Born Again

by Heidi Lowe

  “You find it amusing defacing my body?” Her anger was feigned, her amusement clear.

  “I do, actually. Did you find the others?”

  “You mean the ones on my inner thigh and left breast?”

  I grinned. “There’s one on your butt, too. You’re welcome.”

  She tried to hold her feigned glare, but she couldn’t, and burst into a laugh.

  I kissed her then, cutting the laughter short. I needed to feel her lips. We weren’t supposed to kiss here, but we’d broken that rule a couple of times already.

  She cut it off eventually because she knew I never would. “How did it go at home with you-know-who?”

  “She ignored me, and then hogged the bathroom this morning, hence why I was late.”

  “I’m sorry.” She stroked my face with the back of her hand. “She’ll get over it, I’m sure.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Especially as there would always be the reminder of my betrayal every time I stayed out late, or didn’t come home until the next day, or any time I got a phone call from Naomi. As long as we were together she would constantly be tormented.

  “Welcome to the club!” This was Dove’s response the evening I told him about Naomi.

  It was Friday. I’d curled up in bed in front of my laptop, a bag of Doritos to myself, after a long day of work. The chips and phone call helped me momentarily take my mind off the fact that Naomi hadn’t asked me to come round all week. Five days since our first weekend together. Was she already sick of me? Despite working in the same office, we didn’t see each other often; it had always been that way, and hadn’t changed now that we were dating. If it were up to me we would never be apart. People spoke about relationship fatigue, about couples needing their space, but if you truly loved someone, you would never want to spend a day away from them. Each day apart would be agony. That was how I knew Colin wasn’t The One, and that Naomi was. It ached to be separated from her.

  “You know I don’t give a shit about that stuff,” my brother went on. “Lesbians are awesome. If I were a woman I’d totally be a lesbian.”

  I laughed. “I don’t know if I am one, I just know how I feel about her.” I didn’t tell him about all the women I’d slept with in order to satiate my appetite for her. No one needed to know about that brief but dark moment in my history. All of that was behind me now.

  “Don’t overthink it, sis, just enjoy it.” He sounded sad when he said it. “Just enjoy it.”

  I wouldn’t have been a good sister if I didn’t sense his mood through the phone. “Hey, everything good with you?”

  “Yeah, same same. There’s some trouble with the new single, but nothing we can’t handle.”

  I decided to take his word for it. Maybe I should have probed further, got him to tell me exactly what the trouble was so I could gage the real impact it would have on his mental health. But I wanted to believe he really was okay.

  While he was talking, I heard the unsubtle sounds of moaning coming from the living room. No, it couldn’t have been...

  “Dove, I gotta go,” I said, and hung up fast.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the scene unfolding when I entered the living room. Even though I’d suspected it, the full extent knocked me for six. There was Brit, bent over the couch, while a naked man plowed her from behind. And he wasn’t being very gentle about it, either.

  Their moans didn’t stop even when they spotted me.

  “Brit, what the hell?” This was a first. Up until then she’d always confined sex to her bedroom, out of respect for me. Now she had no such concerns.

  Her grin was devilish. Breathlessly, “Watch yourself around her, Eric, she likes to steal other people’s lovers.”

  I shook my head incredulously, mortified by the scene, and the abuse my couch was being subjected to. I’d bought that with my own money, picked it out myself. Now I would never look at it the same again.

  I waited until I heard the front door shut before I charged out of my room. The living room smelled of sex and sweat.

  Brit, in her underwear, chugged a bottle of beer.

  “That was so not cool,” I said to her.

  She cut me a look, sipped from her bottle coolly. “You know what else isn’t cool? You fucking the woman I’m dating.”

  “For God’s sake, you guys were never serious! It was a fling.”

  “You’re right.” She got up, cut me a bitter look, squared up to me. “I’m good at those.” As she barged past me on her way to her room, beer in hand, she added, “Oh, and get used to what you saw tonight. Because I’m gonna keep doing that until you lose your shit and move the fuck out.”

  So much for her getting over it.

  EIGHTEEN

  Laughter filtered out of the break room as I made my way there to join the others for lunch. I’d packed one this time — a couple of BLT sandwiches, an apple, and a bag of cashew nuts.

  “What’s so funny?” I said when I stepped inside. Saeed, Gaynor, Reece and a couple of others I knew vaguely from Flavio Constantini’s team were sitting on couches and around the table, coffees or Tupperware containers of food in their hands. I noticed that Reece was using one of the Rainbow Wares containers I’d designed. We had all types of prototypes and freebies lying around, so it was unlikely he’d bought it specifically, or even knew what it meant. Seeing it filled me with pride. This was what it felt like to come up in the world, to do something that mattered. I’d never produced anything of value in my nearly three decades of existence. Until the promotion, I’d been on track to become exactly what my mother always said I would be: worthless, someone who made a brief stop on Earth, never accomplished anything, and no one missed them when they were gone. She was wrong, had been about everything, I realized that now. I did have accomplishments, I’d made contributions that were worth something, and now, I had someone in my life who would miss me if I were gone.

  “We were just talking about Gaynor’s barbecue last year,” Saeed said.

  I took my things from the refrigerator, sat down on the couch, beside Reece.

  “We’d recently returned from France, and my son, who was six at the time, thought it would be a good idea to serve his version of escargots.” Gaynor face-palmed as everyone laughed. “Twelve live snails he’d found in the yard, crawling all over the table. It was a disaster!”

  I chuckled as I ate my sandwich.

  “Kids! You gotta love ‘em,” one of the others from Flavio’s team commented.

  If I’d done something like that as a child, I wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. I could just imagine my father’s face... I put the image out of my mind quickly, and thought only of the future. My children would never be afraid of me, I had decided that from an early age. Misbehavior would never be met with shouting or smacking — that was a no-no. Snails on a dinner table, crayons on the wall... The thought only made me smile. How I longed for all of that.

  “You’re coming, aren’t you?” Saeed said to me. “This Saturday?”

  “Oh, uh—”

  “You have to,” Gaynor insisted. “Everyone else is.”

  “Naomi too?” As soon as I asked I felt stupid.

  Everyone laughed, even the guys from the other team, as though it was the most absurd thing they’d ever heard.

  “Yeah, right, like anyone wants to party with The Glacier Queen.” This came from Reece, a guy in his early fifties, who was way past the age of such schoolyard silliness. This all had a Mean Girls feel to it, and it didn’t sit well with me. Which wouldn’t have been the case had I not been crazy in love with The Glacier Queen herself.

  “So she never gets an invite?” I tried not to sound too aggrieved, too insulted. But the truth was, I had every right to be, and to defend my girlfriend, even if no one knew she was.

  Gaynor did a dramatic frown. “Are you crazy? She would laugh in my face if I invited her. She would see it as an insult, beneath her.”

  Not the Naomi I knew. We were two and a half months into our relationship, a
nd I felt as though I knew her inside and out. There wasn’t an inch of her body I hadn’t kissed, nor a detail of her past I hadn’t committed to memory. I knew about her two older sisters who lived in Australia and Wales with their families, I knew that her parents were still happily married and lived in Quebec, her father’s place of birth, and that her mother was American. I knew that she’d played semi-professional tennis as a teenager. I knew she never had anything bad to say about anyone, especially not her employees. The opposite, in fact. If they’d known how highly she spoke of them, how much respect she had for them, they would have seen the error of their ways. If they saw her the way I did, everything would have been different.

  Naomi hadn’t invited me over that Thursday evening, but she was expecting me. When she let me in, and I got a good look at her white, silk chemise, she reminded me of a sexy angel. I wasted no time in dispossessing her of it, tossing it to the floor and leading her, backwards, my tongue down her throat, to the bedroom.

  In my haste to remove her panties, I scratched her.

  “Ow,” she said with a laugh.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” What a complete moron! You’re there to make her feel good, not take her skin off! I kissed her on the spot that I’d scratched, which made her chuckle.

  “Take your time, I’m not going anywhere.”

  It was as if she could read my deepest, most harrowing thoughts. As if she knew I feared that this wouldn’t last; that she would come to her senses and realize that she could do better. It was always at the back of my mind. Happiness, at least for me, had historically never lasted very long. On those rare occasions when my parents were nice to us, the fun would always end abruptly, and everything would go right back to normal.

  Although I wanted to ravage her, I did as she said, took my time. I ate calmly, licked smoothly, sucked gently. I filled myself with her sap, didn’t waste a mouthful. Her pelvis kept hitting my nose as she bucked beneath me, but a broken nose was a small price to pay to be the one who brought her to climax.

  She stopped me before I could get her there. Brought me up to kiss her.

  “Let’s do it together,” she breathed, her lips brushing mine.

  I wasn’t sure what she meant at first. Until she helped me out of my clothes, rolled me onto my back, and positioned her sex over my face while she buried her own face between my crotch. She ignored her own advice to take her time, because before I knew it, my vagina was being mowed down by her aggressive tongue, a tongue that knew exactly which spots to hit to throw me into a frenzy.

  The 69 wasn’t a position I could do justice to. I could barely focus on my task because I was too busy having the life drained from me. I tried and tried to give as good as I got, but it was no use. I was doing more moaning than munching.

  When I finally came, I felt like such a failure. But I needed to give her her release, so I put everything I had into it, wrapping my lips around her nub, and inducing a body shattering orgasm that I could feel myself.

  Ten minutes later, I lay with my head on her stomach, my body still exhausted from the sex. She stroked my head.

  “Would you come if you were invited?” We were discussing the barbecue. I hadn’t told her what the others had said, but I wanted to get her take.

  She didn’t need to think about it. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like blurring the lines. I’m their boss, not their friend.”

  I lifted my head to look at her. “You’re my boss, and my friend... and my girlfriend.” I kissed her bare stomach, which was clammy with sweat.

  “Well in general I try not to crap where I eat. It just isn’t good for anyone.”

  “I wish they could see the side of you that I know and love.” I brought myself up to face her so I could kiss her. If I went more than a couple of minutes without feeling her lips against mine, I started to panic.

  Her laugh was tired. “You mean you want me to be nice to your friends?”

  “I want you to be you,” I said between kisses. The woman she was when she was with me, that was the real her. The other one, the person at the office, was a facade.

  Her hands rubbed my back as we kissed. It was as though we couldn’t exist in the same space without constantly touching each other.

  “Are you staying tonight?” she asked, once our lips had separated.

  I wanted to, more than anything, but I’d stayed three nights in a row already, and we’d been leaving for work together, though driving separate vehicles. She’d even made space in a drawer for me, something I cherished each time I looked at the chest.

  Since things at the apartment had become strained between me and Brit, I’d been spending many nights at Naomi’s. Not just weekends. It had happened gradually, and she’d been fine with it. But I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. Thus, three nights in a row was my cut off point.

  “I should get back. Hopefully there won’t be another strange man walking around buck naked in my kitchen.”

  I saw the anger warp her features. “She’s really inconsiderate.” Those were the words she said, but not the words she meant. What she really wanted to say was far worse, I could see it in her face. But diplomacy, and maybe the fact that she’d caused this rift, kept her respectful.

  “I know, but I have to go back. If I don’t, how will we ever patch things up?” I was still naively optimistic. Quixotic. It had been like this for over a month, with no sign of things changing. At this point it looked as though she would get her wish — I would be forced to move out, to get my own place. Not just because the tension in the apartment had become unbearable, but because Naomi had frequently expressed her concern about the random naked men walking around the house.

  “Let me talk to her,” she said, stroking my face. “I don’t like you being there. It’s really not safe. For either of you.”

  The crows were at it again. Flapping wildly in my stomach, making me feel sick with emotion. To have someone care about me, about what happened to me, and truly mean it, not because of some religion but because it came from the heart, made me weak. Dove cared, when he remembered, but was usually too busy worrying about himself; and Colin cared in his own way, though I’d long suspected his feelings for me were akin to those one would have for a rescued pet, or a homeless person you managed to secure housing for. I was a project, a charity case that he’d gotten attached to. Naomi and I were different.

  I kissed her until she was chuckling and trying to stop me.

  “Thanks for worrying about me, but you’d probably make things worse if you got involved.”

  Though I wasn’t sure things could get any worse between us.

  I was wrong, of course.

  As soon as I walked in that night, the sounds of loud, angry sex hit me. I slammed the door shut so they could hear my arrival. The noises didn’t subside.

  As I walked past the living room, through the corner of my eye I saw not one but two men sticking it to Brit in the most graphic display I’d ever seen. It was like I’d just stepped into a cheap porno. The men looked to be in their early twenties, and had smug, self-satisfied looks on their faces as one worked her mouth, while the other worked her sex. I wanted to throw up.

  She’d had threesomes before, I knew that, but never in front of me. Never in the apartment, in fact. She always did that weird stuff at the guys’ place. In her bid to torture me, on the off chance that I would be home to see it, she’d brought her depravity into the open, onto our couch.

  “You’re disgusting,” I said to the room in general.

  One of the men looked up at me, grinned and said, “You want some of this too?”

  “I’d rather eat dog shit, thanks.”

  Both men laughed and continued defiling my roommate — not my friend. Hers was a friendship I could do without.

  Most of the guests at the barbecue were Gaynor’s friends and family, so I was surrounded by strangers. This always made me anxious. Luckily, Saeed arrived ten minutes after me, Ximena in t
ow. She seemed to be as anxious as I was.

  It was a pleasant Saturday afternoon. The sun had popped out briefly, before becoming shrouded by clouds. A thick heat still hung in the air. Coupled with the heat from the gargantuan, industrial-sized grill, manned by Gaynor’s husband and brother, it made for a sweltering day. Luckily I’d opted to wear a light summer dress, so the fabric wasn’t too clingy or stuffy.

  “Colin didn’t wanna come?” Saeed questioned, taking a huge bite of his burger. Pure, organic beef, apparently, and expensive to boot. Gaynor’s in-laws owned a farm in Northport, Stevens County, so their meat was fresh and clean, reared and slaughtered themselves. I just stuck to salad.

  “No, he, uh, he doesn’t like barbecues,” I lied. No one knew that we’d split over two months ago; I’d kept up the pretense as cover for my real relationship.

  “If I hadn’t met him myself, I’d think the guy didn’t exist,” Saeed joked.

  I smiled, said nothing.

  Forty-five minutes in, I was already bored. Saeed, always the life and soul, had abandoned me and started mingling with strangers. I checked my phone to see if Naomi had called. My phone showed the old voice messages from the missed calls Dove had given me throughout the week. I couldn’t be bothered to listen to them, not after the first one. They would all say the same thing, I just knew it. That some gig fell through, or that Kirsten had dumped him again. Whatever it was it would bring my mood down, and that was the last thing I needed. It had taken me so long to find true happiness, and I didn’t want him to ruin it.

  No text or call from Naomi.

  I went to find a bathroom, and almost tripped over Gaynor’s youngest child — five-year-old Cody — on the stairs.

  “Hey, what’s wrong, sweetie?” I said, noticing his tears. He was a cherubic little guy, adorable with blindingly blond hair and huge blue eyes. He reminded me of Dove from the pictures I’d seen of him as a toddler. His hair was also blond until he got to age six, then the red came through. Even now he wasn’t as ginger as me, and had escaped most of the ginger-hate the kids at school had subjected me to.