Out of the Blue (The Sunset Series)

by Opal Mellon

  “I still don’t get it,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No, it felt good,” she said. “I guess I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen after.”

  “It’s something you’ll figure out,” he said. “When you find a man who loves you.”

  She nodded and touched her lips with one finger. “I can see why women pay for that.”

  He felt like she’d kicked him in the stomach.

  “I don’t sell that,” he said.

  Her face said she knew that, that she’d punished him for reminding her that they weren’t romantically involved. He knew he deserved the censure. He’d kissed her, goaded her, and then basically told her she shouldn’t be doing it with him. He wanted to slap himself but he’d taken enough punishment over the years already. It wasn’t his fault he was a cold person.

  “Thanks anyway,” she said. “Maybe we should head out?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You still have a stalker out and about anyway.”

  Molly let Justin walk slightly in front of her, glad he couldn’t see her wobbly gait. That kiss … Who knew kissing could be like that?

  She felt like the ocean, violently stirred to waves by the moon and the wind. And still in turmoil. Still twisting inside. She couldn’t even say it was completely pleasant. Embarrassing. Intimate. Wrong, but right in a way. She wasn’t a romantic person, but something happened when they had locked for that moment.

  He’d been gentle, like she’d always known he’d be. She’d never thought of it consciously, but in that way where her mind pictured what it would be like to kiss someone. Justin’s mouth and body just seemed to draw her attention. Maybe it was inevitable when a man watched out for you. When you were a girl like her who no one paid attention to.

  “I wonder if the stalker will be back at my place,” she said quietly to Justin as they reached his car.

  “If he is, I’ll stay and help.” He did up his seat belt and waited for her to do hers before pulling out.

  “Thank you.” She looked out the window as they drove. For some reason she dreaded the moment they would pull up. Stalker or not, she would be alone again, in a dark house, no one to talk to or look at. The world seemed less lonely with Justin. Letting him back into her life was letting sunshine back into her life. Only the sun could leave again and getting used to that warmth was just asking to be hurt.

  “Justin,” she said. “If we are going to keep being friends, I need to know why you left.” She folded her hands in her lap. “The real reason.”

  He kept his eyes on the road, but his jaw clenched. But he didn’t say no. Molly thought maybe he wanted to tell her more than he let on.

  “Let’s get you home first,” he said.

  When they pulled up, Molly took off her seat belt and looked over. “Will you come in?”

  “I still don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t want to be alone,” she said. “And I know you won’t do anything. I won’t do anything either.”

  He relaxed slightly, his shoulders rounding down from where they’d been hunched. She didn’t know what to think when he acted vulnerable like this. He liked to be the strong one, but it was time to show him that sometimes she could be the strong one.

  “I can take it Justin. You’ve been good to me. Share your burden with me.”

  “You’re a good friend Molly.” He leaned against her unexpectedly. “I don’t deserve it.”

  She cocked her head. It was all she could do. “Come inside. I promise not to take advantage of you.”

  “In that case …” he said. He laughed, and opened his door.

  Justin felt distinctly different this time entering Molly’s house. He’d been invited, and wasn’t barging in. There wasn’t an idiot with his hands on her, and Molly was asking him to tell her his biggest secret.

  As he considered what she wanted, a hideous possibility entered his mind. Could Molly’s stalker be related to his own? Please no. But once the thought was there he couldn’t seem to remove it.

  She had two brown microsuede couches. He picked the smaller one, hoping she’d sit on the other. The room was probably the most boring room he’d ever been in, other than his bedroom. Brown carpet. White walls. Brown couches. A lot of brown. But when he looked closer he could see more to the room, just like Molly herself. Under the boring black TV stand were a bunch of colorful DVDs covered in cartoon characters. Were these the movie versions of the comics she’d been so obsessed with at one point? He crept over to look at the DVDs.

  He pulled a few out and turned them over. All of the characters looked feminine. And was that a girl or a boy? Why did that girl not have breasts? Why did that girl have short hair and a baseball hat?

  “You look confused,” Molly said.

  “Are these guys or girls?”

  “Both. I thought you of all people would understand.” Molly crouched next to him and pulled a DVD from his hands. She pointed to each character. “Boy, girl, boy, boy, boy.”

  Justin squinted at the case. “Why would I understand that?”

  “Just that both men and women can be beautiful. There are different types of masculinity.”

  She replaced the DVDs. He’d underestimated her. Somehow Molly had grown without him. She made him feel like an immature kid.

  “Sorry I was poking around,” he said. “You know I can’t sit still.”

  “Can’t leave you alone for a minute.”

  “You’re being a lot more talkative now, you know.”

  She paused, sat back on the carpet and planted her hands behind her. She looked at him with those frank blue eyes and waited.

  “Just that, in class before, you know, in school, you were so quiet then.”

  “And you preferred that?”

  Her and her questions. What was she, his shrink? Maybe he did prefer that vulnerable girl hidden in her giant sweater to this small, confident woman with piercing eyes and honesty.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Like you said, we were friends.”

  “Were?” She stood and stretched. “I’m going to the couch. Much comfier.”

  “Fine.” He sat on the floor until he could see which couch she headed to. Then he sat on the opposite couch. He was baffling even himself. How on earth was he going to share his secret if he couldn’t share the couch? No, he just needed the distance, that’s all. And he did want to tell her. In the car she’d said she could handle that. He believed that. And he felt tired of being alone. And if it distanced her from him, all the better, since he was better off alone anyhow.

  But she’d have to bring it up.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I just didn’t want to be alone here. But then I realized, I’ll be alone if you leave again too. I’d like to know what the chances of that are.”

  “Molly, none of us can know how long we’ll be around, how long the people around us will be around.”

  “Don’t treat me like a kid. And stop saying my first name when I’m the only one here. It sounds patronizing. Unless you are used to talking to yourself and have to distinguish.”

  Justin stared as Molly said the longest string of words he’d ever heard.

  “I don’t know how to answer your question,” he said. “I don’t know if I even should.”

  “Oh, so you get to be the only one who helps people?” she said. “You get to be the hero with Bosey, and you get to intrude on the stalker issue, and I just get to let you?” She spread out in the corner of her couch, facing him, and put her arms straight out along the arm and the back, then put her legs up, crossed and straight in front of her.

  “You didn’t let me in on the stalker,” he said.

  “And I’m not going to unless you let me in on something,” she said. “It’s not nice to always be the powerless one.”

  “Deal,” he said, feeling like he’d just bid money he didn’t have for an item he didn’t want. He wanted to take it back. Deal off. Sneak around and find the stalker w
ithout her permission, especially if it could be involved with …

  Then again that possible involvement made it all the more fair to tell her …

  “Fine,” he said. “You go first.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I guess I have a stalker.”

  He humphed. “Let me see the emails.”

  “They’re at work.”

  “You can’t access your work email from home? Come on Molly, you’re an engineer.”

  “We both know you’ll want to see them from work.”

  “It would still be nice to see them from here, get the tone of them.”

  “You’re stalling,” she said. “You have more to say than me.”

  Justin looked at her small living room window and its brown drapes for a moment, then stood and walked over to them. He pulled them closed, and sagged against them for a second. It’s not like telling someone was something he’d rehearsed.

  “When I was little, I was adopted.”

  Molly turned to face him at the window. She propped her arms on the side of the couch and her face on her arms.

  “I was in the foster system.” It was coming easier than he’d thought. But it still felt that someone had lanced a huge painful boil and only a slight trickle was coming for now. He felt scared of the impending burst.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “My parents died,” he said. “I was four.”

  He looked over at her, glad for once that her stone face showed no emotion or pity.

  “What does this have to do with you leaving?”

  “Look this is hard for me! Give me some freaking time!”

  She sat back, eyebrows lowered.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This was a bad idea.” He moved to the door and grabbed the handle.

  “Coward,” she said. “Coward. You can’t go.”

  He stopped, shoulders sagging. “Fine.”

  He moved to the other couch, the smaller, and leaned forward over his legs, facing the floor. Then looked up at her.

  “I got bounced from house to house,” he said. “I didn’t have relatives.” He wrung his hands. “I looked like a girl, and some people tried to treat me like one. I got in fights, I got moved.” He looked up at her face quickly, then back to the ground. “But I found a good place after a while, someone who wanted to keep me.”

  “When I met her, she looked like an angel, and I thought ‘I get to live with this pretty lady?’ I thought I was walking into heaven. I was nine.”

  Molly studied her hands, nervously twisting her pinky around. Justin wondered if he’d already crossed a line. TMI. Why did he do this? He felt dirty.

  “I’m sorry.” He started to stand. “This was already too much, wasn’t it?” He shook his head. “It’s too dirty to even talk about.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what to say. But I think you should keep going.”

  “I just, how will you even look at me the same way?”

  “I have a feeling I’m going to be looking at someone differently, but it’s not you.” She let out a long, harsh breath. “What happened next?”

  “She moved for adoption as soon as she could. I was glad to have a family. She really looked like my mom too, with her blond hair. I felt like I had a family.”

  Molly stood and came to sit by him. She put an arm awkwardly behind him on the couch. He ignored it; he was too deep to be worried about that for now.

  “I thought she loved me. She touched my hair. I loved her so much. Perhaps that is the worst, that I loved her.”

  Molly touched his arm and he bent forward so that tears could hit the carpet.

  “She’ll never let me go,” he said. “I left at eighteen. I ran. I entered school. I thought I was safe. I thought she’d find a new boy. She’d groom him and then I’d be free. But she found me.”

  He looked over at Molly. She clenched one fist in her lap. Her mouth was tensed. Her eyebrows low, eyes narrow. She saw him looking and immediately lightened her face. “That was five years ago.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You can’t imagine. I didn’t want to go.”

  “Justin did she—what did she do?” She put up a hand. “No, you don’t have to say. But I don’t understand.”’

  “She made me her lover,” he said. “I was eleven.” She had heard most of it, she might as well hear the rest, and then he could walk out of her life again and good riddance to such a disgusting person. “When she held me, it was so tender. When I was on her lap, I felt safe. I hadn’t been touched or hugged in so long. It felt so good.”

  Molly reached out and brushed his hair behind his ear. She caught a tear on her fingers. “Monster.”

  He recoiled.

  “No, not you Justin,” she said. “Her.”

  “By the time I knew it was wrong, it’d gone too far. I didn’t want it. When she touched me there, I felt confused. I knew it was wrong.”

  He pressed on his eye sockets, dimming unwanted images to blackness. “But she was all I had. What could I have done? I was a child. When I was older, I pushed her hands away. She locked me up. She offered me to friends. She said she’d offer me to male friends if I didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “Who would believe me?” he said. “She was my adoptive mother. Men are supposed to be happy when older women want sex with them.”

  “Justin what did you do after you left Utah?” she said. “After you left school? What was the plan?”

  “To use what God gave me,” he said. “To please women.”

  “Couldn’t you have just stayed?” she said. “She doesn’t own you anymore.”

  “She’ll always own me,” he said. “You could never understand the power someone has when they groom a child. I feel like my very life is in her hands. I can’t resist her. When she finds me, I’m that terrified child again who doesn’t want to be abandoned.”

  “I had a dog once,” he said. “I paid more attention to it than her. She did dirty things to that dog too.”

  Molly made a retching sound.

  “This is what you wanted!” he said. “That was my reality. I was an upgrade on a dog. And when I paid more attention to that dog than her she kicked it to death.” He gripped the sides of his head with his hands. “I didn’t want to know what she’d do to my friends. She’s capable of so much. I know it.”

  “Justin, maybe you just convinced yourself of that because she had you when you were so vulnerable.”

  “And suddenly you’re just little miss shrink? Miss reclusive virgin who suddenly understands sexual abuse?”

  “It’s a common thing in manga,” she said.

  “Screw your manga!” he said, feeling wild. Feeling blindly afraid. “You can’t understand.”

  And then she was around him, surrounding him with bony arms that were tight like zip ties. The world stopped spinning and he breathed. Breathed in the terror of what happened and the terror of telling. The terror of looking in Molly’s eyes and seeing pity or disgust. So he pressed his face against her small shoulder. Go figure, the first time he felt shaken by a kiss and he ended up melting in her arms as a disgusting lump.

  “You aren’t less of a man Justin,” she said.

  “I’m not even a man Molly,” he said. “I’m a creature. Something half formed that was made to be used.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I’m not fit to kiss your boots.”

  “I don’t have boots,” she said. He laughed. “And you can’t kiss them.”

  Molly fought her gag reflex. Thinking of that woman. Thinking of a dog, and a little boy who watched it get kicked to death. She’d been so selfish. Justin had run for his life. Gosh, she’d been so selfish she could never atone for it. And beating herself up wasn’t something she did often. She deserved it now.

  And what did she do with the fragile facts, and man, in her hands now? Why had she asked? Perhaps she had wanted something simple. Some reassurance that things with Justin would be simple and uncomplicated. She stroked his
head.

  “Can I get you some water?” she said. “Promise you won’t leave.”

  “I don’t think I can even walk right now,” he said.

  She walked to the kitchen, ran the water and sagged against the counter, willing her straight arms to prop her up so she didn’t fall. What should she say to that man out there? He was messed up. Should she tell him to leave? How could he ever be normal after that? She breathed in and let her mind go black. And then images came forward. Justin pulling Bosey away, violently punching him, saying he knew what he was doing. Justin had seen through Bosey’s lie, had known she was telling the truth about being abused. And Justin had been paranoid enough to follow her at the reunion and wanted to help with her stalker. He’d come up to a lonely friendless girl and made friends. Weren’t these all a result of that sensitivity? Ugly as it was, Justin’s past had made him the person who was her friend. Her friend that she was leaving to sit alone on the couch after a terribly vulnerable moment. She grabbed a glass and quickly filled it and brought it to the living room.

  “Took you a while,” he said. “Thinking about throwing me out?”

  “Thinking about asking you to move in,” she said.

  His head jerked up.

  “So that if that woman ever came near you again, I could kill her.”

  He frowned. “Molly, I don’t need to be protected.”

  “Could you hit her?” she said. “Like you hit Bosey?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it?” she said. “Would you have known what to do if that hadn’t happened to you?” She sat beside him and pushed the water towards his mouth. He took it and drank, looking at her over the rim.

  “I don’t like what happened to you, but in the kitchen it occurred to me that you are who you are because of it. This sounds awful, but maybe you’d never have been my friend if it hadn’t.”

  He dropped the mostly empty cup and sat back. Then sat forward, wanting to use his shirt to clean up the spill. He pulled it off, and Molly couldn’t keep back a gasp of shock. She didn’t ever see shirtless men.

  He looked at her slowly, eyes widening, face pale, and she immediately slapped her hands over her mouth. “No Justin, not like that; you just surprised me.”