“Sure. I’m not going to lie to get the job though,” I said.
A smile quirked her lips. “Fine. Shadow me for a week or two, then hope to Jesus Christ the Lord Almighty that Warren takes my word for it that you’re good enough.”
“Okay,” I said, because she was hot and I wanted to be close to her, and I needed a job.
“Also, I’m about to take my break, and I want to suck your dick.”
I stepped back. “Excuse me?” I said. I must have misheard.
“You’re the hottest thing I’ve seen in this place in a long time, and I’m all for a man in flannel, and I just want to suck your dick. How’s that suit?”
“All right,” I said, because there wasn’t much else I could have said. She nodded to Jake, who took over, and we went into the storeroom. She set a keg by the door to keep anyone from getting in, and then crossed her arms, grabbed her shirt by the waist, and pulled it up over her head. Yeah, she was hot. I came towards her, reached around and unhooked her bra. Her breasts were small and pert, her nipples dark and hard, and I hadn’t been with anyone new in over half a decade. I was burning with lust. Then she was up close to me, standing on her toes to kiss me while her hands unbuttoned my shirt. I gripped her back, tight, pulled her against me.
She nuzzled her face up into my neck and kissed my throat while her fingers found my chest beneath my undershirt. Her fingernails traced up from my belt to my collar, sending shivers down my spine.
Then we kissed, our first real kiss while we were already halfway towards naked. She brushed her lips against mine, shyly. I kissed her back, hard, and she acquiesced. Despite initiating this, she wanted me to dominate her. I could feel it. Nothing is ever just sex, even when it’s just sex. There was something else there, too, some connection. It made us hungry for one another.
“I love a man who’s not afraid to give me what I want,” she said, and then she pulled off my undershirt, went to her knees, and undid my belt. I reached down, pulling my jeans down over my hips, and she got a wicked grin on her face when she saw my cock grow hard.
“You want me to suck you off?” she asked, staring up at me with a glint in her eyes.
“Yeah,” I said, sliding my fingers through her long, silky hair, putting a little pressure on the sides of her neck with my thumbs. She tilted her head back and smiled a little.
She was teasing me. Her mouth was poised right over the tip of my dick. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice strained. “I’m sure.”
“You want to fuck my mouth?” she asked, drawing out that last word. I was all need, all animal instinct.
“Yes, goddamn it.”
I pressed myself against her lips and she slid her hot mouth tight around me, taking my dick all the way into the back of her throat, and her hands were wet with spit, working up and down my shaft as she sucked.
“Jesus.” I grabbed onto the shelves with one hand, gripped the back of her neck with the other, and groaned. Maggie just sucked on me harder, faster, like it was the best thing in the world.
For a couple of minutes…for a couple of minutes I felt okay. For a couple of minutes, I wasn’t a widower, I wasn’t a husband. I was just a man. Some part of me needed this, needed to let go in a way that my day-to-day life, my brain, my heart, just wouldn’t let me.
But as soon as the cum started to find its way up my shaft and into her mouth, she looked up at me and all I saw was Em, going down on me in the bed of that pickup, or in the trees out behind the school. My eyes stung and my chest got tight and I had to push it all back, push it away, force myself to finish. As soon as I came in Maggie’s mouth, guilt and shame got their hooks into me. It was all I could do not to run out of that bar and never look back. It took every part of me that’s strong and good to help Maggie to her feet, kiss her hard, and let her tell me she had to get back out behind the bar. With that as my cue, I ran.
To be honest, I never expected I’d hear back from the bar again, but I got a call the next day and afterward I shadowed Maggie at work for a few weeks and got myself hired, as simple as that.
But now I was driving back from the animal shelter with Rae’s number in my phone, and I’d just told Maggie I wasn’t going out with her last night. My life was on a new track, and the last thing I needed was to roll right from one girl to the next. Wouldn’t be fair to Maggie, wouldn’t be fair to me. Wouldn’t be fair to Rae.
I had her number in my phone, but I wasn’t going to call her. Maybe if I needed something for King. But maybe not even then...maybe I’d call the shelter direct and ask someone else. Anyone else but Rae.
I wasn’t going to call her.
I’d keep the number in case, though.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It’s all the petty stuff you remember. Like, I know what kind of lip balm to buy Emily. I can’t walk through the store without seeing it, too. They keep it right by the checkout aisle, half the time. Takes everything I have to keep my eyes away from the little yellow tins with their red lettering. To keep from grabbing one and tossing it in my basket by force of habit.
It’s funny. I held up alright when her birthday rolled around, almost six months after she died—I didn’t hold up great great, but I help up alright—but sometimes I see cherry lip balm and it’s like she’s waiting for me at home, except she’s not and she never will be again.
That’s why I barely hit the drive-through anymore. I always hated drive-through, I liked eating in. Even if I was just getting fast food, it felt better to park and go in and get ourselves a table and eat a damn burger at the table. But Emily, she insisted, and half the time I gave in. When we first got together, I asked her why, and she said “because.” Which, when you first get together with an astounding girl like that, “because” is enough reason.
But sometime after we got married, probably a month or so after, we were at Mickey D’s, which ain’t my favorite but sometimes it’s where you go, and she told me why she liked the drive-through.
“I just like watching you drive. I like sitting shotgun and eating while you drive. It’s not ‘cause I’m in a hurry most often, it’s that I feel all happy with my feet up on your dash. Reminds me of being little, my momma driving us somewhere and getting us fast food. So if I’m going to eat fast food, I like eating it in the truck.”
Which is why I never went through the drive-through anymore. Hadn’t since she’d died.
But I had King and I had those letters waiting at home and dammit I was supposed to be getting better so I’d best act like it. I stopped at BK for a burger on my way home from the shelter, and I went through the drive-through and it wasn’t a big deal.
That’s one of the only things my dad told me about grief. He said that it’s the anticipation of pain that’s worse than the pain. You just do the damn thing, and no matter how bad it is, it’s not as bad as it hurts just thinking it over.
But my mom’s still alive and they’re still married. Sure, Dad lost his brother in Afghanistan, but losing a brother is like losing a limb. Losing your wife is like losing your whole future, present, and half your past. I think Dad knew that, that’s why he never said much.
He was right about anticipation. It wasn’t a thing, going through that drive-through. I got onto the freeway, picking at my fries with one hand, the other on the wheel. King brought his head in the window, I think he smelled the burger.
“Here you go, boy,” I said, and gave him a fry. He ate it, content, got his head back out the window.
Emotion didn’t hit me when I was picking up the food. It hit me when I got home, instead. It hit me when I sat down at the table, put a plate under my fast food burger, and bit into it.
It’s the petty things you remember.
Emily ate her meat well-done. I’d never in my life met someone as country as her who ate her meat well-done. The first couple years, she hadn’t told me, she’d just ate it bloody like I like it. Then one day, we’d been at her momma’s place while her momma was out of town, and Em
ily was cooking us burgers, and she sprung it on me.
“We’re going to be together for awhile,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. I’d been out of school a year, working with my dad. Emily was a junior still. “I sure like to think that.”
“We might be together forever,” she said, and I was all happy inside at that, though I didn’t let it show. Took me a long time to let things like that show.
“I’d like that,” I said carefully, not sure I was ready to discuss our relationship in such concrete terms just yet, even if it made me happy to think about a forever with her.
“Alright so here’s the deal, I like my steak and burgers cooked through to rubber.”
That sure threw me. “What?”
Emily just crossed her arms and gave me that stubborn look of hers. “Can’t stand the taste of blood. Don’t know what it is about it. Makes me gag a little. Don’t like any pink in my meat. If this is for real, you and me, you’ve gotta know that.”
I didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. Just nodded my head slowly. “All this time? But…”
“People are like to make fun of me about it,” she said. “So I usually don’t say nothing.”
“Alright,” I said. “Now I know.” And then I did smile, and she smiled right back.
I’d always assumed she was a picky eater, or just watching her figure or something, how much meat she left on the plate. But after she started cooking more to her taste, she’d wolf it down faster than me. Never put much weight on either, except maybe some muscle. Not that I would have minded. God made all kinds of pretty women in all kinds of bodies.
So I’d known it, when she’d lost her appetite for real. We were married by then, living together. She’d tried to hide it. She had all kind of tricks. It’s crazy how you can stir up a plate to make it look like you’ve eaten more than you have. But she’d never let a scrap of charred meat stay on her plate, as long as I’d known her. Until a year before the end.
I didn’t know what was wrong, though, because I’m an idiot. I thought maybe she was sad, or anxious. Stressed. Unhappy with me. Me and Juan at the flower shop got to know each other, because I was in there almost every day on my way home from work. I never came home late, either, not if I could help it. Pissed my dad right off, the days I worked with him instead of for myself, how I’d pack away my tools right at five and head for home. It’s not what you do when you’re doing construction, he’d say. It’s not what you do when you’re starting your own business, he’d say. It is what you do, though, when your wife is upset and you love her more than life itself and you want her to be happy. You show up on time for every meal she cooks you.
She was sick, and she hadn’t told me. Because we didn’t have insurance. We didn’t have insurance because I was starting my own contractor business. So she kept quiet about how much her stomach hurt, and she didn’t know what was wrong. I could have noticed. I should have noticed. I could have found regular work and gotten us insured. I didn’t.
I failed her.
A man should know these things about his wife.
I put my Burger King dinner back down on the plate, half-eaten, as sobs tried their best to work their way through my chest. My empty house. My empty heart.
To hell with that. Don’t cry, don’t give in. Toughen up.
Three deep breaths. Works sometimes for anger, works sometimes for sorrow.
Not this time.
I cleaned for an hour or so after dinner. Still wasn’t done, not by a long shot, but the place looked about as bad as before King tore it up. I’d done a lot of the specifics from the letter—my old clothes were back in a bag in the bed of my truck, waiting for me to donate them, and I’d done the dishes and boxed up half of them, put them in the garage in case the house was ever full again. Tried not to think too hard about when that might happen, how it probably never would.
It was time for the third letter. I sat down at the table, set out the envelopes. Two of them were open, on my left. Seven remained, on my right. I pulled out my folding knife, carefully opened the third. It wasn’t as hard the third time, opening the envelope. Not quite as hard, not quite as overwhelmingly magical. Just another step on the road to recovery. A good step, a comfortable step. Still, I took a shot of whiskey to steel my nerves. Courage comes in many forms, some of them liquid.
“Well, my love,” it started out, “your house is cleaner and it’s not empty anymore. There’s a big metal food bowl and a big metal water bowl out in the kitchen and I hope you love that mutt enough to let him into bed with you. I’m so proud of you, Luke. But this next part is going to be harder.
“I want you to tune your guitar. You tell everyone you’re tough, and you are, but deep down you’re a big softie and I bet you haven’t been playing because you remember how much I loved hearing you play.”
Emily did, in fact, know me better than I knew myself. I hadn’t even thought about why I wasn’t playing anymore, but it was that. Mostly that. Also that a guitar is a good way to let out emotions. I was having enough trouble keeping mine in.
“I really, really loved the way you were when you played music. Not just your music itself, but the way you were. You open up when the words come out of you. You let the world in, and you’re a strong man already but it makes you even stronger. So tune up your guitar. Maybe get new strings if you’ve got to. Practice. Get those callouses back.”
It wasn’t just my guitar callouses I’d lost in the last year.
“I’ve got two first memories of hearing you play guitar. The first time, the real first time, you didn’t know I was there. It was after school one day. I think you were waiting on practice. You were sitting in the back of your daddy’s pickup and you were picking at the strings and playing something I’ve never heard you play since. You weren’t singing, just kind of humming along. Maybe you made it up just then. Maybe it’s a tune that’s never been played before and will never be played again. And I was walking up through the parking lot, the next row over, and you didn’t see me, because you had your head down over your guitar, so I leaned up against the next car over and listened. I’d already kissed you, but that was the first time I felt like I had a taste, a real taste, of your soul. Of who you are to God. Of the best of you.”
I’d been trying to write her a love song. I hadn’t been waiting on practice, practice had been waiting on me. Every day for weeks, I’d tried to write her that song for a couple minutes every day before practice. Given up, eventually. I hadn’t thought about that song in years.
“Then there was the first time you played for me. You played me Johnny Cash, because you knew I loved outlaw country, and you knew you couldn’t go wrong with ‘Give My Love to Rose.’ We were sitting on top of the cab in the parking lot of, I don’t know, I think CVS, and there you were with your hat on backwards and the sun on your face and you sang to me like I was the only person in the world. Never told you this either, but that’s when I knew I was in love with you. Because love isn’t a one-way thing. Love is a relationship between two people. I knew how I felt already, but I didn’t know it was love until I heard you play and I knew you loved me too.”
I thought I’d been too chicken to tell her I loved her for another six months still, because the first time I said it aloud was that next Christmas, my senior year, after we’d eaten dinner with my family and I realized I wanted her as my family more than I wanted anything else in the world. But it turns out, I’d told her already.
“So that’s all. Just...play your guitar.”
I read the letter over once more, wiped my eyes with my sleeve, and then folded the paper up and put it back in the envelope. Onto the left hand side of the table. Three read, six remaining.
“Hey King,” I said, when I finally felt like I could speak. The dog looked up from where he was lying near the door. “Where the hell’s my guitar?”
I hadn’t seen it while I was cleaning, which meant it was in the garage.
The garage had been a mess since before
we’d moved in, because my granddad hadn’t ever really bothered cleaning the place out. But my Gibson acoustic was where I must have left it in the corner, in its case on top of a pile of junk. A pick was still stuck between the strings, the capo still clipped onto the head. The high E was busted—that was probably why I’d put it away. I’d probably been too lazy to put on new strings, even though there was a complete set in the case next to the tuner.
I brought the Gibson inside, along with the strings and a pair of dykes. Sat down on the couch, started going through and pulling off the old strings, putting on the new ones. New strings are a pain in the ass. It takes a while for them to hold a tune. But it’s got to be done, sometimes. I got them wrapped around the pegs, snipped off the extra length, then tuned the thing.
I had no idea what to play, so I just started playing some chords. A-minor, now there’s a good chord. Goes right into E major, D minor. No specific song, but it’s all the songs, also. The same pattern builds up half the songs ever written, but each one is unique. The same pattern built me up, but I’m unique.
As soon as I got comfortable, the thing fell out of tune. New strings. I retuned it, went back to playing.
My callouses were long gone, but I pushed past where my fingers hurt and kept playing. Started playing some country, some folk. Started to sing a little, cautiously. Kept retuning.
King had never barked that I’d heard him, not once, but when I started singing, he started baying, the same howl he’d let out when I tried to leave him at the rescue. A singing dog. That was alright with me. A clean house, a singing dog. It wasn’t so bad.
There were only six letters left. It wasn’t enough. I wanted letters from now until I died. I wanted to open up all six of them, I wanted to devour her words. I wanted to stare at her handwriting, at the little loops she put on her letters even when she wasn’t writing cursive. I wanted to see her little turns of phrase.
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