were to expect him to reciprocate, so I stuck my head in the sand—like I always seem to do when I’m intimidated or I don’t know how to deal with something.

  Plus, he’s the perfect guy, after all. He’s everything a girl could ever want and everything they almost never end up fortunate enough to have. And just the sheer fact that it’s Cole, my best friend; that we’re unquestionably in love with each other, well… This is different. It’s all-encompassing. It’s complete and total, and the tremendous feeling of being blessed it brings about is unlike anything I could ever hope to know. And it’s something I don’t ever want to forget or take for granted, because you only get one shot at s
omething like this if you’re lucky. Remarkably, I’ve been given two now with him.

  He drops his cigarette into a coffee can just outside the sliding glass door and stretches his arms over his head and then across his chest, the many bands of muscles in his back rippling and flexing. I come up behind him and wrap my arms along with the blanket around his waist, resting my cheek against his back and hugging him tight, appreciating him as the gift he is. He’s warm; warmer than you would think he could be standing essentially naked only mere inches from what has to be four feet of snow on the deck in front of us.

  “How are you so warm?”

  His arms cover mine on his waist and press them to him further. “Mmm…I’m not. Or, I wasn’t.”

  “You feel warm.”

  “Do I?”

  “Mmhm.” I remember he always did. Even when we were little and we’d snuggle up together to watch TV and movies during thunder storms or what we thought were freezing cold days. It was like curling up with an electric blanket that was on the safe and cozy setting. “Do you remember back in elementary school when we went to that lock-in at the rec. center over Christmas break and the heater broke in the middle of the night?” It dropped below freezing that night and the next morning I learned what frostbite looks like on plants.

  “Yeah…God, that sucked.”

  “Not for me. We had our sleeping bags right next to each other.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I woke up in the morning and you’d schooched into mine and were sandwiched up next to me. I had to pee so bad and I was trapped in there.”

  “You know you could’ve just woken me up and asked me to move instead of steam rolling over me to get out.”

  “Yeah, but it was faster and more fun the way I did it.”

  We both laugh and he pulls me around in front of him to hug me.

  “Good times for sure.” I lift up on my toes and he bends his head to give me a little smooch. I still shiver… “Are you cold? You wanna go to bed?”

  “Mm-mm. Not unless you want to.”

  “Erica, you were shivering. We should g—”

  “Uh, that was because of you, not the subzero temperature.”

  His mouth tilts into a half-grin. “It’s the outfit, isn’t it?”

  I giggle. “It’s definitely the outfit. You should really wear skirts more often.”

  “You know, I decided it’s not a skirt. It’s a kilt. Kilts are cool.” He nods decisively. “Yep. I’m gonna start wearing kilts.”

  “Well, you do have the legs for them.”

  He nods again and smiles in that “way to get on board” kind of way. “Right? I bet I’ll totally make the cover of People by wearing kilts. I can even have special ones for all the holidays.”

  I shake my head and snort. “You’re such a nerd.”

  “Erica, the boxers I was wearing less than an hour ago have Snoopy dressed as Santa on them, I still have my first car that I named Baby because that’s what a TV show character called his Impala, and I have a quote from a Pokémon character tattooed on my body. You think I don’t know that I’m a nerd?”

  He has a point.

  He takes my hand and begins to lead me back inside. At the lounge chair, I halt. “Wait. I don’t wanna go to bed yet. I wanted a cigarette too.”

  “You can’t have one.”

  “Wha—why not?”

  He bends a look on me that says I should know the answer. “How many times do we need to go over this? You don’t smoke.”

  He tugs at my hand and I reluctantly start moving again. “You’re really not gonna let me have one, are you?”

  “Mm-mm. And I’m quitting. Again.” We make it into the house when he adds, “Which sucks. ‘Cause I like it.”

  “Then why quit?” Logically, I know the answer to this so I don’t know why I even ask.

  He just looks at me. “Really? You’re a nurse.”

  I shrug. “Yeah, I know. That was dumb.” I take a gander around and realize he’s brought us into the kitchen. “Why are we in the kitchen? I thought we were going to bed…”

  He raises one brow and gives me another look. “I’m hungry. Food lives in the kitchen. You know this…” placing a kiss on the top of my head, he mutters, “I love you, but you’re kinda slow tonight.”

  The back of my hand takes it upon itself to connect with his bicep, then I stand back to watch him rummage through the pantry and fridge, grumbling to himself about not having any good snacky food. Like, he literally ate almost a whole casserole dish of macaroni and cheese on his own and in one sitting hardly more than five hou—huh. Dinner was kind of a long time ago. Crap. Now I’m hungry…

  On the counter is a tinfoil loaf pan wrapped in poinsettia cling wrap with a dark green bow on it. I grab it. “What about this?”

  He eyes it warily. “That’s Old Mrs. Hinkle’s cherry almond loaf, Erica.”

  “So?”

  “So, that’s the kind of thing where it’s the thought that counts, like fruit cake. You just take it and say thank you, maybe use it for decoration on a buffet table at a holiday party or as a doorstop or something, but you don’t actually eat it.”

  “Cole, you have to. She’s like, what? Eight-five or older? And she went out in the snow to shop for the ingredients, she stood on old, tired legs to mix everything together, and older people tend to not like gadgets so she probably mixed it by hand too, which isn’t as easy as you might think, especially if there are cherries and nuts in there, then she baked the fruit of her labor into a gift of love, and she even went a step further by wrapping it and putting a bow on it. All for you. You cannot not eat this. I won’t let you.” I shove the pan into his hands. “I love you. Now eat this.”

  “You know, it’s not like me eating this will start a movement to save a race of holiday breads that have been held down by the man for centuries.”

  “Eat it.”

  “She’ll never even know!”

  One of my hands moves to my hip and I can feel an eyebrow slowly, yet insistently raise, all like I’m challenging him to test me on this.

  “We’re never having sex again if I don’t eat this, huh?” I grin and tap my foot. He pulls a face, his nose scrunching up in distaste as he unwraps the cherry almond loaf and sniffs it. Cautiously, he breaks a piece off and inspects it. “If I hurl, it’s your fault. Might wanna stand back.”

  I’m trying to not show it, but inside, I’m all a twitter with anticipation. My grandma, who could cook like no one’s business, used to make something similar. She went through so much trouble to make it too, so I can fully appreciate what Old Mrs. Hinkle probably put herself through to bake this. The one my grandma made was a recipe her grandmother passed down and she’d received it from a great aunt or something, and I always thought it was so wonderful to be the recipient of something with a heritage like that. The only thing was, it was awful. And no one could ever bring themselves to tell my grandma.

  Then one day, she ate some herself. I never laughed so hard as when she spun around and spit it out in the sink. She even used paper towels to scrape the rest off her tongue. My grandpa was sitting at the table and without even looking up from his newspaper, he said, “Yep. Sounds about right.” My grandma’s face lit with the most incandescent light though when she watched him, still reading his paper, take another bite out of the half-eaten slice on the plate next to him, chew it, and swallow, all without a single disagreeable look or word. It wasn’t that he had to like it…it was just that he loved her so much and appreciated all her efforts that went into being his wife, and eating nasty tasting fruit bread was just one of the best ways he could prove it.

  Cole chews once or twice slowly, stops, looks around at nothing in consideration, chews again, and swallows, his eyes falling on the pan in his hand. “Oh my God, this is fucking delicious.” He breaks another chunk off and shoves it in his mouth without any hesitation. I go to tear off a piece for myself, but he yanks it away and raises the tin above his head, protesting with his mouth full. “M
m-mm…whoa. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I wanna try it!” I wrap my hands around his bent elbow, the blanket falling away, and I try pulling his arm down. He just lifts his arm higher and ends up pulling me off the ground.

  “This is mine. That old woman made it for me, God love her ancient heart. Go find your own cherry almond loaf.”

  Dangling for a second, I give him a pouty look and let go. He chuckles as I wrap the blanket around me again and then pulls me to him with one arm for a quick kiss with cherry almond loaf crumbs on his lips. “Here,” he says and puts a piece of the bread in my mouth for me, “Fantastic, isn’t it?”

  My eyes grow round as I chew. “Oh my God…you weren’t kidding. I need this recipe.”

  “I need to kiss Old Mrs. Hinkle.”

  With another bite in my mouth, I put my puckered lips on his as he bends his head, and I murmur through chewing, “Mm-mm.” I swallow the scrumptiousness in time to receive another kiss. “You can hug her.”

  We end up eating the entire loaf of bread and because I can’t stand it when Cole tilts the tin up and tries shaking all the crumbs into his mouth, I grab his phone from the counter and snap a quick, full-length picture, capturing the bare chest, Christmas tree kilt, slippers, and all. Then he starts posing. It’s hilarious. I get probably six good shots of him in various adoring poses with the empty tin before he tosses it in the trashcan and we head downstairs.

  Hand in hand, we walk into his bedroom, halting along side his bed and turning to face each other. Leaning down to kiss me, he stops just shy. I pull back to see him work his tongue over his front teeth and then stick his finger in his mouth to pick in between them. “Piece of almond I think. I gotta brush my teeth.”

  I giggle and follow him into the bathroom, hopping up to sit on the counter next to the sink. He brushes, rinses, and then contemplates me.

  “You’re waiting for my toothbrush, aren’t you?” I nod. “Sugar…” he says, heaving a sigh and holding it out for me. I take it and after spreading some more toothpaste on it, I stick it in my mouth, putting one hand on his waist when he moves to stand in front of me, nudging my knees apart and placing both his hands on the top of my butt. “You know what, never mind. Brush.”