by Emily Bishop
Olivia,
You’re right. I am angry, in a sense. Angry that I’m not sure how to handle both the death of my father and the news that I have a son. All this time, I’ve been angry at my father—and so conscious of how I’m handling Maggie, so that I don’t turn into old Isaac.
But fuck, Olivia. With me gone, I feel like your dad, old Anthony, has become an Isaac to Max. Telling him he shouldn’t take up space. That he doesn’t belong, only because of his relation to me. It fills me with rage, dammit. And I won’t let that happen to my son.
I will see you tonight. Montgomery’s Steakhouse. Eight p.m. I’ll have a babysitter all set for Maggie. And we can hash out what to do.
I’m hungry for it. For knowing what comes next.
Eric
I crumpled the letter up in my palm, staring down at Max as he swung back and forth, his feet lolling. “I think I’m going to be going out tonight,” I said. “You keen for pizza with Amanda?”
Max’s eyes flickered toward me. He’d spent much of the morning quiet, his mind assuredly an echo chamber of questions about his father. We’d spoken last night over dinner, but I’d insisted that most of the details about Eric would have to be experienced in person.
They had to bond.
Max was nervous. So was I.
“You’re going to see him. Aren’t you?” Max asked.
“Yeah. I want to make sure everything goes smoothly between you guys. Make sure everyone’s on the same page. You’ll see him as soon as he and I have gotten, you know, all the adulty stuff out of the way.” I smiled.
“Ma, you have to be careful. About Grandpa,” Max said, his eyes darkening. He was too wise for a kid his age. Had to be the reading. “Otherwise he said he’ll run him out of town or he’ll—”
“Don’t worry about your grandpa, all right? You leave him to me.” The strength of my words bolstered Max-o. He sat up and nodded, running a finger down the page of his book.
“Ma, what if he comes by tonight while you’re gone?”
I gritted my teeth at the thought. “He knows not to do that.”
“Yeah, but Grandpa’s always been…”
“I know, honey. If he turns up, lock the doors and just don’t answer him. You’re a kid, and you shouldn’t have to deal with any of this stuff. All right?”
“Sure. Okay,” Max said.
“I’ll be right back, hon, I gotta make a call.”
Max returned to his book, smiling a little. He had the best smile. Reminded me so much of Eric—wide and totally uninhibited.
I hurried upstairs and sat down on the edge of my bed then dialed Rachel’s number.
Rachel was my best friend—we’d met just after I got pregnant, and we became thick as thieves. Pregnant at the same time, we bonded by bemoaning the fact that maternity clothing in Randall was about as fashionable as a potato sack on a scarecrow.
Rachel wanted out of Randall as much as I did. But, like me, she didn’t have the means just yet. She was in the middle of a messy divorce and had Raffi—her eleven-year-old—to look after.
“Honey bunny,” Rachel sighed into the phone. I felt the weight of her divorce in every syllable. “I ain’t heard from you in days. Did he call?”
“He did,” I said. “And he’s here.”
“Well, I thought so. I saw this hunk of a man walking down the road just this morning with a little blonde girl beside him. She was light as a cloud, skipping along. That guy, Olivia! I can’t believe you banged him in high school.”
“Ha. And there’s even more to the story now.”
“Wait. Don’t tell me you’ve already—”
“One thing led to another,” I said. “Total mistake, and I definitely can’t let it happen again.” No matter how difficult that would be—Eric was my Kryptonite. “My dad turned up and stopped the crazy, though. Then, of course, introduced some damn crazy of his own.” I filled her in on what had happened, and Mayor Thames’s “threat.”
“That bastard,” Rachel spat. “Thinks about no one but himself, dammit. You stuck around for Max. You gave Max the best life you could. And he still looks at Max like a second-class citizen.”
“Makes my blood boil.”
“You should leave with Eric,” Rachel said, delivering words that were totally implausible. “Start over someplace else. I don’t reckon this town would ever take him back. Not after that godforsaken carnival fire that no one can stop raving about. You would have thought he was the reason London burned.”
I brought my finger along my scar and stared out the window toward Max. Max continued to rock back and forth in that porch swing, head craned toward his book.
“I don’t even know if Eric wants that,” I said. “Right now, it’s about Max and that’s all it has to be. I don’t want to make it into something it’s not.”
“Did you not just tell me he penetrated you minutes after meeting you?” Rachel’s tone bubbled with mirth. “I mean, hello! Do you hear yourself?”
“Penetrated!” I laughed. “Did you have to put it like that? It was… like I said, a mistake. It was just all the tension from the letters and—”
“Right, the super platonic friendship letters.”
“Rach!”
“Don’t bury your head in the sand because you want to punish yourself for old mistakes.”
Ouch, that was a little close to home. “I’m not burying my head in the sand, just focusing on what’s important. Max. Making sure Eric and my father don’t go head-to-head in some kind of Spaghetti Western show down.”
Rachel laughed. “Oh god, I’d pay to see that. Your dad would melt like a pat of butter on a hot griddle. He is greasy.”
“But that’s not what’s right for Max.”
“All right, I hear you. I just feel like… look, girl, life is messy. That’s the up and down of it. You can try to clean it up and make it all simple and ordered, but it never works out that way. Messy can be good, too. Maybe you and Eric need to get a little messy. Stop protecting the hearts you’ve already given to each other and just… go for it. Go with him.”
“I don’t even know how serious he is about Max yet. It’s one thing to say he wants to be a part of his life, it’s another to actually be there. This isn’t easy.” I clenched my fist around the phone. “But I’m going to go see him tonight. Figure it out. It’s all so complicated. I mean, he’s handling the death of his dad, too.”
“You got this, baby doll.”
A bit before seven-thirty, I slipped into a black dress and eased fake pearl earrings over my lobes. Amanda had already arrived to babysit, and she watched in the hallway. Her words echoed out. “Why are you still so hot and my mom isn’t?”
Perhaps this was meant as a compliment. I glanced toward her, shifting my weight to my other hip. “Amanda?”
“You’re going out with that handsome guy who tried to destroy the town. Aren’t you?” she asked me. “You’re going to see him and probably sleep with him. Aren’t you?”
“Amanda!” I cried, bringing my hand across my neck. “Don’t speak like that. I trust you with Max, and I can’t have you talking like that under this roof.”
Amanda bowed her head. “Sorry, Miss T. I just—sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
After kissing Max on the forehead and leaving him beneath a light blanket, stretched out on the couch, I drove the twenty-five minutes out to Montgomery’s, my arms shivering. The energy within me was taut, so similar to those days when I’d snuck out with Eric: knowing only that, if my father found out, Eric would be ruined. And I? I’d never be allowed out of the house again.
Which was ridiculous, now. We were grown. And I wouldn’t be held prisoner by fear of my father.
I arrived to the steakhouse early. The waitress led me to the back corner, where I sat at the edge of the seat cushion, whipping my napkin over my lap twice, then a third time. Around me, middle-aged country couples slid knives and forks through their steaks or poured butter atop their mashed potat
oes. Someone several seats away from me guffawed so loudly it echoed through the barn-like room, humming in my ears.
Eric walked through the door wearing an expensive-looking grey suit.
How’s about take my breath away. Darn.
He strutted toward me, his eyes focused entirely upon mine. He was a thick, dominant man, with rounded shoulder muscles, such a contrast to the light and angry quickness of his youthful form. He hadn’t shaved since I’d seen him, and his face was growing thick with black hair.
I lost my breath. Throbbed for him. Throbbed, good god, relax!
I stood as he approached, and his gaze curved over my breasts. My nipples pricked at the dark fabric of my dress, and my legs shifted against one another.
You’re not here for this. Relax!
But I couldn’t. I was already wet for him. Ridiculous.
He strode across the restaurant, and people in the room recognized him. One man leaned toward his wife, gossiped behind a hand.
Eric was nearly upon me, now. He stood a foot away, towering. I inhaled the scent of his cologne, and yeah, that didn’t help the pattering nerves in my belly.
“You look beautiful,” Eric finally said, his voice low.
Unsure of what to say, the energy between us tightening, I dropped to the chair and brought my eyes to the menu. My shoulders shifted back, cracking slightly. Eric watched me, eyes bright with curiosity at my anxious movements. Why was it that I could tell him so many things over letter, yet now, with him before me, I was mute?
He sat down across from me, cleared his throat.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. I wasn’t sure what I was referring to: Max? Isaac’s death? Maggie?
Eric slid open his menu, his eyes still holding mine. My heart thumped in my ears.
“I want to know him,” he said. “I want to know everything about him. I missed it. And I didn’t have to miss it. I would have risen up for it.”
I parted my lips, then closed them, cheeks red hot.
In the silence that fell between us, the muttering man—the gossip monger—in the corner jumped from his seat and strode toward us. His face was smooth with arrogance. His blond hair was sparse like that of every sour middle-aged man in North Carolina.
Eric noted him instantly. He narrowed his eyes, and the man slowed a little. He halted two feet from the table and smirked, with the confidence of someone who knew he couldn’t be touched in public, no matter his crime.
“Well. If it isn’t Eric Holzman,” he said. “Couldn’t have imagined seeing you here. Not after you tried to tear this town to the ground. Or should I say burn?”
The man’s face stirred a memory. Blinking, I placed him as the tinier best friend of the football quarterback. Freddy, the quarterback, had been my initial date for the carnival dance, before I’d abandoned him for Eric mid-way through the night. And this… This was…
“Hank Obershawl,” he said, smacking his palm atop the table. He leered at me. “Olivia, honey, you’re holding up pretty well, I’d say. Freddy said he saw you when that bastard of yours was three or four. Said you’d gotten pretty fat. Ha. I guess I’ll tell him you lost it all. You know, he owns that big house on the top of Wally Street? Has that wife, old friend of yours, wasn’t she? Cynthia? Anyway, she got fake tits, out to here, but she’s still hot as fuck.”
Eric rose and closed in on Hank. His fists drew forward, nearly half the size of Hank’s small head.
Hank stepped back, waved his hands from side to side, muttering. “No, no. We’re just catching up, man! It’s been so long, you don’t remember how we do things around here.”
“You need to get the hell away from our table,” Eric said, his voice gritty.
“Come on, man,” Hank sighed. “I don’t this this is necessary.”
“It’s not. Which is why you’re going to return to your wife and get back to your meal,” Eric growled. “Immediately.”
Hank spun back toward his table, his fingers flickering against his pockets. My heart fluttered in my ears. Eric rejoined me, his cheeks red with anger.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I shouldn’t fucking be in this town,” Eric replied, dragging his fingers across his cheeks. “I shouldn’t be fucking anywhere around here. I knew when I left that it was all wrong. But then… you called me here. And the old man—he was a monster. I don’t care that he died. Jesus.” His voice rose.
With it, my own anger bubbled up. I pointed at him. “We were doing just fine before you sent me that goddamn letter!” It wasn’t the truth. That first letter had opened me up again. Every day, I’d ached for his words. He lived in a world I could only imagine from the descriptions in his letters.
“Yeah? You think my kid, Max, was doing all right without me?” Eric asked. “Because he sure as hell didn’t look all right to me yesterday, when your dad was making a mockery out of him.”
“I have never let him make a mockery of my son,” I said, evenly. This had been a bad idea. It was too public and way too much pressure. “Dude, you can’t come here and judge me because your life was shitty. I get that, but we have to look at what we have to deal with now.” I paused and took in his glowering expression. “This is—it’s not the right time. It’s just not. We’re in public and people we know, we knew are here. We should’ve done this somewhere else.” I rose from my seat.
“Olivia, wait,” he said, but the anger hadn’t left him.
I didn’t give him an answer, simply walked out, the heat of stares from every corner burning into my back.
I hurried out into the night and walked toward the field near the restaurant, my thoughts circling around each other. I halted and folded my arms across my chest.
This was what it’d come to. I’d told him, like I’d planned, and he’d come. He was real again, here, so fucking distracting in all his appeal, and I had to figure out a way to make this easy.
We both have to figure out a way.
Footsteps crunched up behind me. Eric moved into view in front of me so that his nose was so close to mine. His gaze swallowed me whole.
“I’m sorry I said that in there,” he whispered.
“I’m a good mother. I’ve done my best for Max. That’s what this is about,” I replied.
How the fuck were we going to get through this?
“I know.” He reached for me, and I brought my chin against the hard muscle of his chest. His hands pressed on my cheeks, and his lips came to mine: hungry, warm. A tongue snaked from between his lips, parting mine and tasting me, taking me. My body turned to jelly. As I wrapped my arms around his neck, he lifted me into him, carrying me toward his car. My moans grew louder. He dropped his hands to my ass, gripping it.
He pressed me against the car, then brought his face back, studying me. His lips glistened from our kiss.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” he asked, echoing my thoughts, before diving back into me once more.
As we drove out toward the forest, his large hand rushed over my thigh, his fingers tweaking toward my pussy. I spread my legs out wide, forcing my black dress up toward my hips, my underwear across the floor of his car. He ran his fingers along the softness between my legs, and I tensed, gasped.
Deep in the woods, he parked his car to the side of the small road that strung toward the mountains, then turned toward me, hungry.
“I know we have a million things to talk about,” he said. “But right now I want to fuck you, as hard as I can, as fast as I can. Until we both forget. At least, for a little while.”
I’m in trouble. Rachel’s encouragement circulated somewhere above all of this.
The love letters. The build-up. This was what I’d fantasized about for the longest time.
I unhooked his belt. Made the decision.
Our bodies fell into a fast rhythm, and I brought out the length of his cock into the moonlight. It strained in my hand, so thick and firm. He gave himself over to feeling, yanked my dress up, and my tits bounced softly, two large orbs with pe
rky nipples in the center.
There were so many things to say. So much frustration.
But he pressed me into the backseat of the car, ripping his shirt over his shoulders. The smell of our bodies stirred through the air. I arched my back, cat-like, and brought my legs to either side of the car.
He entered me up to the hilt, filling me with his girth, and groaned, tossed his head. “Fuck, baby.”
He knocked my head against the backseat as he drew a hand over my neck. He wanted to control me, to ensure that my every movement, my every moan was orchestrated only by him.
He smoothed his hand down my chest, cupped one of my breasts and pinched the nipple. “You’re still mine, Olivia. And I’m going to make you come so hard you’ll never forget it.”
“Please,” I said, arms and legs shaking. I drew a line across his shoulder with my tongue, tasting his salt, his sweat.
“You want it. You’ve been hiding from everything you’ve wanted, all these years, and now I’m finally giving it to you. It’s going to fucking destroy you, maybe, but I can sense it. You want it in every cell of your body. Olivia. Olivia…”
His voice was harsh in my ear, growing louder.
Our rhythm grew more insistent, the car rocking back and forth. Through the window at the back of the car, the specks of stars were clear above. This moment deserved the silence of a giant sky.
He ripped up from me, the thick muscles of his chest gleaming with sweat. Mid-thrust, he paused, staring down at my frame. His fingers swiped across my stomach, pausing at the belly button, before gliding up around and around the nipples. I moaned, low, closing my eyes.
God, I wanted to rush far from Randall, to build a world from him that was all cock and pussy and sweat and thrusting and wide-open legs and then exhausting sleeping in one another’s arms. The physicality that meant so much more.
“You’re so much more beautiful than you think you are,” he whispered to me, before bringing his massive cock out from between my legs. Moving down me, he brought his tongue from between his teeth. It flickered with wet. He dotted the tongue against the top of my cunt, working it along the edge. I dropped my head back, crying out and gripping my nipples.