9 Letters

by Austin, Blake

  She let me in. She made me take off my shoes by the door, and she led me by the hand through her living room, down the hall to her bedroom.

  It was sparse. Just a queen-size bed with white sheets and white covers. The walls were a soft blue, lit by a single lamp in the corner of the room. She closed the door on King and Muffin, who had tried to follow us in. But as sad as they looked when they saw the door shut, we heard the two of them playing happily in the living room soon enough.

  “It’s kind of a mess,” she said, though I couldn’t tell what mess she meant. I suppose there was a hamper of laundry on the floor.

  “It’s not a problem,” I said.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, patted the covers next to her, and I sat too. For some reason, I felt like a kid again. In good ways and bad ways both. Like I was awkward, barely knew what to do.

  Maggie, she’s gone right for it. She’d known what she’d wanted (or at least what she thought she’d wanted) and she’d just dove right in. I knew Rae wouldn’t do that, so I tried to put myself in her shoes, figure out what she needed me to do.

  I put my arm around her shoulder, and she slipped hers around my waist, and I brought her to me. We kissed. More gently this time, less frantic. We had plenty of time.

  I let my fingers run up her neck, gently, up from her shoulder and into her hair. She arced her neck back in pleasure, so I brought my other hand up to join the first one.

  Then I grasped her hair tight. Not pulling, just holding, close near her scalp. I held her head in place as I kissed her neck, letting my tongue trace its way up to her ear.

  She took a deep breath in. “I feel safe with you,” she said. “I don’t usually. With men.”

  I let go of her head with one hand, gripped her shoulder.

  She leaned back down on the bed, her legs still dangling off, and I let myself fall into bed next to her.

  She rolled on top of me, kissed me hard. I kissed her back.

  I couldn’t tell you how long that kiss was. Two lonely people, happy in bed, with all the night stretched out in front of us. It was a long kiss.

  Then I stood up, unbuttoned my shirt, took it off. The undershirt next. She sat up in bed, put her arms around my hips, and kissed my hard belly. She let her tongue drift down toward the top of my pants.

  “May I?” she asked. I nodded.

  I undid my belt, and she slipped my pants down. I was growing huge inside my briefs, and she ran the tip of her finger along the length of me through the fabric. I could scarcely stand how much I wanted her. How much I wanted her hands on me, her mouth on me.

  “Talk dirty to me,” she said. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  I don’t talk dirty. I don’t talk much at all.

  But yesterday I would have told you I didn’t dance, either.

  “I want your hands on me,” I said. “I want to get hard in your hands, then I want your mouth on me, your tongue on me.”

  She slipped a hand inside my briefs, up through the leg, and circled around the base of my cock.

  “What will you do to me if I do? What do I get?” She looked up at me, her eyes glinting, and I knew exactly what she wanted me to say.

  I never, not in my life, would have imagined a girl as sweet as Rae could talk so hot.

  “I’ll fuck you,” I said. She smiled.

  “You can do better than that,” Rae said. Her hand tightened around my cock.

  “I’ll hold you down on your bed, wet you with my tongue, then slide my dick into you.”

  “And?”

  She took her hand off of me and it was like the breath left my body. I whimpered, even. I couldn’t help it. But then she pulled down my briefs, and my dick sprung free, and her hand was back around it.

  “I’ll push deep inside you,” I said, “and I’ll fuck you like it’s all I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

  She put her mouth on my dick, then. She went at it with the same playful curiosity she’d shown when we kissed earlier. But never in my life had anyone done so well what she was doing. She let spit dribble down my shaft, then started to slide one hand up and down while the other stayed firmly at the base, holding me in place. The tip of her tongue lapping my head in hungry strokes, her eyes on me the whole time.

  I let out a moan, a long, loud moan. I’d always been so quiet.

  “Don’t stop talking, or I’ll stop sucking,” she said, pulling her lips off of me for just a second, then running her tongue around the edge of the head of my dick again.

  “I’ll hold you by your hips as I ram into you, deep into you. Strong and hard. Like you want it.”

  She put my cock almost all the way into her mouth. Just for a second. Just showing off what she could do. Then she went back at it with her hands, pulled her mouth off of me, just jerking me off with her lips poised right in front.

  “Alright,” she said.

  “Alright what?” I asked.

  “Hold me down on the bed. Wet me with your tongue, then slide your dick into me.”

  “I want you,” I said.

  She took off her shirt, then her white bra. Her chest was freckled, her breasts pert and full. Her nipples were hard and pink. I knelt down in front of where she sat on the edge of the bed, then kissed her between those breasts, then cupped one in my hand and sucked her nipple until she cried out in a mixture of pleasure and pain.

  I pulled my hot mouth away from her, leaned back to unzip her jeans, and helped her slide them down over her perfect legs. She had soft skin, a lot of curves. I liked that. I took off her underwear, then grabbed her calves and pulled her towards the edge of the bed, making her squeal a little. Then I pushed her thighs wide apart and ran my tongue up the line of her pussy.

  “I’ve been wet for you since we got out of the truck,” she said.

  I could taste it. I started lapping at her in earnest, and she wrapped her legs around my back, holding her up against me.

  “In a second, I’m going to let you go,” she panted. “You’re going to get a condom, and I’m going to watch you put it on. Then you’re going to hold me down and fuck me gently. I want you to be careful right now, because I want to fuck you for a long, long time.”

  I stroked myself as she talked like that. Things you never know you want until you have them.

  She let me go, and I stood up. I went to open her bedside table drawer.

  “They’re in my purse,” she said, grinning. “I brought them to the picnic.”

  “You brought them to the picnic?”

  “Well, you’ve got a pickup, don’t you?”

  What a woman.

  I got the condom out from her purse and she stared intently at me as I strode nude across the room back toward her, my cock hard in front of me.

  “Can I trust you?” she asked.

  “You can trust me,” I said. I meant it. I keep my word.

  I slipped the condom on, and she moved to the center of the bed, her posture suddenly shy.

  I climbed on top of her, kissed her. She let me fall into her, and her legs opened up around me. I found her opening with my hand, guided the tip of my cock into her, and watched her face as I slid slowly in.

  She opened her mouth, breathless and voiceless. She didn’t breathe in again until I was all the way inside her, buried deep. She wrapped her legs around me and I kissed her hard.

  “You want this?” I asked, my voice gone rough.

  “Mmmhmm,” she whimpered.

  I thrust. Slow, hard, deep.

  “Mmmhmm,” she whimpered, harder that time.

  I built up speed, just the slightest bit of speed. But our bodies stayed locked together, and I fucked her hard and slow like she wanted. Hard and slow. She moaned the whole time, from someplace deep inside her, like I’d given her permission to let it out. I told her she was a good girl, that her pussy was sweet, and I told her what fucking her felt like. I gave her what she needed, because she’d told me what she wanted to hear. I could see her defenses falling away one wall at a
time with every whisper, every thrust of my cock. Somewhere in there she started crying a little, holding me tighter, but I never stopped.

  After an eternity, she rolled me over, too turned on to wait any longer, and she rode me fast and hard. I clung to the headboard while she rode me, and soon she was screaming and bucking on top of me, letting go of everything she’d been holding onto for so long. She leaned down, kissed me, kept riding me. Then she leaned up again, put two fingers on her clit, and started touching herself while I fucked her from underneath.

  She was moaning louder, and she moved to meet my thrusts in quick, sudden bursts. Letting me slip almost out of her, then thrusting me deep inside her again, fast. She breathed heavy, through her mouth.

  “I’m coming,” she said. “I want you to come too.”

  So I started fucking her with everything I had, and as she crested into orgasm, I kept fucking her until I could feel myself about to come too. I pulled her down onto me, put her mouth against mine, and came like I’d never come before.

  It lasted minutes. It must have. I don’t know. I just laid on the bed, inside her, her naked on top of me, and both of us were shaking as waves of orgasm rushed through our bodies like it was one body.

  “I’ve never...” I said.

  I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Come like that? Come that hard? Come together with someone on the first date? Watched a girl touch herself on top of me? Been so completely and utterly sure that sex was the best thing that ever happened to me?

  All of those.

  I pulled out of her, my hands on the base of the condom.

  “I felt you even through the condom,” she said.

  She curled up with her head on my chest, and I pulled the sheets over us.

  “I feel safe,” she said.

  She was crying a little bit. I could hear it in her voice.

  “You are,” I said. “You are.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sometimes, right before I open my eyes in the morning, I realize I’ve got no idea where I am. Today all I knew was that I’d had good dreams, dreams about running with King, but when I woke up I knew it wasn’t my bed. It took a minute or so to come to my senses. But when I did, I felt good. Rae was on one side of me, King on the other. The window was open a crack, letting in the morning air, and I heard birds in the distance.

  I watched Rae for a little while as she cuddled Muffin. For a terrier, that dog sure took up a lot of space. No wonder Rae had such a big bed.

  I’d assumed I’d feel guilty, but I just didn’t. I was getting my life back together. I was definitely awake, though the sun was barely over the horizon, so I got myself out of bed. I got sort of dressed, with my jeans and my undershirt, then went out to the kitchen to start making myself some coffee.

  Make enough for both of us, actually.

  Once she woke up, I’d ask if I could raid her fridge and make us up some breakfast.

  Her kitchen was split off from her living room by just a counter, and her laptop was sitting on that counter surrounded by a mess of books and papers. Her work stuff, I’d assumed.

  I couldn’t really imagine doing work on a computer. I know how important they are, it’s just hard to wrap my head around doing something for money that didn’t mean putting my whole body into it.

  Seemed to go alright for Rae, though. But hell, was I going soft? Was I becoming a city guy? Going from a woman who grew up on the rodeo to a woman who wrote for a living.

  Jesus, I really am an idiot. That kind of stuff doesn’t matter at all. Hell, I’d grown up in the city myself. Was still here.

  That’s the kind of nonsense I had running through my head while I was looking through cabinets for coffee filters. But my elbow hit a wire, and her laptop screen came to life, and there was her Facebook.

  I wasn’t snooping. It was just, you know, open. I wouldn’t’ve clicked on anything, looked at her history, none of that—even if I knew how, which I didn’t. I wouldn’t be able to stand someone doing that to me, either. But it was open, and I couldn’t help but look.

  Because there in the upper-left-land corner of the screen, there was Emily Cawley’s smiling face. Her memorial page. Rae had found her memorial page.

  I started scrolling through. Didn’t count as snooping—I knew that page inside and out.

  It was skewed more towards her Kansas City friends than her rodeo friends. Her rodeo friends, it’s not that they didn’t love her, not that they didn’t miss her. Just that less of them were on Facebook. And she’d left their life for a long time.

  All those pictures of her, of me, of us with our friends. Happy at the bar, happy at a concert. That wedding photo with the slingshot and Emily’s wicked, happy grin. Happy, happy.

  What an evil thing, how we make ourselves look happy for photos. You don’t realize it at the time, but when you’re looking back and all you see are smiling happy faces, you start to wonder what’s wrong with you now.

  Happy, smiling faces. Paired with the worst words anyone would ever have to write:

  “We’ll miss you, Emily.”

  “The first day you came into Pre-Calc I knew we were going to be friends.”

  “All those secrets, all those things we whispered to one another in the fields and parking lots and everywhere, those will go with me to the grave.”

  I found one of Natalie’s posts, one she’d posted on the anniversary of Emily’s death. “You never had to say it. We’re not the kind of family that needs to say it. You loved me. I loved you. I thought we’d be old cowgirls laughing at the tourists. I miss you.”

  It’s like Natalie’s sister and my wife were two different people. Emily, she’d never been shy to say she loved me. And I couldn’t, not for the life of me, imagine her laughing at anyone.

  I kept scrolling through it all, till I found my last post: “Been six months. Not a day’s gone by that I don’t miss you.” It was simple, and it said something like what it needed to say, but it hadn’t been what I’d typed. The first time I’d typed it, I’d written: “Not a morning’s gone by that I don’t wake up to think that somehow, you were going to be there next to me.” I didn’t want to say something that personal, not to the whole world. So I deleted it, tried again. Took me four tries to say what I needed to say as simply as that.

  It was unsettling, the thought of Rae going through that page. Like she was looking into a diary of my pain, of our friends’ pain. Natalie’s pain. All of it. I hadn’t written what I’d written thinking that one day some new girl was going to go back through and read it all.

  If Rae’d gone back all the way, she’d have seen where I wrote some stuff a hell of a lot more personal than just “I think about you every day.”

  That’s when I saw the book next to the computer. A Simple Guide to Grief. It was dog-eared, highlighted. I started flipping through it.

  “Sexual intimacy is, for some, a welcome relief from mourning.”

  “Let people help you. Let the people who want to help you do so.”

  “Don’t let yourself become afraid of emotional intimacy.”

  And so on, for pages and pages.

  Jesus Christ.

  I felt violated.

  I’d made it on my own for more than a year. I didn’t need Rae to make me feel better. I hadn’t gotten with her as part of the mourning process. I’d come to her because I’d become strong again, because I’d been getting myself ready to let someone into my life.

  And she’d come in assuming I needed saving.

  It just felt wrong.

  I poured myself coffee, but I didn’t pour any for Rae. She was asleep. Better leave her that way. I snuck back into the room, grabbed the rest of my clothes and my dog, then finished dressing in the living room.

  I cast one more look at Rae. I couldn’t handle the kind of conversation I’d need to have with her. Not yet. If ever. I put my boots on, and I left.

  There was a truck in my driveway. It wasn’t blocking my way, it was over on the gravel side.
But it was in my driveway. It looked familiar.

  I pulled in, got out, unloaded King, and I saw Natalie sitting on the front steps, the door ajar behind her.

  Right. Natalie’s truck.

  Why the hell...

  “Have a good time last night?” she asked. She stood up when she saw me. I’m not one to get intimidated by anyone, but she came close. Something in the way she was standing there, I remembered something my mom had told me.

  My mom, she’d worked hard as hell to make me a decent man. I’d like to say she succeeded. One thing she’d told me, though, one thing that stuck: “Luke, the thing you’ve got to know is, most people who get murdered get murdered by someone they know. Most women who get murdered get murdered by their husbands. Whoever you marry, she’s going to know that. No matter how much she loves you, she’s always going to remember that fact.”

  Most people get murdered by someone they know. So I wasn’t scared of Natalie, because I just don’t scare that easy. But I was damn sure aware of her and the fact that she had her concealed carry license.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Out with some other woman?” she asked.

  I kept my hands where she could see them.

  “Why should you get to go out and have fun and fall in love again? Huh?”

  “It’s not like that, Natalie.”

  “You get to have girlfriends again. Fall in love again. Maybe one day you’ll get married again. But me? I’m never going to have another sister.” Natalie was breathing hard, but there were tears in her eyes and I knew her words came from pain, even if they looked like anger.

  She wasn’t going to hurt me. I knew that by then. But I didn’t know how to handle it, whether she needed me to say something, try to make her feel better, or just stand there and listen to what she had to say.

  “No one will ever replace Emily,” I said. But there wasn’t sadness in my voice. There wasn’t any emotion at all, because it took everything I had to keep the anger out of it.

  “I read the letters,” she said.

  “What?”

  Jesus, I was furious. Had to keep my temper under control. Of course I’d never thought to ask Natalie for her house key back. Never had a reason to. Not till now.