“That’s not what you said when you tried to get me to fool around with you at Gaby’s party!” I retorted, which I really, really should have kept to myself.
“What?” Gunnar asked, staring at me.
“What?” the wife asked Carey, who shrugged.
“She’s a liar,” he announced. “She’s trying to make herself look good, just like in high school, telling everyone that we were together back then.”
“I didn’t tell anyone!” I said, aghast. “I was so ashamed! And you were such a jerk, and you still are!”
“I’ve had enough,” Gunnar spat out, and this time he lifted Carey totally off the ground, but his two friends from the offensive line were suddenly nudging me out of the way.
“What’s going on here?” Darius asked, just as Jory said, “Come on, man, you’re the sane one. Let him go.”
Gunnar took a breath and I didn’t think he would let go, but then he slowly released Carey again just as the wife muttered that she couldn’t wait to move to Detroit, where there might be a few women her husband hadn’t been with. She stormed away and grabbed their sons’ hands out of the bread bowl of dip and left the lounge, not even looking back at Carey.
And just as she did, Marley said, “I knew you looked like an asshole. This one’s for Hallie,” and she kneed Carey in the balls.
“Marley!” I gasped.
“He had that coming,” Gunnar told me.
Carey went down on his knees, gasping, and we left very quickly, Gunnar’s arm over my shoulders and holding me to his side, and me clutching Marley’s hand, dragging her along with us as she laughed her head off.
“Lyle will take care of the guy with the nuts problem,” Jory said casually as we rushed through the crowd of fans waiting outside the stadium. “He’s the security guard. I gave him a car last year, and we’re friends.”
I shook my head, slightly stunned. “Marley! You can’t go around assaulting people. That goes for both of you!” I told her and Gunnar sternly. “But thank you, anyway. He did have it coming.” Carey on the ground, his face red and his eyes bulging… “This was much better than me going after him with the loppers and I appreciate it, a lot. But never again! You can’t attack random people just because I have issues with them.”
“We will, if you need us to,” she told me. “You know why.” I looked at her in question but she just rolled her eyes, and then we all split off to rapidly leave the premises. When we were alone in the Bronco, Marley first tried to get at the details of what had happened between me and Carey Winslow, and when I wouldn’t tell her anything more, she said that I was annoying and turned to texting with her mom.
“She’s kind of lonely without me on a holiday,” she explained. “Before, when things were ok, we used to have turkey sandwiches together on this day. And cupcakes.”
“Do you want to see her?” There were rules about it, but I could help figure them out.
Marley looked out of the window for a while. “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. She’s telling me all about her boyfriend being there with her. I don’t want to be around him.”
“No, I don’t want you around him,” I immediately concurred.
“Would you knee him in the balls for me?”
“If I saw him, and knowing that he hurt you…yes. Yes, I would definitely knee him in the testicles.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Yeah, because, like, that’s what you do.”
“No, you don’t,” I said just as quickly. “I shouldn’t have said that, because you can’t go around kneeing—”
“No, I don’t mean you go after all the crotches in the world,” Marley told me. “I mean, you want to protect people. You know, if you love them.”
Oh, no. It was really hard to drive through tears. “Exactly,” I said, and my voice was pretty hoarse. “You definitely want to protect the people you love.” I glanced over, and she was smiling as she looked out the window.
“I got him really hard,” she noted.
Good.
For some reason, everyone except for Gunnar’s parents was out in the driveway, standing in the cold, when we drove up to the farmhouse. Marley and I got out of the car and joined them.
“The dogs ate the turkey,” Darius told us glumly.
“What?”
“I’ve been on the phone with the emergency vet, and she said to give them bread in case they ingested bones!” Meredith announced, and looked desperately at the three giant dogs lolling happily in the snow and frozen mud. “They ate seven loaves and they seem fine now. What do you think?” she asked Jory, and he took her hands and kissed her.
“They’ll be fine,” he said with assurance, and she seemed to accept it. They looked more than fine to me, stuffed with bread and our Thanksgiving turkey, those horrible monsters.
“Maybe I’ll give them something else, just in case. Come on, boys!” she called, and rushed into the house. “Surfie! Come!” The last hell hound galloped after her.
“Seriously, the fucking dogs ate the turkey?” I heard Marley mutter, and Gunnar sighed.
“Jory, your dogs suck,” he announced. He looped his arm over my shoulders and gave me a kiss on the head. Right in front of all his friends.
“Yeah,” Jory agreed, and motioned to all of us to come in and out of the cold. “They’re beaches,” he mentioned to me.
“What?” I asked. “I thought they were brothers. Boy dogs.”
“No, I mean they’re named after beaches in Los Angeles, places Meredith used to go when she lived there. Surfrider, El Matador, and Venice. She misses the warm weather.”
“Oh. Well, that’s interesting.” And I had no idea why he was sharing this. “Did they actually eat the whole turkey, or is there some left for us?”
“She wasn’t really expecting three dogs when I brought them home,” he continued. “So I didn’t argue about the names. I usually argue with people, but it’s like beating down a guy in the stadium family lounge. You act weird around the woman you—”
Gunnar pegged him in the arm and Jory laughed. “I’ll figure out the turkey,” he told us, and Gunnar laughed too. I smiled, not really getting the joke but part of it now, and very happy to be cuddled into Gunnar’s side.
It was a delicious dinner, minus the turkey, and in addition to the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that Jory made and passed around the table. I liked Gunnar’s friends, I liked his parents, and I liked watching Marley having fun, too, talking without cursing to the other guests. She even laughed at some of the stories that Darius told about the things that Jory had done before he settled down. I liked being here with everyone, after all the of years of just me and my dad. But despite the fun, he was on my mind, a lot.
“You ok?” Gunnar asked me quietly, as Darius tried to get Marley to sample the mincemeat pie.
“Yes,” I assured him. “I’m remembering other Thanksgivings. Things have changed a lot in my life in the past year.” He took my hand and held it under the table. I saw his eyes on his own dad.
“Yeah.” His chest heaved in and out with a sigh. “Change sucks.”
“Some of it really does. But not always,” I told him, and he smiled a little. Then he kissed my knuckles and rested our linked hands on the tablecloth.
Later that night, he kissed my knuckles again as we sat on his couch. “I remember this little fist coming for my eye,” he remarked, looking at it appraisingly. “Not on purpose,” we said together.
Gunnar kept studying my hand. “I’m sorry about today. I saw that guy, that Carey, and I had to do something. I’m not sorry if I scared him, but I didn’t mean to incite Marley to violence.”
“Oh, she enjoyed it,” I assured him.
“Do you feel better about him now?”
“I think I started to feel better after I talked to you about it. I was so angry, carrying that around for so long. It was better to tell you, and then it was also better to see him sweating and moaning on the ground today.”
“She made him cry,�
� Gunnar noted, and sounded satisfied.
She sure had. “I’m trying not to be angry in general,” I said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad and I realized that I’ve been angry with him, too. Every time I nailed something and hit my thumb or something else fell off the cottage and landed on my head, I’ve been mad at him. Especially because the house has to be standing, for Marley. When I came home because he was so sick and I found his life in such disarray, I pushed all the anger down. I couldn’t deal with it and also be so sad, but it’s been bubbling back up, and I’m dealing with it now.”
“He made mistakes, but he didn’t mean for you to have to fix them,” Gunnar said, and I agreed.
“I guess it’s also the stages of losing someone, to be so sad and then get angry.”
He took one of my curls and wrapped it around his finger, then let it spring free. “I’m in the first stage, then.” He leaned forward and kissed me. Then he rested his cheek against my head and sighed. He sprung another curl.
“Are you ok?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I was glad to see my parents, but it made it…”
“Real,” I supplied.
“My dad wants to talk to me tomorrow about arrangements. He’s planning his death.” Gunnar’s body jerked a little as he said the words.
“He talked to me about it briefly at the game. He’s trying to make it easier for you.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I can let him go, Hallie. I can’t…”
“I know,” I said, and felt him shudder. “Gunnar?” I sat up to look at his face, and then I climbed into his lap. “It’s so hard and I’m so sorry,” I told him, and let him rest on my shoulder. I rubbed his broad back like my dad used to do for me when I had cried that things just weren’t fair.
They weren’t, my dad had told me, but we were also lucky to have friendship, and we were lucky to have love. We were lucky to have each other. So I held Gunnar tightly as he cried.
Chapter 15
Oh. I moaned a little, because that felt lovely. This was the type of dream I really, really enjoyed.
“Hallie.”
Mmm. Gunnar was in this dream, and we were together in his bed, on the odd-feeling mattress that he used to help his back. And he was kissing my neck, a spot behind my ear that I had never noticed before, but that now was infinitely significant in my life. His lips on it made me move my hips and press back against him, to rub myself there. I felt him against me, hard and ready—
I opened one eye. “Wait a minute. Is this real?”
“Good morning,” Gunnar told me. His mouth slid to the curve of my neck into my shoulder and he bit me gently, making me gasp. “You got very tired last night when we were on the couch. You told me that it was time for bed, because I needed sleep to have my best day in the morning.”
My dad had said that to me all the time. “I did? And you carried me? Gunnar…”
His hand was on my breast.
“With your injury, carrying me around isn’t a good idea,” I breathlessly informed him. “But what you’re doing right now, I totally agree with.”
“You definitely like it when I touch you here,” he agreed. He drew his thumb back and forth across my nipple. “I love your breasts, too.”
“You do seem very interested in them. And, for example, if you wanted to put your mouth on them, I would like it a lot.”
“Great, let’s try that,” he said, and flipped me onto my back to remove the nice Thanksgiving shirt I had worn yesterday, that Marley had picked out for me when we’d gone shopping together.
“My bra is gone?” I picked up my head to look at my bare chest. “I’m sure I was wearing one before.”
“You were. I helped you get it off last night. We went through the sleeve, because I thought you’d be more comfortable knowing that I wasn’t stripping you when you were asleep. My sister Marit used to take hers off like that whenever she came home and then she shot it across the room. She hated bras.”
“I think I’m going to like your sisters.”
“You will,” he said. “I used Marit’s technique because I didn’t think I should see your breasts unless I was invited to. Like now.” He lowered his head and suckled gently.
“I’m issuing a permanent invitation…Gunnar!” He had used his teeth. “Oh, you know, this would be better if both of us were totally naked.”
“Done,” he told me, and in about a second, we were. “God, Hallie. You’re an appetizing mouthful.” He showed me some parts of my body that could go into his mouth, like my ear lobe, my elbow, my finger, and then, my clitoris. He licked me there, twirled his tongue, did things that made me shake and my vision blur, even worse than because I didn’t have my glasses on.
I shook so hard that his special mattress rocked on the frame. “We should do this. Right now!” I told him. I picked up my head, panting, and watched him grab a condom. “Is that going to fit you?” I asked. “Am I?”
“We’re going to be great. We’re going to be perfect,” he answered. He watched me intently, with total concentration on his face, as he started to enter me. “Yes?”
“Oh, darn. Yes, yes, yes!”
“God, that’s good. Hallie…”
“Yes!” I yelled. “Yes, Gunnar, yes!” Pleasure gushed through my body whenever he moved his hips.
“I know that…we didn’t start out…perfectly…” he panted as he pumped. “But now…the thing is…Jory…”
“What?” I gasped. “Harder, harder, please! Jory?”
“What he said…about me…how I acted…in the lounge…”
“Can you tell me later? Gunnar, I’m going to come. Oh, oh, oh, I—”
“I love you.”
“That’s good. That’s really good!” I drew in a huge breath, arching my back as I started to orgasm, and then I let it out in scream of absolute bliss. Gunnar shouted as he ground his hips into mine and I felt him pulse deep, deep inside me. He kept moving a little, murmuring my name and kissing me, and I shook all over again.
We lay, entwined and satiated, our breathing and heartbeats harmonizing. We just had sex, I realized, and it was amazing. I felt the smile on my face and I ran my hand through Gunnar’s blonde hair as he rested his head on the pillow next to mine. Then my mind caught up with what he had just said.
“Uh, Gunnar?”
He lifted onto his elbows and smiled down at me, and I put my hands on his cheeks. “Hi there, munch.”
“What you just told me—wait, what was that noise?” Both of us turned to look at the open bedroom door. “I heard something,” I said. “I think I heard the front door open!”
“Gunnar? Honey? Are you all right?” a voice called.
His head swiveled to look down at me and his blue eyes got big. “That’s my mother!”
“Gunnar, we heard screaming. Are you all right?” she asked again, closer now. “Gunnar?
“Mom, no, don’t come in here!” he called back, and then there was a horrified, “Oh!”
Because she had walked right into the bedroom to join us.
∞
“I’ll never be able to face them again,” I told Gaby. “I made myself go out and say goodbye before they drove away, but I wanted the moat in the yard to open up and take me down into the ground. And she’ll tell her daughters, I’m sure, because that’s where they’re driving today, to visit everyone else, and don’t moms and daughters tell each other everything?” I paused. “Hello?”
A muffled snort came over the line.
“Stop that right now!” I ordered.
“He was still inside you…hold on.” The phone clattered down and I could hear whoops of laughter. A moment later, Gaby came back on. “I’m very sorry,” she told me earnestly. “I shouldn’t have reacted that way. It was a hard day yesterday and I think I’m just emotional and it’s coming out strangely. But I’m so happy that you called, and I’m so happy that guys did it and it was good!”
“It was spectacular,”
I corrected. “That was why I screamed so loudly that they thought someone was being murdered.”
“Hold on one more time.”
I waited in my rotting kitchen, tapping my foot impatiently while she relapsed into hysteria. “Ok, ok, I’m sorry,” she said when she came back. “No, I don’t think that his mom will tell his sisters. Not all moms and daughters talk like that.” She sounded wistful. “She was probably really embarrassed, too.”
“She was, but then she reacted just about the way you are right now. I saw her leaning against the side of the RV because she was laughing too hard to stand up.”
“Hold on one more time.”
“Gaby!”
“Ok, ok, sorry!” She pulled herself together. “Any details you want to share?”
I told her a few, and I told her about the game, and I told her about Carey Winslow. That led to me explaining why Gunnar had reacted that way, and why I had a problem with Carey in the first place.
“Hallie Holliday! Why didn’t you tell me that before?” she asked, shocked. “That big, fat…jerk! I’ll never speak to him again,” she assured me, and that was about as mean as she could get. “But I heard that he’s moving downstate, anyway. Which is good, except he won’t notice that I’m not speaking to him.”
“I don’t want to waste any more time on Carey,” I announced. “How was your Thanksgiving?”
Gaby was quiet. “It was fine.”
“No, you said before that it was emotional. What happened?”
“I don’t really want to discuss it,” she answered quietly. “Holidays are hard, right? We miss people.”
I thought she meant that rancid, repulsive boyfriend of hers. “I’m here if you want to talk about it,” I said, and she said that she knew and maybe we would talk later when she came by the bookshop. She also invited me to go out on Saturday, and since Gunnar had convinced me to wear my glasses, I accepted. Bars and their murkiness and all those trays with drinks would be less of an issue if I could see better.
The Last Whistle Page 25