by Naomi Niles
“You’re fifty-three, just behind George Strait,” I replied.
Allie balked. “I’m not even ahead of George Strait? Is your dog on that list? You know what, don’t even tell me. I don’t think I want to know.”
“You would be crushed.” By now we had come to the edge of the garden, where the cucumbers and tomatoes and onions grew. The hogs hadn’t come around here in a few days, and as I motioned to the ground at our feet, it became clear why. The perimeter of the garden was girdled with half a dozen large, rusty red iron traps.
“See these?” I said proudly. “I went out and bought ‘em after our fight. Now you don’t have to worry about me killing the hogs. They’re smart creatures, and once they saw these, they knew better than to come around this part of the yard anymore.”
Allie beamed up at me, her eyes glowing with pride. Quietly, we made our way down the driveway and back to my house.
“Okay, so,” she said once we were inside. “I know we agreed that you were going to cook for me, but after I made those pancakes this morning, I’m feeling pretty reckless.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, grinning. “How reckless?”
Allie shrugged and smiled. “Reckless enough to maybe make dinner?”
“Is the dinner pancakes?”
She slugged me playfully in the arm, and the argument might have gone on if we hadn’t been startled just then by a knock on the door. “Who could that be at this hour?” asked Allie, looking at me in alarm.
“Couldn’t be Mama,” I said as I strode to the door. “She always texts before she comes over, and she never comes over this late.”
But when I peered through the peephole, it wasn’t Mama. It was Elizabeth Davies.
“It’s her!” I whispered, backing away from the door as if it was on fire and looking helplessly around. “I don’t know what she wants. I didn’t invite her over!”
I was at a loss what to do. Allie, however, looked enraged. She stared at the door as if trying to burn it down with her eyes, her jaw clenched. “Let me talk to her,” she said through gritted teeth.
Before I could talk her out of it, she had marched to the door and flung it open. I stared horror-struck as she and Lizzie confronted each other for the first time. Allie gave her a withering stare, and Lizzie stared back, cool and unperturbed.
“Let me talk to Curtis,” she said. “I know he’s in there. I can see him.”
“Curtis doesn’t want to talk to you,” said Allie.
“Maybe let him be the judge of that?” said Lizzie, pointing into the house. I was standing behind a potted plant watching the dispute with a mortified look on my face.
“No, you listen to me,” said Allie, getting between us and shoving a finger in Lizzie’s face. Lizzie stepped backward, startled, looking scared and indignant. “You’re going to turn around and walk right back up that driveway. And you’re not gonna come around here no more, because he doesn’t want to see you, he doesn’t want to speak to you, he doesn’t want to look at you. Is that understood?”
Lizzie began walking backward toward her car, never taking her eyes off of Allie. “Yeah, okay, got it,” she said, adding in a low tone, “Bitch.”
Allie waited until she had climbed into her truck, then shut the door. Now that Lizzie was gone, she looked pale and shaky, but she blushed with pride as I came toward her.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked. “Did I cross a line?”
I shook my head. “That,” I said, “was just about the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You mean no one’s ever stood up for you like that?”
I ran my lips along the side of her neck. “Not like that,” I said quietly. “There any way I can thank you?”
Allie grinned slyly. “I can think of one way.”
Taking me by the hand, she began running up the stairs, two at a time. I followed behind, flushed with hunger and excitement.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Allie
I had felt the hunger burning in both of us that night as we sat at the kitchen table. It was plain from the look on his face that he wanted to do terrible things to me, but had to refrain for the sake of decency. But now that we were alone in his own house, there was nothing stopping us.
But I don’t think even I had realized how much I wanted him until that woman showed up at the door. There’s something about seeing your man desired by other women that makes him irresistibly sexy. I think we both took a perverse pleasure in knowing that she was missing out, that she had had her chance with him and lost. I had won.
“Is it weird that I’ve never wanted you more than I do right now?” asked Curtis as I struggled to unbutton my blouse with shaky fingers. Beneath, I was wearing a white silk bra with lace trimming.
“I’ve been wanting you all day,” I said as I watched him take off his boots and kick them across the floor. “I swear, the more time we spend together, the harder it is to go more than a couple of hours without you. I sit at the front desk at work bored out of my mind, thinking about how I’m gonna come home and lie next to you.”
“Sometimes it’s all I can think about it,” said Curtis. “I want to be filled up with you, to feel you on my bare thighs and the touch of my bones on yours.”
I shivered. “God, if my boss only knew what we were doing right now, he would be so jealous.”
Curtis came and put his arms around my bare torso, tugging at the belt of my blue jeans. “Is he still messing with you?” he asked softly.
“Well, no, but—” I blushed furiously as I realized I still hadn’t told him about our date. “I do have a confession to make. The other week when I thought we weren’t going to be seeing each other anymore, I sort of asked him to dinner.”
Curtis pulled back, looking rather frightening. “You what?”
“Nothing came of it,” I said quickly. “I ended up leaving after about ten minutes. The funny thing is, being there with him just made me realize how much I missed you. Every second we spent together, you looked more and more appealing.”
Curtis gave a low grunt of pleasure and brushed his lips against my neck. I reached for his face and pulled him back, looking him deep in the eyes. “Is that okay?” I asked. “You’re not mad?”
Given that we were both standing together in a state of undress, I don’t think anything I said could have upset him at that moment. “You know you didn’t have to tell me,” he said. “I’d never have known.”
“I know, but I want to be completely honest with you. This, what we have, it’s more than just being naked. There’s a transparency between us that’s bracing and a little scary.”
Curtis smiled. “I don’t think I fully know what you mean, but I do love it when you talk smart to me like that.”
I grinned and pulled his face closer so that our foreheads were touching. “Do you like it when I use big words? Because I know a lot of them.”
“Mmm, I’d love to hear them,” said Curtis, and he knelt so that his lips brushed against my belly button. He then kissed my stomach, lovingly and repeatedly, as he tugged at my belt and unzipped my jeans.
“Sometimes I forget how small you are,” he said. “The littlest woman with the tiniest legs.”
“Is that a problem?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, it’s perfect. Any less of you and there wouldn’t be enough to make a full person. I think sometimes the clothes you wear make you look bulkier than you actually are. Then when you step out of them, I’m always surprised because you’re so petite. You’re tiny, tiny, tiny.”
By now, he had gotten my pants off of me and was running his fingers along the edge of my white cotton underwear. I knelt and wrapped my legs around him, stroking the top and sides of his head. “Well,” I said, “hopefully a tiny person can still satisfy you.”
“I don’t think I’d be satisfied with anyone else,” said Curtis. There was a half-crazed look in his eyes that said he would go mad if he didn’t pin me to the bed at that moment. “How are you so perfe
ct?”
“Dunno,” I replied. “I guess you just got lucky.”
“Guess so.” He lowered me to the ground, and I could feel his insatiable longing getting ready to expend itself as our limbs became entangled together. That was the weird thing about sex, that it happened like this, two bodies angling for the right positions, my hair in his face, his breath mingling with mine, an ungainly lumpen mass of smells and juices and rumbling bellies and body odors. No other activity was quite as gross as this; no other could lift me to the heights of ecstasy.
Curtis was groaning with longing now, his face bent over mine, red and sweaty. He had reached that state where he was so horny, he hardly seemed to be aware of what he was saying. “You know what I’m gonna do with you?” he mumbled in his low, throaty voice. “I’m gonna make you the happiest girl on earth.”
“Mmm, please,” I whispered back.
“You deserve at least that much.” It was like he was talking in his sleep, the way he spouted forth this revelatory stream-of-consciousness. I listened with interest, wondering what he would say next. “Never met anyone like you,” he growled. “So generous, so giving, so kind, so—so perfect.”
When it was all over, when he had wasted himself inside of me and, succumbing to drowsiness, lay down on the bed and wrapped his arms around me—only then was I able to admit to myself the thought that I had been avoiding for most of the day. Curtis was becoming more to me than just a warm body on the bed next to me. More than a boyfriend, even. As much as it would have horrified a slightly younger version of me, I was delighted to realize that for the first time in my life, I was in love.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Curtis
I awoke the next morning in a patch of gray light. Allie lay beside me, and for a moment, I panicked, wondering if we had gotten drunk the night before and how we had ended up here. But then I remembered the fight with Lizzie and the glow in my heart as I watched Allie defend me.
There’d been a couple of times since we’d begun dating when she had gotten dangerously close to conquering my heart. Last night, she had really done it. Now I was irrevocably and completely hers.
After I had put on my shirt, I lay there for a few minutes watching her breath gently rise and fall. I felt a pride and delight in lying next to her that I hadn’t felt before. Even though it was mostly unspoken, there was a sense now that we belonged to each other. For better or worse.
“You wanna know something interesting?” I asked Allie when she woke up.
“Always,” said Allie groggily, running her hand across my shoulders.
“For a long time after Christine’s death,” I said, “I couldn’t feel much of anything. I was neither dead nor alive, and it was like all the color had been sucked out of the world. I got hooked on booze and screens to the point where I couldn’t even feel my own heartbeat. You changed that.”
“Did I?” asked Allie, sounding amused but pleased. “In what way?”
“By putting me in situations where I had to feel things. There’ve been a lot of long, lonely nights since I met you, wondering if we’d ever be together. Those nights after our fight were some of the worst since her death. But there’s been a lot of joy, too, joy I didn’t think I’d ever have again. The other night when I thought we were breaking up, I remember sitting on my couch crying, and at the same time feeling weirdly happy because I hadn’t cried like this since just after she died. If that was the only thing you did for me, it would have been enough.”
Allie smiled and pulled me back down onto the bed, a flicker of pride in her eyes. “Well,” she said, “hopefully it won’t be the only good I do. I still think we have a long way to go together.”
“I suspect we do,” I said quietly, and we kissed.
Allie pulled herself away and rose reluctantly from the bed. “Anyway,” she said in an irritated tone, “the boss texted me last night and wanted me to come in early, so I can’t stick around very long, otherwise we could stay in bed all day. But if you need something to get you through the work week, Lindsay and I are planning on going dancing on Friday night.”
“How is Lindsay?” I asked with a note of concern in my voice.
“Not good since Zach left. She’s taken to locking herself up in her house and not really wanting to go anywhere. She blames herself for getting so attached to him, knowing he would be leaving. That’s why I wanted to take her out on Friday night. I thought it might be good for her.”
“Zach’s a great guy,” I said sadly. “I know me and my whole family was rooting for them to get together. It’s just hard when you live halfway across the world from each other.”
“Yeah, I guess we were lucky in that sense,” said Allie, coming over and resting her hands on either side of my neck. “Out here, I couldn’t get away from you even if I wanted to.”
***
After spending the night with Allie, I wasn’t looking forward to leaving home and going on the trail ride that morning. And I was even less happy about it when I found out Darren would be joining us.
“Your brother’s gonna be coming with us this week,” Dad said as we loaded up the horses in the stable. “It’s about the only way I can think of to keep him out of trouble. When he’s left on his own, he goes hanging around the paint and body shop, and he’s already gotten the wind knocked out of him twice. I don’t want to get a phone call from the police telling me Darren’s been killed.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Mom and Dad had been deferential to Darren for way too long. “Dad,” I said angrily, “we’re not responsible for him. He’s a grown-ass man, not some kid that we’re babysitting.”
“I realize that,” Dad said wearily, rubbing the back of his neck. “Believe me. But I don’t have much choice.”
Dad took Bessie and led her out of the stable. Not more than a minute later, Darren came walking in. He stood in the doorway framed in morning sunlight, his shadow filling the stable. “You got somethin’ you want to say?” he asked.
I shook my head, ignoring the hot anger bubbling up inside me. “Nothing I haven’t already said.”
“K, ‘cause it sure sounds like you’re upset. Dad told me you wasn’t happy about me wanting to come along.”
I swore under my breath. There was an unspoken rule in our family against telling Dad anything you didn’t want the rest of the family to know. “Yeah, alright,” I said. “I’ll tell you straight-up: I don’t know if this is the best thing for you. Do you have the slightest experience horseback riding?”
“A little bit,” said Darren. He seemed unusually proud of the fact. “I took lessons one summer when I was in high school, out at the Shadow Creek summer camp.”
I climbed up onto the saddle of my mare. From this vantage, he didn’t seem so tall and threatening. “Alright, fine,” I said shortly. “But when you go falling off and break your neck, don’t come crawlin’ over here blaming me.”
So what did Darren do not more than ten minutes into the ride? He tripped over a log about the size of my arm and went flying off the horse.
Dad and I stopped and turned our horses around immediately. “Darren?” I asked, a shrill note of panic in my voice. My hands and face were sweaty, but not from heat.
It was the strangest thing. I thought I had been so mad at him until the moment that happened. I had half-hoped he might fall off because it would teach him a lesson and we probably wouldn’t have to put up with him for the rest of the week.
But when he actually fell, all I could think about was what had happened to Christine, and the fact that if he died now, our very last conversation would have been an argument in which I told him off.
Remorse ate away at my insides as I rode over to the spot where he lay prostrate. He turned his sweaty face up to me, gritting his teeth. It was obvious he didn’t want me to know the amount of pain he was in.
“You alright?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m alright,” he said slowly. “Nothin’ feels broken, anyway. Just do me a favor a
nd throw me one of them watered bottles.”
It was a measure of how worried I was that I didn’t even think to make fun of him for calling them “watered bottles.”
As I was helping him to his feet, he leaned over and said low in my ear, “And Curtis, one more thing.”
“What’s up?”
“Don’t you ever, ever say I told you so.”
Then, to my amazement, he climbed back onto his horse, and we continued on our way as if nothing had happened.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Allie
When Curtis came over to my house that night, he told me about the close call with Darren. Given that he had never particularly cared for Darren, Curtis seemed unusually shaken up about it.
“The whole time he was down there, I kept thinking about how she had died,” he told me as we sat together on the sofa in the tiny house. “Praying to God, ‘Please don’t let another person I love die like this.’”
“It makes sense that you would be worried,” I said reassuringly, running my fingers along his back. “I think if I had seen a loved one die like that, I would be afraid to go near a horse for the rest of my life. It takes a lot of courage for you to get up and go to work every morning.”
Curtis shook his head sadly. “Not courage,” he said. “Just knowing that I have to. Every time I go out there, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, ‘This could be the day I die.’ It could happen in a moment, just like it did with her.”
I took his face in my hands and kissed him on the top of his bald head. “You’re not going to die,” I said. “You’re a much better rider than Darren is.”
“So was Christine,” said Curtis quietly. “She was one of the finest riders I knew. When there’s an accident, it don’t matter how good you are. Take all the precautions you want; you can still be dead within seconds.”
He clung to me with a new urgency, as if afraid he would lose me if he let go for even a second. “Sometimes I don’t know what to make of this world, Allie,” he said with a distant look. “There’s a lot of just plain cruelty and ignorance and anger, and it makes me wonder why we’re here, and why God made so many people, and why we’re all so rotten. And we’re only here for a day, it seems like, and then we’re shuffled off into the ground forever, and we stay there until who knows when? The rest of eternity, maybe. The only thing I really know for sure about this world is that I love you, and I think you love me.”