by Lindy Zart
When a whisper is between our lips, he murmurs, “Who am I about to kiss?”
“Opal,” I say on an exhale an instant before his mouth descends.
5
Blake
Who in their right mind kisses someone covered in mud? Me. But then, have I ever been in my right mind? Along with the lingering taste of cherry from the sucker she had way too much oral fun with—and tortured me in the process—on the way here, I taste dirt. It isn’t enough to dissuade me. Opal’s mouth perfectly fits to my lips, her fingers resting on either side of my jaw, her body flush with mine.
We are touching in all the right places, and she is barely clothed.
My heart is thundering, rampant and brutal. Her hair is thick and dirty, and nothing’s felt so good to the pads of my fingers. All of me is hard. And hungry. I’m trembling with it, maddened by lust. I want to devour her. Her mouth, her body, maybe even her soul. I could blacken her world and make her love it. It would be wrong. But then, isn’t everything about this? Doesn’t matter. This feels better than anything I’ve experienced in a while. A long time.
But Opal is hesitant, shy, holding back. Her lips follow mine, but she won’t fully open them. Like she wants to jump, but is scared there won’t be anything to jump for. I don’t want this kiss to be another disappointment for her. Through the fog inside my head, I tell myself to back off, to go slower. To teach instead of take. She’s leery of kissing, and I’m ruling her mouth. I tear my mouth away, instantly regretting it, and try to catch my breath.
When was the last time? I think. When was the last time I felt like this?
I remember, and pressure forms in my chest. It was years ago. A different life, a different me.
“Sorry,” I mutter, smoothing hair back from my forehead with a hand that shakes. My hands fist, wanting to reach for her again, and I force myself back a step, my jeans tight and uncomfortable against my erection.
Opal’s hands are still raised, her fingers curled, like she either wants to push me away or pull me back. Bemusement looks back at me from a dirty face with wide eyes. Her eyes drop, her throat moving up and down as she swallows. She blinks, and once more brings her gaze to me, looking shocked into muteness. Good or bad, I can’t tell.
“I, uh…” I rub at a patch of dirt on my chin. Where is a smartass comment? Where is my confidence, my mockery? Gone. Eradicated by the touch of her soft lips.
“More,” is all she whispers, and a shudder runs the length of my spine.
I want to. I want to give her more, give her every part of me I can. Knowing it will be lacking, knowing it won’t be enough. Knowing I can’t do that to her. Inhaling deeply, I shake my head, backtracking like my feet have the power to wipe away from existence the past few minutes. Still shaking my head, denying the kiss, denying her—most deplorably, denying myself—I spin around and storm for the house.
Who am I? Who is this man?
I feel like a bumbling fool around a woman I barely know.
The door slaps shut, and I force air in and out of my lungs, staring unseeingly at the inside of the house I inherited from my grandfather. I rub my face, and my palms come away brown. The squeak of the door tells me she’s behind me. I would have known even if she hadn’t made a sound.
“I’ll show you where the bathroom is. You can take the first shower,” I tell her in a voice I don’t recognize. It sounds rough and raw, like I smoked a hundred cigarettes in the span of a minute.
The hardwood floor, original from the time of the house’s construction in nineteen sixty-two, creaks as she shifts.
Without looking back to see if she’s following, I stride through the open entryway and into the living room. Beyond that is the main bathroom. I open the door and gesture to the room. “Everything you need is in here. You’ll smell like a guy, but it’s better than smelling like a swamp.”
Opal slides past me, closing the door before I have a chance to look at her. I stare at the white door, studying the places where the paint is chipping. I don’t generally think about things all that much. I am overthinking everything with Opal.
The sound of running water fills the quiet, and I move away from the door. A trail of mud and grass marks our passage through the room, and after removing my mud-logged boots and socks, I set about cleaning it up.
As I sweep, a voice from the past echoes through the room, loud and robust. It brings a partial smile to my face. Being in this house, where I stayed as much as I could as a kid, I feel my grandfather here, like he never left. I hear his laughter. I see his smile that crinkled up his blue eyes. I remember his corny jokes that made him laugh more than anyone else. My smile grows as I remember one in particular that he told every once in a while.
“What do you get when you mix a Pomeranian with a Shih Tzu?”
“A shitty palm!”
I shake my head as I picture him slapping his knee and chortling at his own joke. Tall and wide, my grandpa’s presence somehow managed to be larger than him. He stepped into a room and overtook it. John Renner always believed in me. He did too much for me. I wish I was someone he’d be proud of. I wish I could say I’ve done something to deserve the faith he had in me. Every day I miss him. He was my father more than my real one.
I put away the broom and dustpan in the closet in the kitchen. The windows need to be replaced, the draft stronger in here than the other rooms. There is a long list of things that need to be updated. And you want to leave it all to fall to disrepair, a voice reproaches. It sounds uncannily like John Renner’s.
I warm up canned soup on the gas stove, Opal stepping into the kitchen not long after I turn on the burner, her hair wet and stringy around her tan face. I turn from the stove to fully face her. A pair of faded jeans caresses her legs and an emerald green T-shirt hugs her upper portion. She has curves that never end, and my mouth goes dry. Other parts of me react as well. Unsurprisingly, that damn pink backpack is in her arms.
Her eyes slide to mine, hold my gaze long enough to quicken my breathing, and move on. “I can watch the food, if you want to shower.”
The remembered feel of her body, her lips, has my heart pounding in my eardrums. I need to kiss her again. Not want—need. I am alive with her, like I was sleeping for the last how many years, and her entrance into my life awakened me.
“I don’t know, I kind of like the mud. It makes for a great facemask.” My hair is rigid and posed upright. I feel like a porcupine.
“Worried about fine lines and wrinkles?” Opal moves to the rickety square table near a row of windows that show the backyard and unending scenery presently cloaked in black.
“You can never start too young.” When she looks up, I nod toward the counter where bread, cheese slices, and a stick of softened butter are set out. “I was about to make grilled cheese sandwiches.”
“You go shower. I can handle a few grilled cheese sandwiches.” Her smile is crooked, her eyes hungry as she stares at the food. I’m jealous of the way she’s looking at it.
“Help yourself to whatever you need.” The floor is cold beneath my bare feet as I walk toward the doorway.
“Blake.”
I pause on the opposite side of the room, looking over my shoulder.
“This is your house, isn’t it?” Opal takes a wooden spoon from a crock of cooking utensils and stirs the soup, her back to me.
“I saw a picture of you, and who I’m assuming is your family, in the living room,” she explains at my silence.
“It’s my grandfather’s,” I answer shortly. “I just occasionally live here.”
She glances at me, a single upraised eyebrow her only reaction.
In the living room, I study the framed photograph Opal mentioned. It rests above the faded green couch, taking up more space on the white wall than it should, a monstrosity of disillusionment and lies. The only truth in it is my grandfather, standing between me
and my father, as he so often did—figuratively, literally. Dark-haired and bright-eyed, he is grinning broadly in the picture, his arm around my bony eight-year-old shoulder. My eyes burn as I take in his image.
It’s the four of us—me, my dad, my mom, and my mom’s dad. Grace Renner, my grandma, died when my mom was in her teens, and both of my dad’s parents passed when I was a baby. If they were the reason my father is the way he is, I’m glad I don’t remember them. In the picture, we’re standing in front of this house my grandfather built for his wife. My dad isn’t smiling. No shocker there. My mom looks unfocused. Even then she was taking pills to ease her troubled mind, to not see her immediate world.
Vivian Malone has a long list of mental instabilities, and I inherited a few of my own. I used to wonder why some days I felt like everything was wrong, when in reality, everything was the same as it had been the day before. But depression is like that—there isn’t a reason to feel bad. I just do. Those who don’t have it can’t understand it. It’s an ever-present darkness that hovers, and with the slightest provocation, it can attack. Debilitate. Destroy. It’s always there, in the background. That voice of doubt that tells me to give up, asks me why I bother trying.
I turn from the picture and stalk to the bathroom.
Steam lingers from Opal’s shower, turning the air humid and thick. It looks like she tried to hand-wash her clothes; the brown-streaked garments are hanging off the side of the tub and dripping discolored water onto the floor. The washer and dryer located in the cement basement are ancient, but they have to be able to do a better job than her hands. I grab the clothes and, trying not to focus too directly on her undergarments, toss them in the laundry basket.
I strip, tossing my clothes in the laundry basket, and step into the narrow shower stall across the room from the door. I try not to think about Opal’s naked body having recently been standing exactly where I am, soaping herself up. Eyes closed, a look of bliss on her face. I can see it clearly, gritting my teeth against the need that pulses through my body. I tighten my hands into fists to keep them off my own body. I take shallow breaths, forcing them to even out. I lower my head under the water and brace my hands to the wall, fighting an attraction I don’t entirely understand. I mean, yeah, she’s got a great body, and her face doesn’t hurt, but lots of women have the same. And she’s outrageous more times than sensible.
Maybe that’s what it is—her inability to get too serious, to let herself be bothered by life. Then again, if all I did was tell lies, maybe I’d be able to not take things too seriously myself. The water abruptly turns freezing, and I hasten to finish up washing. By the time I step out and wrap a towel around my waist, I have myself convinced that I don’t really find her all that attractive.
I step out of the bathroom and sniff. It smells faintly of something burning. Hand clamped around the two corners of the towel to keep them in place, I quickly shuffle for the kitchen as the smoke alarm begins its shrill song. Opal stands in the middle of the room with her back to me, waving her open backpack at the ceiling directly beneath the smoke detector, cursing with each wave of her arms.
My eyes shift to the smoking burner and I sprint for it, turning it off and flinging the pan of blackened bread and cheese in the sink before flipping on the cold water. A searing sound pairs with the piercing alarm, and smoke billows up from the sink. I hear a gasp as I shut off the water, and something falls to the floor.
Spinning around, I take in Opal’s gaping mouth and the direction of her eyes, the backpack lying on the floor with its miscellaneous contents spewed over the hardwood floor. The alarm shuts off, the quiet as brutal as the previous aggravating noise. Her face is red, which is saying something with her golden-toned skin. It isn’t until I open my mouth to ask what she’s gawking at that I feel cold air on my lower extremities, and become aware of my nakedness. Keeping the towel on my body wasn’t really a priority as I lunged for the burning food.
“Oh, my God,” she whispers without looking up.
Now I know how women feel when guys notice their breasts and nothing else. I feel…objectified. It doesn’t bother me, and clearly my manhood likes it, but she is really looking at it.
“You’re making him feel self-conscious,” I say wryly.
Her eyes jerk to mine; her body goes completely still.
“Him?” Opal chokes.
“Bernard.” My eyebrows furrow at the spontaneous name. Bernard was the best I could come up with? “What, you don’t name your girls?”
“Girls?”
I casually lean down to retrieve the towel and loosely lock it around my hips. Crossing my arms and leaning against the counter ledge, I level my gaze on a flustered Opal. “What happened?”
“I saw Bernard.” Opal blinks her eyes, looking to my towel and away.
Laughter is pulled from me, abrupt and rough. I lift an eyebrow. “I meant in here, with the food.”
Looking faint, she gestures to the stove. “I don’t know,” she manages after a time. Opal lifts a trembling hand to her brow, and drops it before it touches her skin. “I just…I went to look at something in my bag, and I must have gotten distracted, and then, smoke, and noise, and you, naked. It’s all jumbled up in my head, and it is so hot in here.”
I walk around, opening a few windows to air the smoke from the room. I am aware of Opal’s eyes on me the whole time.
“How soon until we head to Bismarck?” She sounds nervous. Anxious.
As if to mock her, rain pummels the roof and siding.
“Once the storm passes,” I tell her, studying the valley miles away as it briefly lights up like it’s daytime. “I imagine you want your clothes cleaned first?”
I glance at Opal when she doesn’t answer.
She starts, as if only now becoming aware that I spoke. “Um…yes. That would be awesome. And…can you put on clothes?”
I frown.
“I just saw you naked,” Opal says in a faint voice.
“Yes. You did,” I confirm, glancing at the papers and clothes littering the floor. “The towel seems kind of pointless now, doesn’t it?”
Her shallowly indrawn breath is the only reply she gives.
I move for the drawings, taking one and perusing it as I kneel down. The floor is hard and cool against my knees. “Who are these people?” I murmur, looking up.
“Hey. Those are personal,” Opal states, scrambling to pick up the drawings before I can reach them.
From what I’ve seen, Opal likes to draw faces. What’s interesting about her work is how she captures the essence of the person. This picture is of an older lady with short hair, wrinkles, and a wide smile. There is toughness in her eyes, like she doesn’t take crap from anyone, and I’m in awe that Opal can catch that with a pencil. The bottom of the page reads a single name: Rachel. Looking at this drawing, I can tell that this woman laughed a lot, probably even at herself. I reach for another one. Emily. She is younger, with long, straight hair and heart-shaped lips. She looks shy, but there is a hint of mischief in her smile.
Each time I take a drawing in hand, Opal quickly removes it from my grasp. There are dozens of them, faces upon faces, all named. I note a Jackie as well. She’s middle-aged, with wide cheekbones and a full face, her eyes dancing with happiness and kindness. I blink at the image of a dog named Jane. I guess her drawings aren’t designated to only humans.
“Blake, I mean it, these are not for your eyes.”
“Why?” I ask. We’re inches away from one another, on our knees on the floor. I stare into her expressive eyes, seeing her discomfort, her anxiety, and I want to know why it’s there. These drawings matter to her. They aren’t just something she’s good at—they have meaning. This is Opal without shields in place.
“Because they’re not yours!” she snaps, gathering them all into her arms as if to protect them from my eyes. She’s crumpling some of them, but seems more w
orried about them being seen than ruined.
“Who are they?”
“People,” Opal mumbles, her eyes down, her arms clutching the pictures to her chest. “Just people—and a couple animals.”
“Opal,” I say softly, the tone of my voice asking her to open up to me. Gently demanding it. I have no right to her thoughts, and still, I want to know them.
She pushes the papers behind her before going for more. She won’t look at me, her bottom lip held captive by her upper teeth. “I don’t have a mom or a dad, all right? I don’t know them; I’ve never met them. I don’t know if they’re alive or dead. I just know I don’t have them.
“And no one ever adopted me. I spent my childhood in foster care,” Opal whispers, a crack clear in her voice, in her heart. “These are the people I grew up around, being shuffled from home to home; these are the people who became my temporary families.”
A minor puzzle piece locks into place. She spent her childhood being continually uprooted. Getting comfortable in one home and being moved to another. She must have felt like no one really wanted her. The lies make sense now, but what about the rest of it? The different names, the running?
And she is running.
“You use their names as yours,” I realize.
She looks at me, her eyes large and fractured. “I like to pretend I’m someone who meant something to me as a kid. Someone I know is good, someone I cared about, and who cared about me. They didn’t have to. They didn’t have to be nice to me, but most of them were. I don’t use last names; it doesn’t hurt anyone. And it keeps my name unknown when I want it to be. I don’t have pictures of my foster families, but I have my drawings.”
The room falls quiet. I now understand the attachment to the bag, and it puts a funny feeling in my chest. Like an ache. That pink backpack holds all her most precious items. One drawing rests between us, and I slowly pull it my way. Opal doesn’t protest, her hands motionless on her knees. It is of a long-haired dog with a narrow snout and large eyes. A name is written at the bottom of the paper. Piper.