by JA Huss
She rolls her eyes. “Like Adam and Eve? With the rib? And, like, your ribs are...? And I’m naked and you’re naked and this is amazing and shit, like Eden?” She gestures around us. I’m tempted to tell her not to explain a joke, but in this case it actually helped.
“Oh, yes, right. My ribs. Got it. Ha, ha. You’re a regular Elayne Boosler.”
She splashes water in my face. “Just shut up, sit on the edge, and behave.” I do. I prop myself on the edge of the tub so that just my calves are in the water. The chilly desert air against the warm beads of moisture on my now wet body feels amazing.
But not as amazing as her lips on my cock as she plops her knees on the seat inside the hot tub and goes down on me.
MADDIE
The warm water undulating around my body, splashing my tits, as I work his dick with my lips feels like I’m on a drug. And when he reaches out and pinches my nipples, it feels like an overdose. As I pump the base of his shaft with my hand, my head bobs and twists and licks his thick cock as, under the water, I finger myself desperately.
I keep pumping on him with my hand and let my mouth now find his balls. They’re swollen and full, and I put both of them in my mouth at once (which is no small task) and build the pressure, allowing the suction of my tongue to tug his sack away from his body. Like I’m trying to devour him.
The splashing of the water from the hand that I’m fingering myself with becomes more violent and the jerking and sucking intensifies in kind. “Oh, God. Oh, my fuck,” he lets out as his hands tangle themselves in my hair and he yanks my head back, my mouth wrenching from his body with a gasp.
Panting, I say, “What?”
He says nothing, just pushes me back, stands up, turns me around, and thrusts himself inside me. “Oh, shit!” It’s the only appropriate thing to exclaim.
We’re both standing in the water to our thighs and each thrust he makes sounds like the lapping of waves on a shore. It reminds me of the other night (was it only just the other night?) when we were hidden by the dune in Ensenada. So desperate and in need of one another, so reckless but at the same time as careful as we could be not to get caught.
There is no such prohibition here.
In this beautiful home, on this crystal-clear night, with no neighbors for a thousand yards in any direction, we can be as reckless as we want. Urgent. Needy. Primal. For the first time since we had sex in his apartment on Halloween, we are actually alone.
We’re not in an alley where someone can find us, or my place where my roommates might walk in, or a hotel room with my parents in the lobby, or even hidden under the Hoover Dam with Terry the security guard promising not to watch us on security cameras but knowing damn well that he probably is. For only the second time ever, it’s just us.
The only other time we were completely alone, I cried during sex for the first time in my life. I know it was because it was wrapped up with a lot of other things. Halloween, and feeling trapped, and wanting so much for this thing with this “Ford” guy to work. (Ha. Ford.) And then it all went bad. And then it somehow got better. And then it got terrible. And now here we are. In this Eden, all alone, like we really are the only two people on earth. And while that’s not true, it’s a nice way to think of now.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me harder,” I command. And he obliges.
He’s grunting and panting and pulling me towards him. I have my hands on the edge of the hot tub so that I can assist him by pushing back every time he pulls. It’s so unyielding and savage that you’d think we hadn’t had sex in ten years. As opposed to twice this morning.
The water is splashing all around us now, spraying up into the sky, the droplets mingling with the steam and mist. It’s beautiful. It is the very spirit of our bewildering and impenetrable love for each other lifting towards the sky. It is passion rising, and it is carrying us with it.
“Oh, fuck, babe, I’m gonna come,” he pants.
“Me too, baby. I am too. Come with me? Please? I want you to come with me.”
His breathing is fast and shallow and so is mine as he pitches into me. And when we both come, the wailing moan from him and the frenzied scream from me blend into one sound. The sound of us echoing out of Eden and into the vastness of forever.
TYLER
“The food’s probably cold,” I say into the top of her head. We’re sitting in the water. She’s leaning against me, her head on my chest, and it really doesn’t hurt. Either this hot tub is mad therapeutic, or her pussy has healing powers. Possibly a little of both.
“I’m good,” she purrs, stroking her fingers on my chest, tracing my scars.
“Yeah.” I sigh.
She sits up and looks at me. “What? Are you thinking about your dad again?”
“No. Not exactly. Kind of? I dunno.”
“What’s going on?” She sits up even further.
“Just... Honestly? Thinking about how much I spend on ordering food makes me feel really shitty.”
“Why?”
“Because when we were in Mexico all I could think about was how fucking privileged and entitled Carlos is. Was. Whatever. Just, of all the ways I think the guy was a piece of shit, one of them is that he had all this fucking money that he made off of someone else’s suffering.”
“OK,” she says, “but that’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” I interrupt. “Because privilege and entitlement is privilege and entitlement whether you’re using your money to run drugs and hold women against their will, or you’re just sitting around ordering an ass-load of crispy noodles with duck sauce.” She eyes me dubiously. “OK. So maybe it’s not exactly the same, but it still makes me feel like crap. It’s all tied up with seeing my dad. Fuck. He’s selfish and shitty just like me. But then, today, he seemed like he was genuinely remorseful. Like he really wants to try to set things right. To put the past behind him, just like I do. And even though something in the pit of my stomach is telling me to be careful, I really want to believe.”
“Well. That’s good. Right?”
“I dunno. Just... to be reminded that all I’ve done for the last however long is a whole lotta nothing just makes me mad at myself. Because I don’t deserve what I’ve got right now. I know I don’t. You, your forgiveness, your love, your generosity of spirit. All this.” I gesture around us. “My life.”
“Hey! Stop that.” She tugs on my beard. I think she’ll miss it more than she realizes.
“No,” I say. “Seriously. What’s fucked up is that I thought for a really long time that I deserved to find happiness. Or something. That I’d earned it.”
“You have.”
“Bullshit. I don’t deserve half of what I’ve got.” Those steps we climb to get where we’re going? More often than not, they’re built on top of the discarded bodies of the less fortunate. I remember thinking that and feeling like, Oh, well, that’s life, and just accepting it as the truth. And maybe it is. But it doesn’t have to be.
She takes a long moment to let this settle, and then she finally says, “No. No. I know. I get it. I feel that way too.”
“Really? You do?” I’m genuinely surprised. “Why? Your life has been totally terrible.”
She nods and gets a terse smile. “Thanks.” She pats my shoulder.
“You’re welcome. I’m super helpful. Everybody—”
“Yeah, everybody says so, I know.” (I guess I do say it a lot. Huh. I may just let her start finishing it for me. We can make it a bit.) She goes on, “I saw Caroline and Diane today when I was picking up my stuff.”
“Oh, yeah? Did, um”—I can’t remember if the one I saw with the Christmas tree was Caroline or Diane. Shit—“either of them say anything about running into me the other day?”
“No. Why? Did you?”
“Yeah. I was kind of a dick to whichever one it was because you had just left and I was kind of freaking out.”
“Oh. May have been Diane. She seemed extra annoyed with me.”
“Yes! Diane. Pretty sure it was
Diane. Unless it was Caroline. Anyway. Continue.”
“Just...” She pauses for a while. “I’m... out. I guess. You know? Like, I’m moving on and they’re still where they were.”
I nod. I understand what she’s feeling. I really do. “Yeah. Yeah. I get that,” I say, stroking her cheek. “What do you want to do?”
“I dunno. Help them somehow. I guess?”
Now it’s her turn to get sullen and self-retreating. We’re a real barrel of monkeys. “What’s up?”
“What am I gonna do, Ty?” She turns to face me. I move a strand of half-wet hair from her face.
“About what, angel?”
“With my life? I mean, I didn’t really think much past the Carlos stuff. What’s next?”
“Um, I... dunno. We hang out? Have sex? Travel around and shit? Get into adventures? Solve problems wherever we land? Like Bonnie and Clyde. Only not robbing banks but being helpful to people and shit. That sound fun at all?” I flash my toothiest grin. I know I’m super charming. I don’t care if anybody says so.
She lets out a huge sigh. “Dude, I’m not just gonna live off you.”
“Why not? Evan lives off Robert and he says it’s the bomb.”
“Yeah, but Evan has a job. No, not a job, a calling. He’s doing the thing he’s always loved and always wanted to do. I don’t have that.”
I consider this for a moment. That’s tough. She’s right. I’ve always known what I wanted. So did Evan. And Scotty, and... yeah. That’s tough.
“Want to buy another drone?” I ask.
“Fuck a drone. That was a ridiculous idea. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”
“Oh. Cool. Because I wasn’t gonna say anything, but—” She shoots me a look that is simultaneously terrifying and... Nope. That’s it. It’s just terrifying. “Sorry. Continue.”
“But I have to figure something out.” She swirls her finger in the tub, letting her head fall back to rest on my chest.
“OK. Awesome. Well, then tomorrow let’s talk about what I’m gonna say to my dad, figure out what you’re gonna do with the rest of your life, and maybe see if we can get me a shave and a haircut. Deal?”
“Deal,” she says, leaning in to give me a kiss on my chest. It feels like, if she does that enough times in our life together, she might...might...actually be able to heal my scars.
And then, suddenly, a cold chill races down my spine. I can’t describe it, but it’s that thing that people get when they joke that someone’s walking over their grave, or whatever. A shock to my system that makes the hairs on my arm stand on end.
I don’t know why it’s happening or where it came from, but I look around a little just to make sure... I don’t know what. I just do it. It’s a sense of dread. Foreboding.
Shit. My guess would be that it’s probably my subconscious cautioning me not to get too comfy. Because my subconscious probably can’t believe that everything’s as good as it is, given how FUBAR shit has been for so long.
I decide not to think about it too much and instead, I lift Maddie’s chin up, bringing her mouth to mine and give her a long kiss. As our lips separate, she laughs and shakes her head.
“Wow. Deal with your dad, figure out my life, get you a haircut and shave. That’s gonna be a full day.”
“I know! Two of those things are gonna be really friggin’ tough.”
“Yeah.” She sighs.
“Fortunately, sorting out your existence should only take a minute.”
New-look Tyler Morgan can still be a smart-ass, I decide.
Chapter Six - Maddie
December 28th
Three Days Until New Year’s Eve
“You want some tea?” Raven asks. We’re sitting in her kitchen—well, I’m sitting at the small wooden table up against the windows that overlook her backyard and she’s in the kitchen holding a tea pot under the tap, filling it with water.
I reached out this morning to see if Raven was available for a bit, right after we made Tyler’s hair appointment with Rodney. I don’t know what it is about seeing Raven that makes me feel like it’s the right first step in... figuring out what my next step is going to be, but it is how it feels. Call it a hunch, call it intuition, call it having no fucking clue how to start centering myself and throwing a dart at the dart board. They’re all probably the same thing.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, nervously glancing at Brandon, who is sitting across the table from me just staring. At me, not Raven. There’s one of those triple-tiered serving platter things between us, so he’s partially obstructed by Christmas cookies and shit, but still, his gaze is… intense.
“So,” I say, looking at him.
“OK, I guess,” he answers. I’ve decided he’s some kind of freaky mind-reader because he does that every time I open my mouth. Answers questions I never asked. But he’s always right. Like… he knows things.
“What’d you guys do for Christmas?” Raven calls out from the other side of the kitchen island.
“Shit.” I laugh. “You really don’t want to know.”
“OK,” Raven says, wiping her hands on her apron as she walks up behind Brandon, places her hands on his shoulders, and leans down to bite the outer edge of his ear.
I cock my head at them like a confused dog. “You guys…”
“Yup,” Brandon says.
“Uh-huh,” I say back, just staring at the two of them. Raven plops down into the chair next to me. It’s not a table chair, per se. It’s like… an accent chair. All comfortable with throw pillows and thick arm rests. Kinda homey and classy at the same time.
Which, surprisingly, is kind of a metaphor for Raven right now as well. She’s baking today, hence the apron. And from the look of the triple-tier tray of cookies, she does this a lot. But under the apron—which is white cotton with ruffled edges and has a vintage fifties cherry pattern on it—she’s wearing a long white dress that flows around her legs like ethereal smoke when she walks.
“Who are you guys?” I ask.
Raven laughs, grabs a Christmas cookie off the tray, and takes a bite. “Just people,” she says.
“Right. So…” I look at Brandon, waiting to see if he’ll answer this question before I ask it as well, but he doesn’t. Probably because he already knows it was a question for Raven, not him.
Freaky mind-reader.
“So what are you up to these days?”
“Well.” Raven sighs. “Dealing with insurance shit, mostly. I hired an architect to give me the lowdown on what it’s gonna take to rebuild Pete’s and—”
“Did he leave it to you?” I interrupt. “Like in his will?”
“Not exactly,” Raven says, smiling as she chews her cookie. “We were partners.”
“Partners?”
“I was the silent kind. I mean, as far as the stripper shit went I was just the manager. But I took lead on the good deeds department.”
“Good deeds department?” I ask, thoroughly confused.
“Yeah.” She sighs. “Well, you wouldn’t.” Know about that, she means. Obviously, Brandon’s freaky mind-reading skills have rubbed off on her. “Because we didn’t advertise or anything. But we had feelers out.”
“I’m sorry, what the fuck are you talking about?”
Raven laughs again. “Tell me something, Maddie.”
“Sure,” I say. “What?”
“How did you find us?”
“You mean Pete’s?”
“Yeah, how did you know to come ask for a job at Pete’s?”
“I just kinda…” I was gonna say went in there, but that wasn’t how it happened at all, was it? “I came across a flyer one day. When I was shopping for a drone.”
“Yeah, I’d heard you talk about that stupid drone before. What was the deal with that?”
I wave a hand in the air. “Just one of my harebrained ideas.”
“OK, so you found a flyer. What did it look like?”
I shrug. “It was red paper with black writing. Had an illustrat
ion of a girl swinging around a pole wearing a devil costume.”
Raven lifts one eyebrow. She and Brandon share a look.
“What?” I ask. “What’s that look for?”
“Go on,” Raven says. “Finish the story.”
Something is happening here, I’m just not sure what. “Well,” I continue. “It had dollar signs on it and had something like ‘Make Quick Cash’ printed at the top.”
“So you picked it up at this… drone store…”
“Yes,” I say.
“And what? You needed cash? For that Carlos shit?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “So I went in and applied. And you know the rest because you’re the one who interviewed me.”
“You were wearing white that day,” she says.
“Was I?”
“Yes, you were. White shorts, white tank top, and white wedge shoes. Which is why I hired you.”
“How do you remember that? And what do you mean, that’s why you hired me?”
She sticks the rest of her cookie into her mouth and brushes crumbs off her hands as she chews. Then she smiles and says, “Pete’s was just a strip club to most people. But underneath he and I had a little… thing going.”
“What kind of thing?” I ask. “And what the fuck did you mean you had feelers out?”
But the tea pot starts screaming and she jumps up, saying, “One sec. Hold that thought,” as she goes back behind the kitchen island and starts pouring tea.
I glance at Brandon just as he takes two cookies off the tray, places them on the table in front of him, and then smiles as he lifts one up to his mouth and takes a bite.
These people really have a thing for cookies.
Raven returns with our tea on a serving platter. She places a mug in front of me, in front of Brandon, and in front of her place at the table, and sets down a sugar bowl filled with light brown cubes, a small ceramic pitcher of milk, and a little container of honey with one of those cute wooden dippers.
I take a bunch of sugar cubes, add a splash of milk, and they both opt for honey and no milk.