“Do you think I’m a joke, Glory?” he said tautly, finally. Softly.
She took in a shuddering breath.
“No, Eli. Never.” Her voice cracked. “Never.”
Her hand went up to touch his cheek. To apologize, to soothe. She thought better of it. Not sure he’d welcome it.
He inhaled at length, and then let it out slowly, like a man taking his first free breath in months.
And then he freed one hand from her belt loop and tenderly drew a fingertip beneath her eyes. First one, then the other.
His fingertip came away shining with her tears.
“So if you think it didn’t kill me, too, well, you’re wrong.” His voice broke. “I know you kept Jonah in your blind spot because you didn’t want to feel that kind of hurt. Here’s what I know: you’re equal to it. You’re equal to anything you want to take on. Whether it’s big, big hurt, or the big, big success you’re meant for. Remember how much you felt watching the tigers pacing back and forth in their cage that day at the zoo? That’s what it’s like for me to watch you stay here in Hellcat Canyon. Like you said that day, it’s not right. It’s just not right. I’m not Francone. I’m not the person with the golden ticket out of here. You need to figure that out for yourself. But don’t let Jonah or anyone stop you, Glory.”
She knew by “anyone” he was talking about himself.
She tipped her forehead against his chest and heaved a sigh.
His heart thumped against her forehead. Her favorite rhythm in the world.
And then she tipped her head back and looked up at him, and his eyes were a little wet, too.
She tentatively, softly, touched a finger to his mouth, softly traced it. She was aware only then of how well she knew the shape of it, how she could have drawn it with her eyes closed.
“You’re a big one for speeches, Eli,” she murmured. “But that’s what you’re all about, isn’t it? Speeches.”
She knew he knew why she said it. It gave both of them the excuse they wanted.
His mouth came down hard over hers.
She met that kiss with all the fire and fury in her.
It began as a point to be made. A battle and release. Almost a punishment.
And they took it deep, fast. They each had a little quiver full of erotic tricks they knew to drive each other to that precarious edge of control. But as his hands threaded through her hair, she tipped her head back into the cradle of them, that kiss was searching, tender, and then carnal as hell, driven by what felt like eons of thwarted desire finally unleashed, and she felt herself dissolving into smoke. In an instant, she was his in any way he wanted her.
Lust ripped control right out of their grasp. His mouth never left hers as he reached for her zipper and yanked it down, and she got hold of the top button of his jeans and all but tore at them, and all the rest of his buttons slid cooperatively open.
Practical blue boxers were tented by a huge hard cock and she slid her hands inside, dragged them over the hot, pulsing length.
He hissed an oath of pleasure.
He pulled her jeans down a little, to her hips, and with nearly brutal and unbearably delicious efficiency slid his hand down the front of them, and she gasped, arching into his touch.
In a bit of deftly executed sexual jujitsu he swiped another hand swiftly down her front and click! Her bra popped open. He tugged her shirt from her jeans and slipped his hands down the back, scooping her up to press against his hard cock, his mouth against her throat, his hips moving to grind against her in torturously slow, deliberate exquisite rhythm, as the kiss grew wild and searching, a clash of teeth, the twining of tongues. He moaned her name.
It became purposeful as she moved with him, seeking her own pleasure. Rocking and grinding. It hurt a little, but it was exquisite. She ducked her head against his throat, and reached for the waistband on his boxers to tug them all the way down . . . but she hesitated.
And he covered her hand with his.
And then . . . they both went still. Utterly, carefully, still.
She wasn’t sure what had happened, but some well of pure sense she didn’t know she possessed had risen up and stopped her.
She could still feel the sway of his breath against her body.
“Now do you understand what we’re playing with here?” He whispered this close to her lips. It was almost an apology.
“Yep,” she said dryly. Her voice was a thread. “It’s all pretty clear.”
He exhaled.
She looked up at him. She thought she would never forget his expression for as long as she lived: the tenderness and ferocity and pride, the ache. He smoothed a hair that had lashed itself across her lips behind her ear.
“So no more games,” he said softly. “When you’re certain, when you really know who and what you want, come to me. And ask for it. Ask for me. In a real and true way. Not because you’re pissed off or hurt or sad or horny or lonely. But just. Because. It’s me. And, Glory . . . it’ll be the best thing that ever happens to you.” His mouth tipped at the corner in a cocky smile.
“Big talk, Eli.”
She was half teasing. Half broken.
“You think I’m lying?” He whispered right into her ear and then touched his tongue there again.
She didn’t say a word. She shivered from the pleasure rippling through her, and her body protested at the sheer lunacy of letting this pleasure machine named Eli get away.
“Look in my eyes, Glory. Do you think I ever lie about anything?”
She looked into his eyes. “Nope,” she said, quite sincerely.
Reluctantly, slowly, simultaneously, as if in some tacit agreement, they took their hands from each other’s bodies; they stepped back and put distance between them.
The world seemed strange. Her head was still spinning. She felt like an astronaut rudely ejected from her shuttle while she was up in space.
He buttoned his jeans.
Funny how watching him get dressed in some ways felt more intimate than sliding her hands into his underwear.
She re-arranged her own wanton disarray. Dragged her fingers through her hair in a probably futile attempt to straighten it.
He drew in a long breath, and it was like he was drinking in the sight of her.
“Just . . . be sure, Glory.”
She knew he meant for his sake and for hers.
He didn’t kiss her good-bye. He did pause to pick up the forty-five single of “Hey Hey What Can I Do,” which he’d dropped.
It was unscathed.
“I’ll be keeping this,” he said.
He turned around and walked away, off toward the home he’d lived in for as long as she could remember.
And suddenly it was like every memory she’d ever had of Eli, at every age, in every season, walking away was superimposed on that big man walking away from her now.
She put her hands up to her hot face. Her body was ringing like a suspended fourth chord, but her whole soul felt scraped raw and ached like an open wound.
A cleansed wound, maybe.
But it still hurt like hell.
She sank into a crouch and pretty soon she was weeping again, for the enormity of everything, for the beauty of it, for her fear of the unknown, and for the big decision she’d have to make on her own. Without Eli or anyone.
One way or the other, it looked like she was going to lose something.
And finally she swiped at her eyes. And sighed. Boy, she was going to look like hell when she got home.
Finally she stood, exhausted as if she’d run the length of Hellcat Canyon and back.
And perhaps naturally, she began singing softly to herself. A sort of stop-start near waltz of a melody. The song of someone gasping for breath. Maybe out of fury. Maybe because he’d exhausted himself with lovemaking.
Too much crying today
Too much hurt
Too much truth
Too much dirt
Too much love
Too much fury
&nbs
p; Too many things
We try to bury
It was raw, and had beauty and ache and promise, and it needed work. Like everything else in her life.
Chapter 17
When she got home, that big blue Lexus she’d seen outside of the Misty Cat was parked in front of their little house. The one the tan Clint Eastwood-y older guy had climbed into. It was looked wildly out of context against the untamed shrubbery, and it was almost the width of their house.
She stared. Then squeezed her eyes closed and opened them again.
Nope, still there.
Mrs. Binkley was in her garden, pretending to deadhead some flowers but in truth enjoying her usual front-row view of the Greenleaf drama.
“I think your mama has taken to entertaining gentleman callers. Times being what they are for you Greenleafs.”
“Bite me, Mrs. Binkley,” Glory said almost ritualistically. With the solemn reflexiveness of a churchgoer uttering “And also with you.”
“He’s been there for hours,” Mrs. Binkley added, standing on her toes expressly to see Glory’s expression when she told her this.
Shit shit shit.
She didn’t even bother to try to hide her angst over this news.
Glory hovered indecisively on the porch.
First she checked her own reflection in the sideview mirror of the Lexus, just to see if she looked as though she’d been ravished in the woods and then wept for a half hour.
And that was exactly what she looked like.
She was altogether rather pink, a bit chafed from wild kissing, and her hair was just a degree more subdued than Medusa’s. Her eyes were pink, too. That she could at least blame on allergies.
So she was forced to some grooming in the sideview mirror while Mrs. Binkley watched, evilly amused.
Finally she put her hand on the knob of their house gingerly, as though it was suddenly electrified.
She had an entirely heretical thought: What if Mrs. Binkley was actually right? And her mother was making a little money on the side?
There was no way. There was just no way. She knew her mother too well.
And then . . . she heard her mother laugh, a big, delighted, genuine laugh.
The rumble of an amused masculine voice rushed alongside it.
Glory went still.
She knew her mother’s social laugh from her real one.
This was the real one. A little stab of happiness stole her breath.
She was realizing she hadn’t heard her mother laugh quite like that in a long time.
She went toward it almost reflexively, as if she were going toward the light, and turned the knob before she knew it.
Her mom was sitting on the sofa, and the Lexus guy was sitting across from her in the armchair.
“Glory, honey! Come on in and sit down and meet my old friend Gary Shaw. He went to school with your uncle Bill. Turns out we know practically all the same people. I remember him coming into the supermarket before I met your daddy. He was driving by the house because he buys up foreclosed properties and I was out in the yard, and he recognized me, and before you know it . . .”
She and Gary Shaw laughed together giddily, even though this wasn’t exactly funny. Especially the bit about foreclosed properties.
“Maybe I should have told you, Charlie. I confess I met your daughter a few days back down at the Misty Cat. I just got so caught up in catching up with you, it didn’t come up.”
Their faces were lit up in that way people have when they’ve been laughing and talking for hours. They were in a little haze of happiness and peace, and the sunlight through the windows cast them in a little amber glow.
They were each holding a little highball glass tinkling with ice.
Her mom hadn’t gotten those glasses down, or poured any celebratory booze in the house, in God knows how long. Booze cost money, and her mom hid it well in case John-Mark had any ideas about helping himself to it.
Glory sat down gingerly on the edge of the armchair.
Unwilling to commit to whatever this scenario was just yet.
Her mother laughed. “Oh, honey. It’s okay. Don’t look so shell-shocked. Turns out Britt Langley has done favors for us both. She resigned her job showing properties for Gary because she’s going to draw cartoons from home, or something like that, and Gary thinks I’m just the person to fill her shoes. It’ll be fun to have a job! And he’s interested in buying the house from the bank and renting it back to us.”
“Sure,” Glory said cautiously, ironically, after a moment. “Jobs are fun.”
She probably shouldn’t have sounded so incredulous.
It was just that this was so out of the blue. This sudden lifting of a terrible burden from all of them. It would take some getting used to walking without it. Maybe an hour or two.
“Job doesn’t pay much,” Gary said cheerfully. “And I call at unreasonable hours. Just ask Britt.”
Glory sat motionless in absolute bemusement.
She knew the difference between her mother trying to charm someone and her mother genuinely enjoying herself. She understood all at once that she hadn’t seen the second in ages.
She was radiant. She was lovely.
And Glory felt unaccountably selfish for not noticing that her mom had been suffering in grace.
And as for Gary Shaw, sitting in that old worn brown-and-yellow print armchair, well, he looked as though he’d come home.
Glory ended up taking her tiger to bed with her that night, like a needy toddler. A full moon was making its presence known, and it lit part of her ceiling, which she watched as if it were an old familiar movie. And in some ways it was.
A castle. A bearded wizard blowing bubbles. A monster pushing a grocery cart. That big old elm tree surrounded by the worn white pasture fence. The face of a lion. A treble clef. A plate full of nachos. Glory had picked out all of these things in the stucco pattern of her ceiling at night since she was a little girl. When she lay still, when the light was right, she could find them all again.
Tonight, she wished the ceiling was an oracle. Maybe if she peered hard enough, her future would emerge from the pattern. She’d see future Glory, stepping into a limousine, waving at adoring fans as she swept into the Grammy Awards. Or future Glory, playing an open mic night to an audience full of hecklers on her fiftieth birthday, simply because she hadn’t taken that one chance, that one, sudden, surreal opportunity, to go with the Franco Francone to meet the Wyatt “King” Congdon.
And in all likelihood sleep with the Franco Francone.
Judging from the internet search she’d done, approximately a gajillion women would be happy to do just that for no reason other than, for crying out loud, because just look at the guy.
She finally sighed gustily and threw off her covers and slid out of bed, and then, just to give herself something to do, she picked up her tiger and put him next to her African Violet so he could have a little taste of the jungle.
She snorted at herself. And she sat back on her bed and looked at her tiger.
Gary Shaw had taken her mom out to dinner at the fancy French place in Black Oak. And she’d heard her mom come home a little tipsy a few hours ago, and she’d sung.
Out loud.
For the first time Glory could remember.
She sang all around the house, that damn song by The Baby Owls. Really got into it.
And for the first time ever Glory thought maybe some of the music in her must have come from her mom. Her voice was pretty and expressive and joyous. Her mom’s gift, Glory realized, was to love and be loved, and she was happiest when she was in a relationship.
And as Glory sat there staring at her old tiger in the moonlight, she all at once understood why she’d never heard her mom sing around the house before. Because like a bird with a blanket thrown over its cage, her mom hadn’t seen the point in it.
And from there, the realizations came in a cascade.
Glory understood that she was, in fact, despite ongoing appeara
nces to the contrary, inherently lucky. Really lucky.
Because she’d seen examples of big, big real love her whole life. She’d seen the before and after of it. How it felt to live with it, and how life looked and felt when suddenly, in a heartbeat or a gunshot, it was gone.
She was lucky she’d seen her mom talking to Gary Shaw today and to suddenly realize that even while her mother had managed all these years without her dad, Hank Greenleaf, and even though she’d taken a chance at happiness with two other men since him, the whole time a big part of her had remained unlit, like the dark side of the Moon.
Who knew someone like Gary Shaw could walk in and change everything? But he had.
She was even lucky to know how Eli’s shoulders felt shuddering beneath her arm on the day of his dad’s funeral.
And how his mother’s haunted face had looked that night at the bonfire.
And to see Jonah facedown in handcuffs.
And to feel Jonah gone out of their lives.
All the laughter. And fights. And summer days and summer nights.
All of those things had taught her about love. And how being loved like that, being part of a big panorama of love like that, that was the reason she’d ever felt free to pick up a guitar and write her songs and be exactly who she was.
Above all, she was lucky a certain bullheaded man would always, always do the right thing by her, no matter the cost to him. Because instead of grabbing her by the belt loops and pulling her back and banging her deliciously senseless in the woods, which is what she wanted just about more than anything and would probably have made her his slave, he’d let her go so she could make a decision that could very well break his heart all over again.
She doubted Eli was sleeping tonight.
She was pretty sure Franco Francone, however, was sleeping like a baby.
She smiled, at peace.
When she thought of her whole life like this—as an improbable, ceaseless cavalcade of blessings, not as something that pivoted on a single dire choice to sleep with a hot actor or not, she knew what to do.
She got back into bed and slept hard after that.
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