by A. R. Hadley
"And you won't be doing that now either."
He gathered her hair, tossed it behind her shoulders, then nipped at her neck. "Tonight, we can sneak downstairs and christen it." Nip. Nip.
"You're horrible. Like a horny teenager."
"You're the horny one with your crazy pregnancy hormones."
"I'm not crazy."
"No, you're sexy. Beautiful. Amazing. Did I say sexy? Are you sure you don't want to be fucked? Right. Now." He growled the words against her neck as he rocked her, tracing his thumb over her nipple until it pebbled through the material.
"Stop," she moaned and swatted his wrist.
"You stop. You’re the one rubbing your pussy all over me, making me fucking insane."
He flicked her nipples — one, then the other. The rhythm of both their hips picked up speed.
"Come for me, Annie Rebekah." She could hear the smile wrapped up inside his delectable words, confident he would get what he wanted.
"You're the worst," she groaned.
"I'm the best," he whispered.
He slipped a hand toward her crotch and slid his thumb over her harshly, making sure she could feel his touch through the material. Her nipples received attention too. He bit them — through layers of bra and shirt — multiple times, until she was practically putting a hole in her tongue to keep from screaming.
"Fuck..." She squeezed his torso with her thighs, grinding herself against him until it burned. "Fuck..."
"Quiet."
Writhing her pelvis, the apex between her thighs, against his stomach, writhing and writhing and writhing — it didn’t take long. She went boneless, emptying of anxiety but filling with flurries of the notion that anything was possible. Anything. Loving this man forever was possible.
Forever? God, what a concept.
Still panting, she laid her face against his chest, clutching his biceps and enjoying the safety of his enormous sequoia tree. He smelled like a beautiful, clean T-shirt and the salt at the beach.
"I could feel you releasing through your jeans." He spoke against her hair. "I love it when you let go, when you fucking forget everything."
After catching her breath, Annie sat up, licked his face, chin to temple, and laughed. "That's what's in store for you." She put her lips to his ear. "I will put my mouth on you. I’ll make you let go and lose your everything."
"A blow job … on the settee?" He raised his eyebrows.
"You’re naughty." She smacked his shoulder, then they both stood.
"Naughty and hungry." He swatted her ass — hard. "Let's go feed that baby."
"What’s going on with you?" Rosa asked Cal.
Two days until the funeral, and she’d just arrived in Ojai. The two of them were alone in Constance's sitting room.
"I don’t like this sitting down for news. It’s enough that your mother is dead." Rosa made the sign of the cross. "What is it?"
Cal only retuned her question with a stare, and then he looked over toward the hall and called out, "Annie."
Rosa’s fingers fluttered in front of her chest. "You’ve kept this from me.”
It had been months since they’d seen each other. Rosa’s eyes became coins as Annie appeared from behind the corner, hands clasped at her back, a grin on her face, a splash of rosy on her cheeks.
"You’re so difficult." Rosa squinted at Cal as she went toward Annie with her arms open. “My querida."
They embraced. Rosa smelled of sweet perfume. Her body felt all at once like a grandmother’s, a mother’s, an aunt’s — a woman with jewels strung about the heart in spades.
Inching away from Annie's face but keeping a grip on her biceps, Rosa asked questions using only her expression. Her jaguar eyes sang. She looked back and forth between Cal and Annie, seeming to possibly be guessing their news.
"No…" Rosa said in the tone of yes mixed with disbelief and shock. She lifted Annie's arms out to her sides and looked at her belly. "Is it true?"
Annie nodded.
"Dios mio." Rosa sighed. "Tu me has dado un regalo especial hoy."
Cal came up behind Annie and wrapped his arms around her pelvis, splaying his hands across her stomach. "The baby is due in May.”
Rosa's eyes filled with tears. "I will have two. Dos."
She moved forward and wrapped her arms around them both. Palms on Cal's back, she squished them inside her petite embrace, making beautiful, quiet noises. It even sounded as though she was crying.
"You don't tell me this.” Rosa wiped under her eyes, stepped back, and continued to cry — yes, she had cried. “Oh my, I'm not a crier, Annie, but this … oh my." She swatted a palm in front of her face. "This is a miracle."
The three of them sat on the settee. Rosa in the middle. Cal and Annie each placed a hand on the small of her back and shared a stare. Their eyes invited the other to tell Rosa about the upcoming marriage.
"I need a drink," Rosa said even though she had calmed. Her eyes were dry. "Una fuerte."
Annie laughed. "We haven't even told you the rest yet."
"There’s more!"
Annie began to rotate the platinum band. "Cal asked me to marry him.” The words had come out in a choked whisper.
Rosa gasped. Now her eyes were the size of half-dollars. And as she looked back and forth at the two of them, she fanned herself, then blinked — several times. Finally, she lifted Annie's hand and inspected the ring.
"This is your abuela’s." Rosa sucked in a shaky breath. "Get me a drink, Calvin. I’m an old lady. You’re giving me too many heart palpitations. More than my other children."
She waved him off, and he chuckled as he left the room.
"Men." Rosa sank into the seat, and Annie laughed. "Oy."
"Oh, mi amor.” She cupped Annie's cheeks. “You both are so good for each other. I knew this." She patted Annie’s knee. "This is right for you?"
"Yes." Annie smiled and nodded.
"I knew when I met you. You have an old soul too. He waited for you. Ah, I might cry again. I never cry." She pressed her lips together and stopped on a dime.
Annie retrieved the tissues from the corner table as Cal returned with a glass of what looked like red Moscato.
"Oh, this is good." She cleared her throat and stared ahead after draining half the glass. "This is good, mi hijo."
Cal sat on the coffee table, facing the two women, and after Rosa finished off the wine, she grabbed ahold of each of their hands.
"This moment where you bring in new life..." Rosa paused and shook her head.
"Rosa..." Annie said.
"No. I must say this, and then we’ll drink and laugh."
Annie grinned and squeezed Rosa’s hand.
"Constance breathed out her last breath in this moment where you have new life." She choked on the last word. Tears were trapped in the corners of her eyes. "It is ... how do you say? Something found. Something you were not looking for."
"Serendipity," Cal and Annie said together.
"Jinx," Annie said to him. "You owe me—"
"Oh, I owe you something." Cal smirked.
Rosa swatted his arm. "You owe her a wedding. Getting her pregnant first..." She made the infamous sound with her mouth, the clicking, and followed it up with a smile. "Oh, mi quierdo. You made me a very happy woman today. Your mother … she is happy."
If he looked over the edge, he would fall straight down the steep cliff.
And Cal would not go down into the pit again.
Not when Annie was next to him, at his side as a partner. The shoulder he’d never needed to lean on — but did — rubbed against his, inviting him to relieve his burdens.
The cliff they stood on looked out over the valley. The “pink moment” would happen any minute. They’d been patient. Close family and friends had left, and now Cal and Annie stood alone, but together, and with Constance, ready to cast off her ashes into the place she’d called home for forty years.
The breeze brought with it a chill, and so Cal wrapped his jacket acros
s Annie’s shoulders and stared at the mountains, thinking of one word:
Pregnant.
I’m pregnant, Annie had said to him last summer. A baby. Those words meant he could go forward, stop living in the past. Stop regretting. Stop searching for what wasn’t there and start realizing the thing he’d chased had been there all along.
Hadn’t someone once told him that? Had he thought it all philosophical bullshit or Oprah-Winfrey-new-age-nonsense?
What you need is within you. It’s in you.
What he needed also stood next to him, and what he had needed as a boy was now in a vase, awaiting release.
Constance would integrate with nature, become one with the wind and blow over the cliff through the valley. She’d become part of the tangerines and rocky places, bird’s nests and leaves. Constance would be everywhere all at once, the way she’d always been.
“It’s happening,” Cal said with no inflection, something fantastic and terrifying mixing in his stomach as something spectacular and out-of-this world changed the color of the sky and mountainside.
The piedra blanca turned golden first.
He opened the lid of the urn.
Annie kept a palm on the small of his back.
“It’s beautiful,” Annie said, staring at the Topatopa Bluffs.
“It’s magic.” He waited for the wind to change direction. “People think it’s the hand of God.” And the moment it did, he emptied the vase, watched the ashes of a beloved woman toss and swirl and the sunlight paint strokes of shades of unimaginable pink and peach and lavender in the sky and across the sides of the mountains.
“You’ll regret not bringing your camera,” Cal said as the last bit of Constance “The Owl” Prescott faded away.
“Did you see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty?” Annie asked, keeping her tone somber but still surprising him.
Cal only stared into a void, eyes stuck on the past, maybe on a remembrance.
“You probably saw the 1940s film,” she said, and that produced a reaction out of him. Annie smiled. “I know it’s silly to mention it now, but there’s this line...” Setting the urn on the ground, Cal gave her his full attention. “Maybe I shouldn’t ruin the movie.” She hooded her eyes.
As he touched her cheek, she focused on his grief and vulnerability. The latter being something rare — a privilege he shared with few. Today, he shared it with mountains and wind and a one-of-a-kind view.
“One of the characters in the film, Sean Penn plays him, he’s a photographer.”
“Like you.”
“Mmm. He’s an adventurous photographer.”
“Like you.”
“He flies over volcanos.”
“He’s fictional.”
“So, anyway, he’s on this mountain.”
“Like you.”
“Cal … stop,” she said, grinning a mile wide, not knowing whether to smile or cry. Lots of emotions took charge. And maybe she could be everything at once: mourning, elated, filled with awe, dumbstruck, ready to impart whimsical wisdom.
And wasn’t art supposed to make an impact? Movies had lines that carried people through time.
Running a hand through his hair, he smiled and asked her to continue.
“Well, Sean Penn is stationed on a mountain, in the cold, waiting for the appearance of a snow leopard, waiting to capture it through the lens. Being a photographer is his job. His life. And then … when it happens, when the animal — who never lets itself be seen — makes an appearance”—Annie swallowed as she glanced over the valley, then back to Cal—“he doesn’t take the picture.”
The two of them stared at one another for several heartbeats, the cold and wind and death nonexistent.
“Look.” She tipped her head toward the view, speaking with the softness he’d become accustomed to, drawn to, and needed.
They shifted and stared at the pink moment. The hand of God. The magic. The brushstrokes. And like that — just like that — it faded. The sun went down. Disappeared. The colors dulled.
“Some moments are meant to be experienced without any barriers — not even a lens — without distraction,” she whispered as they held hands, fingers squeezing, hearts intertwined.
Tears slid down her cheeks as Annie dropped her head against his bicep. The rush of Cal’s sadness bled through his clothing, came through in the rise and fall of his lungs and weight of his stance. She could feel everything.
They shared a sleeve.
“Tell me something you remember,” Annie said and waited.
Cal pinched his thumb and first finger into the corners of his eyes.
“Please,” she begged. “A happy something.”
“We went to Big Sur a few times.” He sighed. “Maybe when I was eight and nine and ten. We camped and hiked. My grandfather, grandmother, Michelle and her mom, and mine.”
“Yours,” Annie said with a fondness for a woman she’d never met.
“My mom…” His breath contained all his sensibilities — all his control — exhaling with those words. “She was often distant, always seemed far away, but her eyes, if you looked closely, told a million stories. You could see things in them. Sorrows and lessons and love. They were blue.”
He inhaled and started anew. “Whenever we went there, she seemed more relaxed. Freer. As free as Constance could be. It’s why I love your photograph. The one I had sent home. She would sit in the sand and build castles with me.” He shifted his eyes. “We would tell stories at night, and she would sometimes dance.” Cal scrubbed his fingers over his chin then smiled. “She taught me.”
“But you don’t dance.”
Hand around my waist, palm on my shoulder. Look me in the eye and lead. A man must lead. A man must be in control of the movement. Relaxed but in control. Guide her. Direct her. You must lead. And you never — ever — step on her feet.
“Precisely.” Cal’s grin was wicked and delicious.
Arching up on her tippy-toes, Annie kissed his forehead. “I love that story, Cal. I want to come here again, another time, with my camera. We can bring the baby.”
“Jackson,” he quipped, peeking at her out the corner of his eye, wishing to get a rise out of her.
“Maybe it’s a girl.”
“Jackson.” He smiled.
“I’m not naming my baby after a popstar or a city.” She rolled her eyes.
Cal picked up the urn and took one final look out into the valley below. The haze of dusk still held a glow over the magnificent features of the place he also called home.
“Is she free, Annie?”
She met his tailor-made backside — his shoulders stern and tense and masculine, holding the weight of the world — and brushed her lips across his upper arm and pressed her cheek against him, rubbing her face over him like a cat giving its owner attention.
“They both are,” she said. “Now we have to learn how to be without them. We’ll learn how to live free.”
Talk turned to the funeral as Cal, Annie, and her father sat in a booth at Albert’s favorite restaurant, sipping cocktails and nibbling on an appetizer, waiting for their food to arrive. Cal spoke about Constance's service as though it were a distant memory and not something that had occurred merely a few weeks ago.
Annie understood the unpleasantness of it all, and by the faraway look in her father's eye, she knew he was wrapped up in his own memories. His own knowledge of the necessity of death. And so, she attempted to steer the conversation to less stormy seas, but of course, her father, having finished off a second martini, fresh out of his daydream, probably had other ideas.
"It smells good." Annie squeezed Cal's bicep, nuzzling her cheek against his shoulder. The waiter had just appeared, hands full of dinner plates.
"She smells everything now with some sort of superhero power." Cal directed his comment toward Albert, who eyed the food.
"Can I bring you anything else right now?" the server with the dark, trendy beard asked.
"No, thank you," Annie replied.
>
“Another drink, please.” Albert feigned a grin, then — barely waiting for the bearded man to leave before beginning his interrogation — he looked square at Cal and said, "You never married then?"
Annie's posture stiffened. She jerked her gaze to her father, her face flaming with a fat brushstroke of blush.
"No." Cal didn't take his eyes away from the inquisitive man who would soon be his father-in-law.
"And what makes you think it’s right — now?" He gripped a steak knife. "With my daughter?"
Annie began to cut her meat, dropping her eyes toward the steam, the juices, and the perfectly prepared red center. For God’s sake, her father could hardly be insinuating he had the market cornered on marriage after divorce number three.
Bite your tongue, Annie. Keep cutting your meat. Cal can handle it.
Mouth dry and palms clammy, Cal squeezed Annie's knee, awestruck for a moment at the foreign predicament he found himself in: getting to know in-laws, a soon to be wife by his side with a baby growing inside her body, in love beyond all sound reason.
He kept his composure, though. He knew how to seal a deal.
"It's right. This is right." Cal glanced at Annie. "I knew the moment I laid eyes on her."
Albert's eyes shot out like an arrow, slicing Cal, telling him he knew what it was he’d seen the first time he’d laid eyes on his daughter, and it had nothing to do with love or marriage.
"No," Cal chuckled. "I mean I knew Annie was different."
"Damn straight," Albert said around a mouthful of food.
"You both are talking about me like I'm not even here," Annie grumbled.
Cal smiled. The death grip he had on her knee relaxed.
"Annie saw something in me that first night." He snuck a peek at her face out of the corner of his eye, his lips slanting upward. "She’s shown me what it is to truly love."
"Reminded you." Annie bumped his shoulder.
"Reminded me." Cal grinned, knowing the love he felt for her was different. It was more than a reminder. It was a brand-new lesson in unconditional compromise, humility, and patience.
"Well, Annie always knows what she wants." Albert took a sip of his fresh drink. Number three.