by Anne Calhoun
Jonathan was playing in the bare patch of dirt under the oak tree. Ben slowly crossed the yard, watching the kids. Five, no six, Barbies sat in the sandbox, several in swimsuits, two in shiny satin evening gowns, and the Ken doll in cowboy gear. The girls had parts of a tea set in there as well, their high-pitched voices tumbling over each other as they played.
“Hi, Uncle Ben,” Callie said.
“Hey,” he said as he hunkered down to watch them play, then turned his attention to Jonathan. The boy sat off by himself, almost hidden by the tree. Attachment issues. That’s the phrase Sam and Chris used most often. He’d used a gardening trowel to scrape away the dirt barely covering the tree’s roots, and had a line of Matchbox cars nosed into the shallow depression.
“What’re you doing, buddy?” he asked.
“Playing.”
“You don’t want to play in the sandbox?” Ben knew all about this sandbox. The pressure-treated, red-painted sides held four hundred and fifty pounds of the finest white sand money could buy.
Jonathan didn’t look up from his precise arrangement of cars. “I like dirt.”
Ben walked over to stand beside him, then went down on his heels again, but a couple of feet away. Jonathan had been forcibly removed from his home by a uniformed officer. Ever since Ben stopped by one night after work in uniform, the boy had stayed away from him. “Why?”
Jonathan shrugged. “It’s just better.”
Ben remembered how he’d played at that age. He and Sam found a scraggly patch of dirt at the top of the pasture and over the summer months carved an entire ranching operation into the natural hillocks and channels. They’d spent hours out there, negotiating roles, arguing over what land to use for what operation, just like their dad did. It was a passionate, all-consuming game, one that occupied them for most of the summer between first and second grade.
Jonathan was going through the motions. He pushed cars around with his skinny fingers, but he kept an eye on the girls and the back door, too. So wary.
Ben looked at his watch: 11:06. Rachel would have left his apartment by now.
His stomach did a twisty little flip-flop. To cover it he said, “Have fun,” straightened, and set off to find Sam.
The house’s main floor was filling up with Sam’s eclectic Sunday lunch crowd, consisting of neighbors, friends, artists, anyone who took the open invitation seriously. His sister gave him a tight nod while describing an upcoming surprise trip to Disney World they were planning for the girls. He returned the nod and kept moving.
Eleven fifteen. No Sam.
He swung back through the garage for another beer. The male couple making out against the fridge moved long enough to let him snag another beer and wander out into the yard. The noise subsided a little out there. A group sat around the fire pit built into the stone patio Chris put in a couple of years earlier, their feet up on the rim, arguing politics. A couple sat on the swings, talking idly and sharing a bottle of beer. Ben looked around again, then up at the tree house nestled into the limbs branching over the sandbox. Jonathan ignored him as he climbed up the slats nailed to the tree’s trunk.
Sam lay on his back, a beer in one hand, looking up at the branches and leaves overhead. “Took you long enough,” he said.
Ben settled onto the platform and swung his legs up, then lay down on his back, his head at Sam’s feet. “First time I came up here I interrupted a sex act,” he said as he closed his eyes.
Sam laughed. “And you didn’t bust them?”
“Private property,” Ben said, his eyes still closed.
“They ask you to join in?” Sam said lazily.
Ben huffed. “It was two women, so they looked at me like I was physically revolting. I got the feeling I totally killed their mood.”
Sam laughed out loud. Ben grinned, lifted his head enough to tip the rest of the beer down his throat, then stared up through the leafy canopy at teasing glimpses of blue sky.
“I thought you had something going on Sundays these days,” Sam said.
“Not today,” Ben said.
“What was it? Some work thing?”
Ben stared up at the sharp points and veins in the leaves. “Not exactly,” he said.
“Off-duty thing?”
“Not exactly.”
“Fucking talk to me or I’m going back to my party.”
He could tell Sam anything. “This woman bought a date with me at a bachelor auction. We went out on the date and after the date I fucked her.”
“You know,” Sam drawled, “like you do.”
Ben ignored him. “Turns out she was a virgin.”
His brother propped himself up on his elbows. “What?”
“I felt bad about deflowering her in what had to be the least sensitive way possible, so I offered to give her sex lessons on Sundays.”
“I’m fucking speechless,” Sam said finally. “You felt bad about screwing a woman?”
Ben slugged him, hard, but Sam slugged him back just as hard.
“Where the hell did you find a virgin?”
“Like I said, she found me at the bachelor auction.”
“That was weeks ago.”
And this week it was over. “She’s twenty-five, and five months ago she was living at Elysian Fields,” he said, like Sam had asked. “She needs to catch up with the rest of the world in a hurry. She knew exactly what she was getting. She said she wanted to lose her virginity with someone who wouldn’t care.”
How did she see that? How did she know?
“Ouch,” Sam said mildly. He knew. He always knew how Ben felt, what he needed. Who needed a mirror when you could look at your own soul?
Yeah. Ben tipped back his beer bottle.
“What’s she like?” Sam asked.
She needs something I can’t give her.
“I thought she’d be a blank slate,” he said finally. “Innocent, sweet, kind of clueless. She’s more like . . . It’s like when we used to rehearse in the barn. Remember?”
Below the tree Jonathan murmured quietly to the cars. Ben and Sam had graduated from Matchbox cars and a pile of dirt to video games to jamming away in the barn. Katy even played with them for a while, pounding away at the drums like a punk rocker. But then Ben joined the varsity football team and got popular with girls, while Sam got quiet. When he wasn’t singing.
“I remember,” Sam said quietly.
“It’s like that.” He stared up at the branches. Together. When he was with Rachel he didn’t feel alone. They weren’t exactly making music, but he wasn’t alone.
Sam shifted his gaze from Ben’s face to the leaves. “She’s got something going on today?”
Ben stayed quiet.
“Benjamin Eli Harris,” his brother said. “You didn’t.”
“It’s how the game’s played,” he said to himself. He glanced at Sam’s wristwatch but the sunlight streaming through the tree house window cast a glare on the face.
He wasn’t going to ask.
He wasn’t.
“What time is it?”
“Eleven twenty-two,” came his sister’s voice from the ladder. “Why? You have somewhere to be? Shove over,” she added as she clambered up into the tree house.
“Hi, Katy,” he said.
“Hello, Ben,” she replied formally, folding her legs to the side and smoothing down her skirt. “Long time no see.”
“I’ve been busy,” Ben said.
“And yet you’re magically not busy on the one day Mom and Dad aren’t here? Very convenient.”
“Katy,” Sam said wearily. “Leave him alone.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” she said mock-cheerily. “Is that why you’re here, Ben? Because Dad isn’t?”
“No,” he said. Katy’s attitude and t
he unpleasant truth made him clench his jaw. He was here so he wouldn’t be where Rachel’s lips and hips and fingertips could lay him bare again. Avoiding their father was just a perk.
Katy started in on the argument midstream. They’d had it so many times she didn’t need a reason, or even a word from Ben. “We’ve all moved on, Ben. All of us. Mom, Dad, Sam, me, Alan, the girls. Even Chris. We’ve all moved on.”
“That’s great, Katy,” Ben said insincerely.
“You’re the one stuck in the past.”
Ben looked at Sam and saw what no one else saw, the pain hidden behind his brother’s eyes. The lines around his mouth. The wariness. He wasn’t stuck in the past. In this he was Sam’s mirror, bearing witness to the destruction of a soul, and if that was too hard for the rest of his family, too fucking bad.
“You two don’t need me for this,” Sam said. He crawled past Ben’s outstretched legs and lowered himself through the hole in the floor to the ladder. His soft, loving hey, buddy drifted up through the opening, along with Jonathan’s less guarded reply. Attachment issues or no, the kid loved Sam wholly and completely. The thought of what might happen if things didn’t go well made Ben’s throat tighten.
“Dad’s sorry,” Katy said into the silence. “He’s sorry, and he regrets what happened.”
Regrets what happened? He’d driven Sam out of the house with threats of a reeducation camp for gay kids. He’d removed the carburetor from Ben’s truck so he couldn’t search for his brother, his own lost soul. And when he’d started to cry, his father said, Don’t you start. Don’t you fucking start. Be a man, for Christ’s sake.
Ben kept his gaze locked on Katy’s face. “What exactly does he regret, Katy?” he said emotionlessly. “Because the list of things he did to this family is too long for sorry to cover it.”
“You’re the one who’s ruined family dinner and holidays for a decade. Not Dad.” She shook her head. “You’re just like him. Stubborn as hell, hard as hell.”
“How do you think justice happens, Katy? You think it comes from being soft and easy? You have no fucking clue what happened to Sam, what he went through on the streets,” Ben snapped. “I do. I see it every goddamn day. Sam’s got to live with that for the rest of his life. Dad does not get to set that down and walk away with an apology.”
He was halfway through the hole in the tree house floor when Katy put her hand on his arm. “You’re hurting all of us, Ben, but the person you hurt most is yourself.”
“Sam never pulls that pop psychology bullshit on me, and he’s a therapist, not a loan officer. You don’t get to, either.”
Eventually, as the day dragged into later afternoon he made his way through the mellow crowd and down the block. Inside his truck he turned on the AC and picked up his phone. Four twenty-seven. Not that he was checking the time or anything. He scrolled through his missed texts and calls.
None from Rachel.
Well, fuck. A laugh huffed from his chest. He didn’t need to teach that girl any-damn-thing.
He picked up a pizza on the way back to his apartment. Dinner consisted of opening the box on the coffee table and eating in front of the Sunday night game.
The knock on his door surprised him. The last time someone knocked on his door on a Sunday night he’d ended up in a ménage. But the knock wasn’t military firm. It wasn’t tentative, either, and lightning didn’t strike twice in the same place.
He opened the door to Rachel Hill, dressed in jeans and a white eyelet shirt that tied under her breasts, her hair in a French braid as thick as his wrist. From his taller vantage point he saw bits of dried leaf clinging to the strands. Emotion simmered in her whiskey eyes, too complicated for him to figure out. Anger, mostly. He recognized that, no problem. Concern that grew as she studied his face, which confused him. Today was what everyone did, a lazy Sunday brunch with family. No cause for concern.
The anger won. “An hour ago I lost my temper with someone, for the first time ever. It felt really good so I thought I’d come here and try it again. Where were you?”
“Sam’s.”
His answer made her blink hard and look away. “Oh,” she said. “That’s nice. Did you have a good time?”
He shrugged. “It’s just a family thing,” he said and left it at that.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had other plans?”
“Because I didn’t.”
She worked through the implications, then settled on the right one. “That is not all right, Ben,” she said. Her voice was clear and even, not hushed to prevent his neighbors from hearing. “If I did something wrong last Sunday, if you don’t want me to come around anymore, then tell me and I’ll find something else to do. But be honest with me. Don’t make me guess.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Guys just stop calling. You won’t know why. It’s what you need.”
At that she turned on her heel and took two steps toward the stairwell. The sight of a white envelope tucked into the back pocket of her jeans forced her name from his throat. “Rachel. Wait.”
She stopped. Turned back to face him. “I’m done with people telling me what I need, Ben,” she said firmly, as if that could cover the tremor in her voice.
“Okay. I get it. I do,” he said and stepped back to open the door wide. “Please.”
For a long moment she didn’t move toward the stairwell, or toward him. But then she crossed the short distance, and turned sideways to slip past him, into his apartment. He shut the door, then picked up the remote and turned off the TV.
“It’s so complicated,” she said as she rubbed her forehead.
“What is?” he asked cautiously.
“Everything.”
The look she gave him wrenched something out of alignment inside him. Indomitable Rachel, with tears in her eyes. Then she eased down on the arm of the chair next to the TV and pulled the envelope from her back pocket. “My dad returned my letter. Again. I don’t know why it still hurts. I’ve sent him letters, one a week since I left, and he’s returned all of them. Unopened.”
Ben folded his arms across his chest and sat on the arm of the sofa nearest her. “And?”
“I applied to vet tech school. They have rolling admissions so I should hear soon, but the waiting is killing me.”
“And?”
“Jess is mad at me because she thinks I’m after Rob, but I’m not. I’m not. I just like him. He’s a friend.”
“He’d be more than a friend if you wanted,” Ben said.
“I know that,” she said impatiently. “I was never stupid. I’m not even naïve anymore. He wants me. I want you. I don’t know what you want. You’re not my lover. You’re not my friend. You’re . . . It’s a mess.”
He crossed to crouch down in front of her but refrained from touching her. “Do you want me to be your friend?”
She reached out with her index finger and touched his lower lip, gaze fixed on skin-against-skin as she pressed gently. The sweet taste of honey bloomed unbidden in his mind, fading again when her finger traced down his chin to the hollow of his throat, then over his collarbone to tug aside his collar. The snap below her finger gave way, the sound of metal popping loud in the silence.
She slid off the chair’s leather arm and slid down on her ass with her knees to her chest, between his spread legs. Gaze still fixed on his, her finger followed the upper contour of his pectoral, tugging open another snap in the process, then more directly moved down his sternum.
Click.
Click.
Click.
“Is that an option?” she asked.
Were they talking? He’d forgotten, because Rachel’s finger brought his skin to life. All the nerves went on high alert in its wake, sensation coursing south to pool in his cock. The expectant look in her eyes triggered his memory. Was being f
riends an option?
Click.
His shirt gaped open. He watched her eyes flick between his face and his torso, and didn’t answer the question.
Disappointment flared briefly in her eyes. He saw the moment, the exact moment, she settled for the sheer sexual heat simmering between them. She fisted her hands in his shirt and pulled his mouth down to hers. The kiss was hot, electric, an angry, sliding battle of tongue and teeth. He teased her, holding back his own emotional turmoil to heighten hers. Get angry. Take it out on me. Make me feel something other than this festering knot of anger and abandonment.
She got to her knees and reached for his belt, making quick work of buckle, buttons, and jeans while he tugged her jeans and panties off. He sat back on his heels, pulling his wallet from his front pocket both to ease the strain of his jeans pulling across his thighs and to get a condom. She plucked it from his fingers and rolled it on, a brittle edginess in her movements. He rarely worried about putting himself in a woman’s hands, but Rachel was strong, and pissed. She rode the edge, though, handling him just roughly enough to make him insane.
He swallowed hard and wrapped one arm around her waist as she straddled his thighs, centered herself over his cock, then wound her arms around his neck. Her lips brushed his, and this time she was the tease, her tongue flicking at his lips, her breath heating nerve endings already sensitized to her kiss as she worked herself down his cock.
Then she rode him with none of the connection she’d created when she tied him to his dinette chair. It was hot and fast and completely focused on her own release. Based on the hitches in her breathing she took a perverse pleasure in leaning just of reach when he tipped forward to kiss her. Really kiss her. Swiveling and grinding on his cock, the end of her thick braid rhythmically brushing his forearm, slick little noises drifting under their erratic breathing, she closed her eyes and took exactly what she wanted from him, while giving him nothing. When she came she buried her face in his shirt while the contractions gripped the length of his shaft, but he was nowhere near coming himself.