“They’re not bad, I guess. They just belong to someone else now.”
I studied his skin, a trace of that golden tan lingering even as the New Year approached. I pressed my winter-pale hand to his back. “What’s your lineage, anyway?”
“Bunch of stuff. Mostly French Canadian and German on my dad’s side, and my mom’s half Puerto Rican, half Irish.”
“That’s quite a mix.” Complex, just like him.
“Bit of everything . . . Ignorant as they might be otherwise, I’ll give my family that much—they’re color-blind.”
I wished I could say the same of mine. My parents would never say anything intolerant aloud, and they were both way more evolved than the generation who’d raised them . . . But old biases persisted.
As Eric stood, I let my fingertips trail down his spine, then watched his ass as he strode to the door. I flopped back across the rumpled covers, and listened as the water came on.
There’s a felon in my shower. There’d been a felon in my bed. In my body. But it was so easy to forget how we’d met, taking it minute by minute. And thank goodness. If this was going to be something, I needed to focus on the future—not the place we’d met or the mistakes he’d made to get there.
He doesn’t see it as a mistake, though.
I got up and headed for the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. If I’d welcomed him into my bed, I had to have gotten at least halfway past the cavernous divide between Eric’s actions and our two disparate lenses for viewing them. I had to be, or else whatever this was didn’t stand a chance. And it deserved a chance. Eric deserved a chance.
It was as I clicked the basket into place and hit the On switch that I found a way around the problem. A philosophy to trump his righteousness and my misgiving.
If he hadn’t done that, I’d never have met him.
I wouldn’t have gotten my sexuality back for who knew how long. Wouldn’t have felt alive as I did now. Wouldn’t have felt all those wonderful things with him, last night in bed.
Maybe I didn’t approve of what he’d done . . . but I’d be a liar to deny that I was grateful for it, in my own selfish way.
I pulled out pancake ingredients, pleased to find I had everything. I heard the bathroom door open, heard Eric’s footsteps creaking through my bedroom. He appeared shortly in the kitchen threshold, dressed in yesterday’s clothes.
“Have a seat,” I said, waving to my little table by the window. “How do you take your coffee?”
“Cream and sugar, if you have it.”
I made him a cup, hoping it was a million times better than prison coffee. I wanted to spoil him today, in every way possible.
He sat just as he had back in Cousins during Book Discussion, legs spread wide and lazy, and it felt like August all over again. My heart soared as he took a sip and shut his eyes, pure rapture in his smile.
“Strong enough?”
“I haven’t had coffee this good in forever.”
“When’s the last time you had pancakes?”
“When I got out.”
My shoulders slumped. “Oh, darn. I was hoping I’d be your first time for everything.”
“Sorry, my mom and sister beat you to it.”
I found a whisk and beat the batter in a plastic bowl. “Did they meet you, the morning you were released?”
He nodded. “They brought my truck, with some furniture to fill out the apartment I’d gotten hooked up with. A bunch of old clothes, not that they fit anymore—I was still a wiry kid when I went in. We went to IHOP.”
“What’d you order?”
“Sausage. Two sides of sausage.” He smiled at the thought. “The meat in prison is disgusting.”
“I’ll bet. What else?”
“Pancakes, eggs, butter on everything. But the coffee wasn’t half as good as this,” he said, raising his cup. “Or maybe everything just tastes extra good this morning.”
“And why might that be?” I asked coyly.
He smirked, eyes narrowing, and patted his thigh. “C’mere.”
I set the bowl aside and dusted my hands on a dishrag. I sat on his leg, feet between his spread ones. Warm palms ran boldly down my waist, over my hips.
“Thanks for last night,” he said quietly.
“Thank you for last night.”
“There’s no way I can tell you how much that . . . how important that was, to me.” He looped his arms around my middle and rested his chin on my shoulder.
I felt vulnerable in the nicest way, naked and protected at once. “I’m so . . . I’m so grateful, I guess, that you waited for me. Or flattered. Or something. That whatever you feel for me, it was strong enough to be worth waiting for.”
“You know how I feel about you. I told you last night, at the bar.”
I’m in love with you. I’d barely let myself absorb his words, but I’d felt the truth of them, spoken between our bodies. I wasn’t ready to say them back. I didn’t yet know if they accurately named what I felt for him. But I could bask in having been told them, at least.
He spoke, breath warming me through my sweater. “You will let me see you again, right?”
I stroked his hair. “Yes, of course I will.”
He pulled at my collar, exposing my bare shoulder and kissing me there, then bade me to stand with a soft pat on my butt. I was cooking a man breakfast, obeying his orders to sit on his lap and getting patted on the butt. It would’ve been kind of ridiculous, if I weren’t so damn crazy about him.
“I wish I could afford to take you someplace nice,” he said as I went back to cooking.
I ran a melting pat of butter around the pan. “I don’t care. There’s not any nice places in Darren, anyway.”
“Someday, though. I’ll save up and take you somewhere good. For Valentine’s Day, maybe.”
I smiled at him, ladling batter into pools with a soft sizzle. “I like the places you took me last night. Without us even leaving my bed.”
His cheeks went ever so slightly pink, his grin bashful. “I liked those places, too.”
“Don’t you look shy?” I teased. “You, the man who tricked me into writing dirty letters for him in a room filled with convicts.”
He laughed. “I only tricked you that first time. You can’t act innocent about all the stuff that came after.”
“You still going to write me love letters, now that you’re out?”
He made a game face. “If you want me to.”
“You could email me over Christmas while I’m in South Carolina. Tell me everything I’m missing out on, being away.”
“I will.”
I grinned, turning the bubbling pancakes over. “What are you doing for Christmas, anyhow? Driving home to see your family? And where is home, again?”
“Kernsville.”
“Right.”
“It’s about twenty miles past that lake we parked by. But it depends on the weather. If it snows and there’s extra work I could pick up, I’ll stick around here. Holidays pay double. I don’t really want to head home, anyhow. My dad always seems to turn up, and I don’t really feel like dealing with him. Not yet, at least.”
“You haven’t said much about him.”
He shrugged. “He’s still married to my mom, but it doesn’t mean anything to either of them.”
“You said your sister takes after him. What word did you use? Wild?”
“Yeah. He’s always up to something. Always waiting for some check to show up, or some scheme to come through. He’s not the worst man in the world—never hit my mom or us kids, and he’s more of a dipshit than an actual leech. But he’s no sort of role model, either. He’s a loser, basically. Lazy. Ignorant.”
“Bummer.”
“He’s just how they make them, back home.”
“You’re not, though.”
“I used to think I wasn’t . . . but come on. I was incarcerated. Kind of wrecks any upstanding cred I’d built up, always staying employed and relatively sober.”
“What did you do, before Cousins?” I asked him. “For work?”
“Whatever I could get. Construction, demolition. Security. Drove a truck for a lumber company for a couple years. Whatever paid half-decent money and kept me outside some, and didn’t require a diploma.”
I handed him a plate with two pancakes, delivered the syrup bottle and butter dish, found us silverware. I put the third pancake on my own plate and sat down, our knees brushing under the small table.
“Made me nuts,” he went on, “the times when I couldn’t find work for a week or two, back home. I hated some of my jobs, but I never understood how anybody could stand it, just sitting around doing nothing.”
“Me, too.” I thought of Justin, twenty-eight now but probably still sixteen at heart, wasting entire weekends drinking and playing video games with his buddies. And how many hours had I sat there, spectating, bored half to death?
Eric said, “That had me more nervous than anything, about getting released—what the fuck I’d do if I didn’t have something lined up. If I’d get stuck back home, having to crash with my mom or sister. And how awful that’d feel. Like I’d forfeited all that time and wound up worse than where I’d left off. Or like everybody would look at me like I was going to turn into my dad—a waste of space.”
“Thank goodness for your work release supervisor, I guess.”
“No lie.” He sponged at his syrup with a forkful of pancake. “It’s been hard. For my family, after five years, my getting parole is like the finish line to them. The goal. For me it’s just the beginning.”
“And what are your goals?”
His eyes went to the window as he chewed, the morning light making them look like the syrup, sweet and maple brown.
“To work my ass off, to start. Get through the winter and see how this job goes, once I’m actually getting to do landscaping. Get good at it. Get real good at it, and I dunno. Just see where it takes me. Maybe I’ll see about getting some certification. Though I probably need my GED first, and I never managed to pass that while I was locked up. Not even close. I don’t think I ever even made it halfway through before the time was up.”
“They offer GED programs tailored to people with all sorts of special needs.”
He smiled, looking embarrassed. “Special needs? Christ.”
“You know what I mean. For dyslexic students and people with ADHD, and even for dysgraphia. I think you need proof from a doctor though, to qualify. But that’s not such a hurdle.”
“Nah, probably not. Not if I want better work certification. It costs a couple hundred bucks for a professional landscaping course and it’s probably all stuff I’ll learn on the job anyhow, but if it means I might make more money down the road . . . could be worth it.”
“You seem to have found something you really enjoy.”
He nodded. “I do. I hope that’s not just because it got me out of Cousins a few hours a day, though . . . But no, I like working with plants. It’s interesting, the way each one needs something different to thrive.”
“Better you than me. My mom’s had a garden my whole life, and I still can’t seem to keep anything more complicated than a jade plant alive. Do you think you’d do that—build yourself a garden?”
His cheeks flushed again, if I wasn’t mistaken.
“What?”
“I sort of have, already. Sort of. Much as I can, in my apartment anyhow.”
“I’ll have to come see sometime.”
A funny little smile. “I’m not sure I want you to. My place is such a shithole.”
“Oh yeah, and mine’s a penthouse.”
He shrugged. “I like yours. It feels like a home. It’s going to be a while before I can afford to move anywhere nice or decorate. I owe a lot in fines for the assault, and for time served. Plus my truck needs work, and my mom always needs something done—something bought or at least fixed, and driving eighty miles round trip to do the fixing is expensive, with my shitty gas mileage.”
“Ah.”
“Plus I can’t really stand going back home now.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been back twice, since I got out. Prison wasn’t a step up or anything, lifestylewise, but I’ve been away long enough that it’s like . . . I dunno. Like I can see that place for what it is now. Like I brought the world into focus, being away. When I was eighteen, twenty years old, I was almost proud of where I’d come from. Fucking trailer park pride or something.”
“Time for a fresh start, maybe.”
He nodded. “Overdue . . . Is that why you’re here? A fresh start?”
“Not exactly. A start in general, to my library career. I got my master’s in Ann Arbor, and a job search brought me here, but that was the only reason.”
“Think you’ll stick around?”
I considered it. Considered my struggling, scrappy library in its struggling, scrappy little city. Considered the people I helped at Larkhaven and Cousins, and out around the county. “For a while, at least. But I don’t know if this is where I want to be the rest of my life. I want to make a difference in a place where it counts, but . . .”
“It’s a depressing area.”
I nodded, feeling guilty. “It is. And the people are just way different than back home. People say that all the niceness down South is fake, but . . . Some days I’d happily take fake niceness over honest jerkiness. Plus winter’s so damn long.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Let’s pool our money, then. We’ll buy a little place down south, way away from all the snow and my shitty hometown. I’ll be able to do landscaping year-round. You can find some little town with a library that needs fixing.”
My body went funny, warm with the pleasure of such a thought. Had he been serious, it’d be a different matter, but we’d just spent the night blowing each other’s minds, so when else would wistful future-fantasizing be this appropriate?
“Sounds good. Though between your fines and my student loans and both our salaries, that pool may take a long time to fill.”
He shrugged, smiling. “I know a thing or two about patience.”
I smiled back, but that light in my middle flickered once more. He’d told me last night, he couldn’t promise not to do what he had for his sister, for me. It meant something to him, something about honor or justice. But should anything terrible ever happen, and this was my man . . . He might make a decision that took him away from me, right when I needed him most. His freedom was worth less to him than another man’s due suffering, and I wasn’t sure I could commit to someone who valued vengeance over staying close to his loved ones.
He must see that as the extent of what he has to offer, I realized. His violence. Foolish as it was, I wondered if I could teach him differently. Show him how much more worth he had as a partner than a pit bull.
But if half a decade in hell hadn’t taught him, what chance did I stand?
Dumb thoughts. Now wasn’t the time to be having them, anyhow. Now was a time to revel in what we did have—a growing fondness, an undeniable physical bond. Plenty to explore, for now.
I made another round of pancakes, then we drained the coffeepot into our mugs and retired to the couch to flip channels while we digested. Eric made a piqued noise, and I stopped on football highlights. I didn’t care what we watched. I only cared about the warm heft of his arm around my shoulders and the sight of our socked feet propped side by side on my coffee table. I only cared that for the first time in five years, I was close to a man. And he felt so good. Big and strong, reassuring. Warm and right as the mug in my hands.
“You got anyplace to be today?” he asked. “Stuff to get done?”
I shook my head. “Nowhere ’til tomor
row morning. You?”
“Nope. Even if I did, I’d blow it off if you’d let me hang out here with you.”
I waved at the TV. “With all the buildup they’re giving the Lions game, I’m pretty sure you have to stay now. And I got groceries on Friday, so we have absolutely no reason to leave the apartment, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be happy if I don’t even put shoes on today.”
He gave me a squeeze, drawing me closer. “I can barely believe we’re here, like this. Much as I imagined it. After last week, at the coffee place . . . I thought for sure the fire had gone out of us. Out of you, anyhow.”
“Not really. Not completely, even when I got freaked out, about your release. It was always simmering deep down. Embers of it, just waiting to reignite.”
“That’s awful poetic.”
“Back when we were writing to each other,” I said, laying my head on his shoulder, “I used to get dressed up, and put on makeup and perfume, and light a candle. Pour a glass of wine. And I’d sit right here, and read what you had to say to me. Like these really weird dates.”
“Right here?”
I nodded. “Where you’re sitting. But sometimes in bed, too.”
“And you dressed up for me?”
“I guess so. Or for myself. I’m not sure. Just to make it special. Or exciting.”
“Did you ever go to bed after,” he asked softly, “and imagine you were getting undressed for me, when you took your clothes off?”
I bit my lip. “Yeah.”
“Did you keep thinking about whatever we’d been saying to each other in those letters, in bed?”
“Yes.”
He turned, his far arm coming around, palm warm on my ribs. “You put yourself to sleep, thinking about me? About us, doing all that stuff?”
“Just about every night.”
His voice turned low and heavy. “You ever say my name, when you came?”
I nodded, throat tight, head foggy.
“Out loud?”
“Yeah, I’m sure I did.”
He caught my eyes, then leaned close to brush our mouths together. “I want to watch that sometime.”
I’d never let a man see me doing that before. But I’d never wanted one the way I did Eric. “I’d do that, for you. If you’d do the same for me.”
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