by Megan Mulry
“After you get used to having it around, you know, you’ll want to get better acquainted,” Max had joked one morning, standing behind her, both of them stark-naked and fresh out of the shower, his warm, smooth cock nestling snugly against her backside. She couldn’t help reaching around to grab his ass to pull him even closer, massage a bit, then give him a quick spank. “Enough of that, Romeo. I am actually going to work this morning.”
“I know, I know. And I too am venturing afield. I only have three classes left and Dr. Hedges wants to go for lunch today. I’m not suggesting we pursue it now, just planting the idea, so to speak.” He turned and left the bathroom and, as she reached for her toothbrush, she felt the absence of his warmth almost as much as she had felt the presence of it.
Not good.
All of the sweet memories of the past few weeks were starting to splinter and crowd around her mind in a dreamlike montage: snippets of conversations, the feel of some part of his warm body coming into contact with her hip in the middle of the night, the feel of his tongue on her, the feel, as now, of him deep in her mouth. Deeper and deeper she wanted to take him. She wished she could open her throat even more, the possession of it, the thrill of his response, a response to her, a joy from her, the feel of his tension in one of her hands, her delicate touch, then firmer, wanting him to know how much it all mattered to her, how much she lov—
And then he arched and came in her mouth in the most crushing, salty, wet rush, as she sucked again, pressed harder into him with her hand and smiled to herself and to him. As she tenderly pulled away, she licked her lips for the mere pleasure of it and looked up at his utterly satisfied expression. Eyes half closed, mouth half open.
“So much for your prior concerns about that particular activity,” he joked in a husky, low voice. He pulled Bronte up along his body and began caressing her back as he relished the very languid feel of her long, graceful form draped down the length of his. He held her tenderly, almost cautiously, protectively, then started to let his hands wander down along her back, the sides of her hips, her thighs. He trailed his hands lazily around her body, stroking her, up and down and in, loving the shape of her ass.
“Mmmm,” she purred.
“Mmmm-hmmm,” he moaned in reply, giving her a good grab on one cheek, then resuming his gentle tracking. Farther down with one hand, now, then the other hand coming up her back to trace the outline of one shoulder blade. His other hand was perilously close now, then, “Oh, Max,” as one finger, then two began a slow, methodical rhythm against her slick opening.
She was so becalmed, like a blanket on him. She loved the relaxation, but her legs were starting to quiver, and she knew she couldn’t stay merely receptive much longer. Her upper thighs started to tense in an uncontrollable way, the heat and moisture in her building to an almost unbearable pitch.
“Oh, Bron, you are so wet, so ready, from having me in your mouth, so good…” His voice trailed off as his mouth captured hers in a plunging, maddening kiss and his fingers found the exact spot to trigger her response. She grabbed on to him, as if on to a raft, for dear life in a terrible storm, pulling away from his kiss and nearly sobbing into the crook of his neck, grabbing him with her teeth, her sweat and saliva—and perhaps tears—mingling with his salty, masculine scent.
She didn’t know how long they wallowed there, like castaways flung onto the middle of the living room floor. She opened her eyes and saw that the fading, early summer sun had turned to dusk, and the warm hues of gold and amber were reflected across the ivy-covered garden wall.
She wondered vaguely if the broccoli rabe had overcooked into bitterness by now and started unenthusiastically to peel herself off of Max when his phone trilled a bizarre, unfamiliar ringtone.
“Damn. That’s my mother,” Max ground out, as he scrambled awkwardly out from under her, fumbled into the pocket of his discarded jeans for his phone, and hit the talk button. “Hello, Mother… yes, I can hear you, but it’s not really a good time… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you while you were speaking. What’s happened? Are you all right?”
Abruptly, Max got up from the crouching position on the floor where he had recommenced petting Bronte’s arm in his initial belief that he’d be able to give his mother a call back later. He cradled the phone in the crook of his neck, pulled on his jeans distractedly, and moved out to the garden, leaving the French doors ajar so Bronte couldn’t not hear him.
“Just tell me… you’re not making any sense. Mother, put Devon on the phone, please. Hi, Dev. I couldn’t understand her. That’s not possible… oh, Jesus… where should I go? All right, I’ll be there in two hours. All right… okay, hang in there, Dev; I’ll be there as soon as I can. Can Mother come back to the phone? Mother? I am on my way. I will be there by morning… I know. Me too.”
Bronte had thrown on his oversized T-shirt and stood hesitantly, arms crossed, in the half-open doorway to the garden. Max stood stock-still with his back to her. Every inch of his body was so familiar to her now. Every nuance of every muscle along his spine, the beautiful curve of his hip, the wide shoulders, the turn of his upper arm, the warm, male smell of earth and faint bay rum that seemed to define him.
She stepped quietly out into the small garden and rested her cheek against his back as she snaked her arms around his bare waist. He slipped his phone down into his front pocket, then covered Bronte’s hands with his own. It seemed like a long time that Bronte just stood there, relishing the feel of the warm strength of his back against her cool cheek. She could have stood there forever.
“I won’t pick a fight. I promise,” she whispered.
“My father is about to die.”
“Oh, Max,” she gulped. “I’m so sorry.”
He turned slowly into her arms and kissed her so tenderly, so deeply, so completely, her knees were useless.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I don’t know… there is going to be so much familial turmoil. This is not how I wanted this to happen with you and me. I thought we’d have so much more time… I don’t know if you should come with me now or in a few weeks.”
Sweet Jesus. Bronte thought she could help him finish packing up his apartment for fuck’s sake. Why the hell was he talking about her going to England? He was obviously in shock. He didn’t know what he was saying.
“First things first, Max. Where do you need to be in two hours? Where are you meeting your mother tomorrow?”
“I need to be at a private airfield near O’Hare in two hours. A car is coming to pick me up at my place. Will you come help me get my shit together?”
“Of course. Let’s grab whatever you have here and we’ll head over to your apartment.”
“Maybe you should pack a bag and just come with me now, Bron… I think I want you with me,” he stated matter-of-factly, his spine going slightly rigid beneath her palm. This wasn’t going in the order he had intended, but his feelings were the same: they were meant to be together.
“Max… you don’t want me there…”
“Of course, I want you there, Bron.” His voice was still gentle, but there was also an edge of rising impatience. “My father had a massive coronary less than an hour ago and my mother is virtually incoherent. One of my sisters is backpacking around Australia; the other is on vacation in Prague with her useless husband. My younger brother, Devon, is alone and trying to keep his shit together until I get there.”
“Max… I wish I could, but please… I can’t just not show up at work tomorrow… I can’t just drop everything and wander off…”
“Bronte!” His voice exploded. “It is not wandering off! This is important. You’re my—” He paused, as if he couldn’t complete the sentence. “I guess I am not used to having to ask for things in this way—maybe I am not doing it right—but I really need you right now… I am asking you…” His voice quieted as he looked at her.
She tilted her head and gave him a questioning look.
“All right”—his fr
ustration was palpable now—“I am not asking you. I am telling you. I need you. You need to come with me. This is so much more important than showing up at your job tomorrow.”
Wrong answer. She felt the hairs on her neck bristle. Even if he was right—and boy, did that romantic side of her want to dive right in: he wants you! he is begging you to go with him! he needs you by his side!—it was still all wrong. Because she knew (or thought she knew) where those eager cravings of hers led.
To perdition.
She could not, she would not, let herself be stirred by the promise or threat of so-called once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
She looked down at the slate of the garden floor and loosened her hold around his waist.
“I just can’t, Max,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. You’ll see, you have your family there, you will want your space, you won’t want me underfoot—”
“Stop it!” he shouted with uncharacteristic brutality.
She felt it like a punch in her stomach. He never lost his temper. That was her job.
His arms fell from her waist and he walked back into the apartment. He continued speaking, without looking at her, while he began to gather up his things.
“You might not have wanted to pick a fight, but you got one.” He wasn’t yelling, but the steady, controlled anger was almost worse. “Don’t you dare tell me what I want or don’t want. You are the one who doesn’t want to be there with all that messy emotional distress and all those uncontrollable feelings flying everywhere and all that godforsaken not knowing. If—no! when my father dies, probably while I am completely and utterly alone on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean trying to get to him, I will become responsible for all of them. And all of his business dealings. And my mother’s grief. And the grief of every other person who has come to rely on my father’s kindness and generosity over the past sixty-four years.”
Max finished putting on a clean button-down shirt, slipped on his shoes, and stuffed the last of his things into his overnight bag.
“Spare me your cool distance and emotional fortitude for now, okay, Bron? I’ve had quite enough of you thinking you know what’s best for us.” He spit out the last word. “If I wanted space, you would know it. Because I would tell you I needed space.” His teeth were clenched through the final syllables. “Because that’s what intelligent, mature adults do, Bronte. They say what they mean to say.” Max tried to control his breathing, but she could see that his chest was heaving despite the effort.
In the face of her continued silence, he began again, more calmly. “I’m going to leave now. Are you coming with me or not?”
Even though he was on the other side of the apartment, she felt like he was physically pummeling her with every word.
“This is it,” he said with deadly precision. “This is not some cooked-up emotional test or scheme for me to manipulate you. My dad is going to die. I have to go. I want you with me. I can’t make it any clearer than that. It’s now or never, Bron. Is it all… or not at all?”
Bronte blanched at the oddly familiar ultimatum, then realized it reminded her, for a terrifying second, of her father. She knew it wasn’t Max’s fault, necessarily, but the damage was done: there was no way in hell she was ever going to be propelled into action by the demanding threats of a man who thought he knew what was best for her. Lionel Talbott had spent too many years making her feel like she wasn’t entitled to her own opinions… to her own mind. Even the vaguest hint of Max trying to wield the same arrogant power made her withdraw. She shook her head in a slow, silent no.
“No? Fine then. But just so we are clear, this is all you, Bron. I am not being overly demanding or cruel, or any of that. You know you can do whatever you set your mind to. You of all people. You know. This is the fork in the road and you are walking away from me… not the other way around.”
Max turned toward the door and dragged one hand through his thick hair. Reluctantly turning back toward Bronte, his expression defeated, his voice empty, he said, “You know what? You are probably right. Clean break and all that. That is what you wanted all along, right? No muss. No fuss.”
She was frozen to the spot where she stood, standing there in the middle of the room like an idiot in nothing but his oversized T-shirt. She wanted to pull him into her arms so badly, but it felt impossible. She knew she was watching him slip away, and she was utterly paralyzed to do anything to stop it.
He took a deep, long breath, deciding whether or not to speak, then continued, almost against his will: “I love—I loved you, Bronte. I mean, flat-out loved you. Wasn’t it obvious?”
And with that fucking neutron bomb, he walked out of the lower-ground-floor flat and out of Bronte’s life.
Chapter 5
Bronte stood in the center of her living room until her legs were too tired to hold her any longer, and then she sort of crumpled into a heap on the carpet, curled up like a baby right there in the middle of the floor, with his T-shirt stretched over her knees in a little cocoon. How the fuck did she go from the eternal optimist to the woman who just let the best man, who loved her—who actually really meant he loved her when he said he loved her—walk out her door?
As she faded in and out of a half-conscious, dismal approximation of sleep, her mind tripped haltingly back, conjuring a confrontation from nearly a decade before.
***
Spring had tried to come early. It was barely April in New Jersey. Bronte always recalled how the bright-yellow buds of forsythia outside the kitchen window were so idiotically cheerful in the midst of all those grim, bare branches. She stood in the kitchen with her mother’s hand resting lightly on her shoulder as the two of them stared at the piece of paper on the worn Formica counter.
The ivory vellum with the embossed orange and black logo may as well have been radioactive. Bronte didn’t want to actually touch it.
“I never thought I would really get in,” Bronte said quietly.
“It’s so exciting, Bronte! We are so proud of you!”
Bronte despised when her mother used the royal we. Her father rarely left his home office upstairs, and when he did, it certainly wasn’t to show any team spirit with his wife. As far as Bronte was concerned, her parents were not a we.
“Mom. I don’t want to go to Princeton. I want to go to the University of California at Berkeley.”
“Oh, honey, you are just saying that to be… contrary.”
“No, I promise, I’m not being contradictory. I just can’t stay in New Jersey. I can’t. I only applied because I knew how much it meant to you, and Dad, I guess. But”—she shook her long hair, trying to shake off the whole situation—“I never, ever thought I would get in.”
“Bronte. Please. You have straight As and nearly perfect SAT scores. Why would you be so down on yourself?”
She turned to look at her mother.
“I am not down on myself, Mom.” Bronte almost laughed at the irony. “I—I’m embarrassed to tell you, but at this point, I guess it doesn’t really matter… I wrote my entire application essay about how much I disrespect my father and the entire world of East Coast academia, how hypocritical, arrogant, out of touch—you name it—all those ivory-tower assholes are. Completely removed from the rest of the world, creating Central American nations with their rich friends. Washed-up spies and politicians grazing off the fat of ill-gotten endowments.”
“Oh, Bronte, you didn’t.” Her mother brought her hand to cover her mouth in near-horror.
Bronte barked a sardonic laugh at her mother’s dramatic response, then picked up the piece of paper with her thumb and index finger as if it smelled.
“And look what they do? I insult them, ridicule them—hate them!—and they want me! Do you see how perverse this all is?! I can’t, Mom; I just can’t. Not to mention the goddamned money.”
“Please don’t swear, dear.”
“Oh, Mom. You have no idea. I curse more than you will ever know. I swear almost every other word. I love swearing. That ‘goddamn’ is the least
of your worries. Mom, Princeton will cost a fortune. I don’t want you to have that kind of debt… financial or otherwise…” Bronte added.
“Oh, Bronte, have I ever made you feel beholden?”
“No, Mom.” Bronte sighed and tried to ratchet her voice back to a normal level. “Because you are a saint. Because you work like a beast to make sure we can live in this sweet ranch house and I can go to the best school and that lazy son of a bitch can sit upstairs and write or do whatever it is he is supposedly doing in there—”
Bronte thought she must have blacked out for a second before she realized her mother had slapped her quickly and firmly across the cheek.
Tears sprang to both of their eyes: Bronte’s were tears of shock; her mother’s were tears of rage.
“Please don’t ever speak about your father in that way, Bronte. I won’t have it.”
Bronte felt her blood drain straight down to her toes.
“Mom…” The tears didn’t fall and her voice was even. “I love you so much. But I don’t love him.” She accidentally dropped the acceptance letter from Princeton onto the kitchen floor, her grip loosening in a moment of forgetting, but she didn’t bother to pick it up.
She stared down at the typed letter for a few seconds, then, when she looked up from the familiar, yet suddenly unrecognizable, faux-brick linoleum floor, she saw that her father was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, just over her mother’s shoulder.
Bronte’s mother turned swiftly to see her husband.
“How long have you been standing there, Lionel?”
“Long enough. She’s going to Princeton.”
Bronte laughed, softly at first, then to the point of hysteria. She watched as her mother fought the constant battle: stand by her man or soothe her frantic teenager.
Bronte often felt guilty for forcing her mother to have to make that choice, then she merely felt resentful that her father, the supposed grown-up, needed so much of her mother’s soothing. Lionel Talbott remained leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed in an arrogant posture that let Bronte know he was waiting for her histrionics to subside, but he wasn’t happy about it.