by M. R. Joseph
My thoughts of fireworks and bar-b-ques suddenly turn to panic. My gut clenches. The acid in it turns, and my eyes well with unshed tears. Willow looks at my face, knowing damn well that I see something I don’t care to see. My solitude is suddenly lost in an image, and as it approaches, it seeks me out like a hunter who finally spots his next meal. My mind whirls around at the sight of his eyes, the way they hold me captive, his lips, and the way he sticks his tongue out to graze his own top lip, and the way he saunters over towards my table. The hunter appears to be ready to strike, and my breathing becomes heavy and labored. Willow leans over and whispers, “What is it, Harlow? What’s wrong?” The sheer panic in her voice makes her whip her head around to every angle until she spots the hunter.
“Oh, Christ. Harlow, look at me.”
I can’t.
I can’t tear my eyes away. She grabs my hands and tells me sternly, “Harlow, I said look at me.” I do. I focus on her face, seeing my reflection in her eyes due to the fact I’m focusing so hard. She speaks to Craw without breaking her eye contact with me.
“Craw, I think we need to leave, slowly, without making a scene. Do you understand me?” I don’t see Craw’s face, I only hear his words. “Mother fucker.”
Then I hear Cruz’s voice. “What the hell is going on? Turnip? What’s wrong with her?”
I do something again so out of character for me. It’s difficult to comprehend why I do it, but I do it anyway. I break my eye contact with Willow, pull my hands away from hers, and turn my head to Cruz. He looks just as panicked as I am. He searches my eyes for an answer, but I don’t give him one. I only say what I feel I must at that moment.
“Cruz, kiss me, now.”
He pulls back, trying to understand the question, or rather the demand.
“Kiss me now, quickly.”
He smirks. His facial expression bordering on annoyance, and he sits upwards in his chair with defiance.
“I am not kissing you, Harlow. You’ve got to be crazy.”
Wrong choice of words at this present time, my friend.
I search his blue eyes, suddenly taking my hand to his broad, hard chest. I snake it upwards towards his thick neck, scraping my nails on his taut skin. As I do so, I say strongly and without fear, “Maybe I am, but if you don’t kiss me now, I’ll be forced to make you. I’ll be the one.” He hesitates, his mouth slightly parted, and he manages a sigh. I look to my right and see that the hunter is almost at his target, and in a desperate move to convey to him the importance of this act, I whisper, “I warned you.” And I pull his face to mine. My lips touch his, and my tongue darts out to part his lips. The stubbornness of his lips infuriates me, so as my hand reaches up to lock in his unruly brown locks. I feel Cruz’s body relax, and he parts his lips for my welcomed tongue. I slip it inside, tasting him, whipping it around inside his mouth, his tongue bathing mine. The twists and turns of them together, almost in a battle it seems. The subtle moans I hear coming out of his mouth, and I taste him. My eyes are tightly shut, and his hand grasps my hip, pulling me towards him even more. One more inch and I know I’ll be in his lap. I can feel his teeth hit mine, biting at my lower lip, teasing it. As I feel a familiar ache begin to build between my thighs, I see stars. My eyes are shut so steadfastly, temporarily making me forget the purpose of my actions. I see. I see…
Fireworks.
That’s until I hear the hunter speak.
“Baby, I’ve missed you.” My eyes spring open like a jack-in-the-box, but I still keep my focus on the man whose eyes are before me. He licks his lower lip, bringing his free hand up to touch it, and I break my gaze from his when he does so. I look at Willow and Craw, whose expressions I’m not sure I’m reading correctly. Theirs is a mixture of anger and disbelief.
“Baby, did you hear me?” The hunter’s words then bring me back to the reality that he is here, the hunter has found his prey. I turn my eyes to him, not being able to escape his voice as it reverberates through my soul. I need to maintain cool composure and act like his presence is like that of anyone else who says hi to me.
“Oh, hey. What are you doing all the way down here?”
The hunter leans both his hands on the table, gripping it, so he can steady his long, lean body.
“Daddy let me take his boat down here this weekend. He heard about the opening of this place, and told me it was good for her to stretch her legs down this way. What’s, um, going on here?”
Craw stands up, his chair falling behind him from the force of his abrupt move.
“None of your fucking business. Get out of here, asshole, before I throw you out myself.” Willow grabs hold of Craw’s arm, pulling him down, as she sets the flipped over chair up, willing Craw to sit.
The hunter straightens his body up and waves his hands at Craw.
“Whoa, just relax little brother, I only came to say hi to Harlow. I’m meeting a few friends here so I’m not staying, unless she wants me to. Do you want me to stay, baby?”
He sounds like he’s asking me, but he’s not, he’s actually telling me. To the outside world, it appears he’s asking, but I know him and his games and how he lures in his prey.
I don’t answer him, but the hunter’s curiosity about the man I was just kissing comes full circle.
He extends his hand to Cruz. “Hi there. I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Chad Knox.” I sneak a glance at Cruz, who looks confused, but takes Chad’s hand anyway, and I hear Cruz say, “Chad… Chad. Nice to meet you.”
“Don’t say it’s nice to meet this son of a bitch. Get the hell out of here, Knox. I’m not fucking kidding.” Craw never holds his words back when speaking to Knox. Chad exudes a small laugh and seems to back away from the table the slightest bit.
“Fine, have it your way. Baby, when you’re done playing around with Mr. Tattoo, I’ll be at my Uncle Dan’s house on 4th Street, if you want to talk. I’ll be there all week. I hope you do come to see me, baby. I’ve really missed you.”
He acknowledges Willow, then Craw, who remains silent, but provides him with the standard one-finger salute. When he retreats and walks to his party, I relax just the slightest bit in my seat. I touch my lips, feeling the swell of them, and I remember what I just did. I turn to Cruz.
“Oh, God, Cruz, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He runs his large hand over his face, scratching at his stubble. His eyes wander around the room, and every time he opens his mouth to speak, only sounds I’m not sure what they are, come out.
“I’ll fucking kill that mother fucker, so help me God. Har, are you ok?”
“I’m… I’m fine, Craw. Cruz?” He doesn’t look at me, and I think I may have just ruined our friendship. My hand finds his arm, and I grasp it.
“Cruz?” He finally looks at me, his eyes tense.
“An ex-boyfriend I presume?”
“Mother fucker is more like it,” Craw says as he pulls out a cigarette to light, but just holds it between his lips. I wait with bated breath for Cruz to say something, anything. Tell me to fuck off, whatever.
“You let him call you baby?” When he says it, it stuns me, and I can’t help to feel a pang in my heart when he does so.
With those words, he gets up out of his chair, throws a few dollars on the table and walks away.
So he met the one we do not speak of, and I wish he hadn’t. I had to kiss him. I had to show Chad he doesn’t have me. His powers are useless against me, and I can move on.
But in actuality, I didn’t. I just used Cruz as a decoy, a distraction from reality. The reality that I caused. I wanted to go talk to Chad, but I have to be strong, fight the forces of evil that invade me. I need to talk to Dr. Goldberg tonight. I need my therapeutic sessions with him on the phone, or even more so, my early morning therapeutic session on the dock with a cop.
But will he give me the therapy I deserve, or did I lose that too?
When I touch my lips, I try to hold back the ache that has surfaced. A familiar one. I never thought a k
iss could set me on fire, especially one that I initiated. My belly rolled. I lost all sense of reality, thinking and feeling things that I haven’t in a very long time. Not since last year. But how could that be? I grabbed him and brought his lips to mine just like that fateful night a year ago. It was that same feeling of excitement, adventure, raw sexual emotion, passion, lust, and any other words I can use to describe in a sexual nature. However, thinking of Cruz in that way has rendered me confused. I can’t stop touching my lips. They burn, the blood coursing through them, throbbing. I know what he tasted like, what he smelled like. What it was like to have his tongue duel against mine. Sharing a kiss like that so intimately, but yet surrounded by so many makes my pulse quicken. Again, I did something out of sorts for me. This is what this man does to me, he makes me do things beyond my control, and I have to be in control. I am reckless when I’m with him, I am not the girl who hid under her blankets for over a year. I am not the girl who uses big words to impress people or scare them off. I don’t need to be that way around Cruz. I can be me. Harlow Hannum.
My lips still ache and I wonder when the feeling will leave me, or would I want it to.
“Hi, Dr. Goldberg. I know it’s not one of our regularly scheduled sessions, and I know it’s late but I needed to speak to you.”
I had called Dr. Goldberg’s answering service, and they told me he would call me back. I know it’s well past midnight, but when you’re desperate, you’ll go to any length.
“It’s fine, Harlow. Really, it is. What can I do for you.”
I touch my lips again, feeling the strength of Cruz’s lips still on them, and every time I close my eyes, that moment plays again in my head like a movie. A good one with some sort of climatic moment and then thoughts of Chad pop in and the panic sets in. Immediately, I lose all forms of serenity. The way he made his way over to my table when I spotted him and those eyes. They know how to hypnotize me and reel me in like bait on a hook. I don’t want him because he never wanted me. I used to do whatever I could to please him, but no matter what, I’d always come up short.
“I was out tonight and I saw Chad.”
Dr. Goldberg sighs, not that he is annoyed, but in a way that says he wishes I didn’t.
“I see. Did you exchange words with him?”
“Yes, it was brief. Actually my brother said more to him than I did.”
Dr. Goldberg laughs. “Oh, my. Good old Craw. I like the boy. I like how he always has your back, Harlow. So then what?”
“Well, I think I handled it well. He asked me to come and see him, but I didn’t answer. I kept the conversation short.”
“Good, good. That’s exactly what I told you to do, knowing you are both from the same town and your fathers are friendly, you are bound to run into him.”
I know I have to tell him the reason why I handled it so well, and I’m still not sure it was the best approach seeing the way Cruz left. I think confused is a good word to describe it. I, myself, am bewildered by it all.
“I kind of did something else that I’m not sure was the best thing to do.”
I shut my eyes tight, feeling guilty for what I have done. I’m always feeling guilty for something. I wonder if that feeling will ever subside.
“And what was that, Harlow?”
“I kissed Cruz in front of Chad to… I don’t know, make him jealous? But I don’t think that’s it. I think maybe to distract myself from his presence? See, this is why I’m calling, Dr. Goldberg. I don’t know what made me do what I did.”
I sound whiny, like my sister Greta.
A moment goes by before he speaks again.
“Harlow, what transpired between you and Chad is something I feel you will never fully recover from. What went on will remain in your thoughts no matter what you do, no matter what you say. You told me before he has a powerful grip on you, always has, but I don’t think you did what you did to make him jealous. A distraction, quite possibly, but for some unknown rationalization I think from the things you tell me about your friend Cruz, you wanted to kiss him.”
Now I think Dr. Goldberg is the one who needs to be on crazy pills.
“Oh, no way! I didn’t mean for the kiss to end up like the way it did, and I didn’t set out for it to happen, either.”
Or did I? Was it premeditated?
Still feeling the after effects of the kiss, I question myself.
“Harlow, I’m not saying you set out to kiss him, but maybe in your subconscious mind it was… the logical thing to do. I hear you speak so highly of the man. Although I am a licensed doctor and therapist, I am also a man who has been happily married to the same woman for thirty five years, and I know how women think.”
Here’s Dr. Goldberg giving me his take on the female psyche. Typical male.
“I understand that, Dr. Goldberg, and Cruz is becoming a near and dear friend, and we have a past, but I’m not sure in the back of my mind I wanted it to happen.”
This time.
I hear him clear his throat.
“You once shared some sort of intimacy with the man and clearly you have not forgotten it. Can you open your mind to the fact that there may be more here between you both? Is it out of the realm of possibilities?”
It has to be, doesn’t it?
My lips still burn. Is that normal?
We are friends who were one-time lovers. A case of at the right place at the right time, I suppose. Besides, even entertaining the thought is out of the question, not even sure I would. No. No, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. We are developing a friendship, a mutual understanding that it is possible for a woman and a man who have slept together, but no longer have the desire to be with one another in that way again can, in fact be friends.
I’m too damaged anyway.
Nobody wants me.
“No, Dr. Goldberg, I like being on my own. I like the person I am becoming. I like myself again.”
I lie a little because I no longer can listen to his psychobabble.
It’s too hard to pretend to not care how damaged I actually am, but with Cruz, I forget that. Maybe he’s bringing me out of that way of thinking. I need to explain it all to him, and I know he will listen, but only when the time is right.
***
CHAPTER 8
All the worlds a stage, and I’m the best actor around.
Cruz~
No matter what my dick is doing right now, which is a lot, I still can’t get the image of what happened at the bar out of my head. It was like Harlow was a different person. She was like that person last year in the bathroom, taking charge, dominating the situation, stepping outside of that God damn shell of hers.
I never said I liked it, though.
My mind is still reeling from the time her eyes changed their shape, the color blue turning a bleak gray when she saw him walk through that door. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it. I’ve never seen eyes do what hers did. There was nothing there when she spotted him. They were lifeless, like when her focus was on him, he sucked the light out of them. It scared me and as fucked up as that sounds coming from me, it did.
And I don’t get scared.
I’ve got this girl, Leilani, who I met at the bar the other night, riding Morty so hard right now, I may need to soak him in a tub of ice tomorrow. For some strange reason, I can’t get Harlow’s kiss off my mind. The way she grabbed the back of my neck and forced her lips on mine, the sensation I felt going through my body just from that is enough for me not to give two shits that I have this animalistic, exotic looking piece of ass going bunking bronco on me.
And that scares me even more than the look in Harlow’s eyes.
I don’t get scared. I don’t feel things. I was born and raised on the streets by a crack-head. My father left when I was two. I never knew him. I only knew the Johns that walked in and out of my mother’s life. She used to make me call them uncle. Uncle, my ass. The final straw was when I was ten and one of them told me that my mother wouldn’t suck his dick, so I had to step into
her place. I threatened him with a butcher knife and hung his bag of crack over the toilet, threatening to flush it and slit his throat if he even tried to touch me. Never saw that fucker again.
My crack-head mother blamed me for ruining her life once he left, of course. All she ever cared about was the drugs. She didn’t love me or my brother. She didn’t show compassion or care about us. We were basically on our own. Bella’s, my sister in law’s, parents would make sure we were fed on holidays and would check on us frequently. They were our neighbors and looked out for us. I wish we could have lived with them. Not like we saw a lot of our mother. During the day, she slept off her high and at night, she was out selling herself or trying her damnedest to score.
We lived in filth, felt like filth, we were just that.
Filth.
Feelings weren’t expressed in my house. I feel what I want to feel, physically, not mentally. Like I can feel this girl’s pussy going up and down on my cock, and it feels good, don’t get me wrong, but that’s it. I don’t feel like kissing her, touching her skin, feeling her lips on me. I just want to get off and show her the door.
I don’t show emotions, but for some reason, I showed some tonight. It was a mixture of them. The look on her face, the way her body tensed, the way she looked at me, the way she… Kissed me. I wasn’t prepared for that.
I’m not prepared for anything that has to do with Harlow, but the one thing… the one fucking thing that still has me spinning is she let him call her baby, and she didn’t bat an eyelash when he did. There was no, ‘don’t call me baby’, she just let him say that word. The word she hates, no let me rephrase that… she fucking despises. I say it to her almost every day without even thinking first and every day she corrects me in her teacher voice, like scolding a child. Except with that douche bag, it was like it was just another word. When I say it, the woman shoots fire from her eyes. I mean it. It’s like the word is poison. I don’t get it. I don’t get her.