It's Complicated

by Julia Kent

  Steam rose over their heads as the water heated in tandem with her blood, fire between them evident as his hands went everywhere—hers, too. Bodies tangled in a dance of strokes and sighs. Stepping into the shower, she bent over to set the condom on the edge of the tub and found him behind her, the push of his cock against her thigh.

  Oh, my. The shock of so much of him behind her, of the water pounding both their naked bodies, of his arms and hands and thighs and all of Alex pressed against her, slipping and sliding and taking her over made her flush and swell, eager for sex that would be fast and furious. Spinning around, she wrapped her limbs around his body and moaned as the parts matched up in just the right places.

  Mouths hungry, the water hot and aimed right over her head, it pounded into his neck and sprayed around, he reached down to find her, one finger sliding in as she gasped, opening her eyes to find him wet and smoldering, as if that were possible.

  One last, almost violent kiss and he turned her around, one hand grasping her breast and pinching her nipple so hard she nearly climaxed, and then the telltale sound of the wrapper tearing, a hand against the cleft of her ass, and his voice.

  “Put your hands against the wall.”

  The order made her knees tingle, palms slapping against the white fiberglass wall. Splayed out, her hands bore witness to his arm wrapped around her waist, his hand roaming wherever it damn well pleased, his thighs sliding against hers as his other hand took his thick self and slowly centered the tip right where she wanted it most. Backing up, she helped him to enter her, the water’s spray on her back now, thin rivers pouring over her breast, waterfalls cascading from her nipples.

  Never a fan of sex where she couldn’t be face to face, this was something completely different. Filled with an erotic uncertainty, she tingled and faltered, thrilled by his new dominance. The power of Alex’s thrusts behind her, how one hand now rested on her shoulder, the other strumming her clit, made her lift one leg and brace herself against the tub edge, the new angle so exquisite she felt the rush of orgasm right then, her inner core muscles tightening with breakneck speed.

  “Oh, God, Josie,” he said behind her, the tension palpable in the wet air, his voice like gravel. And then—both tightened, hard, and she exploded into a million tiny fragments, slamming her backside against him, wanting to take in as much as possible, needing him to fill her and touch that thin line of flesh inside her that made everything whole and disintegrated everything, all at once.

  Face down, she inhaled ragged breaths, the water pooling at her lips and dripping down, all senses focused on the muscle contractions that fueled a supernova of need and release. Slowly, Alex’s deep thrusts receded, his hand on her clit at a standstill, the sandpapery shift of his cheek against her shoulder blade a sign that both were done.

  Sometimes it felt good to just be fucked. A quickie could reset her entire mood and make the world make sense. Bright eyed, she lowered her leg and he pulled out, taking the hint, as she leaned back against him, and the two stood, silent, in the downpour. Ear against his chest, she waited through each breath to hear the pounding go to normal, Alex peppering the top of her head with kisses.

  Josie took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, through sputtering lips overcome with shower spray, “We should actually shower.”

  “I’ll soap you up,” he said, reaching for the bar.

  “I’ll end up against the wall again if you do that,” she answered, dodging his hand as it traveled down between her legs.

  “And the problem is…?”

  Laughter poured out of them both, but, as if they were old hands at doing this, each split off to a separate section of the tiny shower and did a quick wash and shampoo, trading places under the spray to rinse off. Weak and completely wrung out, Josie climbed out and toweled off, enjoying the view as Alex did the same as he walked to the bedroom. He must have dispensed with the condom at some point, though she had no idea when. The man was a condom Houdini.

  He returned to the bathroom dressed. She pouted. He shrugged and walked into the kitchen. The beep of a microwave was her soundtrack as she dressed, too, choosing a simple white button-down and khakis for work.

  “I heated our coffees,” he said as she waltzed into the kitchen. Coffee. Ahhhh. She used to say it was better than sex, but she couldn’t say that anymore. Grateful, she sat across from him, playing footsie.

  “You working today?” she asked.

  “No. I need to catch up on sleep. My shift starts tonight. Twenty-four hours.”

  Awkwardness set in. Avoiding his eyes, she wondered what she could say next without sounding too needy. Part of her wanted to see him every day possible, to schedule their next date so that it was set in her mind, a firm joining that would allay her insecurities.

  Another part wanted to fade out and avoid. Already at the brink of what she could handle emotionally, she felt fragile inside and ready to snap.

  Living with both feelings was like an interminable sentence.

  A quick check of the clock told her he needed to go—now. How could she ask him to leave? It felt rude. Wrong. Abrupt. And yet this was the longest she’d ever let a man spend in her apartment. He didn’t know that, of course. Whatever was stirred up inside her would settle down eventually, she reminded herself.

  The particles of chaos suspended in her every molecule right this moment, though, showed no signs of settling any time soon.

  Alex stood, putting his mug in the sink. “You need to go, so walk me to the door and make love on the porch and I’ll let you.”

  She stood, too. “I must have Stockholm Syndrome, because that sounds appealing.”

  “If anyone is the abductor here, it’s you.”

  She snorted. “Right. Because someone who aims the shower nozzle at dachshund level could totally kidnap you.” They reached the front door. Crackhead appeared out of nowhere, nuzzling Alex’s legs.

  Alex looked down at the cat. “Crackhead?”

  Josie nodded.

  “He? She?”

  “It.”

  “It likes me.” Tugging on her ass, he pulled her close.

  “It’s not the only one,” she said against his neck as they embraced.

  One last long, slow kiss from him and she nudged him out the door, needing the last few minutes to get ready and clear her head. While her body was back in alignment and utterly sated, her brain needed to refocus in the idea of work, that there was a life and a structure outside of her and Alex’s genitals, tongues, hands, and mouths.

  Unfortunately.

  He turned the corner and she sighed, restraining an impulse to run to the window that paralleled the road he walked on now. Coffee. A quick blow dry and another giant mug of coffee would get her on her way to work, where what she faced was about as diametrically opposed to the past twelve hours as could be.

  Relief and disappointment flooded her simultaneously as Alex’s absence sank in. A quick march to the bathroom and she plugged in the hair dryer, snapping it on and furiously tousling her wet, brown mop of hair, the white noise of the machine helping to clear her thoughts. Inhaling deeply, she felt the air leave her body, as if it contained Alex and now he were being purged from her body.

  No. Impossible. Her skin burned with his touch, her nether regions completely fulfilled with the last few hours of sex, and her hips carried her with a jaunty saunter that felt mature and primed, as if she were somehow more a woman now for having found a partner so fine. The Josie she had become in the past day had stumbled into a secret society; she as a full-fledged member of a group with a single requirement—being yourself.

  He hadn’t flinched, had he? Finishing up her hair and dragging a comb through it, she let the relaxed waves frame her face. No makeup. She rarely wore it to work anyhow, so if she did today, people would tease.

  Melting into the background of her ho-hum job was what she wanted most for this day.

  Any more excitement and she would implode.

  Two days had gone by and she’d
texted with Alex, who was finishing up a grueling twenty-four-hour shift. As her phone beeped, she hoped it was him.

  Nope. The phone number showing on Josie’s screen made her stomach drop into a hole in the floor. If she had balls they would have crawled up into her abdominal cavity and pressed against her throat.

  It was her mother.

  A phone call from Marlene meant only one thing. She wanted money. Money for her alcohol, money for her drugs, money for cigarettes, and money for her men. Josie had ignored the last two calls she’d had, abrupt and perfunctory voicemails Marlene always left when she was determined to get something. “Josie, it’s your mom. Call me. Click,” had been the sum total of each. She knew that Marlene would persist, though, so against her better judgment she pressed the answer button and said, “Hello?”

  “Heeeeeey, it’s my baby girl.” The smoker’s rasp rattled so deeply in Josie’s ear, she could almost smell and taste the cigarette smoke. Her mom and her aunt Cathy had plenty of things that were different about each other, but on this one, they were united. Chimneys who filled their homes with the ever-present houseguest of nicotine residue.

  “What’s up, Mom?” Josie tried to keep it light. If she engaged in any possible way, this could get nasty.

  “I was just thinkin’ about you, and you didn’t answer my voicemails.”

  “I was on shift, Mom.”

  “Oooooooh, okay.”

  From the tone in her mother’s voice, Josie could tell she wasn’t drunk or high. It was a rare moment of getting what was left of the real Marlene, one to one, and a thin tendril of hope allowed itself to unwind inside her. Maybe she’d get one good conversation, after all.

  “I hope you’re not overworking yourself. You know how hard that…” Marlene stumbled, and Josie could imagine her, cigarette in her right hand, waving it, as if the smoke could somehow coordinate to form the word that her stuttering brain couldn’t find.

  “Yeah, nursing can be hard, Mom,” Josie helped.

  “That’s right.” Marlene’s voice became more confident. “That’s right, nursing is hard, but I’m proud of my baby.”

  Josie’s teeth felt like steel edges grinding against each other. “Thanks, Mom,” was all she said. She wasn’t going to fall for it and ask, “So what are you calling for?” She knew that if she did that, it could go one of two ways; she could be told “why do I need a reason to call my baby girl?” or she could be told “because I need money,” and then hear a diatribe about how she was the rich nurse who lived in Boston who didn’t send her mother enough.

  Josie knew her mother’s monthly income. Between working a couple of pity shifts at the local bar, where Jerry let her work mostly to work off an ever-increasing bar tab, and survivor’s benefits from her father’s death, she knew that there was enough to at least pay the mortgage, cover utility bills and basic food. There wasn’t, though, enough to cover cigarettes, booze, and pills. When Josie had come home from college in her senior year she’d found the stash of Percocets, a hundred or more, in her mom’s top drawer. She knew enough not to ask, and she knew enough to realize that her mother was probably going to multiple doctors to get that much. Traumatic brain injury, and neck and back muscles that were permanently twisted as she recovered from the accident, gave her the perfect excuse when it came to getting pain meds. Josie’s problem was that teasing out how much of it was legitimate and how much of it was bullshit had driven her crazy for years. She couldn’t let it continue to drive her crazy, so she’d cut it off at the knees and quit wondering. Now she just tolerated the phone calls from Marlene.

  “When you comin’ home next, Josie?” Marlene asked, the question a formality; she knew damn well that Josie came home once a year, typically in August.

  “Oh, you know, same time.”

  “You’ll be here for a week?”

  “Yep.” She would spent most of that week with Darla, hanging out and chatting, and trying to convince the younger cousin to come back to Boston with her. This would be a different trip now, wouldn’t it? Because Darla could be out here soon, if Josie took the job with Laura and asked to have Darla be her assistant. Darla had a natural acceptance of the surreal that made Josie think she’d be perfect for the very unconventional dating service Laura and her guys were proposing.

  The rattlings of the implications of getting Darla to move out here made her teeth hurt even more. Marlene would ask the inevitable question, “Well, if Darla can move in with you, then why can’t I?” and that was a whole conversation that Josie didn’t want to have.

  “Mom, how are you doing?” Josie asked, giving her the entry that she needed.

  “Ah, same old, same old here,” Marlene said. “You know, I’ve been having a hard time with the house, though.”

  Here it goes, Josie thought—the house was going to be her excuse.

  Sometimes it was the car, sometimes it was her health, sometimes it was Darla and Cathy. When they were brought up it was easy to give Darla a call and say “So, my mom tells me your cat died,” and Darla would say, “Oh, the fifth one this year?” and they’d laugh, because who else can you call when you need to talk about your crazy mom, and nobody else has a crazy mom. Aunt Cathy wasn’t quite crazy, but she was depressed, and it meant that Josie and Darla could commiserate.

  “What’s up with the house, Mom?” she asked.

  “Oh, the gutters, there’s this problem with ’em, and they’re rotting, and they’re saying it’s gonna cause all this roof damage and it could be thousands and thousands if we don’t get it fixed now.”

  Familiar. Josie figured it had been about two years since she’d used that one. Back then it was the gutters were being ripped off the house by angry squirrels, and that she needed to have all of the leaves that had built up in there cleaned out, and that that was going to cost $600. Josie paused to see whether Marlene was recycling entire stories.

  “Really, what’s wrong with the gutters?” she finally asked.

  “Oh, it’s these damn squirrels!”

  Closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead, Josie hated to be right. “How much will it cost to fix, Mom?” she said, haltingly, mentally running through her own savings, wondering how much she could manage without putting herself in jeopardy.

  “Oh, it’s actually not too bad, there’s some guys in the neighborhood who say they can do it for four hundred.”

  “Four hundred.”

  “Well, maybe $300 if, you know, I flash ’em some tit and flirt with ’em a little bit.” Marlene’s throaty chuckle made Josie’s own throat tighten, choking her on a ball of disgust and resentment, anger and embarrassment. And sorrow.

  “I can get a check for you for three hundred, Mom, it’s a little tight here.”

  “Oh, it’s tight here, too, Josie. If you’ve got it tight then it must be a completely flat pancake here.” She cackled.

  Their laughs, despite Marlene’s smoker’s rasp, were similar, and Josie hated that. She didn’t like to be reminded that she was anything like Marlene. Unless it was the Marlene from before the accident. Everyone noticed, though, as soon as they met Marlene. She had a moment of horrified dread at the thought “when they meet Marlene.” Suppose one of these days Alex met Marlene?

  The dread was brief, though—the thought of Alex rushed over her like some sort of antidote. She imagined Alex’s mother, pictured her normal and nice, a professional, who didn’t walk around wearing clothes that were two sizes too small, six-inch “come fuck me” pumps, or eyeliner so thick you’d think that a road crew had applied it with a line painter.

  “No problem, Mom,” she said, smiling. It was a sick grin, one that came from her out of a place of security of knowing that Marlene couldn’t see it. Her phone flashed, some number she didn’t recognize. “Hey, Mom, I gotta go, there’s somebody on my other line, it might be work.”

  “Okay, hon, well, you take care and I’ll just look out for the check.”

  “Yep, bye, Mom.” Click. She flashed over. “Hello?”
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  “Josie,” said a warm, deep voice.

  Oh, how she needed this. It was as if he had read her mind and called to rescue her at the exact perfect moment. Gratitude flooded her, along with desire and need. “Alex,” she said, “how great to hear your voice.”

  “That’s the kind of welcome I like.” The sound of him was filled with a smile, a happiness that infused her. “How are you doing?” he asked softly.

  “I would be doing a lot better if I were with you,” she said, the words coming out effortlessly. No anxiety, no nervousness, just a drained sort of honesty that she found very appealing within herself.

  “I would love to be with you, too,” he said quietly, a pensiveness to his words. “Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked.

  “A real walk, or a walk?” she said, adding affect to the second phrase. If he’d been in the room with her he’d have seen her put quotation marks around it.

  A boisterous laugh filled her phone, forcing her to pull it away from her ear a few inches. “I don’t know…you tell me what I should say.”

  “How about we start with a walk and then see if later on we could go for a walk.”

  “I’d like that, Josie. I like you.”

  If he had said “I love you,” she’d have run screaming in the other direction, but his simple “I like you” was better. Seconds ticked by; her brain paused as she just felt how good he was, how comfortable they could be together, and how this was a layer of life that she didn’t even know she had wanted. Finally, she said, “I like you, too.”

  She could hear the smile in his words as he said, “Want to come over? We can have a glass of wine here and then go for a walk.”

  “We will never get to the actual walk part, Alex, if I come over.”