Wild Child: A Novel

by Molly O'Keefe

  She laughed. “See you later, kid.” And then, just to torture him, she lifted two fingers to her eyes and then pointed at him. A little Robert DeNiro, for I’ll be watching you.

  Jay vanished into the back room.

  And my work here is done.

  * * *

  Years ago, after Monica ran away, putting the kibosh on that horrible reality television show, Simone had been the darling of the tabloids. Monica couldn’t go into a store, or walk by a TV, without seeing a picture of her mother pretending to be heartbroken or comforting herself on the arm of some handsome man. Eventually, her star had faded enough that no one cared where she ate lunch, and Monica’s name was only referenced in a “Where Are They Now?” context.

  But after Monica published Wild Child and it started to become successful, Simone found her way onto another reality show. And sure, that might have been just coincidence, but Monica didn’t believe it. Monica saw her mother on the tabloids and on TV and she burned with resentment.

  But instead of sleeping with bad boys and running away, Monica showed her mother by getting on better shows and in better magazines. She dragged that press tour out as long as she could, just to shove it in her mother’s face.

  Not her finest hour. Or two years, actually.

  But then Jenna got sick and Simone became background noise.

  But now … just when Monica had decided to get her life together, to step off the island, her mother shows back up. It was as if she had an instinct for when Monica was in the midst of change and just wanted to screw it up.

  But this time, Monica wasn’t going to play.

  Everyone was talking about the fact that Simone was in town, and they seemed compelled to tell Monica where they’d spotted her. Cora saw her at the grocery store. Sean saw her at the post office. Mrs. Blakely apparently had a strained reunion with her at the library. After the vitriol-filled interview Monica had with Mrs. Blakely, Monica imagined the woman sprinkling Simone with holy water and making the sign of the cross.

  But Monica wasn’t going to retaliate; she wasn’t going to show her mother how much she didn’t care about her by ignoring her at Cora’s. That was what the old her would have done.

  The new her was hiding.

  She was ordering in, making do with the horrible in-room coffee. She tried to train Reba to pee in the sink so there would be fewer walks. But Reba was untrainable. So she paid Jay a few bucks to take Reba around the block twice a day.

  She told herself she was keeping to her room because she was working, which she was—the book had to be written. But that was an excuse.

  For a week, she’d been using Jackson as a distraction. Just as he was undoubtedly using her for distraction from the Maybream contest. And it worked—spectacularly—most of the time.

  “You’re not actually here, are you?” Jackson asked, looking down at her. His face was folded and creased into lines of worry and strain.

  “It’s good, baby,” she lied, pushing her hips up at him, gasping when he settled deeper inside of her.

  Hold the phone, she thought, there’s hope for orgasm yet.

  “If this is the show, I’m disappointed.” He grinned at her and kissed her nose before pulling away and sliding out of her. She was immediately cold in his absence and sorry that she was so distracted.

  “Jackson,” she said, putting a hand to his back. “It’s okay. I’m just …”

  “Distracted. I … understand, and don’t worry.” He tossed the used but empty condom in the garbage and leaned back against the headboard, his erection pink and hard.

  “Your mom, right? You want to talk about it?”

  She howled with laughter. How ridiculous! “You want to talk about my mom.” She lifted her eyebrow, glancing at his damp erection. “With that?”

  “It’s got a lot of tricks, but it doesn’t talk.”

  “Jackson, honestly, this is just too weird.”

  He stroked her arm, pulling her toward him. It should feel awkward—the stopped sex, her distraction, his erection. It was a mess of an afternoon, but somehow, somehow it was okay. He made it okay with his largesse, with his kindness.

  He pulled the blanket up over his groin. “I’m a man, Monica. Full grown. Not a kid or an asshole who will have sex with a woman who isn’t really interested. Just ignore it—it will go away.”

  Was it any wonder she liked this man? Any wonder that every minute they spent together sent her spinning toward someplace new—someplace she’d never been before? She was giddy and sick and … falling in love.

  “Have you left this hotel room?”

  “Today? No.”

  “You can’t hide from your mom forever.”

  “I’m working!”

  His lifted eyebrow denounced her as a liar. She was waiting to hear back from her editor on the work she’d already submitted, and he knew that.

  “Fine,” she sighed. “But … what’s there to say to her? Honestly, what will change if we talk?”

  “You don’t know until you try, right? I think you’d be crazy not to be worried about talking to your mom. It’s okay to be nervous. Or scared, or whatever it is that’s distracting you from my awesome sexual powers.”

  And that was the moment—that was when she knew. It was as though all the dams burst and she was flooded with knowledge. It was done. Over.

  I love him. I really love him.

  And instead of freaking her out, it blew her open. And she realized that every other feeling she had for any other man in her life was dirty compared to what she felt for him. It was in fact the purest thing she’d ever felt for anyone.

  Loving Jackson was the best thing she’d ever done. Ever.

  Immediately she doubted it, because that was her nature. Because she’d been conditioned not to believe that good things could happen to her. There was a chance that this was just another coping mechanism for dealing with her mom. Instead of press tours and drugs and bad sex, was she filling the holes in her life that her mother left behind with Jackson and good sex?

  She tested the edges of that theory and found it to be false. What she felt for Jackson was totally and utterly free of her mother. It was about her. About who she was and who she wanted to be.

  How … amazing! Liberating. She wanted to shout it from the rooftops.

  Delighted by her discovery, she squeezed his face, beloved and handsome.

  “You all right?” he asked, his lips pursed.

  I can never tell him, she realized, turning cold. She dropped her hands. I can’t. He won’t … understand it. Or accept it. She imagined his face, the way he would close it down—become polite.

  Oh God.

  She would tell him she loved him and he would be polite. Because she would be one more set of expectations on his shoulders—her emotions would be something he would try to handle, try to make right.

  He would try to fix it.

  And that would be awful.

  “You okay?” he asked. “You’ve gone pale.”

  She realized she had her hand over her heart, as if she could protect it from the hurt coming her way. Because it was coming, and it was going to be bad.

  “I’m fine,” she said, grappling with both this new heavy love and the equally heavy heartache loving him brought.

  But the realization that she loved him couldn’t come without notice, without commemoration. Because she’d never loved anyone before. Not really. And the fact that she could, that she’d grown up enough and grown past her mistakes enough to be vulnerable in the face of another person—that deserved commemoration.

  She deserved some commemoration.

  It took no effort to push away thoughts of her mother; Simone had already been sidelined by these new realizations. So instead she concentrated on him. On the way he made her feel. How whole and desirable and perfectly flawed.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked with a smile—a slightly confused smile, but a smile, nonetheless.

  “I’m thinking about how good
you make me feel.” She ran her hand down her breast, over her nipple. As he watched, she pulled her nipple, twisting it in a way she’d never realized she liked until he’d done it.

  She pulled aside the quilt, and his erection, which had flagged momentarily, revived, and she ran her fingers down it, tracing the veins from the top down to the base.

  “I love your dick.”

  “It feels warmly toward you, too.” Unable to wait another minute, she leaned over and slipped him into her mouth. He tasted like latex and her and she loved it. She pressed her nose into his skin, taking him as deep into her throat as she could.

  “Ah, God, Monica,” he breathed, brushing aside her hair so he could watch.

  “Tell me,” she said, lifting away from him, looking up at him, breathing over him. “Tell me how I make you feel.” She kissed him once, hard, before putting him back in her mouth. She would settle for this, settle for the dirty words spilling out of his lips about how sexy she was, how exciting. She pushed him in so deep, she felt tears burn in her eyes. Part of her, from the old days, the old her, told her to be ashamed, but she couldn’t muster up that emotion.

  Loving him made all of this right. Made all of it okay.

  He pulled on her hair, lifting her off of him. His kiss was wild, wet. His control was breaking and she loved it, loved being on the receiving end of a passion slipping out of its restraints.

  “On your stomach,” he whispered and pushed her down onto the mattress. She was drenched between her legs, wanton and hungry, and she lay across the bed as he’d demanded, the sheets rubbing her nipples. She spread her legs a little so he could see what was waiting for him.

  He groaned just before he covered her and she felt tiny under him. He lifted her hips and in one smooth thrust buried himself deep inside of her, deeper than ever. He pierced her heart.

  She braced herself as best she could, curling up and into him, using everything she had to pull him along with her, to break that control.

  “Monica,” he breathed against her neck, across her cheek. He braced a hand by her face and she sucked his thumb into her mouth and bit it. Hard. Wanting him wild. Wanting him to be changed, if by nothing else then by this magic they shared.

  He braced his thighs wide and lifted her hips, holding her as he thrust heavy and fast into her.

  “Come on,” he breathed. “Come with me.”

  She slipped a hand between her legs, using her fingers to catch up, to stay with him.

  “Yes!” she cried as it all started to coalesce. The love and pain amplified by the fact that this was all he wanted from her, this was all they would really share. And it was so good she could almost convince herself it was enough.

  Crying out against her pillow, she exploded, broken by her love.

  Chapter 21

  Monday morning, Monica was ready to venture out into the world, emboldened by her secret love. Proud of herself for being brave enough to feel it, if not express it. It made her feel new. Powerful.

  It kind of made her feel like singing.

  Only to be brought up short by the sight of her mother and Turtle Man sitting near the windows in the hotel lobby, reading the newspaper in sunlight so perfect, so bright and solid, it looked fake. Like they were on a movie set.

  In a heartbeat, anger eroded her pride. And she knew hiding out in her room had not brought her any closer to dealing with her fury and resentment toward her mother. Just the sight of her slammed shut all her doors and locked all her windows, sealing her inside her head with all her demons—all her worst instincts.

  As she approached their little sunlit scene, she caught the scent of Shalimar and it produced a whiteout in her head. “This is harassment, you get that, right?”

  Simone looked down at the stack of papers in her lap. “It’s the news.”

  “Don’t be cute, Simone. This is bullshit.”

  “Join us,” Simone said. “We’ll discuss it.”

  “No,” she said. “There’s nothing to discuss.”

  “Your mother has a lot of things she’d like to say to you,” Turtle Man said, and Monica spun.

  “I don’t care who the hell you are,” she lashed out at the man. She stood at the edge of the rug, as though the hardwood floor had a repellant property. “But you don’t know me. And you don’t know her. Not really. So stay out of it.”

  “You blew off our meeting,” Simone said.

  “Well, you blew off my childhood, so I guess we’re even.” Monica took a lot of comfort in being awful. Being awful made her feel strong around her mother, as if those purple eyes would never see her, really see her.

  Simone carefully folded the paper, running her thumb along the crease. “I think we should meet. I think … there are a lot of things we need to say.”

  “I’m not very interested in what you have to say. I think I’ve made it pretty clear. You can hang out in this town and hang out in my hotel and talk to my friends, but it’s not going to change anything. We’re not going to talk.”

  “What about London?” Simone asked. “Greece, France? You don’t have questions about those years anymore?”

  The red roosters, the blue room. The dreams of croissants and the tears on her face.

  “It won’t change anything. We can talk about it, I can ask you all these questions, but it won’t change me. The damage … the damage is done.”

  “Oh.” Simone swallowed. Her hand reached out and then fell back to her lap. “You’re not damaged,” she said.

  “How the hell would you even know?” Monica asked and then stopped. She held up her hand, forcing herself to calm down before her head started spinning. “Why are you here, honestly? What do you want?”

  “I want …” She glanced at Turtle Man, who nodded, as if giving her permission or supporting her, and Monica wanted to gag. “I want you to be happy, and I think maybe … if we talk …”

  “It’s too late, Mom. Too late.”

  The inevitability of it all suddenly crushed her. The rock of her reality was an immovable force. Loving Jackson when he didn’t love her back wasn’t new. Or special. This was what she did. She loved people who could never really love her back. It was the lesson she’d learned from her mother, repeating itself. Monica stormed out of the Peabody like she was being chased out of her own skin, with nowhere to go. Homeless all over again. It was as if all the work she’d done in the last years, to be her own woman, to bury that child she’d been, was gone. And the wild child was back.

  Or maybe she never really left.

  “Businesses have seen a twenty percent increase in revenue,” Brian said. It was Monday morning again, four days until the Okra Festival started on Friday morning, and the town was electric. Walking down the street felt good. Cora’s Café was full of smiling faces and miraculously, for the first time since Jackson had taken over the job as mayor, this budget meeting didn’t suck. “The Peabody is sold out for the next month of weekends and Cora has started taking reservations,” Brian continued.

  “The Okra Festival has gotten more attention than it’s ever gotten. Businesses as far as Masonville have reserved booths,” Jackson said, thrilled about that fact, if for no other reason than that it would make good television. “The chili cook-off actually has five entrants. A restaurant from Memphis is coming to challenge Cora.”

  Brian laughed. “Well, good luck to them. I’ve had some of Cora’s chili and there’s no way it’s getting beaten.”

  “We’ve had to reorganize some of the events,” Jackson said, flipping through the calendar, “for the live taping. The parade and street festival will start Friday morning, eight a.m., instead of Saturday.”

  “When does the crew arrive?”

  “Thursday night. We’ll have the pageant that night, too. We’ve sent out fliers and the schedule will be in the newspaper on Wednesday.”

  “Well, then, let’s keep our fingers crossed that the Okra Festival goes off without a hitch.”

  Jackson was past crossing his fingers. He was c
onsidering offering Sean as a sacrifice to the gods to ensure the Okra Festival went smoothly.

  “You know I doubted the validity of this contest,” Brian said, gathering up his files. “But even if we don’t win the contest, with the increased tourism the town is already winning.”

  It felt that way; it really did. The town had new life, but without the new factory it would fade away. Vanish as soon as the parade was over.

  When Brian left, Jackson turned back to his computer. Only to stare at the dark screen.

  It was happening; all the work was paying off.

  Soon there’d be a factory working in this town again. Jobs. A tax-base increase. The schools would be fully funded, and everyone would be okay. He imagined the future and it was bright, brighter than he’d ever dreamed.

  He heard the door shut and he was dragged from that fantasy back to his office.

  It was Monica standing there, her back to the wall, fire in her eyes, a different kind of fantasy altogether.

  “Hey!” He jumped to his feet, happy to see her.

  “Hey yourself,” she said, dropping her laptop backpack into the chair Brian had just vacated.

  “What’s up? You seem … tense?” She seemed wired to blow, surrounded by thunderclouds and twisters. Dangerous.

  “I am.”

  “Your mom—”

  “I don’t want to talk about Mom.” Monica reached over and locked the door, the click loud in the silence.

  “What do you want to do?” The blood getting hot and thick in his veins knew the answer.

  “Fuck the mayor.” She pulled off the ancient Duran Duran tank top she wore, revealing a utilitarian white bra. His lingerie-loving lover obviously hadn’t gotten dressed this morning planning to seduce him, which made him wonder, briefly, distantly, what was going on.

  Her denim skirt landed in a heap at her feet. She wore black panties, a tiny vee between her legs. “Sit down,” she ordered.

  He had no choice; his free will had vanished. He was hers to command. He sat in his chair and wheeled away slightly from the desk, giving her space to slip in. She pushed aside the paperwork and his keyboard and sat down on the blotter, putting one leg up on his chair, her other foot pressed against his crotch.