Love in a Small Town

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  This worry about her being with Sam was relieved, however, when he reached the cottage and saw the El Camino sitting beside it. He stopped at the entry to the drive and debated what to do. It appeared to him that his options were limited, since he couldn’t drop out of the sky or anything, so he continued on down the driveway. On impulse he cut the engine and let the car coast, having the hope Molly wouldn’t hear him coming. He thought it would be best to simply appear at her door. It seemed to him that would be a little impressive.

  Taking up the rose bush, he got out of the Corvette and stood gazing at the cottage. The windows were all up, and he heard music playing. He suddenly thought he could smell the scent of Molly. And just as suddenly he knew what he had come for. What he had to have.

  He went to the back door and peered through the screen. For an instant he had a strange feeling of having been in a similar predicament on the night he had caught his father and Odessa in the cottage, which should have been a lesson to him about sneaking and spying through open doors.

  The kitchen was dim. Late afternoon sunlight made patterns on the refrigerator and cabinets. He didn’t see Molly or the two dozen roses, and he didn’t hear any voices. He did have the distinct impression the cottage was telling him to go away.

  Ace the cat suddenly appeared at the door and meowed, and Tommy Lee about jumped out of his skin. Quickly he set the little rose plant on the bottom step, scratched on the screen to get Ace to meow again, and then strode quickly back to the shade of the big elm trees. He leaned against the trunk of one, propped himself, and gazed toward the cottage. His blood was running warm and he thought of touching Molly.

  The next instant he was startled when he saw an image shimmering behind the black window screen, not Molly’s face, but the face of an old woman looking angrily at him. Then it was gone, as the evening sunlight shifted through the trees and made moving patterns across the cottage walls and windows.

  Molly’s voice: “Oh, Ace . . . I’ll let you out.”

  Her shadow appeared behind the screen, and it swung open. Molly stood there, looking downward at the little bush. The yellow sunlight turned her hair to gold and played warmly over her face, down her body, down her legs that were bare beneath a big denim shirt.

  Tommy Lee stared at her legs.

  His gaze drifted down her pale thighs and to her bare feet. He felt his blood run harder as she came slowly down the steps and bent over the little bush. The shirttail rode up high on her creamy thigh.

  Then she was lifting the pot, reverently, as if it were a golden chalice. Her face came up and she looked straight at him.

  He straightened and took hold of his courage. “Hello, Molly.”

  “Hello.”

  Molly held the pot hard against her fluttering heart, feeling as if she needed to hold on to something. She felt, too, that she held a treasure to be protected. She stood there and watched him saunter toward her, his muscles firm, his movement fluid, his eyes intent upon her.

  He stopped when still ten feet from her, cocked his head slightly, and perused her with a gaze that made her tingle all over. His eyes were dark blue, blue as summer evening sky.

  Molly had the sensation of glass walls cracking around her and fresh breezes beginning to blow. Suddenly, in a hot flush all over, she knew exactly what she wanted, and she knew as clearly as if he’d yelled it at her what Tommy Lee had come for.

  She looked downward at the little flowers of the bush because right that instant it was much easier to look at the plant. Her heart was pounding and she grew warm in intimate places.

  “You like the plant then?” Tommy Lee asked, a silly question like he could ask.

  “I love it,” she said, raising her eyes to his.

  “The old woman said it was a miniature rose bush. That it could be kept anywhere. I thought you might like that . . . that it was a living thing and would keep on blooming.”

  She thought then that he knew, about the flowers Sam had sent her. She said, “Yes, I do. . . . I love it.”

  His eyes were intent on her. Searching her.

  “Would you like to come inside?”

  His gaze shifted to the cottage for an instant. He shook his head. “Walk out back with me.”

  Her heart caught. “Well, okay. I have to get pants and shoes on first.”

  She raced back inside the cottage, pulse pounding. She feared he wouldn’t wait. She jerked on her jeans, slipped into her shoes. Silly to be so flustered. She stopped to dab Chanel down her breast. Another dab for good measure, and all the while she was thinking about Tommy Lee and how he felt against her.

  Back through the kitchen she grabbed up the little rose bush from the table where she’d set it. She didn’t even realize she had taken it up, until she stood once more on the stoop, holding it close to her breast.

  There was strain on his face. But it eased when she walked toward him. Without a word they walked together out to the wooden fence. They stood there, and Molly, heart pounding and every cell in her body screaming for his touch, began to wonder if Tommy Lee was going to say anything. Was he going to do anything?

  She began to get impatient, and panicky, thinking maybe nothing would come of it, and that she was likely to die if she didn’t get to have him. The sun was a red ball far in the west, painting things golden. It really was pretty, and here they were standing in it, getting hotter and hotter. Longing so much for him that she thought she might cry.

  She was to the point of just telling him what she wanted, when Tommy Lee moved and slipped through the fence. She could not imagine why he did that. He turned back to her, took the rose bush from her and set it on the ground, took her hand and tugged her through, then led her over to the barn.

  “Tommy Lee . . . what . . ."

  He stopped her there, in the bright red-gold light pouring over the barn front. “Just don’t say anything, okay, Molly?”

  He took her face between his calloused palms. The wanting he saw jump into her eyes startled him. Gratified him.

  He kissed her.

  Instantly he was on fire, hauling her tight against him, pressing her against his groin. He went at her hard, and she came back at him just as hard. He was somewhat startled by her passion, but then he fell deeper into her moist eager lips and trembling hands. He fell deeper into her sweet perfume and sweet woman scent and hot muskiness of mating humans and ripe summer earth. Good Lord Almighty, and it was a prayer.

  He shoved her against the wood planks of the barn gate and went at her, kissed her again and again and again, until they were both feverish and out of breath, and he was about to burst right through his jeans.

  It was Molly who took his hand, opened the gate that kept the horse out of the hay, slipped through, and led Tommy Lee with her. He sat on stacked bales, spread his legs, and pulled her between them. The pressure of her gave him a brief ease. He lifted her shirt and kissed the warm, silky skin. She moaned and pushed her belly at him. He fumbled with the button of her jeans. She quivered. He paused to savor the quiver with his hands, and his lips. He went lower with his lips.

  “Tommy Lee . . . please . . ."

  “Oh, Molly . . ."

  He jerked his shirt off and spread it for her, spread his jeans and hers, but never got beyond getting her shirt unbuttoned.

  She was beneath him, coming to him with a luxurious sigh that made him glad to be a man. Her scent surrounded him, and her skin slid sweaty beneath him. Her breath caressed his ear as she moaned urgently. She spread her legs for him and pushed at him. She was ready. He felt the golden beams of sun on his back, and his blood burned in his groin.

  There was no going sweet, no going easy. It was hot and sweaty and earthy, the sun setting the barn and the hay and him and Molly on fire. They had both come a long way since the first time in this very barn. They both knew the notes of pleasure in each other’s body and how to play them. It came to him, as he shoved into her whimpering, quivering, eager body that this was what he had been needing for months.

/>   “Molly . . . I can’t hold . . ."

  She covered his mouth with her own and wrapped her legs around his hips. The last thing he heard was her calling his name in conjunction with God’s, before he heard only the roar of blood and heat and pounding need.

  * * * *

  Molly felt thoroughly, deliciously wrung out. She stretched languidly and cracked her eyes to see that the setting sun cast a rosy glow into the barn. It was as if the rosy glow came from her and Tommy Lee. She kept her nose turned against him, inhaling his virile scent, and kept her body pressed tight against his, savoring the heat and the sweat and the memory of what he’d just done to her.

  Had it ever been like this? Oh, Lord, thank you! Oh, maybe now I can go on living a while longer.

  But passion cannot, no matter how magical the moment, be sustained indefinitely. There always came valleys after mountain tops. Marker came peeking in at them, and as soon as he awoke from dozing, Tommy Lee began to twitch and rub his feet together. Shortly he began kissing her shoulder and a bit after that he was on his feet, slapping at his back. “Geez, the mosquitoes are comin’ out.”

  Molly lay there and watched him in the light of the setting sun. He was naked, except for his socks. He grinned at her, blushing as he reached for his jeans. She sat up and pulled her shirt together, began buttoning it.

  “We should make a shrine out of this place,” he said as he zipped up his jeans.

  He spoke low and huskily, and she looked over to see him cast her a shy smile. She smiled back at him.

  And then she went to him, pressed herself tight against his chest. “Thank you, Tommy Lee.”

  His arms tightened around her. “Thank you, darlin’.”

  He hadn’t called her darlin’ in so long. He held her and kissed the top of her head.

  Molly wished they could hold on to each other forever and was annoyed when Tommy Lee pulled away. How long could a couple hold each other? How much heat could they endure? How long before their legs gave out and mosquitoes ate them up? Molly didn’t care at all for reality, which seemed to be crashing down on her.

  While Tommy Lee put on his shirt, she tugged on her jeans and slipped into her shoes. She left him searching for his boots from where he’d thrown them and went out the barn gate, hurrying. She picked up her rose bush at the fence and walked quickly across the shadowy ground beneath the elms and in the back door of the dark cottage, where music still played softly.

  Tommy Lee wondered at Molly’s abrupt departure, as he stomped his left foot into his boot. He couldn’t think of what he had done to anger her . . . but maybe she wasn’t angry. Maybe she was simply being practical and getting away from the heat and mosquitoes.

  He straightened, looked down at the strewn hay and then up at the orange horizon. He tried to imprint the past moments into his memory, having a feeling that he would need the memory, not wanting it to get away, as had the one so long ago.

  It had been somewhat barbaric, he thought, a little awed at the passion that had taken hold of him. He thought that it was a good thing such passion didn’t take hold of a man every day, because like as not, he’d be dead quite quickly. Sweet death, he supposed, as he walked slowly toward the cottage.

  He searched the window screens, black squares in the cottage walls now, but he didn’t see any old women’s faces. A soft light fell out the back door, and faint music came with it. He stood there a moment, gathering himself to go inside, thinking of how Molly had raced away from the barn.

  Inside he found her watering the little rose bush. His gaze slipped down the neckline of her shirt, where it hung loose and he could see her pale flesh. He remembered how her skin had looked in the glow of the setting sun. How it had felt beneath his hand . . . beneath his body.

  Then he glanced back into the living room and wondered where Sam’s roses were, if they weren’t anywhere in the cottage. He wasn’t going to ask. She offered him some ice tea, and he said that would be nice. It seemed strange to be talking about ice tea with her scent and sweat still clinging to him.

  When her gaze met his, he knew she was remembering how they had been only a few minutes earlier.

  “Let’s take it out on the front porch,” he suggested, experiencing again that peculiar sensation that something was about to fly off the cottage wall and hit him.

  He had assumed that, after what had just happened between them, Molly would quickly pack herself up and come home, but he began to fear that he had been jumping to conclusions. She didn’t seem as if she was going to pack.

  Instead, the two of them sat on the small wicker settee—so old and fine that Tommy Lee was careful when he sat and didn’t move much either—on the screened porch of the cottage where Molly now resided, having cold glasses of sweet tea and watching the sky shift from red to coral to purple and saying stupid things like: “The sky is beautiful . . . mosquitoes are thick this year . . . cicadas are loud," while the heat of passion was still whispering around them.

  Tommy Lee decided he was absolutely not going to ask Molly to come home. He sure hoped she said something. He laid his arm along the back of the settee and made circles on her shoulder with his thumb, while he thought up a dozen ideas of what to say but couldn’t get any of it to his tongue.

  After what seemed an eternity, she said softly, “Maybe we can love each other but not live together.”

  “I thought we were doin’ okay a few minutes ago,” he said. “In fact, I thought we were livin’ together mighty well.”

  “We were”—and she smiled a smile she tried to hold back—"but that isn’t everything, Tommy Lee.”

  “It’s a hell of a lot.” He felt her blush, felt the heat in her eyes. He knew she was thinking about it and still feeling him inside her and thinking about doing it again, just as he was. He kept circling his thumb on her shoulder, needing to keep touching her.

  She said, “You thought that we had sex, so everything was going to be okay.”

  “It seems logical, Molly.” He started to get mad, mad enough to say, “Especially the kind of sex we just had. God, Molly, I know you felt what I did.” He drew his arm from around her then and leaned forward.

  “I did,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

  They sat there, each falling into taut silence. He was glad she had admitted it. He’d begun to worry that maybe he’d been mistaken. He felt more confused than ever, however, and he thought hard, trying to figure out what he was leaving undone. “Molly, what do you want me to do?”

  She didn’t know what to tell him. She had begged him often in the past year to spend more time with her. She had tried to explain that she needed him. Each time he would get angry at her, then would end up promising to give her more of his time, and she knew he tried, he really did, but it was his having to try that hurt most of all. She didn’t want him to have to try to be attentive. And somehow whatever he gave her wasn’t enough. How could she say that to him?

  “I don’t think there is anything you can do,” she said. “It’s me, Tommy Lee.”

  After a long minute he said, “You’ve been like this since Colter went off to college.”

  “It was before . . . only I just never had time to think of it. The kids kept me busy.” Then she added, “They filled the hole.”

  She sat very still, waiting for him to leave, because she knew he was going to.

  Tommy Lee got up and went to the screen door. When it simply fell off in his hand, he was momentarily startled away from his anger.

  “We haven’t gotten it fixed,” Molly said. “Rennie and I just propped it up there. It still more or less keeps out flies and mosquitoes."

  Tommy Lee shifted the door aside, tossed the melted ice from his glass outside, and set the glass on the plant stand. He didn’t know what to do then. He had intended to just leave, but the broken screen door had somehow distracted him from a grand exit.

  Finally he said, “It’s been fun,” and left, striding out and around to his Corvette.

  Molly watched his bac
k disappear into the darkness. Then she put her head down on her arms. She felt as if all life were leaving her. She thought of running after him, but that just didn’t seem right. She had to let him go. She could not try to change him for her needs. That wasn’t fair, and it would never work anyway. Good Lord, they were entering middle age. Neither of them could change.

  A limb snapped, and she jerked upward. Tommy Lee came striding back into the faint light.

  He gazed down at her, and then his hand came up and he pointed a finger at her.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll just do it your way. You know where I am, when you’re ready to come home. I’ll wait.”

  The next instant he crouched in front of her, grabbed her head, and kissed her soundly, taking her breath and her senses.

  “You know where to find more of that any time you want it.” Then he stalked off again.

  Molly started crying. Jumping to her feet, she pushed out the doorway and called after him, “You know where to find it, too!”

  Chapter 21

  Life’s A Dance

  The next morning Tommy Lee called Molly and woke her before the sun was fully up. She had to roll out of bed, sending Ace flying with a loud meow, and find the telephone.

  “You awake?” Tommy Lee said, laughter in his voice.

  “I am now.” But maybe she wasn’t, she thought as she wandered with the phone. Maybe she was dreaming. Was that really Tommy Lee?

  “Well, I’m awake. I’m havin’ breakfast . . . sausage and eggs and biscuits. And I’m naked, darlin’. . . and willin’.”

  His voice held all the memories from the previous evening, and they came through the telephone line and down Molly’s spine, making her begin to throb.

  “Where would you get biscuits?” She lowered herself to the sofa edge, her legs feeling weak. Her legs suddenly feeling Tommy Lee’s hands upon them.

  “It is amazin’ what they can do with frozen food. Heat ‘em up, put butter on ‘em . . . umm, good.”

  “You are actually heatin’ yourself biscuits?”