HUNTER

by Blanc, Cordelia

  When I showed up at the address, I thought I’d been duped. The Kyla Rose I knew growing up lived with her wealthy family in the ritzy end of town. I remember her house had vaulted ceilings and a white picket fence and all that shit. She could never hang out because she always had piano lessons to go to, or cocktail parties her parents were dragging her to. The address I’d been given made my little shit-shack look like the goddamned Taj Mahal.

  The closer I got to the house, the worse the smell became. At first, I thought I’d stepped in dog shit, but the bottoms of my boots were clean, and it didn’t smell like the product of a dog. It smelled human. The smell was coming from somewhere else. Why was Kyla living in this smelly dump?

  I nearly fell through the rotten deck stepping up to the door. I rang the doorbell three times before I realized the thing didn’t even work, but I was afraid to knock and have the whole house collapse. I knocked lightly.

  “Just a second!” a voice called out. It was a female voice, and it sounded an awful lot like Kyla’s voice. But I still didn’t believe it was her. The Kyla I knew wouldn’t dare live in a trailer park. Standing there, I could distinctly remember her refusing to go to a party in that very trailer park, back when we were teenagers.

  I scrunched the address up and tossed it next to the home, in the mud where grass was supposed to be. Then, the door opened and holy shit, it was Kyla Rose.

  Her eyes widened at the sight of me and her lips parted. It looked like she had something to say, but couldn’t. She probably had a lot to say, based on the range of expressions she made. Within seconds, I thought she was going to cry, I thought she was about to slap me, I thought she was going to slam the door in my face, and at one point I even thought she was going to jump into my arms.

  “Hey,” I said, killing the silence.

  “What are you doing here?” I don’t think she’d blinked yet. She kept looking around, down the streets like some paranoid skid. There was no one there but us.

  Her voice brought me back. It was the first familiar voice I’d heard since returning, save for Greg’s—and even his voice didn’t sound familiar since we’d been back. Kyla’s voice sounded exactly the same as five years ago—exactly the same as fifteen years ago, when I was a little, horny thirteen year old kid, trying to convince Kyla to be my first.

  “I was in the area. Thought I’d stop by and say hi,” I said.

  Her eyes were still darting up and down the street, hardly stopping on me for more than a few seconds at a time. “Now’s not a good time,” she said. She started to close the door on me, but I stopped it with my foot.

  We’d known each other for fifteen years but she was treating me like I was some door-to-door appliance salesman. Not even a little ‘Hey Hunter, long time no see.’

  “Is everything alright?” I asked, peering into the house through the narrow gap between the door and its frame.

  “Everything’s fine. Just busy is all.”

  “I won’t be long. Five minutes. Just want to say hello, find out what you’ve been up to.”

  She sighed. “Okay, but come on inside.” She opened the door and let me into her home.

  Her entire home was no larger than her childhood bedroom—a bedroom I’d only ever been in once, when I was dropping her off after a party where she’d had too much to drink.

  It didn’t stink inside, which was a relief. But that didn’t answer the question, what the hell was that smell outside?

  She told me to have a seat at her kitchen table, and I did. She didn’t, though. She couldn’t sit still for more than a few seconds, constantly buzzing through the room, washing dishes that had already been washed, topping up my coffee after just a few sips, and so on.

  “What’s that smell outside?” I asked. I had to ask.

  Her face became red. “It’s not always there. There’s a sewer cover in the yard that came loose. The landlord was supposed to fix it weeks ago, but he’s taking his sweet time.”

  “A sewer cover in the yard, huh? Well, that explains why it smells like shit out there.”

  She scowled at me and then her eyes darted away. “I know. It’s not ideal. We’re saving up to move.” Her face became redder and she continued to buzz around the room, avoiding eye-contact.

  She didn’t ask about the Congo or Sammy. I was hoping she would have, because that was why I came, and it wasn’t the easiest topic to segue into. Delaying the topic was easy, seeing as I had a thousand other things on my mind, starting with, “I saw you down at the airstrip the other day.” I didn’t ask her outright why she gave me the stink-eye then left, but I figured I didn’t need to—that much was assumed.

  She bit her lip and looked down at her toes. “Yeah, I stopped by for a bit,” she said, though I could tell she knew that wasn’t the answer I was looking for. She went silent.

  “You sure everything’s okay?” I asked.

  “Things have just been real tough since you left,” she said, keeping her lips parted. There was more to add, but it wasn’t coming out.

  That’s when I decided to tell her I knew everyone found out about me and her. Her eyes started to water and she turned back to the kitchen. She continued buzzing around. Apparently, it was a sensitive topic.

  “We were drunk, shit happened,” I said. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

  She swung her head back to me, her face suddenly dark red. “Thanks, Hunter. I haven’t beaten myself up over it too much. Everyone else has, though.” She turned back to the sink but there was nothing left for her to clean. She just stood there, staring down at the counter.

  I figured that was my best chance to tell her what I came to tell her. “Sammy cheated on you, you know. A few days before we fucked, he told me he was sleeping with another girl.”

  Kyla slowly looked back at me, her eyes red. Her brow lowered and her head tilted to one side. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. He told me a few days before we fucked.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Is that why you came here? To rub it in my face that not only was my life ruined sleeping with you, but that my boyfriend didn’t even love me?” I thought she would be relieved. I thought it would ease any grief she’d been suffering. I guess some people just feel better killing the messenger.

  “I kept telling him to tell you, but he thought he was protecting your feelings, not saying anything.”

  “And you wanted him to tell me so—so what? So you wouldn’t feel so guilty when you swept in and slept with me? That didn’t stop you though, did it?”

  Maybe Anders was right. Maybe I shouldn’t have tracked down Kyla Rose. It wasn’t turning into the happy reunion I’d hoped it would.

  “Hunter.”

  “Huh?”

  She was staring at me with eyes peeled wide, waiting for an answer to the question I figured was a hypothetical one. “Well?” she said. “Is that why you came here?”

  Not exactly. I wanted to see her. For the first time in five years, I wanted to see her. And I didn’t want her to hate me. We’d been friends our whole lives and I thought a lot about her in that P.O.W. camp. I thought a lot about Sammy in that camp. Unlike me, Sammy was never given the chance to finish things he’d started, to right his wrongs. Sammy would’ve wanted Kyla to have the piece of mind. The least I could do was give it to her. “Yeah,” I said.

  “You’re a prick, Hunter,” she said.

  “Sammy Boy wanted me to tell you.”

  “Did he tell you that?” She wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “Well, no. He didn’t have the chance to, but I knew Sammy since we were just kids. Longer than anyone.”

  “You think I don’t know he was cheating on me? Of course I knew. You think reminding me that Sammy was a bad guy will make me feel good about everything?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Hell, it helped make me feel a bit better about things.

  She shook her head. “You should go.” She started towards the door. That’s when I noticed the big, dark bruise on the back of her
arm—the arm that wasn’t bandaged from Greg’s attack.

  “Where’d you get that bruise?” I asked, pointing to the bruise.

  She turned her arm away from me. “I hit it against the counter.”

  “Did Greg give that to you?”

  “No. Greg just did this,” she looked down at her bandaged wrist, “and he didn’t mean to. That was an accident.”

  “So where’d you get that bruise?”

  “I hit it against the counter earlier, Hunter. Look, I have a lot to get done here. You should go.”

  I walked up and turned her arm around, taking a closer look at the bruise. It had long, finger-like patches. “Your counter have hands?”

  Kyla pulled her arm away and looked down at her feet.

  “Who did this, Kyla?”

  She remained silent. It was obvious she wasn’t going to say. She was protecting someone. Given her dating track record, I had my money on it being whoever she was seeing. Sammy, as much as I loved the little prick, had left Kyla with a bruise or two on more than one occasion, early in their relationship. That stopped after I made sure he knew better. Nearly broke his arm.

  “You should go,” she said, finally breaking her silence.

  I wrote my number down on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “Let’s catch up sometime,” I said, handing her the number and stepping out onto her porch.

  “Bye, Hunter.” She closed the door and I could hear her footsteps through her thin walls as they moved across the trailer home.

  I peeked in her mailbox before leaving. There were a number of letters addressed to a Liam Silverstone.

  Liam Silverstone. The name rung a bell.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Greg had come back from the Congo a completely changed person. Hunter, on the other hand, hadn’t changed one bit. He was still just a selfish ass. And the whole bad boy thing was just plain pathetic. It was cute and innocent enough when we were kids, but we weren’t kids anymore. Everyone laughed when my dad caught Hunter trying to climb the wall up to my bedroom, when we were fourteen. When Hunter took Ms Lyle’s car for a joyride, when we were in the eleventh grade, we all got a kick out of it. No one got hurt.

  Now, there were consequences for being a bad boy. It wasn’t cute anymore.

  If Liam knew Hunter came over, I couldn’t even imagine what he might do. Before Hunter came home, I didn’t think Liam would ever so much as yell at me. Apparently, I was wrong. A few hours before Hunter showed up at my door, Liam came home, screamed at me, and gave me a mean shove into the counter. Who knows what he was capable of if he was pushed any further? I wasn’t exactly hoping to find out.

  I quickly cleaned up Hunter’s coffee cup, leaving mine dirty so that Liam wouldn’t catch on. I even cleaned Hunter’s shoeprints off the floor. One thing I couldn’t seem to get out was the smell of Hunter’s musk—that smell of wood, fire, and gunpowder, as if the Congo was still in his blood and his sweat.

  I held Hunter’s phone number over the garbage but hesitated. I put the number into my purse.

  And that was all there was left to do, but wait for Liam to come home from work. I couldn’t even watch TV. Liam had cancelled our cable. He said it was too expensive. I was left alone with nothing but my thoughts and that lingering scent.

  I took a seat at the kitchen table, still two hours before Liam was supposed to be home. I didn’t want him to come home. I knew he would find something to set him off. He would manage to read into something I’d say and accuse me of doing something I never did. And how long could I put up with that for?

  I could still smell Hunter. I could practically see him sitting with me at that table, too—smirking, probably thinking about how much he loves himself. He’d gotten another tattoo since the night before he left for the Congo. It was a date, in roman numerals, written across his forearm. It was too muddy to read, as if he’d done it himself with an old needle. He probably did.

  He used to always make me go with him to the tattoo parlours when we were kids. His excuse was that I made him look older when I stood next to him, and the rules said you needed to be eighteen. I think he was just trying to impress me, show me how tough he was, getting inked up without ever flinching.

  I wondered if he’d gotten any other tattoos in the Congo. He’d always talked about getting a quote tattooed on his side, but never got around to it. I couldn’t remember what the quote was—some song lyric. He would say that he wanted to wait until he was “the right weight,” afraid the tattoo would look funny if he kept putting on muscle after he got it. By the looks of it, he’d put on a good forty pounds of muscle since he shipped out. He barely fit his t-shirt. When he was sitting at the table, I could see every bulge and dip in his chest and arms.

  What does a man need with all that muscle? He was strong before he left. I could still remember him pinning me down to that bed, driving his cock into me. If he’d pounded me any harder, he probably would’ve killed me.

  Judging by the sheer size of his chest, it was safe to assume he had a lot of free time in that prison camp, a lot of time to work out. I had a clear picture in my mind: Hunter, glistening in sweat from the heat, with both hands clasped around a bamboo beam. He pulls himself up, touching his chin to the beam before lowering himself back down and repeating the process. Every muscle in his arms, torso, and back bulge as they flex.

  I let my hand slowly lower down my stomach. I curled the base of my shirt up to my bellybutton and the tips of my fingers pushed under the waistband of my pants. My hand slipped down.

  The prison camp must’ve been so lonely. The newspapers said they spent weeks in solitude, with nothing to do. It was surprising that Hunter, of all people, went five years without touching a lady. Knowing Hunter, he probably jerked off a lot.

  The tip of my middle finger snuggled between the lips of my pussy, and gently drew circles against my clit. My whole body shuddered. I couldn’t help but wonder if he thought of me when he was in that camp.

  I pictured his hand stroking up and down the length of his cock, beads of sweat still trickling down his glistening body. He gets harder and harder and harder until the throbbing tip of his member is nearly touching his sternum. The vein that lines the underside of his cock is throbbing harder and he begins to stroke faster.

  My other hand slipped under my panties and two of my fingers penetrated my hole. “Shit,” I heard my voice mutter.

  Hunter pumps his cock faster still, his eyes closed, his muscles tense. He’s muttering my name under his breath. He wishes he could just bend me over, stick it in me, and fuck me until my muscles go weak and I squirt all over his dick.

  Then, he pulls out and flips me over just in time for his warm come to spray my tits.

  I came. “Oh shit,” I said aloud, my hands down my pants and my legs convulsing. A shudder of pure elation surged through my body and my body was suddenly weightless, warm, as if Hunter was holding me tightly in his thick arms.

  I opened my eyes, pulled my hands out from my panties. I looked around the room, overwhelmed by the sudden anxiety that Liam was home. He wasn’t, thank God.

  But now I had another excuse to clean. My fingers were dripping wet and my crotch was damp. I’d squirted. I hadn’t done that since…

  Since I slept with Hunter.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The internet had come a long way since I left for the Congo, which I discovered with a quick stop in at the local library. It had come such a long way that I barely knew how to use the damn thing. I had to get one of the librarians to help me, which I was happy to do, seeing as the librarian was a surprisingly young and surprisingly hot woman.

  She was the complete opposite of the librarian stereotype, save for the pair of glasses that sat at the end of her nose. “What do you want to do?” she asked, taking the seat behind the computer and aligning her fingers at the keys. She smelt like flowers and horny nightclubs.

  “I was just hoping to look up an old friend,” I said.

  “The best way to d
o that is with a Facebook account. Do you have one?”

  “No.” I didn’t know what that was, but she set one up for me, and tried to show me how to use it.

  It was mostly gibberish, though I got the part where she said, “Type your friend’s name in here and you should be able to find him.” She was right. I found Liam Silverstone of Nintipi, Kansas; occupation: Junior Foreman at Nextek Solutions. He only had a couple of pictures posted, mostly of him slamming cans of cheap beer and a couple pictures of him holding up a dead buck by the antlers.