One More Time

by Caitlin Ricci

  “Cookie shake and a double burger please,” I told her. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, not really, but I had to give her my order since I didn’t have a “usual,” and besides, if I acted off, people would start asking me what was wrong, and I couldn’t have handled that.

  “You got it, punkin.” She wrote it down, then gave me a little wink. The nicknames I had in this town, mostly because they’d all seen me grow up as the chief’s kid, sometimes bordered on ridiculous. Other times they annoyed me. Roxie could call me whatever she wanted, though. I’d put up with it from her, because after my mom died she stepped in sometimes. The guys on the force, plus the people in Rosie’s, had really raised me during the rough patches after her death, when my dad was having trouble. I’d done my homework in a booth with a strawberry milkshake, and got rides to school in patrol cars when my dad was too depressed to do much more than say hi to me.

  It hadn’t always been hard, but now, after what had happened to Simon, I could see a little of what he’d been through with me. I’d been really young when Mom died, but for years afterward Dad had rough patches where it was like she died all over again and he was just beginning to grieve. Even now it happened occasionally, and I wondered if I’d feel the same at times too, once Simon was really gone. He’d felt gone to me for five years, though. I hadn’t moved on, not at all, but I didn’t have relationships anymore either. I had sex, a lot of it, but I didn’t let my heart or my emotions get involved. If they didn’t want me, so what? If I didn’t want them, that was no big deal either.

  I looked up to see Caleb sitting down across from me and forced my thoughts away from Simon so Caleb couldn’t see that I was upset. I’d known him for about two days now, and I was pretty sure even people who knew me wouldn’t be able to tell something was off, so it was unlikely Caleb could. But I wanted to be careful just in case.

  “Hey. Decide that you needed to eat?” I asked.

  Caleb smiled at me and I smiled back. It was easy pretending everything was fine.

  “Yeah. I finished a package of cookies and realized I needed to eat more than that for dinner.”

  I laughed, and I was glad it sounded natural. “Well, here is definitely better than cookies. I can promise you that.”

  He started looking through the menu, and I watched him. “What do you do?” I asked after a few minutes.

  “Graphic design. How are the chicken tenders?”

  I wasn’t going to say my mom’s food wasn’t good, so him asking was kind of a moot point. “They’re nice.” Roxie brought out a basket of fries for me and a side plate for me to put the ketchup on so I didn’t get it all over my fries.

  “What’ll you be having, Trent’s friend?” she asked.

  “Roxie, this is Caleb,” I said. “He just bought Rocky Creek Stables.”

  He put the menu down. “Hey. Iced tea and chicken tenders please.”

  “You got it.” The menus stayed on the table, and she went to put his order in while I started on my fries. I pushed them toward him so he could have some too, which he did, so I was glad Roxie would bring out as many baskets as I could eat. I’d need all the fried, salty comfort food I could get that night.

  “Rocky Creek Stables?” Caleb asked as he finished one fry and reached for another.

  I nodded and thought it was weird he didn’t know what the place he bought had been called. “When I was a kid it was a touristy place. Your property backs to government land so the Smiths used to take people through there on the trails. It was kind of a big deal when they stopped the rental business since, as kids, we used to go onto their property and feed the horses. My first job, when I was fifteen, was cleaning out stalls there until I was old enough to lead some of the rides.”

  “Huh. No wonder everyone seems so intent on me getting horses back out there. Even my youngest nephew asked me today if I could buy him a horse and keep it on my property.” Caleb shook his head, then wiped his hands on his jeans.

  “How many nephews do you have?” I asked.

  He pulled out his phone and slid his finger across a few times before handing it to me. I looked down at a picture of the same pretty woman who was up on his bookshelf. Only this time she was older and had three little kids with her. The biggest one was almost as tall as her. “That’s my sister, Marie, and her three kids. The shortest is Ben, Robbie is the one in the middle with the red hair, and Daniel is the one that’s nearly scowling beside her. He’s fourteen.”

  Caleb rolled his eyes, and I smiled. “Cute kids. I can see some horses in the background.”

  He nodded and took his phone back. “Yeah. They show them. Mostly in western pleasure. Sequined shirts, black leather chaps, saddles with lots of silver on them.” He shrugged, and I wondered why he didn’t seem to like horses at all. Sure, some people just didn’t like them. But I wasn’t one of them, and he had all that land….

  “But you don’t?”

  Caleb made a face. “Show horses? No. Not at all. I can ride, but I don’t show. It’s not something I’ve ever been interested in. Her kids seem to like it, though, so that’s great for them.”

  “But you do like horses?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I do. I guess. I mean, riding is fun and they’re beautiful animals.”

  “Then why not have some?” I might have been pressuring him, or being a pest, or whatever else. But he had all that land, and it was already set up for horses. And he liked them. He’d just said that. From his house and knowing that he’d paid for it in cash, I knew his reasons weren’t that he couldn’t afford them.

  Our food came before he had a chance to answer me. Then for a while there, we just ate, making soft noises as we enjoyed the food. I was drinking my milkshake when he made the first little moan that sounded so much like a sex noise, I nearly choked on my shake.

  “Sorry,” I said, coughing. “Went down the wrong pipe.” It hadn’t, but I didn’t want him to know the real reason I’d had an issue with my straw.

  “This is really good food,” he said as he finished off his meal.

  I nodded. I knew it was. I was halfway through both my burger and my shake and mostly done with the basket of fries. I didn’t know if I’d be ordering more or what my plans were for the rest of the night. I didn’t want to go home, though. Not just yet at least. Simon hadn’t ever been in that townhouse, so it wasn’t that.

  It was more like I didn’t want to just sit at home thinking about him. But getting on the dating app and finding some random person to take to a hotel didn’t really work for me that night either. Most nights I would have been fine with that. I liked hooking up. I liked the lack of complications and how there weren’t any expectations. I never saw them again and even if they did text me and ask me for another night, I always said no. I let them know it had nothing to do with them, but I didn’t do repeat visits. I was an ass, and I’d been called worse than that often enough. But really, these guys were on a hookup app. What did they expect? A ring, a key to my townhouse, and permission to get a dog after one good fuck? Not likely. I didn’t ignore their texts or play other games like that, but I didn’t do begging either. Some guys had to be shut down hard or else they wouldn’t get the hint that I wasn’t interested in them for anything more than a one-night stand. That didn’t make me evil; it made me uncomplicated.

  “I can’t take care of a horse. I had a car accident and sometimes my back acts up,” Caleb told me, bringing me back to our earlier conversation. “If I had someone that could take care of it, I might have one, but then it would be more their horse than mine. I didn’t mean to buy a horse property. I just wanted the biggest house I could afford in a tiny town.”

  “Why Thornwood?” I asked. No one really moved to my town. Plenty of people moved out, usually to go to college in Denver or northern Colorado near Fort Collins. But very rarely did people choose to move to Thornwood. It was weird.

  He smiled and pushed away his empty plate. “Honestly? I took out a map of the US, closed my eyes, and picke
d a state. Then once I’d decided on Colorado, I did the same thing with a big map of Colorado. My finger landed on Thornwood, and I called a real estate agent that worked in the area.”

  I stared at him. “You seriously decided to move here because your finger landed on our town?”

  Caleb gave me a little laugh and nodded. He was blushing again, and I shook my head, not believing what I was hearing. “Sounds crazy, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah, just a bit,” I agreed with him.

  “But I can work from anywhere, and once I walked in and saw those big windows in the living room, I fell in love. So I bought the house, moved in, and now at some point I need to go buy a lot of furniture because I moved from a one-bedroom apartment to this huge house, and it feels so empty.”

  I was still shaking my head at him. “Wow. That’s just… okay, then. You’ve got to be the craziest rich person I’ve ever met.”

  Caleb looked a little surprised at my assumption. “I’m not that rich. I got a good settlement for the accident, but I still have to work.”

  That was a little better, I guessed. But I was still really shocked at what he’d done.

  “Do you want to come over?” he asked.

  I frowned as I wondered what he could be getting at. “I thought you didn’t want….” I looked around the diner as I let my voice trail off. People there knew I was gay, because it wasn’t like my sexuality had ever really been a secret, but at the same time, I didn’t want them knowing I was into casual sex either.

  He held up one of his hands, stopping me. “I don’t. I just figured we could watch a movie, have a beer, eat some cookies. As friends.”

  I relaxed a little because I’d been wrong and my earlier thoughts were right. Caleb wasn’t interested, which was fine. I was still interested in him, but I could handle rejection and besides, friends were always good to have. “Sure. A movie sounds good.”

  We were done with dinner, so I put some cash down on the table and started to get up.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Caleb told me.

  I shrugged, because paying for dinner didn’t really bother me. “It’s fine. I’ll meet you back at your house, then?”

  “Sure.” I followed him out, waved to Roxie, and then watched him get in his SUV before I got into my patrol car. He really needed to get those tags looked at, and I figured I’d mention it at some point, but no one in Thornwood would give him a ticket for that. We didn’t really give tickets. We talked to parents, gave hard lectures on speeding, but unless someone was actually being reckless, no one on the force gave tickets to the people in town, and if it warranted a ticket, it usually meant we’d be taking them to jail too. Which was a pretty long and fairly boring drive to the nearest big town with holding cells. We didn’t have any in Thornwood.

  Getting to his house from the diner took less than five minutes, about the same amount of time it took to get anywhere in town. It was pretty late, so I went slower to watch out for any deer that might cross the road. Most people took it slow, but every once in a while we got some people who enjoyed speeding through our little town. The people who got lost on their way to gambling up at Black Hawk and Central City and ended up zooming through town were some of my favorite tickets to write. People rarely considered the road to be residential, but the truth was there were plenty of kids in town who played by the streets or tossed balls across the road to each other, even after I’d told them not to a dozen times before.

  I parked next to Caleb’s SUV and stretched my legs to catch up to him as he walked up the steps. A movie sounded good and would probably give me the distraction I needed tonight. I hoped so anyway.

  Half an hour later, I was restless, and though the movie was supposedly a pretty good one, I could barely focus on it. I curled my fingers over my knee and tried to force myself to relax. Maybe getting a guy in Denver wouldn’t be such a bad thing. At least then I could exhaust myself with someone. I didn’t want to do that, especially tonight while my thoughts circled around Simon, but I didn’t know what else to do in order to get my racing heart under control. I felt caged, like I needed to stretch out or go for a run or… just something to get myself back under control.

  “You okay?” Caleb asked a few minutes after I’d made the decision to leave but hadn’t yet figured out a polite way to excuse myself.

  I started to nod, then finished off by shaking my head. “Not really. Look, I’m sorry I came over. I’m not in a good space right now. I should probably go.”

  He looked disappointed as his expression, one of mild curiosity, turned into a frown. He nodded, though, and I got up from the couch. “Okay. See you later?”

  “Of course.” I was at the door, and I should have just opened it and gone right back outside. But… I ran my hands through my hair. I was too messed up for this, for friends, for hanging out. Caleb was nice, and as a friend he could have been great. But I didn’t need a friend right then. I needed someone to screw and never have to look at again. I needed someone who would let me treat them like a sex toy to vent my frustration about what had happened to Simon, about losing the only person I’d loved. And even if the accident hadn’t been my fault, in my mind I could hear Cassandra screaming at me the way she’d done that first night in the hospital. It was all my fault because I’d fallen in love with Simon and he’d fallen in love with me and if he hadn’t, then her big brother would still be around for her. She was wrong, but she was so right too.

  Caleb put his arms around me, and once again I realized I’d been crying. “I’m not good company right now,” I told him, as if that weren’t completely obvious by the way I was crying and shaking.

  He nodded and released me. I thought he was letting me go to deal with my problems in the only way I really knew how to: naked on top of someone else. But he took my hand and pulled me back to the couch. I sat after his gentle shove to my stomach. I could have stopped him, could have just moved out of the way and left like I should have. But restlessness warred with frustration within me and so much of me just wanted to stay. I liked Caleb. It wasn’t just that he was the only gay guy I knew of in Thornwood. It was that he smiled, and I felt like smiling too—even now when I didn’t really want to. He put one of his knees on the couch beside my hip, and I looked up at him. I didn’t know what his plan was, and part of me was scared.

  “What were you asking me for this afternoon?” His voice was quiet. He’d turned off the movie when I stood up, since the TV behind him was now completely black.

  I licked my lips and weighed my options. I didn’t want a relationship, couldn’t handle one even on my best days, and he’d said no to one. The easy way out of there would have been to tell him I wanted to be serious with him. I could scare him by saying I wanted to move in. After two days of knowing me, that would probably make anyone run for their lives. But I didn’t want to shut him down like the persistent guys on my app. I still wanted him to be around, and so I simply shook my head and left my hands on the couch, even though I wanted to touch him.

  “Sex,” I replied simply. I watched him, judging his reaction for myself. He pulled his leg off the couch, but he didn’t go far as he sat down next to me, facing me, with one leg pulled up under him. It wasn’t a rejection, not really, but it wasn’t the reaction I was expecting either. I’d figured him for the kind of guy who would have turned me down flat. He didn’t come across at all like one of the guys I toyed with. I chose needy, easily controlled men who let me fuck them and then leave them. If I misjudged them and they turned out to be a bit more clingy than I’d anticipated, it was usually easy to get rid of them.

  He was built for sex with a great body, but he didn’t move as if he was looking for his next dick and he didn’t talk like it either. He seemed like all he wanted was a friend, and I couldn’t be that for him right now. Maybe the next day. After all it wasn’t as if either of us was going away anytime soon, but tonight I couldn’t be a friend, not when all I wanted was to forget myself with someone else. And I wasn’t asshole e
nough to do that to someone I wanted to be friends with. So I tried to get up again, but he wrapped his fingers around my wrist.

  “I’m no good right now,” I told him as I covered his hand with my own. I’d pry his fingers off my wrist if I needed to. It wouldn’t even take much, just me putting my fingers around his thumb and manipulating his hand off of me. His hand would go wherever I moved his thumb. I knew that. But I didn’t do that, and I didn’t make myself stand up. I was a coward and a horrible person. That’s all I could think to explain why I sat there and let him straddle me. He bent down and kissed me. His mouth was soft and his kiss gentle, like he was scared of something. I kissed him back, but I was a lot rougher. And I put one of my hands behind his head, right on his neck, so he couldn’t pull away. I was hard, because I’d been so worked up and still was, but having him on my lap with his thickening cock pressing against my stomach through his jeans and the thick material of my uniform made it even more impossible for me to do what was right.

  Caleb found the fly of my pants and pressed his palm against me. I jerked back, because he surprised me, but it didn’t take me long to settle down and let him rub and squeeze me through my uniform. This wasn’t right; I didn’t mess around with guys in my uniform. And I didn’t want to lose Caleb as the good friend he could very easily be. But he opened my pants, pushed my briefs aside, and found my cock. I opened my mouth and shot my tongue between his teeth. I should have let him go. I should have pushed him off me and told him that tonight just wasn’t going to work. But he was hot, ready, and wanting me. And I was weak for letting him.

  He was good with his hand, but a hand job wouldn’t have fixed my problems tonight, so I reached to the button of his jeans and took him out. He was nearly fully hard and already a bit wet on his tip. I rubbed his head and stroked his length until he was panting and shaking against my chest. I didn’t know if he had a bed already set up in the house, but really it didn’t matter. Sex was just as easy on the couch. Hell, his kitchen island would have worked just fine too. I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and was glad I’d left my holster and gun locked up in the car. It was one less thing to get in the way.