“Now I know that y’all know that I like to give Luke a hard time,” she said. “And I know y’all know I never really approved of my little sister going all-in on a big city guy. Especially since they’re both so young.”
She paused for dramatic effect.
“But that’s not how I see it, anymore. Because Luke’s my family now. So I’m going to keep giving him a hard time, because that’s what family’s for.” People laughed. I might have even laughed.
“I’m going to just eat humble pie,” Natalie said, “and admit that maybe, just maybe... Well, shit. Luke’s the best thing that could have come my little sister’s way. Even if he can’t ride a damn horse to save his life.”
Dave took the mic next, swaggering in that way of his. “You’re not the only one who likes to give him shit,” Dave said. “But I’m not up here to embarrass our man Luke any more than he can do for himself.”
That was good for a few laughs. I was blushing. I’m not the kind of man who blushes. I’d thought.
“No, I’m here to embarrass Emily and Luke both. I’m here to tell you about what happened when Luke here was prom king and Emily was prom queen. Now, it was bad enough that a damn baseball player made it to prom king, leaving our star quarterback...he’s here somewhere, isn’t he?”
“Leave me out of this!” Damon yelled from somewhere.
“Leaving our star quarterback out in the cold. And by cold I mean necking with Stacy Chapman right outside the fire exit. So it was bad enough, right, but more than that, can you believe it, Emily here wasn’t even a cheerleader. Hell, she wasn’t even a senior. Or a junior. Our sophomore prom queen.”
He lifted his solo cup, and everyone took a drink.
“So Luke and Emily, they started getting paranoid, as soon as they realized they were going to win. They started thinking that people were going to prank them. Dump blood on them or take over the DJ booth and play the Monkees or something and try to make them sing it karaoke. Now I’m not saying that that wouldn’t have been the best idea I’d ever pulled off, if I’d pulled it off. I’m saying that these paranoid kids became convinced we were out to get them.”
“You were!”
“Well maybe. But then we realized we didn’t have to embarrass them, that they’d embarrass themselves. If...if we told Emily that the way that it’s done in Kansas City is that the prom queen takes off her sash and puts it over the principal and asks him to dance. You know, the traditional prom queen, principal dance.”
Everyone was howling with laughter. Emily found me in the crowd and put her hand around my waist so we were both blushing together instead of alone.
“But I’ll tell you that as soon as Luke saw what was happening, he stepped right off that stage and he walked right up to Ms. Murphy, our eighty-year-old vice principal too stubborn to retire and too old to die, and he asks her to dance too. Because damned if Emily is going to make a moron of herself alone. And that, that right there, is why Luke deserves someone as completely and utterly astounding as Emily Cawley. To them both!”
He raised his cup, and everyone toasted.
The speeches went on from there, and I listened and laughed. But I only listened with the back of my mind. The front of my mind was just overwhelmed with emotion.
Then we were dancing. I don’t dance, but that day I did. I heard that steel guitar on the loudspeaker, and it was time, and Emily strode across the dance floor, took me by the hand, held me close.
It was like we were floating, right up off the floor. Her up against me, tight up against me. I don’t know fancy steps, but I know how to keep a rhythm, and we weren’t awkward. We just floated across the floor.
All too soon, it was over. Everything is always over too soon. You blink, and your first dance is over. Blink again, the wedding is over. Blink again, and...and...and thoughts you can’t linger on.
We went home, to our new home. There wasn’t money for a fancy honeymoon right away, but we’d save up. A cabin on a lake. If not that summer, then the next. That’s what we told each other. We’d ride in, on horses. A cabin on a lake with nothing but a horse path leading up to it.
But that house, right there in Kansas City, Missouri, that was better than any cabin on any lake in the world. It was ours.
Emily hadn’t even seen inside until I carried her over the threshold. She gasped—I’d been in there cleaning and fixing and rebuilding every day, and it looked pretty good.
But I didn’t set her down on the ground floor, I went right up to the steps, right up to the bedroom, and set her down in bed.
“Well I’d ask you to join me under these sheets,” she said, “but I’m a married woman now. Wouldn’t be proper.”
“Whoever married you, he’s the luckiest son of a bitch that’s ever been born.”
“Get into bed, Mr. Cawley.”
The window was open, just a crack, letting in the cool autumn air. I took off my jacket, set it on the back of the chair. Unbuttoned my shirt, folded it, set it down. Then I pulled off my undershirt and when the cold air hit my chest, I was finally sure this wasn’t a dream.
I knelt down and kissed her. It never got old, kissing Emily. Every kiss was the first kiss. Tentative, but full of desire. Heat building up between us as we explored what each of us wanted, needed in the moment. I put my hand on the back of her neck, held her close to me, and she let out a little happy sigh. Then Emily slid her hand up my back, over my shoulder and down to the center of my chest. She looked into my eyes, a happy smile on her lips.
“This is mine now, Luke Cawley.” Her palm was warm and firm against the beat of my heart.
In that moment I realized I had never wanted anything more.
“It’s yours,” I told her. “Always been yours.”
Her fingers went into my hair, her nails running along my scalp. I cupped my palm around her cheek for just a moment, then stood up again in front of her. She was watching me. I took off my pants. Unbuttoned them, let them slide down my legs, and stepped free. I climbed up onto the bed, straddled her, and knelt down to kiss her.
I was floating again.
Her lips were soft against mine. She had such wonderful lips. I put her hands up behind her head, pressing into her. She moaned.
Looking down at her in the faint light through the window, I put my hands on her thighs over the silky fabric of her dress. Inched my hands up towards where her legs met. She was squirming under me, already breathing heavy, knowing what was in store. That’s the beauty of being with someone you already know. I’d learned how to read her. She could tell me, without telling me, what she wanted, what she didn’t.
I started rubbing my thumbs up against the V of her mound from outside the dress, dipping my head down to kiss the underside of her jaw and down the line of her throat. Her mouth fell open and she let out a soft moan.
“Lie back,” she said, and my pulse pounded at her command.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She laughed and settled on top of me, the satin of her dress cool against my hot skin. It was all I could do not to rip that dress right off her.
“Em—”
“Shh.”
I got goosebumps as she ran her fingers up and down my arms. She stopped to massage my shoulders with her thumbs, then kept exploring my chest. I let her hold me down with one hand while her other slipped inside my briefs and touched my hips, sending a shiver of excitement through me.
Then she kissed me again, while I was there underneath her, and her hair cascaded down either side of her face and all I could see was her. All I could think of was her.
She stood up, facing me, and slipped the dress down off her shoulders, shaking her hips a little as she wriggled out of the voluminous skirt. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of her standing there.
White lacy underwear. Risqué, like I’d never seen on her.
“I get to be naughty, now,” she told me, as she unhooked her bra and her perfect breasts fell loose. Her pale pink nipples were hard already, and
my cock started to grow against my briefs.
She ran her hands down to her hips, hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties, and started to slide them down slowly. So slowly. Good. I wanted to savor the moment.
I wanted to savor every moment.
She was naked, and perfect, and I was staring. Hell, I might have been drooling, I was so hungry for her. My dick was too hard, so I slipped off my briefs. I let my thumb go down to the base of my cock, started lazily touching myself while she teased me. She took a half step closer to the bed, then reached out and ran her fingers along my skin, trailing from my feet, up to my knees, to the inside of my thighs. Her fingers just lightly grazed the side of my cock, then kept going up. Her nails felt amazing against my nipples, and I drew in a sharp breath when she lingered there, but then her fingers were up over my collarbone, to my chin. When her finger got near my lips, I took it in my mouth and sucked on it, licking it, teasing it. She let her other fingers explore my mouth, then leaned down and kissed me again.
It was like falling into a night sky in the middle of the desert, nothing existing outside of us, the hot press of our mouths and tongues, the breathless gasps, her hands reaching down to grip my shaft in a tight squeeze. I groaned.
Then I reached down, took her hand. I met her gaze, questioning.
“Now,” she said.
In one motion, I pulled her to me and threw her down onto the sheets. She giggled a little and I climbed over to her, spread her legs apart, and met her eyes again.
“Now,” she said, louder this time. She didn’t like to start slow, Emily.
I ran a trail of kisses down her neck, slowly licked her nipples until her breaths came fast and hard, then resumed kissing down her belly, and I kept going from there. I’d let my stubble grow out just long enough to where it wouldn’t hurt her, and I found her pussy with my tongue and my mouth. My hands held her thighs, lifting her lightly up from the bed while I teased her with my tongue in short, quick strokes.
She was moaning already. That girl could ride a bronco, that girl had a voice for show business. I loved it. I pulled her close against my face, let my tongue move deeper and open her folds, lick lightly across her clit.
Then harder, the flat of my tongue pressed up against her.
“A girl comes faster the second time in one night than the first,” my brother’s wife had told me, and it was probably the only sex advice I’d ever been given that did me any good.
I worked her hard, moving to slip two fingers inside her, and Emily guided me. We drove her slowly up to climax over the next God knows how long and she was screaming and banging on the wall with her fists while I licked her clit. It’s the kind of thing you don’t get tired of, tasting your wife.
“Enough,” she said, panting, and I pulled my fingers out of her and let her fall down into the bed. “Enough. I need more. I need you.”
I straddled her waist, ran the tips of my fingers along her cheek, down her neck, circled her breast.
“Let me just catch my breath first,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
We’d been using condoms for a year already, but she’d gone on the pill a month before our wedding. She’d made me keep using a condom until our wedding night, because she’d wanted it to be that much more special. We’d have kids, one day, but there was no hurry. We’d wait until my business got going. Our whole lives were in front of us.
“Alright,” she said. “Gentle, though.”
I leaned down, kissed her ear. Put my palm against the side of her neck, while my mouth drifted down to her throat and shoulders. I licked at her nipple, then bit it, ever so gently, just to hear her breathe in, sudden and deep. I looked up and we locked eyes. Just stared into one another’s eyes.
“I love you,” I said.
She spread her legs, and I knelt between them, let my cock find her—she was so wet. I thrust in, gently, and she moaned, and I moaned. She lifted her legs, and I went as deep as she could take me. It was like we were built for one another. She was tight around me, and she looked up at me with that look that said she loved me, and I fucked her. Gentle, for awhile, but soon enough she was on top, riding me, her nails digging hard into my shoulder.
Then I wrestled her over, kissed her hard, and kept my pace strong and steady until she came again, and as she came, I came, our mouths pressed together, our bodies pressed together. Our lives, our lives were pressed together. I was inside her, and our lives were intertwined.
She curled up against me, and her breathing grew regular, and she was soon asleep. I drifted off, thinking I could just stay there forever. Stay in that house, with my wife, forever. I had no idea that in all likelihood, she was already sick.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It gets easier, waking up alone. That’s something I hadn’t even hoped for. But it does. I woke up feeling pretty good, in fact. Before my alarm. I was sore as all get out, but that wasn’t so bad. I’d had a dream about Emily. A nice dream. Just us on a walk somewhere in a nice neighborhood. In the dream, she’d had her arm through mine and I’d been happy. When I woke up, that happiness from the dream started to fade.
I checked my phone. No new messages but that one from Maggie, the one I was a bastard for not getting back to.
“Hey,” I texted her. “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you last night. Been working a lot, kind of ignoring my phone. Sure, we can talk sometime. Maybe later in the week or something?”
I didn’t want to talk with her, because I knew that road pretty much led to her bedroom and to guilt and to continuing to be a jerk to both Maggie and myself. But I couldn’t ignore her text, either.
I went into the bathroom, lathered up, and shaved off almost a week of beard. Usually, I would have just hit it with trimmers. But damn, why not shave proper? Then I hopped in the shower and let all the dried sweat flow off my body.
I got out, put on my briefs, started stretching. Working through the worst of the knots that sleep had put into me. My chest was sore from swinging the hammer and my legs were sore from humping lumber. Went downstairs, microwaved some leftovers, and went to start a pot of coffee.
I was out of coffee.
King ambled down just then, his tail wagging, came into the kitchen expecting a nice breakfast. I fed him a bowl of dried dog food.
He looked up at me like he wanted to complain, and I looked down at him like “hey, you’re a dog. I’m giving you dog food. Deal.” He ate the dog food. I ate my leftovers.
I washed up, scrubbed down the cast iron I’d cooked in the night before, and dragged me and my dog out to the truck to head to Heartland Habitat. I was just about running on time. But I didn’t have any coffee, so I stopped off at Starbucks.
By the time I made it to Habitat, it was a quarter past seven.
“You’re late,” Morris scowled.
“Ran out of coffee,” I said. “Got you one. Got it black, since I didn’t know what you liked.”
He reached out and took the cup I was offering him, and maybe his scowl turned itself down a notch. Maybe I imagined that.
“Why don’t you get me your cell number,” I said, “so I can give you a call if I’m running late.”
“Better yet, why don’t you just show up on time?”
That’s not the kind of grief I’d take from a guy my age. Not even a boss, to be honest. There’s a reason I’d rather work for myself. But Morris wasn’t my boss, and he definitely wasn’t my age. I guess you just gotta let old crotchety men be old crotchety men sometimes. It’s part of their charm. And besides, I’d left him to load up the truck by himself—a new load of lumber was in the bed.
His scowl disappeared when King ran up to him, though, and he squatted down to give my dog a good pat on the head. I couldn’t decide if King liking Morris spoke well of Morris or if it just meant the two were conspiring against me behind my back.
I climbed up into the passenger seat after King loaded up in the bed. I let the coffee and the wind and the mu
sic take me away from my troubles while that truck took me away from Kansas City. There was some spring rain coming down light on the windshield, but working out in the rain was something I never bothered to mind.
Only the two women were still there from yesterday, Judy and Georgia.
“Little bit of rain and the boys go packing,” Judy said, greeting us with a smile. “Nothing left but the real men and us women.”
Her daughter Georgia offered me a rain slicker, and I put it on and pulled up the hood. Most of the site was tarped off, but someone—and I knew it wasn’t me—had left the nail gun out in the rain.
“Know how to deal with this?” Morris asked, holding the nail gun as water ran out its tip.
“Pretty much,” I said. “I’ll re-oil it.”
He handed it to me and I took it under the tarp. Didn’t take but ten minutes. And the sun came out from the clouds.
“Bet you your truck that those good-for-nothings will find their way over here now,” Judy said. She was ripping up cement forms.
“Hey Morris,” I said, holding the nail gun still. “Since I just dried this out, can I...”
“Nope,” Morris said.
He was inspecting some of the framing from the day before.
“Get over here, bring a claw hammer.”
I went over to where he was looking.
“Tear out these nails. We’re going to build it better.”
Ten years ago, I would have told him the truth, that he was looking at a section someone else had framed. No way I’d let my work have bent nails in the finished piece. But I was grown up, so I kept my mouth shut. He either knew it already or he didn’t, and putting the blame on someone else—even deservedly—wasn’t a thing a man should do.
“It’s not good enough. Just because we’re building a house for free doesn’t mean I’m going to let it be shoddy. Do it better this time. Rip them all out.”
“Some of them are alright,” I said. “Hell, most of them.”
“I said all of them, didn’t I?”
I didn’t say anything, but I guess my face said a lot, when I started in on ripping out the nails.
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