Wild Child: A Novel

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Me?”

  “Your mother.”

  Oh.

  “One of the nurses smacked your mom across the face. Swear to God, we all just about tackled her, but … your mom stopped screaming. The nurse got right into your mom’s face, looked right into her eyes and told her to be quiet. That she was scaring you.” Jerome ran a hand over his head; the dark curls sprinkled with gray didn’t move. His wedding band flashed in the light.

  You’re a good man, she thought. I’m sorry I’m making you remember this. I’m sorry.

  “She shut right up. Closed right down. Never seen anything like it. Bruised, bloody, broken, and then … just not there. Just—” He shook his head. “I can’t explain it.”

  “Inside herself?” she asked, remembering her mother on that bed in Greece, her open unseeing eyes.

  “Yeah. That works. Inside herself. Like as far away as she could get.” Jerome took a deep sigh and gave the coffee cup one last nudge. “You get enough? Because I’m running late for the parade meeting over at The Pour House.”

  “Yes. Of course. Thank you.” Monica made a good show of stacking her notes, turning off her recorder. Look at me, I’m a professional writer, totally okay with everything you just said.

  Jerome laid one big black hand over hers. “This is a weird job you got.”

  She laughed. “Tell me about it.”

  “You know, you should come to the parade meeting. Have some fun, forget these terrible things for a while.”

  “Parade meetings are fun?”

  “Ours are. It’s in the big garage beside The Pour House. Come. It would be good for you.”

  Jerome tapped the table once and headed out the door, making the bell ring as he went.

  Monica looked around, surprised to see an empty restaurant. Cora stood behind the cash machine, counting money.

  “Oh my gosh, Cora, I’m sorry,” Monica said, shoving her stuff in her bag. “I didn’t realize you’d closed.”

  “Well, you were talking pretty good there. I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

  Clearly, talking about her mother had put her way off balance, and she suddenly found herself blinking back tears. Grief was a tourniquet around her throat and she could barely breathe.

  “But if you’re done,” Cora said, “I’d like to get going to that parade meeting too.”

  “Of course.” Monica managed to smile while she stood. She took a twenty-dollar bill over to Cora, who only stared at it.

  “For our pie,” she said.

  Cora shook her head.

  “No, Cora, come on.” She pushed the twenty a little closer. Cora ignored it.

  “I heard some of what you were talking about with Jerome,” she said, in that utter no-nonsense way she had. “And we got something in common.”

  Monica’s hand fell to her side. No, she thought, with grief for this woman who put so much love into her food, who’d created such an enviable business. Monica didn’t want Cora to have any experience with the conversation at the table.

  “Abusive asshole fathers,” Cora clarified.

  “My …” Monica cleared her throat. “My father never touched me. Not once.” Always my mom, she thought. Every single time.

  Cora stacked her twenties, then put a rubber band around them. “Then you’re lucky,” she said.

  And never looked up.

  Monica walked back to the Peabody on leaden legs. She let herself into her room and Reba stood up from the corner of the bed, shaking herself so hard she fell over.

  “You are ridiculous,” she told the dog for about the thousandth time.

  Reba barked, once. A succinct “screw you.”

  Monica put down her bag and picked up the leash from the doorknob. There was no way she could sit in this room, not with the ghosts and the memories having a party in her head. She recognized this feeling from her misspent youth—this anxiety, this impatience, this anger mixed with grief—it had driven her to awful places. Dangerous men, stupid decisions. It was a hole in her that could not be filled. Could never be filled with the junk she’d tried to fill it with.

  I have to find a new way to cope, she realized, staring at Reba, who only stared back. I can’t pretend it isn’t there. I can’t ignore it or wish it away.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Monica said.

  * * *

  Jackson dropped the plastic spoon back in the bowl of red meat that Sean was calling chili. “This is awful,” he said.

  Cora, next to him, nodded. “Really bad.”

  “No, it’s not!” Sean tried in vain to defend his concoction. He took a bite from his own bowl and made a big show of chewing it and swallowing it down. But his eyes were watering.

  Jackson wiped his mouth, wishing he could use the napkin to wipe off his tongue.

  “You know I’m entering the cook-off,” Cora said.

  “So what?” Sean demanded, red-faced. “We should all just not enter? Just crown you the winner?”

  Jackson was aware of the cameras rolling behind him and he walked away from the arguing duo, hoping the cameras would follow.

  They didn’t. Damn it.

  More than the usual suspects had shown up to the parade meeting because the camera crew was there. Sean, always looking to make a buck, was selling beer alongside his terrible chili and since people were nervous around the cameras, they were drinking it. A lot of it.

  Jackson was doing his best to steer Dean, Vanessa, and Matt away from the crowds who were just there to gawk and drink, and so far he’d been pretty successful, but he had doubts about his ability to keep up the show for long.

  And frankly, looking around the room, he realized that no one seemed to be actually working.

  Including his sister. After dragging her to the meeting, she sat in the far corner near the old Chamber of Commerce float that had been stored here since last year.

  Alone.

  After the scene at the art camp, he’d dragged her to pageant rehearsal and confiscated her phone. All of which she’d accepted silently. Contrite and belligerent at the same time.

  And now she sat alone and he felt … bad.

  He’d taken three steps toward Gwen when the side door to the old garage creaked open and Reba the mutant dog made an entrance, followed by Monica.

  Her eyes immediately found him, as if she were a compass and he was True North.

  And all that shit they didn’t talk about, those big black spaces they kept secret from each other, from the world—none of it mattered. Seeing her, it wasn’t just that the night got brighter, or the room warmer, or any of that. It was that finally inside the building filled with people he’d known since he was a child there was someone who knew him.

  She was more than a friend, really. A comrade. A kindred spirit.

  Nearly thirty years old and that had never happened to him before. He scratched his chest, suddenly uncomfortable with the feeling; it was like being handed one too many things to carry.

  “Hi,” she said, almost shy. “I’m crashing your party.”

  “It needs crashing.”

  “I can see that.” She glanced around. “Are you actually making the floats tonight?”

  “The Chamber of Commerce one, yes. Vanessa’s request.”

  “Vanessa has a lot of those.”

  “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Please do.”

  “I’ll be happy when Vanessa is gone.”

  She smiled and her purple eyes danced, and he was taken aback by how they seemed to be in accord with each other. Her smile and her eyes told the same story about Monica this evening and it was a good one, as happy as he’d seen her outside of her hotel room. Entranced, he stepped a little closer. Reba danced around his feet. “We still on for tonight?”

  Her lips parted and a breathy gasp escaped. God, he loved that. He really did. Lust roared through him, a wave obliterating everything but her. Everything but how she made him feel.

  “Yes.”

  “I need you to do exactl
y what I say,” he whispered, his eyes never leaving hers. She nodded. Spellbound. He knew if he touched her, she’d be hot. Growing damp. Cautious and careful in her desire, she didn’t fling herself into it, didn’t rush into sex. It felt like such a goddamn privilege to turn her on.

  He wanted to roar, throw her over his shoulder, and run away with her back to her hotel room.

  “When you go back to your hotel room, leave your door open.”

  She nodded.

  “Have a drink.”

  She blinked.

  “Turn off the lights.”

  “Now you’re getting pushy.”

  “Take off your clothes and touch yourself.”

  She gasped. A soft small sound that turned him on so hard and fast he got dizzy for a moment. Lost in her eyes.

  “Can you do that?”

  She nodded, her pupils dilated. The purple nearly all swallowed up by the black.

  “Can you do that and think of me? Of what I’m going to do to you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her lips curving into a sly smile. Just for me, he thought. That smile is just for me. And it was so much better than her frowns.

  He stepped back from the cocoon they had managed to make between the wall and the door and his back to the room. They weren’t alone. No one was listening, but they weren’t alone.

  He took a deep breath, to center himself, to pull himself together, and turned only to see Vanessa halfway across the room, holding a camera on them. She held up a thumb, her eyes alight with excitement.

  “I’ll … I’ll be right back,” Jackson told Monica.

  “I don’t need a babysitter, Jackson.”

  “Okay, but don’t try Sean’s chili.” He fought the urge to kiss her, to press his lips right to that place on her forehead revealed by the black sweep of her hair. He ignored the urge, unsure of what to do with it, and walked over to Vanessa.

  “Now that’s a twist,” Vanessa said. “The mayor and the Wild Child?”

  “It’s … it’s not what you think. There’s nothing between us.”

  “Well.” Vanessa grinned knowingly. “The important thing is that on tape, it looks like there is. And that stuff plays, my friend. It will be eaten up—viewers will be breaking their thumbs to vote for Bishop.”

  Here he stood once more at a divide in the road. What exactly would a better man do? He didn’t want to use his relationship with Monica for votes. But he needed to win this contest.

  In the end, he did nothing. Vanessa walked away knowingly and Jackson told himself he was just trying to take care of the town.

  She won’t care, he told himself, but knew it was a lie.

  As a rule, in Bishop, Monica had encountered only kindness and some mild celebrity worship. Shelby had been the only one ready with her judgment and her upturned nose. And walking around the garage, she got a few more nods and careful smiles, as if people were unsure how to approach her. A few men watched her with something altogether different in their eyes. Those were the men who had reread the sex parts in her book. And how odd, after years of becoming inured to men thinking the worst of her, that now she wanted to shrink away from it.

  Her armor was dented. Rusted. Full of battle wounds. She could no longer pretend to be a version of what they expected.

  But Jay waved when he saw her, using his whole arm to do it. Ania brought over her parents to meet her, and they were both very kind, if slightly embarrassed. The younger kids who recognized her from the art camp made her a part of an elaborate obstacle course they were running around the adults.

  She wasn’t alone, and her soul, though barbed and over-sharp, was … quiet.

  Reba drew a crowd of people, for whom she twitched and preened. Monica found herself no longer annoyed telling people about the breed.

  All in all, it wasn’t awful.

  And every once in a while, she looked up and saw Jackson watching her. Smiling at her. Every single dirty thought in his head right there in his eyes.

  I’m in trouble with him. Real trouble. The kind of trouble she’d never, ever thought she’d be in.

  Luckily, Sean was a fantastic antidote to all of it.

  “Hey!” he called, standing behind a folding table, a Crock-Pot in front of him beside a bunch of plastic bowls and spoons. “You here to try my chili?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, grateful for his cheerful and easy acceptance.

  “Don’t do it,” Cora warned as she went by, her arms full of tissue-paper flowers that people were tucking into chicken wire on the float. “Nearest doctor is thirty miles away.”

  “Hilarious, Cora,” Sean said as the woman swept right on by. “Don’t listen to her. She thinks she owns the market on food in this town.”

  “I’d love some chili,” she said, and Sean beamed as he spooned some up for her.

  “So … this garage,” she said, looking around at the soaring ceilings and cement floors. It was about as big as a house. “This is yours?”

  “Yeah. I bought it a year ago thinking I would start brewing my own beer, you know. Microbrew style.”

  “Great idea.”

  “Yeah, but my brother Brody hasn’t been home long enough at one time to help me set it up.”

  “There isn’t someone else you can have help you?”

  Sean looked at her for a moment, as if gauging whether or not to trust her with a secret. In the end he shrugged—choosing not.

  Sean handed her a bowl of chili. “Bon appetite,” he said with absolutely no attempt to pronounce the words correctly. She smiled at him, inexplicably fond of the man at this moment. He wasn’t pretending to be anything.

  And then she took a bite of his chili.

  “Oh my God,” she said, choking it down, because she couldn’t actually spit it out. “That … that’s awful.”

  “Come on!” he cried.

  “No, it is. I’m sorry. Is the … is the meat even cooked?”

  Sean grabbed the chili bowl and scowled at her. “Get,” he said. “Go away.”

  That was clearly her cue to leave, and she was all right with that. She’d broken up her loneliness, managed to brave a few steps off her island.

  But Jackson, over by the float, lifted his hand, calling her over.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to try the chili?”

  “You did. I wish I’d listened.”

  “Well, I need your help. What do you think?” he asked, holding two tissue-paper flowers. “Light green or dark green?”

  “For what?”

  “For the okra on the float.”

  She laughed. “You can’t be serious.” Reba ran in circles around her. Vanessa swung her camera over toward them.

  “Stay,” Jackson whispered, glancing sideways at the camera. “Just stay for a little longer.”

  She wanted to stay. With him. Oh. Oh no. She was in such trouble. And helpless to get out of it.

  “Dark green,” she said.

  And stayed.

  Jackson stared at the gold safety lock popped backward out of the hotel-room door, keeping it cracked.

  She did it. She actually did it.

  He’d rushed here. After Vanessa had left and Gwen walked home, Jackson nearly ran out of that garage. Desperate to see Monica. Desperate to have her.

  And she’d done what he’d asked. The door was open.

  Want was a twitch in his muscles, a fire under his skin, and he pushed open the door and took a step into the hushed darkness of her room. The air was warm and faintly damp and he thought of her in the bath, those freckled shoulders. The three inches of thigh above the water, covered in drippy trails of bubbles.

  His foot made a soft noise on the carpet and he heard her breathing on the bed.

  There were a dozen things he could say. Dirty words. Kind words. A joke or two, but something compelled him to be silent. The trust of that cracked door—that trust, it just wrecked him. Left him stunned and humble.

  And so, silent, he came to stand next to her. The moon came through the
sheer curtains just enough that he could see the gleam of her bare skin in patches. Snapshots. Her thigh. Her belly. The slice of her left cheekbone. Her arm came out of the shadows, and the glass in her hand glittered as she set it down on the table.

  This felt … inevitable. Whether or not she’d worked up the courage to tell him her secrets, whether he’d worked up the balls to try to seduce her out of her own head—this moment felt unavoidable. Like a destination they would have come to no matter what detours or wrong turns they might have made.

  The bedsheets rustled as she bent her knee, revealing the dark shadow of curls between her legs. Drawn, powerless, he touched her knee, running his hand up the outside of her thigh to her waist. She arched into his hand, curved and curled under his touch. Open-handed, his palm slipped up her rib cage to cup her breast. She was warm, trembling in his embrace.

  He felt an impatient tug on the hem of his shirt and in answer he ripped it off, then pulled off his pants. He stood naked over her. Her fingers, soft and cool, touched his erection. Curled over him, around him. Pulled.

  They hadn’t kissed. They’d barely touched, and he was hard as stone. His blood pounded beneath his skin.

  This … this wasn’t how he’d imagined it happening. He’d had this image of him controlling things tonight. Of being the big-man seducer and not giving her a chance to think, to talk herself out of what she felt. But here she was with her own control. Her own agenda.

  Fuck. That was hot. Surprising and beautiful.

  “Condom is on the table,” she whispered. Even in the dark he found it without a problem. Tore it open with his teeth, slipped it over his skin, hissing because it felt so good. His own touch burned.

  He put his fists on the bed near her shoulders, braced his knee beside her thigh, and held himself over her, the heat filling the inches between them. He felt so close to breaking, so near his own edge; he’d felt that way every time he walked into this room. She sent him there with her trust, with her skin and scent. Taking his time, trying to pull himself under control, he slipped his fingers between her legs, his thumb finding the heat and dampness of her. She gasped, groaned, pushed herself against him.