by Naomi Niles
Of course, it wasn’t all talk; toward the end, his sweet words had become hoarse whispers, low moans, and growls; the animal look had come into his eyes and for a few minutes, we were two bodies in heat doing what bodies in heat had always done. It was a strange alchemy, this melding of poetry and passion, human and animal, and it had resulted in some of the hottest sex of my life.
Now as I stood there in the doorway with one hand on the center button of my shirt, he walked over and placed both hands on my shoulders. After looking into my eyes for a long moment, he said in a low voice, “Oh, baby, you are perfect.” And he kissed me like I hadn’t been kissed in almost a year.
I closed my eyes and felt the brush of his lips against my face and neck, hungry and unashamed. Gradually, I became aware that his fingers were fumbling for the bottom buttons of my shirt. His hands were shaking, the way a person’s hands might shake when they haven’t eaten in three days.
“You sure you’re feeling up to this?” I asked him, placing a hand on his stubbly cheek.
“Baby, I’ve been ready,” he said as he unbuttoned the lowest button.
Now I was standing half-in, half-out of my shirt and he had a full view of my blue bra. Instinctively I folded my hands over my chest so he couldn’t see. He shook his head and smiled. “You always do that.”
“Do what?” I could feel the heat rising into my face, burning like a brick pavement.
“Try to hide your body, like you’re ashamed of it.”
“I guess I’m not used to being looked at by men.”
“You mean you never slept with a man before?”
“Not every day.” I smiled. “And the guys I’ve had in the past were always in and out, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, if you know what I mean. Sometimes they didn’t even wait until I had gotten my clothes all the way off.”
Zack shook his head sadly. “See, that’s no way to treat a lady,” he said. “You’ve gotta be kind, and you’ve gotta show them affection, and you’ve gotta be willing to take things slow at first.”
“Is that how you do it?”
Zack’s eyes lit up with a look of mischief and cunning. “Why don’t I just show you?” he replied.
While we had been talking, my arms had automatically drifted back over my breasts. He grabbed me gently by the wrists and pulled them away, and there was a moment as we looked at each other where I think we both knew this was really about to happen—the lovemaking, the words of affection whispered low in my ear, my hands around his head, his body and mine intertwined.
“You know, I thought I liked you before,” he said as he traced his fingers along my belly. “But I’ve come to respect you so much more in the last year, even though we barely talked.”
“Mmmm, why is that?” I asked. His words were already having their strange effect.
“Because of all the shit you put up with after that piece went to press. And even before, if we’re being honest. My boys had no right to treat you like that, and I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had decided it wasn’t worth it, given up, and gone home. But you kept going no matter how nasty they got, no matter how much they ignored you.” He reached over and eased me out of my shirt, then kissed me once on the forehead. “I think that deserves some kind of medal.”
“I was just doing my job,” I said.
“I know. But after the chilly reception you got from the rest of the base, you must have known your report wasn’t gonna make you friends. And for the last year, you’ve put up with the death threats, and the harassment, and the hate mail, and you haven’t let it consume your life, and you’ve pressed on despite the hate and the venom and the anger.” He was unhooking my bra now, but he paused to look me directly in the face as he said, “I think you must be one of the bravest women I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “That means a lot coming from someone who risks his life probably every day.”
He shrugged. “Just doing my job.”
By now, he had managed to get my bra off. I felt naked and exposed to him, despite the fact that I was still wearing my jeans. This was always the hardest part, the part where I had to let go and surrender to him fully. But after the things he had just said to me, I was more than ready.
Chapter Twenty-One
Zack
She fell asleep that night with my arm wrapped around her. We were arguing about James Blunt, whom she apparently loved and had seen in concert more times than I cared to know about. She seemed to think it hilarious how much I loathed his music.
“Did you know he was in the Royal Navy in Kosovo?” she asked, in the bright, chirpy voice she always used when a disagreement arose between us and she was trying to win me over, but I was refusing to yield.
“I could care less—” I groused, smiling in spite of myself.
“And that he was instrumental in brokering a peace deal!”
“B.S. He probably played guitar for someone who was involved in the peace talks, and they were so annoyed that they told him that just to shut him up.”
“Can you imagine dating someone like that?” she asked with stars in her voice.
I rolled over and glared at her in suspicion. “What, you wanna go out with him?”
“No, I just mean, what if you were dating James Blunt, and you broke up with him—”
“… because he’s a whiny, emo, irritating song-butchering piece of snot—”
“… and then a year later,” she said, raising her voice to talk over me, “all of a sudden his song is all over the radio and you can’t escape it. Think how annoying that would be, but how cool for him that he wrote something you couldn’t get away from.”
I threw her a quizzical look, as though I had never truly seen her until this moment. “I’m glad you’re not a multi-talented artist with a vindictive streak. If we ever broke up, I can see there’d be hell to pay.”
We went on talking and arguing like that for about an hour before she finally began to fall asleep. At one point, she asked me about the tattoos on my arms, and I told her about them. It was only in the moment just before she closed her eyes that I realized she hadn’t asked because she was interested, but just to hear the sound of my voice.
I lay there for a long time after she had gone to sleep, wanting to memorize her features and wondering how something so perfect had fallen into my life.
***
When I awoke the next morning in the hazy gray pre-dawn light, Kelli was stumbling around frantically trying to gather up her clothes. I couldn’t help smirking with delight as I watched her scooping up her socks and smelling them to make sure they were still good to wear.
“What are you laughing at?” she asked as she buttoned up her shirt. “Am I really that funny?”
“I don’t think you realize how funny you are,” I said, rising slowly and stretching. “One of the bonus perks of dating you—in addition to being brilliant, you’re also insanely funny.”
“You forgot about ‘great boobs’ and ‘great in bed,’” Kelli said sarcastically.
I shrugged and said, “I figured that went without saying.”
I threw on my boxers and got out of bed. By the time she reached the door of the apartment, I was already standing there waiting for her.
“Anyway,” she said, jingling her keys, “don’t try to keep me this morning; Evan wanted me to come in early, and he’ll be pissed if I’m late.”
“You sure you couldn’t be just a few minutes late? Like half an hour to an hour?”
I ran my lips over her hair; she squealed with delight and beat me away with her fists. “No, quit! I don’t relish the thought of explaining to my boss that I couldn’t get to work on time because I was sexing it up with my boyfriend.”
“Mmmm.” I frowned and shook my head. “Seems like a guy like him would understand.”
“Well, if you really think that, then you’re welcome to come down to our basement and tell him I couldn’t make it to work because we were making s
weet love.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“Go on, get out of here!” Kelli exclaimed, pushing past me. “I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.” She opened the door and walked out.
I went into the kitchen and fired up the skillet, wanting to remember every second of her visit. It hadn’t escaped my attention that she had called me her boyfriend just before she left, the first time either of us had hinted that we were dating the other. I guess that makes us official now, I thought as I reached into the fridge and pulled out a package of mozzarella and some tortillas. If that was the case we would almost certainly be seeing each other again before very long. It wouldn’t matter if we were on the other side of the country; we’d find a way.
As I ate breakfast at the table in the dining room I wondered what my buddies would think if they knew I had hooked up with the girl they hated so much. “Traitor” was one of the kinder words they had used to describe her, and I had never taken it well. “How does it feel to be dating a woman who hates her own country?” I could hear Chuck and the other guys asking when they heard the news. But if that was how they chose to react, they were going to have a fight on their hands.
I had nothing else to do for the rest of the day, so after I finished breakfast I went into the living room and turned on the TV. I felt weirdly guilty about lying there on the couch, like I ought to be doing pushups or tracking a nest of guerilla fighters to their mountain hideout. Instead, I was watching CNN, and it was a normal Monday.
On the TV, they were talking in breathless tones about a mosque bombing in Afghanistan, but outside my window I could hear the constant drone of city traffic. I felt a sense of comfort listening to it. I was back here in America where I didn’t have to worry about being burned alive or kidnapped or having my leg blown off because I stepped in the wrong place. Those were all things that happened somewhere else, not here, not in this country that I loved.
I don’t think I had fully realized until just then how stressful it had been living in a place where I could be killed at any moment. Before, my body had always been tense as though bracing itself for attack. But I wasn’t going to die now, and there was no reason to worry. It was the strangest feeling.
I was shaken out of my thoughts with a start when the front door suddenly opened, and a figure strode into the room. For a single, wild moment, I thought someone was trying to rob my apartment, but then I realized it was only Carson.
He had dispensed with his uniform entirely and was dressed in a pair of loose-fitting shorts and a Chicago Bulls t-shirt. Anyone passing him on the street might have mistaken him for a gym rat, one of those guys who spend all day lifting weights in front of a mirror and all night in the club bragging about it. “Hey man,” he said, holding up his right hand for a high-five. “How’s it hanging?”
I remained motionless on the couch. “You’re lucky I waited to see who it was. Otherwise you’d be on the ground right now with my knee in your back.”
Carson gave me a puzzled look, as if it was perfectly normal for men to go barging into each other’s apartments without invitation and without knocking. “Anyway,” he said, seating himself in the big leather armchair by the window, “What’d you do last night?”
Briefly I brought him up to speed on my date with Kelli and its aftermath. He seemed especially interested in knowing what we had done when we got back to the apartment, so interested, in fact, that I was wary of telling him.
“I’ll just let my imagination fill in the blanks,” said Carson, shutting his eyes and allowing a lascivious smile to spread across his face. “Oh, nice. Very nice!”
“Hey, stop that,” I shouted, throwing a pillow at him. “Cut that out!”
He shrugged, as if to say, “That’s what you get.” But out loud he only said, “So what’d y’all do for real?”
I shrugged. “Mostly just talked about James Blunt.”
“That whiny bastard?” Carson scoffed. “Sounds very sexy.”
“It was a wild night. You been busy since you got back?”
He smirked and shook his head as if to say being busy was for losers. “I went out to the Marquee and bought drinks for a few girls, but none of ‘em wanted to come home with me. One told me I looked like Paul McCartney, and I was like, ‘Young Paul or old Paul?’ and she just laughed.”
“You should’ve told her you play guitar.”
“I actually brought my guitar and sang a couple songs! I sang ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and tried to play ‘Wonderwall,’ but they wouldn’t let me. Apparently it’s become uncool in the year since we were gone.” He rolled his eyes. “God, sometimes it’s so hard to keep up.”
“Wonderwall was never cool,” I pointed out.
“Still cooler than freaking James Blunt. Anyway, I won’t be going back to that night club. The drinks were subpar, and the girls weren’t much better. One of ‘em had never heard of Jay-Z. Can you imagine going through your whole life not knowing who Jay-Z is?”
“How old was she? Twelve?”
“Seventeen, I think. Her ID said twenty-one, but there’s no way that was real.”
“She’s probably an undercover cop.”
“Well, maybe I’ll invite her to the awards ceremony on Saturday. Who are you bringing?”
“Saturday?” I had nearly forgotten we were being honored with a banquet on Saturday afternoon. “I don’t know; I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d probably invite my mom if she were here.”
“That’s why you’re a better man than me,” said Carson. “Anyway, you ought to think about bringing Kelli. I bet she would love to go with you.”
“Maybe,” I said slowly, a note of uncertainty in my voice. “As long as the firing squad doesn’t attack when she gets there.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kelli
I hadn’t accounted for morning traffic, and by the time I finally made it to work at around 11:00am, I was about an hour late. There was a horrible tightness in my stomach as I ran through the parking lot and waited for the guard to enter the security code that would let me into the building. Strange how quickly a morning could pivot from joy to fear and frustration.
As I descended the stairs into the dank basement that smelled oddly of oysters, I braced myself for Evan’s reprimand: the last time I had been this late to work, a year or two before, there had been a long talk in his office during which he scolded me for sending personal emails during work hours and taking overly long lunch breaks—all the things that had been upsetting him but that he had been willing to overlook until now.
But when I came into the room this morning, I found Evan sitting in the corner desk under the drain pipe hunched over a sheet of paper. He was attempting to write with one of those cheap plastic pens you can buy in packs of ten at the Dollar Tree; the ink seemed to be running out, because he kept shaking it in frustration. He didn’t even seem to have noticed that I had come in.
Dennis glanced up with a shrug as I sat down. He was eating a green apple as he scrolled through the Vox main page on his laptop.
“Sad, isn’t it?” he said, motioning to Evan. “What this once noble and venerated institution has come to.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean he’s just given up caring. Unless my watch is wrong, you were supposed to have been here about an hour ago. Shelley said she was going to run out for coffee and probably won’t be back for the rest of the day. You could dress up in a gorilla costume and wander around the office scratching yourself under the arms, and I don’t think it would phase him much.”
“Is he just busy, or…?”
“No, I think he’s just lost all hope that the Bugle is ever going to be respected or bring in a sustainable income. Now he’s just sitting around waiting for everyone to quit or for someone to buy us out.”
It wasn’t a large office, and I was reasonably sure Evan could hear us, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. Instead, he rose from the desk and said, “Kelli, did you know about this? The Foundry is
hosting a banquet on Saturday to honor returning SEALs. My old friend Mohammed will be there, and he’s invited me as his personal guest. He’s requested that you come and report on the event in a professional capacity.”
There was a brief silence broken only by the sound of Dennis biting into his apple. “It’s kind of him to think of me, but—”
“But what?” Evan peered hard at me from behind his glasses.
I hesitated. It wasn’t like me to turn down an assignment, and I wouldn’t have done it without good reason. “Frankly,” I explained, “I don’t know if it would be safe for me to attend. I haven’t been very popular with that particular platoon since my piece ran. I haven’t been popular with the Armed Forces, period.”
It was a sign of how distracted and careless Evan had been lately that he hadn’t considered this. “Right. Of course.” He looked disappointed. “Well, if you don’t want it, I’ll give it to Shelley when she gets back.”
I sat back down with a feeling of relief, but also a sense that I had offended Evan by rejecting our friend’s invitation. It didn’t help that Dennis grimaced and made a slashing motion across his throat.
“You know he’s about to start making staff cuts, right?” he said. “If I were you, I’d be careful.”
“Thanks for being so reassuring, Dennis,” I replied.
Dennis shrugged and returned to his apple.
Because it was Monday, I was supposed to have an opinion piece up on the website by 3:00pm. I scrolled through Vox and Salon for a few minutes looking for inspiration, but found it hard to keep focus. At one point an ad opened up—I tried to close it but it wouldn’t close—and there was an explosion of noise that made Bryan jump out of his chair in alarm. Dennis, however, was unruffled; he just shook his head as if to say, “You’d best be careful…”
I was almost relieved when my cell phone buzzed—at last, a distraction!—and doubly relieved to see that Zack was calling.