Never Say Never

by Taylor Holloway

  “It’s just been a really long day,” I said. The rest came spilling out in a rush. “I worked all night last night, and then at six am I got a call. See my mom had a double mastectomy and complete reconstruction last year. This morning she woke up and could hardly breathe her pain was so bad. She’d developed some kind of allergy to the latex in the implants. By the time I got her to the hospital she was going into anaphylactic shock. Her throat was starting to close up. The implants had to be removed immediately or else they’d kill her. Now she’ll need another whole reconstruction. It’s such a gruesome surgery, you know? People never talk about that. She just healed from the first one.”

  “That must have been terrifying for you both.” Her voice was soft and understanding. Gentle. Like she was trying to soothe a frightened animal into eating out of her hand.

  “My mom was her usual self. She’s looked death in the face enough times I guess. I was the one who freaked out.” My voice sounded flat in my own ears.

  “I can’t imagine. Is your dad around?”

  I shook my head. My dad was a deadbeat of monumental proportions. If he was still alive, that is. I wasn’t exactly sure or even inclined to find out.

  “Any siblings to help you?”

  Another head shake. It was always just me and mom.

  “You seem to be doing fairly well, given the circumstances.” Her voice had taken on a more professional, detached quality. She would be used to seeing people freak out, I supposed. It did make me feel a bit better to know that she wasn’t judging. “You ought to give yourself some credit.”

  “Credit for what?” I may have sounded a little bit bitter. “Turning into a scared little boy the moment my mom gets sick again?”

  “Holding it together enough to make sure she gets what she needs. You can’t imagine the number of people who lose it completely when their loved ones get seriously ill. I’ve had to sedate plenty of perfectly healthy adults who couldn’t cope with the situations their family members found themselves in. Husbands who can’t handle seeing their wives sick; parents who can’t handle their kid’s illnesses. It makes a big difference when a patient has someone who can properly advocate for them. Hospitals try their best, but nothing really takes the place of a loving family member paying attention to the little details.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. The care my mom received today was excellent, it was the absolute best that money could buy. But it was still impersonal, and the people providing it were exhausted and overburdened. During my mom’s long battle with cancer I’d learned how to work the system to make my mom comfortable. What to request, what to insist on, and when to complain. Being engaged in the process did make a difference.

  “You don’t have to make me feel better,” I said finally. I could still barely believe I’d admitted any of this to her. There wasn’t anyone in my professional world that knew about my mom’s illness. Except Richard. That bastard knew everything about everyone.

  “You don’t have to make yourself feel worse, either,” Eva replied simply.

  “I just wanted some pizza,” I admitted through clenched teeth. “I wanted a break. I’m sorry for melting down and throwing a fit. It was just the last straw, you know? I just wanted to think about something else for a few minutes.”

  “I can think of something better than pizza to take your mind off things.”

  I turned my head, opened my eyes, and looked at her. She was unfathomably beautiful. What happened next was not fully within my conscious control.

  Eva didn’t pull back when I leaned over and kissed her. Her soft lips yielded easily to mine, and she tasted like peppermint and comfort. Our tongues twined around one another and I was already lost. I pushed her baby-soft brown hair back from her forehead and we stared at each other for a heartbeat before drawing back together. What was there to say?

  I pulled Eva toward me, shoving my seat backward and more horizontal. She clambered awkwardly over the center console at my silent urging. If she’d been any taller, it would never have worked. This wasn’t a large car. As it was, having her straddling me in the driver’s seat was a perfect fit.

  She was a perfect fit. Her mouth on mine was soft and sweet and her whole body felt alight. When I wrapped both hands around her waist, my pinkies almost connected at her spine.

  This was a godawful terrible idea. It was a brilliant idea. I was all out of other ideas. All I could think about was her.

  Eva sighed softly into my mouth, her nimble little fingers working the buttons open on my shirt with ease. She ran her hands up my chest and onto every inch of exposed skin she could access, and I shivered. She was adorably eager.

  And I was desperate for connection and release. Desperate for her. By the time I was pulling her shirt out of the waistband of her little skirt, my hands were trembling.

  Eva arched as I lifted the lace blouse up over her head. Beneath the blouse she had on a filmy little camisole that quickly joined the blouse on the empty passenger seat. A lacy little bra promptly met the same fate. Finally, her bare, silky white skin was bared in the dim light of the car. It was a thousand times more attractive than all the lace.

  Eva’s waist was narrow, but her ass and chest were full and lush. I cupped her chest appreciatively and then pulled her forward to lick her hard, pink nipples. Her whole body smelled faintly of vanilla. She made sweet little whimpers as I went to work on her, turning each peak harder and darker. I could have lavished attention on her nipples forever, but there was still so much more of her to explore.

  Her round ass fit flawlessly in my palms, and she giggled softly into the ceiling when I tried in vain to simply snap her thong off by ripping through it. It had seemed like a good idea, but the fabric was surprisingly stretchy.

  “No laughing,” I told her, squeezing her rear end playfully. I could bounce a quarter off her firm, round ass. Giving up on divesting her of the thong, I decided I’d just pull the stupid thing to the side.

  Eva wasn’t wasting any time either. She pulled at my belt buckle and worked her fingers under my pants and boxers with record-setting efficiency. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised. She was a nurse after all. They would need to be good at removing excess clothing in a crisis. This counted as a crisis.

  I pulled her mouth back to mine and kissed her with every ounce of frustration the day had thrown at me. She wriggled forward and freed me from my boxers, stroking eagerly with her soft hands.

  My self-restraint was reaching its breaking point. I fumbled in the pocket of my jeans and found the condom that I’d bought this afternoon and packed in some sort of fugue state of cognitive dissonance. As much as I kept telling myself no, and as much as I feared we’d both regret it later, I knew we’d end up like this.

  Eva took the condom from me and rolled it over me before shifting her hips above me and bearing down straight onto me before I even got to play with her. I certainly couldn’t complain. She was exquisite and unbelievably hot and tight. Eva was everything.

  And unbelievably, she was ready to go. I gripped her hip with one hand and kept her movement slow and steady, but she was clearly just as out of her rational mind as me. Eva moaned into my neck as she ground her hips down onto me eagerly and I dragged my fingertips down her back with my opposite hand.

  “Touch my hair?” She asked. It came out in a breathy, needy whisper.

  I liked a woman who knew what she wanted, and readily obliged. I ran my hands through her loose, long brown hair. It was soft and silky, just like her skin. I wrapped the strands around my fist and tugged on it with more pressure, tipping her head back enough for her to feel it, but not enough to hurt. She liked that, I could tell, because she pushed herself down on me harder in response.

  As Eva bounced up and down on me with increased urgency, I gave up on trying to take things slow. Slow was overrated anyway. I was much too transfixed by her bouncing nipples at the moment. Eva liked to go fast in everything it seemed. I could do that.

  I fisted her hair more for
cefully and tugged her head back again, pushing up hard with my hips as I did. She arched down onto me with little moans. She kept her hands pressed firmly on my chest while she rode me, and I pinched her nipples, and pulled her hair, enjoying the increasingly urgent noises she made. She went faster and faster and I pushed into her harder in return. As the rain poured down around the car, the windows grew steamy. My shocks were getting a workout.

  We found the right rhythm eventually, building steadily and staring breathlessly into one another’s eyes. Eva’s eyes went glassy and vacant when she got close, and she bit her full bottom lip. The sight of her, and the feeling of her muscles tightening hard around me when she came, the way she moaned my name in her sexy little voice, Eva pushed me over the edge right after her. She folded down atop me a second later, nuzzling my neck and nipping my throat as little aftershocks shot through us. I held her close to me for a long time, dragging my fingernails lazily down her spine, and listening to our breathing slowly returning to normal over the sound of pouring rain.

  Eva was right. This was much better than pizza.

  10

  Eva

  Charlie took me to his place after we pulled our clothes back on. The drive into the city was only slightly less high octane as before, probably because of the rain, but Charlie seemed a thousand times less tense than the first leg of our journey. At first, I felt the same: relaxed and happy. But then the happy, snuggly sex chemicals wore off and I wished I knew where I stood with him. Goodbye oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. Hello cortisol.

  Did he just use me to make himself feel better? Was I a convenient distraction and nothing more? I could probably be ok with that given the fact I’d initiated it, but now I needed to know.

  I was no manic pixie dream girl. I’d never been known to flit happily from partner to partner like it was nothing. I began to feel increasingly sad as the evening went on. Being in Charlie’s adult, fancy townhouse made me feel young and immature. Charlie was sweet, gracious, and grateful, but I’d never had sex outside a relationship before. I didn’t know how. I didn’t understand how to enjoy this if it was temporary.

  “Are you ok, Eva?” Charlie asked as I nibbled on the remains of my Pad Thai. We had ended up getting takeout. Apparently, Charlie lived off delivered Thai food. He was on a first name basis with the delivery guy. I’d also caught the fist bump they’d exchanged when the delivery guy saw me.

  “Eva?” Charlie asked again.

  I nodded and looked everywhere but him.

  How do you ask someone you hooked up with if they are ever going to call you? How do you ask if they actually like you versus having casual sex with you? You can’t.

  “How long have you lived here?” I asked instead. I smiled as sweetly as I could and tried to look casual.

  Charlie looked around his modern, minimalistic living room as if surprised to see it.

  “Five or six years.”

  “What made you pick this place versus somewhere else?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t really remember. It was probably cheaper. Please tell me what’s bothering you.”

  Busted. I fidgeted nervously atop the black leather couch and stared at the ground.

  “I’m just… I’m just awkward,” I said. “I guess I’m not very good at one-night stands. Sorry.”

  He reached out and grabbed my hand across the gulf of couch cushion between us.

  “Why should you feel sorry for that?” Charlie asked. He looked at me inquisitively, but his voice was free of judgement. Or a hint about how he felt.

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I… I’ve never had a one-night stand before.” I felt myself blush when I admitted it. “You said before that I was, you know, work to you. I don’t want to make things weird. You know, with… everything going on.”

  He didn’t seem to know what to say. His eyebrows knit together with an emotion that I couldn’t decipher. I wished he’d just tell me if this was a one-time thing.

  Meanwhile, I felt myself babbling. “Do you… do you want me to go away? I know you’ve had a long day. I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything.” I pulled my hand out of his and felt instantly cold.

  “I obviously don’t think of what we did in my car tonight as work,” he finally said. His voice was low and earnest, and his eyes bore into mine when he continued. “I don’t want you to think that’s all I think of you. That you’re somehow ‘just work’ to me. I also don’t want you to be uncomfortable… I’m not very good at this either. If you want to leave I’ll understand… I’ll drive you home right now if you want me to.”

  We stared at one another uselessly. Neither of us had mentioned Dylan, but he might have well been in the room with us. Charlie’s big brown eyes held warmth but no answers, but he reached out and recaptured my hand. Moments ticked by as I let myself be comforted by the sight of his huge hand enveloping mine. Maybe he was as inept at this as I was.

  I sighed. All I wanted to know was if he liked me. But I couldn’t figure out how to ask without sounding desperate or pathetic. That was the last thing I wanted him to think of me. I decided to interpret him holding my hand as some evidence of affection.

  “What did you want to discuss with me originally?” I finally choked out. They weren’t the words I wanted to say, but they were all I could come up with at the moment. At least it cut the silence.

  “We should probably wait until you’re done eating,” he replied. He was frowning now, but I sensed it was unrelated to me. His eyes looked far away. “I haven’t looked at the whole file, but there are some pictures. Some of them are… explicit. It looked bad when I glanced at it.”

  “You make it sound like I’ll be reviewing autopsy photos or something,” I said. I meant it jokingly, as a way to lighten the mood, but Charlie’s face froze. My jaw dropped open. “Wait, seriously?”

  His frown deepened. “Yeah, I’m afraid so.”

  Charlie reached down to his briefcase that sat beside him on the floor. He set a large, white envelope on the coffee table next to me. The label? Philadelphia Medical Examiners…aka the city morgue.

  “Whose?” I’m sure my eyes were as big as dinner plates.

  “Edith’s.”

  “You really know how to bury the lead.”

  “Sorry.” He did look like he felt guilty. He shook his head hard enough to move his curly dark hair. “I didn’t mean to spring it on you. I need your help because I don’t understand what I’m looking at and didn’t have the stomach to look at the photos. There was a problem with Edith’s coroners report. So now her autopsy is being re-reviewed. These are the photos and the report. It’s all jargon to me anyway.”

  If he hadn’t looked at them, he deserved a warning. Not everybody can handle pictures of death. “I have a strong stomach and have attended live autopsies before. If you don’t, you might not want to sit here while I look at everything.”

  Strangely, having work to do was making me feel better. I could review autopsy photos all day long. The human body is endlessly fascinating to me. Even when it got kind of gross. Especially when I didn’t have to smell the gross stuff in a real autopsy. There was a certain smell to a human autopsy, a unique mix of clinical, primal, and putrid. It that sticks in your memory forever. Even just holding the envelope, I could swear I detected a whiff of it.

  “I’ll go make some coffee,” he said as I opened the envelope. He was visibly making toward the door already. Probably a wise choice. “Do you like espresso?”

  I was already skimming over the forms that accompanied the records.

  “Only if you top it with steamed milk.”

  “That’s not espresso. That’s a latte. This isn’t a Starbucks.”

  “Actually, it could be either a cappuccino or a latte depending on your technique. Is that a no? I’m looking at a chopped up dead woman for you and you won’t make me a latte?”

  “I guess I can steam you some milk,” he grumbled. I looked up to see him smiling at me. “Y
ou’re such a girl.”

  “I’m a girl because I like lattes? Screw you, coffee snob. I think lattes are delicious.” I said it without malice since I was mostly absorbed in what I was reading, but I felt my nose crinkle up. Then I realized how blunt I’d been and looked up at Charlie in horror. He was grinning.

  “You’re really very cute.”

  I smiled at him as I pulled out a second form from the envelope with as much dignity as I could. “Thank you.”

  As I continued to read about Edith’s apparent heart attack, I could feel his eyes lingering on my face. When I looked up at him again his face was bemused and happy again. All the awkwardness from the previous moment had vanished, but I felt like he was holding something back.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” As he walked to the kitchen I heard him mumbling to himself. “Making a latte. Jesus Christ. I’d probably let you eat crackers in bed too.”

  I pulled out the first picture as Charlie started making noise in the other room, and my jaw went slack. Edith hadn’t died from a heart attack. Her death hadn’t been natural at all.

  11

  Charlie

  Steaming and frothing milk was a lot harder than I’d realized. My espresso machine’s instruction manual was in Italian. Never having used this particular part of my machine, I thought you just put the steam stick thingy in the milk and it frothed right up. Not so. It turns out if you do that the boiling milk flies all over you and then you drop the cup and your asshole cat licks it up off the ground while you try not to scream about your burning hand. At least, that’s what happened to me.

  Eva heard the commotion and came running.

  “What did you do?” She asked as she grabbed my forearm, took my watch off, and then ran my stinging hand under cool water. Wallace—who absolutely loves the faucet— jumped up to drink some water as well and she shooed him off the counter with a dismissive sweep of her hand. Only slightly chastened, Wallace reluctantly returned to cleaning up the milk droplets.