by Cat Porter
My pulse heated. “I’m sick of feeling, Tania. It’s nothing but a ripping in my gut, bleeding me dry over and over again.”
She jacked up on her knees on the mattress. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
That image of Lenore and her baby—her husband’s baby—in the middle of that Christmas wonderland flashed in front of my eyes. Thick bile and vinegar slid down my chest, searing my insides. I jerked off the bed and slid my leathers up my legs, grabbed my tee from the floor and pulled it over my head.
“Finger!”
“Yes! I saw her.” I shoved my feet in my boots, buttoned my leathers.
“Wait—What are you—”
I couldn’t. I didn’t want to discuss, didn’t want to deal. Didn’t.
Snapping up my keys on the small table, I threw open the motel room door and stormed outside to my bike.
I didn’t want to talk about her. I couldn’t talk about her. I was still trying not to think about her. I couldn’t even say her name anymore, not even with Tania. I didn’t want to. That made the loss of her acute. More acute.
She was good where she was; a memory I’d stuffed into a bottle, corked and sealed and tossed to bob in my sea. Always in view, though.
I needed that view.
I rode off, leaving Tania and the motel behind me in a cloud of dust. I didn’t know if I’d hear from her again, but I also knew I didn’t have to explain myself. We were good that way. I’d leave it up to her.
Three months later she called me.
“I’m on a vacation in New Mexico with a couple of girlfriends. Are you...around?” she asked, her voice breathy, hesitant.
I happened to be in Arizona on a run to oversee a new meth distribution operation in the area. I could only spare maybe two hours with her at best with the riding time included. I couldn’t be under the radar too long, but I’d do it to see Tania again.
“Hell yeah, I’m in Arizona. What are you doing now?”
“I’m in the hot tub by the pool getting picked up by these men my friends like, but I can’t say I do.”
“I can be there in four hours. Can your hormones wait until then?”
Only her laughter filled the line.
“Give me the hotel information.”
Once I got into town, Tania texted me. She was in the bar lounge of a sprawling resort hotel where she was drinking with two other women and two men. I spotted her the moment I entered, my colors covered up by a thin black hoodie. She blushed, that slight smile perked up on her lips as she uncrossed her long legs, and I gestured with a slant of my head toward the bathrooms by the elevators.
She shot up from the small sofa where she sat with one of the guys who tugged her back close to him. She bent over and whispered in his ear, and his face lit up like she’d promised him a lap dance once she returned. He let her go and she moved away from him. She wore a short tight green dress that looked hot on her pale skin paired with high heels.
Rolling her eyes, she strode across the lobby towards the bathrooms, her hips swaying, making my dick come to life in my leathers. She turned the corner, and my arm shot out pulling her into the men’s bathroom. I headed for a stall, her heels eagerly clipping the tile floor behind me.
In the stall, she plastered herself against the wall and raised her arms high. She knew my drill. I locked the door and slid my hand down over her ass. My pulse fired. “Fuck, Tania. No panties tonight?”
“That’s for you.”
I yanked up her dress. “You’re totally bare.”
“That’s for my bikini.”
“I like it.” I palmed her, my hand sliding over damp, smooth skin. “You don’t want to fuck anyone out there tonight?”
“They’re jerks. My friends like them, but I’m not into drunken bonkfests. They’re really drunk too, so it’s only going to be sloppy, and they’ll probably whip out their phones and film the whole thing. Nowadays everyone thinks they’re doing a spring break video for the Playboy Channel.”
Tania talked. A lot. That hadn’t changed, and I liked it. My muscles relaxed. She wasn’t mad at me for being out of touch for so long. She still wanted it from me, and I definitely still wanted it from her. We were good. I squeezed her tits over the slippery fabric of her dress. No bra either.
Her fingertips curled into my beard, tugging. “Shit, your beard got longer. It really suits you.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah—” She stumbled on her high heels.
I suited up in a rubber, and hitching her legs around me, thrust inside her slickness.
She let out a loud cry, clutching my shoulders. “Tomorrow, when they can’t remember shit about whatever they do tonight, I’m going to remember this.”
I dug my fingers into her ass, nailing her up against the quivering divider. Banging her.
She came, and I pulled out of her, turned her around. She trembled in my grip, and my blood rushed into my head at the feel of her anticipation, her jitteriness, her lust. I thrust into her very wet pussy and pumped fast and hard. My balls screamed, my muscles burned. She moaned loudly, shuddering, and I roared right after.
I ripped the condom off me. “Get on your knees and get me there again.” I yanked the top of her dress down and her breasts spilled out. “I want to come on those tits.”
She wiped the sweat from her upper lip and got down on her knees in the stall and worked my cock until I started coming in her mouth. I spattered my cum over her tits.
“Rub it in. Let ‘em smell me on you.”
She made a face at me, but she did it. I helped her up, and she wiped at her skin and dabbed at her dress with a wad of toilet paper.
“I’m not done,” I said, pinching a nipple.
She grinned. Neither was she.
Twenty minutes later, with the urinals being used and flushed in the next room, men’s knowing chuckles and overly loud coughs having set a soundtrack to our fucking, I sent her back out to her friends, a lazy grin on her rosy face, her legs wobbling on those hot high heels.
“I’ll call you.”
“You do that,” she mumbled as we passed each other in the lobby, her hands smoothing over her hips.
I strode down the grand front staircase of the resort hotel, the parking valet boy shuffling back in my wake.
For years, Tania and I met in towns and cities all over the country, sometimes in motels for a night or only a couple of hours during the day. Anywhere convenient for a quick fuck. It was never regular, once every few months at most, off and on. But it happened, and I liked it.
We never discussed any other women in my life, of which there were many.
And we never discussed her. Not ever again.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I got your text message,” said Tania. Wind blew hard in the background from the payphone she was using somewhere in Chicago.
“I’ll be there by three. This cold weather sucks, icy rain in the forecast too.”
“Finger?”
“Yeah?”
“The thing is, I can’t meet up today.”
Her voice was unsteady. Ordinarily, if one of us said no, we didn’t ask details about why. But something in her tone made me want to know.
“What’s going on?”
“I met someone.”
I didn’t respond.
“It’s going well, and just keeps getting better and better, and I want to give it a real shot, so I can’t meet up with you anymore.”
I breathed out.
Almost ten years had passed since me and Tania had started meeting up. Life was moving on, no matter how I tried to shape and mold it to my will, to keep it still or keep it narrow. I was glad for her. She should be getting on with her life, not slipping me in whenever and wherever as we’d been doing over the years. We’d had our fun. We�
�d both gotten satisfaction out of it.
I was going to miss it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice filling the silence between us.
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
Lenore had gotten married, had her son. And now Tania was actually committing to a relationship. We were all older now, were we wiser? Stronger?
“You be happy, Tania.”
“I will,” she replied, her voice steadier. “I want you to be happy too.”
I didn’t answer. I hung up.
39
“I don’t know where you are, but I do know where you aren’t.” Eric made a face, his lips bunching together as he packed his guitar into its traveling case. “And that’s here.”
I braced for yet another argument. “I’m right here, Eric. With our son—”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s your excuse—Beck.”
“Beck is not an excuse. You’re the one out of town all the time.”
Eric glanced quickly at his Blackberry and shoved it into his pocket. “What I’m saying is that when I am home, you’ve got so much shit going on in your head, it’s like you’re not even here. You’re still having the nightmares, talking in your sleep, but you’re not getting any help.”
“For shit’s sake, I’m not into therapy like you and all your friends are.”
“It might help you, but the point is, you’re just not willing to go there.”
I used to have nightmares regularly—about Med, about Motormouth, Turo. But they had all faded. Eric was wrong. Dreams of Finger haunted me now. Ever since I’d had the baby, Finger’s face, his voice, his touch, even had come back to haunt me, as if the vault door had suddenly sprang open inside me. I’d woken up this morning in a sweat at the memory of his words.
“You’re the villain here. Not me.”
Disappointment settled over me like a layer of wet cement hardening quickly.
“What’s the matter, Eric? You need more attention from me?” I lashed back.
He propped the guitar case up on the sofa. “It’d be nice for a change, instead of being your goddamn afterthought. I get that you work, I know Beck’s a handful. But when we’re both in the same location, you don’t act like you really want me here. I feel like I’m in your goddamn way.”
I chewed on my lips, staring at my bare feet. He had a point. In the beginning of our relationship, I enjoyed spending every minute with him and the other members of Cruel Fate and their crew. But it had gotten tedious real quick, especially when I was in the last months of my pregnancy. Once I had Beck, who we named after Eric’s rock hero, Jeff Beck, I’d preferred to stay home with my baby, rather than be a part of Eric’s background noise.
Eric ran a hand through his thick mop of blondish brown hair. “I’m a little busy as a working musician here. I wish I could take years off between albums to hang out with you and live in our castle in the south of France drinking Evian or some shit, but those of us who aren’t superstars have to actually sweat for a living. If I’m not out there touring, I’m writing and recording. The pressure to produce is harsher than ever, Len. Album sales are tanking, you know this. We haven’t had a hit single in years.”
“I know. Sales are shit for everyone, Eric. All I’m saying is that we’ll never get this time back with Beck. You weren’t around when he started to eat solid foods, to speak, to walk, his first day of school.”
“I know, but it doesn’t mean I’m a shit dad if I can’t be around because of work. Fuck, there you go again, turning this into something else—I’m supporting us, I only wish you could support me!” His voice rose.
“I do support you! How can you say that? I stopped working full time so I could be there for you whenever and wherever you needed me. I was always the first to compromise in this relationship, especially now that we have Beck.”
“You’re the mother!” he shouted.
“Yes, yes, I am. I’m the mother.”
No truer words had been spoken. I thrilled at those words, that title. They were a part of me, and I delighted in them; they were written across my soul, just like Beck’s name had been tattooed over my heart in bold red letters.
Our little boy had been born healthy and energetic. I adored him, and I adored being his mom. For weeks, every morning I would rush to his crib to watch him sleep, still barely able to believe that I had a child. I had achieved this dream, and the dream was real, and I was happy.
Wasn’t I?
We lived in our house in LA most of the time, and spent the odd month here and there at the house in Rapid City. Our lifestyle wasn’t red carpets, paparazzi, and private jets, but it was a recording contract, tour dates, video clips, supportive fans, and a manager who believed in the talent.
We had just come off a tour of the southern states, and it had been challenging with Beck in tow. But I figured if Linda McCartney had done it with four kids, I could do it with one. I did, but I was happy to be back at the house in Rapid.
Eric pulled on his jacket. “Look, David is threatening to pull out of the group and that can’t happen. I need him to write with. I need him onstage. It won’t be the same for me without him. If he leaves, it’ll be the beginning of the end for Cruel Fate.”
“Yeah, well, David needs cocaine to write with you, and he needs cocaine to perform with you. If he doesn’t get help soon—”
“Sure, of course.” Eric shrugged. “But he needs the music, Len. He needs us. We’re his family. We can help him through this.”
“Eric, you haven’t been able to help him through this in over fifteen years. Come on!”
“You don’t get it.”
I waved my hands in the air and picked up Beck’s superhero figures from the living room floor. “Right, right, I forgot, I don’t get it.”
If only he knew.
Eric didn’t know anything about my past. I’d only told him that I’d come from Chicago, studied design, and was good with a sewing machine. I’d explained the scars on my body with a detail-less story about an abusive stepfather, and he never pressed me for more.
Eric gnawed on his lower lip. “Look, I have to get to LA. I just need to make sure David’s okay and get him to finish this album once and for all. I’ve got to get him in gear.”
“Hmm. Right.”
David also had a little sister who’d had a crush on Eric from day one, and Eric was sweet on Pam. They’d had a thing off and on for years before I’d come along. Sara, one of the groupies of the band that I’d befriended from the very beginning, had called me in a drunken haze last month and told me she’d seen Eric and Pam together before and after a show at a small club in San Diego in between concert dates. Pam was a professional cheerleader for an NBA team in California, and hot as hell. Who could say no to adoration from a girl ten years younger than you with pompoms and twerking moves?
The taxi honked its horn outside.
“You go to LA, Eric. Say hi to Pammy for me when you see her.”
“What?” Eric, his eyes wide, stood motionless in the middle of our living room in a sea of Beck’s metal yellow Tonka trucks. His jaw stiffened, and he snatched a Batman doll from the sofa and tossed it into the toy basket at my side. “Pam’s in Houston.”
“Is she? That’s too bad.”
Eric grabbed his guitar case. “I’ll call you.”
He stalked down the hallway, his footsteps thudding down the glossy hardwood floor. The front door opened. The slam of doors, and the car took off down our driveway, its motor fading.
I flopped back on the sofa and stretched out my legs. I didn’t feel sad or particularly angry or even resentful of him and Pam. Eric was right, of course. I’d checked out of our relationship, and our work schedules had provided the perfect excuse. Whenever we were together, a well of panic would rise inside me because I couldn’t give him back all the things he expected of me.
In the very beginning, I had made a supreme effort, when things between us were new and fun and I’d convinced myself that it was for the best. A new adventure in a new world, a world I needed to lose myself in. But I was already lost in the dirty puddle Med had left behind, and lost foremost, in the love I had for Finger. I’d put those feelings high on a shelf, out of reach. But they only stared back at me from their lofty perch, towered over me, casting their shadow over everything.
The late morning rays streamed through the front bay window, and I enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my body. The vividly colored curtains I’d made last year created a warm glow of burnt orange, gold, and berry flowing through the small room. My life with Eric was colorless, and I didn’t want to be his wife anymore. I couldn’t pretend or make do any longer. He was frustrated and pissed, and he had every right to be. And Beck deserved better than growing up with parents who merely tolerated each other. I needed to clean up my mess.
I got up from the sofa and picked up the rest of my son’s toys from the floor. My eyes went to the drawer where I’d tucked that divorce lawyer’s business card a friend had given me last month.
I hadn’t been able to make it work with Eric; it wasn’t in me.
Would it ever be again?
40
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
We stood outside the diner on Shepherd Street where I’d just had an early breakfast, and he’d bought himself a cup of coffee to go. I recognized him from the party at the club the other night. He’d been serving drinks. A new hanger-on. They mostly came and went, but a number of them hung on. Like him.
“Drew. Drew Reigert.”
My gaze flicked over him. I knew that name. This kid definitely looked familiar, and it wasn’t just from the party.
“Where you from?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Meager, South Dakota.”
I hadn’t seen or heard from Tania in years, and here was her baby brother offering himself up to me and the Flames. Drew was ten years her junior, and from what little she’d mentioned to me, he was a hell of a lot of trouble. They’d lost their dad when Drew was in kindergarten. The boy had never really known his father, was naturally hyper, and a crazy handful for his mother and two sisters who’d struggled to keep their family afloat.