by A. J. Downey
“A couple hours.”
“A couple of hours? What were you doing?”
“Watching you,” he murmured and caressed the side of my face, leaning in for a kiss. I gave it to him, blushing, and a little self-conscious about any potential morning breath. He leaned back, and as they ever did, his soft gray eyes slayed me.
“What happened? I mean, is it over?” I asked quietly.
“I can’t give you any details, but yeah, Baby. It’s over,” he said with enough certainty, I had to smile.
“Good, because I’d really like to get back to saving people rather than hurting them.”
He rolled his eyes, “You and me both!”
I searched his face, “You mean that?” I asked and he tipped his head to the side, considering.
“Yeah, I do, but to be honest, painting houses pays me more… Speaking of which, I kind of need to get back to it today.”
“So soon?” I pouted.
“Storm only bought me some time, not enough.” He sighed, “Trust me, I’d rather be right here… with you.”
“It’s okay,” I said, “I should really put in more applications and send out more resumes, I haven’t gotten anything yet.”
“Ah, well, it’s the medical field, bureaucracy at its finest. It moves at the speed of light on the ground when you’re understaffed and overworked, but you get up into the suits and talking heads of any hospital, it’s all budgets and finding the right person for the job and they act like they got all the time in the world.”
“You don’t sound bitter at all,” I said dryly, rolling my eyes again. He smiled and held me a little tighter.
“Saw a lot of really good nurses turn bitter and blow out when I was a medic, the only people that kind of bullshit hurts is the patients in the end… There’s a rough and ugly side to medicine they don’t teach you in school.”
“Yeah, I know. I was in the advanced nursing program and did a rotation of hands-on training in one of the busiest emergency departments in the state. It was eye-opening, to say the least.”
“Yeah, well down here, we’ve got Florida Man, too… so don’t forget that.”
“Florida Man? What is that, some kind of superhero?”
He laughed, a bitter barking sound, “More like a super villain, Florida Man is what the internet calls it, but it’s a high instance of super bizarre and fucked up cases. Polk County is the worst offender. I think it has something to do with a lack of infrastructure in place to handle the mentally ill, and we definitely have a high rate of drug use down here. For sure that system is overloaded.”
“Okay, so give me an example of Florida Man in action,” I said and he thought for a second. I rested my chin on my hand across his chest, and relished the warm contact.
“Best main-stream media case was that bath-salts case a few years back where the guy on bath-salts chewed the homeless guy’s face off.”
I jerked back, and couldn’t keep the horror off my face, “Ew!”
“I once had a case where this caregiver left this old woman to lie on a couch for so long, bedsores developed, and she ended up healing to the cushions, she was literally fused to the couch, we had to take cushions and all on the stretcher and take her to the hospital. Never did hear how they got her separated.”
“Oh, my god!” I jerked back even further at that one.
“Florida Man in action,” he said and sighed.
“Yay, just one more thing I get to look forward to,” I uttered unhappily.
“Pretty much. Human beings do some seriously fucked up shit to each other. The good news? At least you get to come home to someone who gets it, and you don’t have to censor yourself. Talking helps… I only got to talk to my partner. Corrine had a weak stomach for those things. Probably because she’d lived it.”
“I saw the scars in the photographs, do you mind if I ask what happened?”
He was quiet for a moment and pulled me back down to lay on his chest. I closed my eyes to listen to his heartbeat while he mulled over whether he wanted to talk about it or not. I was surprised when he did…
“I met Corrine on a call, my partner and I were called to this shitty apartment in this shitty part of Portland.”
“Maine?” I asked.
“Oregon, actually. Anyways, her boyfriend at the time had flown off the handle, had carved her up but good. Slashed the side of her neck, stabbed her multiple times in the upper left anterior of her chest, she was bleeding out and a total mess. We got her to the hospital, but I couldn’t forget her, you know? Just something about her eyes…”
He paused for a really long time, and I thought he was done talking, but he picked up again, “She was staying in this battered women’s place, about six months later, when another unit was dispatched to it for something or other. She asked the crew to take me a note, had remembered my name and everything. Invited me to come by the coffee place she was working at so she could buy me a cup and say thank you. The rest is history.”
“Aw, that’s sweet. Sounds like something out of a romance story you’d see on TV, or read in a book.”
“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?” he gave me a squeeze and rubbed a hand up and down my arm in a firm caress. I snuggled into him knowing any minute we’d have to get up and face the day, and sure enough, a few minutes later, he heaved a giant sigh.
I groaned, and he chuckled, “Please don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” he said and with a grin that was purely devilish, I wrapped my fingers around his jutting cock.
“Mm, seems like it’s a little late for that,” I said playfully.
His eyes slipped shut and he dropped his head to the pillow. I loved that I could have such an effect, and it urged me to stroke him lightly with my hand, sadly he stopped me, wrapping his fingers around mine to still my motions.
“To be continued?” he queried and I smiled, leaning in to kiss him.
“Absolutely,” I whispered against his mouth.
“Okay,” he agreed and swallowed hard, and I relinquished my hold.
We got up, he got dressed and so did I, and neither one of us looked fancy. He went down the hall towards the kitchen and diverted at Marlin and Faith’s room.
“Yo, Marlin. I need my cage back, bro,” he called out, rapping his knuckles against the closed door. I slipped past him down the stairs, intent on getting coffee started, because let’s face it, coffee is both the blood and the life, and my caffeine system had way too much blood in it, it was time to thin it out.
Nothing came down just as I was grinding the beans I’d found on the countertop, he sniffed the air and groaned, “God, yes please.”
“It’ll be a few minutes,” I said and finished loading the coffee maker, hitting the switch.
“Mm, come here then,” he said and I straddled his lap, kissing him until the coffee maker gurgled its last. Loving that I was with a man who wanted to make out like teenagers every chance he got. There was something seriously sexy about that.
“Let me fix your coffee,” I whispered against his lips and he smirked.
“Just hook me up with an IV,” he said.
“Good lord, the day they hook us up with an intravenous caffeine delivery system is the day we’d never sleep again.” I got up and set about fixing two cups, holding up cream and sugar and fixing his to his liking with the requisite amounts he rattled off.
“Gotta sleep sometime,” he said stretching.
“Like when you’re dead?” Marlin asked, coming heavily down the stairs, my sister ghosting down right behind him.
“Like when I’m dead,” Nothing said, nodding.
I fixed my sister a cup after handing Nothing his and taking my first sip, and asked Marlin how he took his.
“Black, thanks,” he said and I made a face.
“Heathen,” I uttered and he raised an eyebrow, on the unbattered side of his face.
“Actually, I’m the purist, you’re the heathen for watering that shit down with your froo froo little creamers a
nd sugar and shit. Give it to me straight, no frills; no gimmicks.”
I laughed a little and handed him his coffee. It wasn’t long before the whole house was up, and I was brewing another pot. Nothing, in the middle of all the hulabaloo of getting everyone situated, slipped up behind me and with a light kiss to the side of my neck, left with the quiet promise of “See you later.”
Just about everyone scattered, going back to some day job or other sort of business, and before long it was just me and my two sisters at the dining room table. Hope and I with our laptops open and Faith sipping coffee and playing with the cord on a pair of headphones to a pink iPod.
I was staring at my laptop screen, contemplating the web based application I was staring at and I looked at Hope.
“Would you be mad at me if I took a job considered to be below my station?” I asked.
“What?” she asked confused, looking up from her email.
“Would you be mad at me if I took a job that didn’t pay me as much as a job as, say, an RN would.”
She frowned, and did something I hadn’t ever really seen her do, she thought about it before saying anything… Maybe these guys really were having a good effect on my sister. I thought to myself. I exchanged a look with Faith, who gave me a bewildered look and a shrug.
“Let me ask you this,” Hope said and I gave her my full attention. “Is the job a medical one? I mean, is it still technically using your degree?” she asked.
“Well, yeah, I don’t want to not help people, it’s just… I don’t know, it’s like to some people I wouldn’t be living up to my full potential, and all of that.”
Hope raised an eyebrow, “Just sayin’, Blossom, you’ve never done anything out of the norm and almost always ‘what’s expected’ of you. You’ve not once done anything out of character without having a damn good reason to do it, and I don’t think this is any different. I mean, you would still be helping people, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“And you’d still be living your dream, right?”
“For sure,” I said.
“So fuck what anyone thinks. Money just makes things easier, it can’t buy happiness. It can’t give you the warm fuzzies of coming home to people you love and it can’t give you family. Just make sure you’re doing what’s right for you.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Faith blurted out, and I laughed.
“Feeling just fine, Bubbles. Just had a serious adjustment in my priorities over the last few months,” Hope said with a heavy sigh. She put her hand on the table and Faith covered it with hers, a sympathetic look on her face.
“What’re you thinking about doing, anyways?” Hope asked.
“I’ll let you know if it pans out,” I said distantly, my focus on the keys as I pecked out my information into the little boxes.
“Okay,” Hope said, drawing the word out with her sigh.
We spent a few hours at the computers, me filling out applications, Hope filtering through weeks of business emails until with a noise borne of frustration and boredom she slapped her laptop lid shut.
“Problem?” I asked.
“Let’s just say you aren’t the only one questioning their chosen career path lately.”
“Ah.”
“I’m gonna have to suck it up and do a few more jobs out of town,” she sighed, “But all I really want to do is stay here.”
“Mm, I feel you,” I said, “So what’re you going to do?” I asked.
“Seriously? Up my rates, until only the desperate are willing to pay me. It will cut down on my travel, for one, and for two, I’ll be pulling in about the same amount of money. I just don’t want to be doing this anymore, especially right now when I have so much more to stay put for.”
“I’m surprised you can do it at all,” Faith said unhappily.
“An arrest does not equal a conviction, Bubbles. I got off, so while I have an arrest record it’s not like I have a record. Besides, there’s no one that can do what I do with half so much the efficiency. I’ve created a pretty niche market for myself.” Hope shrugged.
“Can we go for a swim?” I asked, staring out the back slider, longingly at the distant waves down the beach.
“That sounds like a fine idea,” Hope said dryly and so that’s exactly what we did.
Chapter 38
Nothing
“I don’t want to call you Nothing anymore,” she said.
It was late, I’d come back to the Captain’s place after one seriously agonizing long day painting a house two towns over. I’d stopped at my house to grab some more clothes and had spent a long few minutes staring into my guest bathroom. At the stark walls, and empty shower curtain rod, leaning in the bathtub.
I didn’t really have the money, but I needed to redo it. The bathroom, I mean. I didn’t want to bring Charity back into my house until I did. I wanted to erase every aspect of the horror she’d had to endure in that bathroom and start fresh. My mind made up, I’d called a couple of the guys to see if they could help me out.
Now, Charity and I were stretched out in her bed, getting ready to sleep after yet another mind blowing round of sex. She had her chin propped on her hand, which was flat on my chest, her bright, inquisitive eyes, boring into my own.
“It’s my name, Baby. I have to earn ‘Galahad’ back, and that’s going to take some time.”
I smoothed a hand over her golden hair and her eyes slipped shut in simple pleasure, “I know that,” she said, “But, it’s not who you are anymore. I get that you felt that way, and I get that you felt that way for a really long time and that you may be used to it, but it’s not right.” She opened her eyes and I could see something akin to hurt in them, as if she ached for me, and it was all over a stupid name… so I humored her.
“There’s always Shepard, Shep, or Dominic,” I murmured, “Corrine always used to call me Dominic, she hated Galahad,” I said with a wry twist of lips. I’d hated it too for a while, but had eventually grown used to it.
Charity smirked, “Dom it is, then,” she said and leave it to her to put her own twist to things. I smiled and gave a nod, once up and once down.
“Dom it is,” I agreed and she leaned forward and kissed me.
I wondered vaguely if it would ever stop feeling brand new when she did it. Every time her lips met mine, I felt that pleasing little jolt in the center of my chest. Like when you’re in a car and you crest a hill and go over the other side, that funny feeling you get in your stomach as gravity does its thing where it suspends and everything inside you feels like it lifts, going buoyant for that split second before gravity catches up to things. Usually you felt it in your stomach, but when Charity kissed me, it was higher up, around the center of my chest, like my heart fluttered or sprouted wings. It was a feeling I thoroughly enjoyed, and I secretly hoped that it never went away.
I slowed Charity down before she got too heated on me, I had another long day the next day in a bid to catch up on work, and the sultry, sexy as hell whimper she let out when I drew back damn near did me in for saying ‘fuck it’ and going in for a round two. My dick throbbed beneath the top sheet and let me know its opinion on the matter, and I sincerely hoped I wouldn’t regret this act of adulting by way of a set of Smurf balls the next morning.
Charity cuddled into my side, and I held her close, a content and complete feeling overtaking me.
“Night, Baby,” I whispered, kissing the top of her head and she sighed out, a contented happy noise that put me on cloud fuckin’ nine.
“Good night, Dom,” she murmured and I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. I liked the sound of my name on her lips, even shortened as it was. Something, for the most part, that was uniquely hers.
***
The next morning was almost a new ritual, we got up, Charity made us coffee, we talked for a bit and I left for work. I finished up the edging and brushwork on that house, painting the trim around the windows and doorways, as well as up under the eaves, then headed home to meet u
p with Lightning and Gator to deal with demolition on the bathroom. Gator was waiting in my driveway with his pickup truck and I parked on the street, hitting the switch for the garage door.
“Aw, shit,” I called out, coming up the drive, “I totally forgot that I was holding Charity’s Jeep hostage over here.”
“You got the key?” Gator asked.
“Nope, but if I’m lucky…” I went in and tried the handle, “Ha! Unlocked and it’s a stick, we can push it.”
“Sweet.”
We got vehicles swapped, and Gator’s Toyota pickup backed into the garage. The bathroom was across the hall and adjacent to the doorway leading into the garage, so that worked out for us.
“How far you thinking about tearing down?” Gator asked, standing in the door way with me.
“All of it, man. I was thinking vanity, sink, shower wrap, floor… Toilet is meh, floor is just shitty linoleum from whoever owned the house before. I figure if I’m gonna do it, I might as well do it right.”
“I hear that.”
“Yo, Nothing!” Gator and I turned back towards the garage.
“Yeah, Lightning! In here.”
“Hey, what’re we doing,” Gator saved me from having to repeat myself by repeating it for me. Lightning looked the bathroom over.
“You know this is all still in pretty good shape, man. Why you doing this?”
“Don’t want to bring Charity back over here, you know? Want to fix it. I can’t take the memories out of her head but I can change the whole room, you know? Make it so they aren’t as biting.”
“You’re really gone on Hope’s sister, ain’t you?” Lightning asked, his wide grin taking most of the bite out of it.
“Shut up,” I said, and he laughed.
“Alright, let’s do it,” he said and the three of us got to take some frustration out on ripping my bathroom to shreds.
We got the vanity out, the shower wrap, and ripped up the floor in short order, and I was kind of glad we did when Lightning let out a low whistle. I saw exactly what he meant.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“Blessing in disguise,” Gator said bitterly.