by J. R. Rogue
Are there better Christmas songs out there? Musically? Sure, maybe. But for me, nothing can make me feel joy like that damn Mariah song.
I was obsessed with the diva in high school, devouring every album she put out. One year, I dressed as her for Halloween. A white tank top with a rainbow from her Rainbow album.
Hunter finds me in my room, jumping up and down on my bed, belting the song out. “I don’t want a lot for Christmas…” I am so out of tune. And I should be embarrassed to be caught by a singer like this—sweaty and disheveled, off-key and a little drunk.
Ever since we put up the holiday decorations with Sera, her husband, and the people close to her, I can’t get my head straight. Their dynamic makes me ache. They’re family, and I miss having a family—someone to love, and friends close by. Sometimes it feels like I have none of those things.
What I do have is a flirtation with a guy I fucked once in Nashville. I have him looking at me now like I’m insane.
I have my words, but they don’t keep me warm at night. They don’t comfort me anymore.
“What are you doing up there?” Hunter asks from my doorway, and I note his hesitance to enter the room.
I haven’t invited him into my room the entire time we’ve been here together. We write in his room. We eat in the hall. We fucked in the hot tub.
I have my walls, and he stands outside of them.
Mariah belts a high note, so I try to match it, then start to tumble off the bed. Hunter is there in a flash, his hand in mine, arm around my waist. Then I’m in his arms, and he’s lowering me to the bed. Nothing scandalous, just a man taking care of me.
It’s too much like my husband, so I pull away.
“I’m drinking wine,” I say, pulling my cardigan over my chest, “and singing some Mariah. What’s it look like?”
Hunter is leaving very soon, and I don’t want to face that.
“I reckon it looks like you’re getting shit-faced and ruining dinner upstairs,” he says.
“Oh, fuck. Can they hear me?” I’ve played the song ten times in a row—minimum.
“Mmhmm.” Hunter sits next to me, leaning back into my pillow. He looks comfortable in my space, but I’m too tipsy to panic. I wanted to keep him out of here, and now he’s in my space—acting like he belongs here.
“That’s my bed. That’s my pillow.” I point.
“I know how you sound when you’re drunk. I figured I’d come on down here and make sure you didn’t end up passing out and hurting yourself.”
“My knight in shining armor.” I laugh, standing on wobbly legs.
“Nah, you’ve never needed saving.”
I disagree, but I don’t argue. Not out loud, anyway.
Hunter pushes a stack of books to the edge of my bed so he can stretch out. Art is my favorite thing to gift. And words are the art closest to my heart. I own duplicates of every book I love. I spend hours at library book sales, grabbing novels for my home library. When I rave about a book, I’m eager to gift the duplicate copies I own. I hope somewhere, someplace, someone has two copies of one of my books on their shelf. I hope they’re raving about my words, and they want to share them with someone.
“What’s your favorite part of writing?” Hunter asks, paying more attention to the stack of books. Cynthia A. Rodriguez, Kat Savage, and Christina Hart. Those are the names on some of the books I brought with me.
“The days I’m locked in my office, feeling insane.” I had one blank wall in my office with a giant corkboard hung in the center. I plotted with index cards and looked like that damn meme of Charlie Day describing a conspiracy when I did it. Except I was working out plot points with imaginary characters.
“Are you only insane in the office?” he teases.
I smack Hunter’s arm. “You know, I could spend every day in my office working out character flaws and plot holes. But if you live your life locked in a room, who are you sharing it with?” I feel the wine then, and my sadness creeping in. Without Mariah’s voice to drown everything out, I feel the depths.
“The world,” Hunter answers. “When they read your words. But, you have to live your life. If you don’t live it, what are you writing about?”
“Memories?” I’m reaching.
“But what happens when all the memories worth something run out?”
“Memories are forever,” I say, staring at the man who won’t leave mine.
“They are, as long as you can recall them. How good is your memory?”
“It’s shit sometimes,” I admit, laughing. I can remember the exact sweater I wore on a Tuesday five years ago when I ran into an ex-boyfriend at Dairy Queen. But things from six months ago escape me at times.
“You recycle what you have in life. You recycle it so someone new can enjoy it. But you can only recycle it so many times before you wonder what it really used to look like,” Hunter muses, and I wonder if he is talking to himself or me.
“I think I’ll warp my marriage so many times I won’t know who the villain is.”
“There doesn’t always have to be a villain. Sometimes people love each other, and they aren’t compatible. They don’t know it until they’re too far in it. Ya can’t beat yourself up over it forever.” He reaches for my hand.
“I want him to be happy.” I feel myself sobering up. The air is charged around us.
“You should want that. Or else, what kind of person would you be?”
“A real one.” I can be petty and mean and vengeful. In my heart, but never in my actions. It comes out in words.
“People always say they’re real when they’re ugly. Doesn’t excuse it. Doesn’t make the fact that they’re shitty less shitty,” he says.
“Oh, Obi-Wan, tell me more.” I bat my eyelashes.
“Jackass.” Hunter waves his hand, rolling his eyes. “Listen, one day you’re gonna live your life without worrying about how you being happy is going to hurt him. Because you’re going to realize he’s living his life too. And he isn’t worried about hurting you. The ink is dry. You have your last name back. Trust me, he’s sizing up a new wife.”
“You think?” My chest aches.
“Here’s the thing. Men our age—he’s our age, right?”
“Yes,” I say, nodding.
“They want to settle down. They want a wife and they want a home and they want a family. Women our age seem to go the other way. If they’re single, they had that, and it suffocated them. I think that’s why men our age go for younger.” Hunter shrugs his shoulders.
“Oh yeah, is that why you do?” I have to admit it to myself, it bugs me that Hunter sleeps with women younger than him. Because that means they’re younger than me.
“No.”
“Then stop. Young girls want to settle down, have their own kids, not share yours with someone.” I hate that he can’t see we’re suited for each other, that we could really be something if we stopped the dance.
“I need to. I know,” he says.
I don’t like the way we’re talking. Like friends. Friends who will never be anything more.
But denial is where we live.
I pull the focus from him. “You really think my ex is sizing someone up?”
“Yes. Especially now that you don’t live there. He may’ve been waiting, so he didn’t hurt ya. He didn’t date while you were still in town, right?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Yeah, he couldn’t. Not with you near. But distance changes things. He knows you severed ties with that town. So he wants it to be his home again.” Hunter crosses his arms, and I lean back, absorbing his words.
I’m glad we sold the house. That the person he’ll one day move into my old role won’t live in my old home. I don’t know why it matters, but it does. I can’t imagine another woman hanging photos on my walls, taking showers in my old shower. It was my home, not just a house. I didn’t want either of us to create some sort of family there without the other.
Maybe I’m old fashioned in some ways.
I look around my makeshift home. At the little tree. At my overflowing suitcase and the fire outside. I like the way the flames paint Hunter in amber and desire. And I desire him, though he pisses me the hell off.
That may be part of the reason I desire him. I want to master it, and sometimes I don’t like the way I’m off-kilter. The glass in my hand is growing as warm as the light surrounding us. I take one last swig, knowing I won’t pick up another. My desire for Hunter isn’t the only thing I want to master.
I want to be precise with my words, with my wants and defenses. I hate the way they crumble around him.
Hunter looks me in the eye, then pats the place on the bed closest to him.
Is it arrogant to assume I could be his happiness? Maybe. But if he feels that tug too, if he has felt it throughout the years, it’s a shame to waste it.
“Do you want to keep talking about our exes, or should we just have sex?” I ask casually.
“Do you say everything that comes into your head with everyone? Or am I the lucky one?” he asks.
“You know I don’t. Quit fishing for compliments,” I say, but I’m lying. I like when he pulls them from me.
“It’s so hard, though. I like when you flatter me. It’s damn rare, woman.”
“Men always do. Then you settle down, get married, and the shine wears off. We,” I motion to myself, “the conquest, become human, and humans are the ugliest things on this earth. And when you stare ugly in the eye, all you see is your own ugly. So you, me, one of us leaves, because the truth is easier to leave in the dust.” I stare into my empty wine glass, avoiding his eyes. I can see Hunter in my peripheral.
I wonder how ruined his ex-wife feels. If she has found love again. “Is your ex-wife remarried?” I ask, going for the jugular.
I Don’t Want To Be A One-Night Stand
Sonnet
Hunter looks startled for a moment, but recovers. “No.” He reaches for my wine glass, which I hand to him, and then he grabs the bottle on the floor and pours himself a drink.
“Wow. Not what I expected.” I do the math, think of the years. “How long have you guys been divorced?”
“Twelve years,” he says.
I pull my head back, brows furrowing. “Does she have a boyfriend?”
“Nope. She hasn’t even had a boyfriend.” He’s so matter-of-fact. I usually like it when he answers my random questions, but this answer flat out sucks.
“I can think of a few reasons why she wouldn’t have one.” My tipsy wheels are turning, and I don’t like the track they’re on.
“None of them would be right,” he tells me.
“It’s not that you’re a life ruiner?”
“No,” he says, not taking the bait, not finding insult there. “It’s because of our daughters.”
I wonder if he still fucks her. If she’s holding on to something. Or if she finds the thought of finding a man useless as long as she has him to warm her bed a handful of times a year. That’s the question I won’t dare ask, though. It’s too much.
Drinking another glass crosses my mind because then I can blame my digging on that. But I’ve been here too many times, like this, with him. Drunk words and regret. My shame mingled with embarrassment. He never calls me out, and sometimes that makes it worse.
“Life doesn’t stop when you have kids,” I say tentatively, because I don’t want it to sound like I’m judging them. I just don’t get it; I don’t have kids. How could I get it?
“No. It…pauses,” Hunter counters.
“Until you let go of the button.”
“Are we talking about her or me now?”
“You guys have been split up for over a decade. She doesn’t date, and you…you do date—or fuck around, if we’re being honest here. You get involved with younger girls who want the whole package, and you know, straight out the gate, that you can’t give it to them. You think you’re moving forward, but you’re treading water too.”
“I can see how it would appear that way,” he says.
“Are you still in love with her?” God, I hate myself.
“No.” He doesn’t sound defensive.
“Is she still in love with you?” I can’t stop; this train is going off the tracks.
“Maybe?” Hunter shrugs his shoulders.
“I can’t figure out if that’s ego or truth.” I pull my legs up, cross them on the bed.
“When do I ever have an ego?” He’s serious, and it pushes me over the edge.
I laugh, and I keep laughing. Tears spring to the corners of my eyes. Because I’ve known few men without ego. Some are loud, and they fill the room. Some egos are meek, but still in the room. Watching. Waiting for their time to crawl out into the open. Hunter has an ego. He likes for me to stroke it. To press myself into it.
“It’s that funny?” he says, and he’s laughing too—that small one. It slips out as the side of his mouth turns up.
“Your entire attraction to me has everything to do with your ego,” I state.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You don’t like me. You like the way I make you feel. You like that I get drunk and say stupid shit. You like the way I hold our past in my pocket. You know it’s there, easy for me to pull out if given enough fuel. Your ego is so hungry.”
“Quit speaking in poetry,” he says.
“I was named for it.” I can’t turn it off, and I know he doesn’t really want me to stop speaking that way. I can hear it now, and I can’t turn it off any easier than he can turn off his voice—the song on the tip of his tongue. I want to taste it. I stretch my legs out, brushing against him. Before I can pull away, his large palm grabs my ankle.
“Don’t do that,” he says.
“Don’t do what?”
“Pretend you’re doing that accidentally. If you’re going to touch me, if you want to touch me, do it intentionally,” he says, his voice dropping low.
“I don’t think either of us can handle that right now. You’re leaving soon.” I want him to tell me that I’m wrong.
“I can handle you. I can handle anything you want. Use me.” He moves closer.
“That’s all it’ll be. Me using you, you letting me.” It sounds fun, and I’ve needed that, but we can fall so easily into hurt if we let ourselves continue this.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Aren’t you tired of this game we’ve been playing, Hunter? I am.”
“I’m not tired of it.” His thumb moves slowly over my skin. “If I was, I would’ve left the moment I saw you.”
“And yet you didn’t.” I laugh. “Because that ego is thirsty.”
“Thirsty? Or hungry? I’m getting confused by your metaphors.”
“Shut up.” I laugh, brushing his knee again. It’s only a second of contact before Hunter moves toward me.
I shift away, falling back as he comes down. Two big hands on both sides of me, my own arms crossing over my chest. My face tilts away as he leans in, his breath warm on my face.
“You keep teasing me, and I’m gonna have to take a taste of you,” he says.
I turn into him, my lips meeting his, surprising him. He opens to me, and I feel it in the pit of my stomach. It’s been years since I’ve been free to kiss this man. Years since I felt hunted by Hunter Hart. This week has flown by, and I hate time right now.
He’s on his knees then, between my thighs. I part for him, my mouth and my legs. His hungry hands are on my waist. Mine are on his neck, his shoulders, his broad chest. His stubble tickles me, but I don’t laugh. There’s nothing funny in this room now. The teasing is gone. This is serious, and I’m not sure I can continue to survive this blind touching, the melody of his mouth.
He’s humming into me, my heart beating between my legs, and it hits me—how close I am to telling him I don’t want him to leave. How quickly we could push past the barriers we have erected between ourselves for years. Miles and misconstrued words. Miscalculations and hurt feelings.
; We can let that all fall away. I can let him fit into me, fill me, pretend this will fulfill me.
It’s that thought that makes me pull away. His tongue trails down my jaw, my neck, to my collarbone. “Wait, Hunter.”
And then he stops, pulls back a little as he reaches for his ballcap and centers it. Just like that, he’s fixing the mess, the rough edges of our coupling. “What?”
“I don’t know. We went from laughing to that, and I just want us to slow down.” We’ve had sex a few times this week, but now it feels real, serious. Since he’s leaving.
“You’re scared of me,” he challenges.
“You don’t scare me,” I say.
“You’re scared of the way I make you feel.”
“No fucking shit.” I push on his chest and he falls backward. I hate his honest mouth when it comes to calling me out sometimes. “You’re free. I’m free. When have we ever been here? Never.” I bulldoze through the bullshit.
“So?”
“I don’t fit into your timeline, and I’m not waiting around for some imaginary line to be crossed, some imaginary date on a calendar.” I throw the reason he has never been serious with another girl at him.
“It’s not fake.” He’s closing off, just a little. I see it.
“It’s your trick, I’m just not falling for it.” I cross my arms for effect, feeling like a petulant child. The liquor isn’t ruling me now; it’s my anger.
“Where’s the danger? You’re not falling for me, Sonnet. I know that. You never could.” He almost sounds wounded.
“Here we go. The ego is out. It’s thirsty again.” I roll my eyes.
“Hungry,” he corrects.
“Whatever.” I need to open a window, let the fresh Tennessee air in to settle us down, let it rip my warring thoughts from my head and heart.
Rumor
Sonnet
We met at the wrong time, in the right place.
I was single that summer, trying to track down a man in Nashville who would break my heart more than any other. Hunter helped me, for a moment, to forget everything. I forgot I loved two men—in different ways—who didn’t want to choose me. So just for one night, with Hunter, I existed for myself. For my wants and pleasures.