Losing Streak (The Lane)

by Kristine Wyllys

  She wanted to be saved. I knew better. I was always going to have to save myself.

  “Last chance,” Masochist announced, coming to a stop outside a door with as many locks on it as Mama’s. “Well, that’s not true. But it’d be nice if you left now if you were going to.”

  I studied him in the dim light, noting the way he looked as if he belonged here. If I was going to back out, this would be the moment. The moment when I looked into the abyss and saw my equal looking back.

  “Open the door,” I said, reaching around him to push it open and him inside. It had barely shut behind us before I was on him, attacking his mouth with mine, nearly sighing with relief when once again the white noise in my head dimmed and disappeared completely. He made a noise in the back of his throat and with it, something broke and we were yanking at clothes, shoving and pulling and coming back together before the reality could set in that we’d ever been apart. There in the tiny foyer that wasn’t a foyer at all, he grabbed me just underneath my ass, hands burning against my skin, and heaved me up against him. I didn’t want to waste any more time, didn’t want to drag it out any longer, and I reached between us to guide him into me.

  “Wait,” he gasped out, attempting to pull his lower half back. “Condom? Or, fuck. I don’t know. I don’t care.”

  “Birth control. I’m on birth control.”

  “Good.” Then he surged forward and I was clutching at his shoulders, my head falling back as a sound between a hiss and a wail escaped my lips.

  Nothing existed beyond this, beyond slick flesh and desperate grunts and the taut muscles underneath my hands. There were no worlds beyond his teeth that nipped and mine that returned it and the occasional “shit” that he muttered under his breath like a sinner’s prayer. And when he shifted one arm up to wrap around my waist and his other came up and gripped the back of my neck, his hips angled and I was soaring. It was like breaking, like splintering apart. Only this time I didn’t feel the cracks. I felt him. His skin pressed up against mine in a way that was almost crushing but didn’t come with that drowning sense of hopelessness I knew so well. It was shattering, but a controlled one. One where his body wrapped around mine and held the pieces together so they didn’t scatter. So maybe when I patched myself up later, the cracks wouldn’t be so noticeable. So jagged.

  I was finally coming down when he gave a final thrust and I clung to his sweaty neck, eyes squeezed shut. Then he let his legs buckle beneath him and buried his face in my throat that was struggling to suck in air as hard as he was.

  “Never done that one before,” he said in a ragged voice after a few moments, still gripping me against him.

  “What? Had sex?” I should have pulled away, eased back at least, but I made no moves.

  “No. I mean that position. Fucking wall was too far away.”

  I glanced over his shoulder at the maybe three feet between us and the closest wall and grinned at him. “Not entirely sure how I should take that.”

  “It’s a compliment. Felt too damn good to stumble in that direction.” He grinned back at me and damn it, I kissed him before I realized what I was doing.

  “Next time we’ll get over that way,” I promised.

  “Yeah?” It was loaded, that yeah. He was asking more than one question and I didn’t hesitate like I probably should have.

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  “His name is Brandon.”

  No matter how many times I said the words in my head, I couldn’t force them out of my mouth. Not to anyone. Especially not to Mama.

  I eased open her apartment door and peeked my head in, telling myself that this would be the time I said it. “His name is Brandon Williams and I’ve been seeing him for the past three weeks.” But when that relieved sigh escaped upon seeing her lying on the couch, I swallowed the words once again before they had the chance to escape.

  Oh, Mama.

  Every day it all seemed to get just a little bit worse until there was no relief at all for her. The word relief no longer existed for us. It was erased from our vocabularies completely.

  We’d been told, of course, when she’d first been diagnosed, that multiple myeloma was aggressive. Ruthless. That it was the ass-kicker of cancers and though it was incurable, it could still be treated. It wouldn’t save her life, but it’d extend it. But somehow hearing those things, knowing them, never prepared us for the decline. Because they didn’t warn us that we’d watch her waste away and it would be rapid. There would be no time to adjust or get used to what was happening. We’d know her and then we wouldn’t.

  We didn’t realize that there would only ever be bad days and worse ones. There would be days she never left the bed, when nothing I said or did could convince her to eat. Days when I’d have to drag her into doctor’s appointments and off to treatments and then physically prop her up while we were there.

  They never prepared us for the cold. She was always cold, always shivering, no matter how many blankets I piled on top of her. I even took over the set from my own bed, hoping the last of the stash would be enough. Of course it wasn’t. She lay beneath that soft mountain and shook so hard her teeth chattered and I was helpless to do anything more than watch, hands fluttering over her uselessly.

  They didn’t tell us she’d shrink.

  I didn’t even know that was possible, and yet it happened. She lost an inch here and an inch there off her height right before my eyes. What she didn’t lose, she hid, stooping like a woman twice her age, as though her body was drawing in on itself to escape the pain. As if it was so desperate to protect what little it had left that it was hiding it from the cancer’s grabby, ruthless hands.

  She was disappearing on me and it terrified me down to the depths I kept my beast caged in, and my beast didn’t react well to fear. Fear only made it angrier than it already was.

  So I couldn’t tell her about Brandon, about this dangerous, life-scarred boy I’d found myself sneaking off to see between work and her. I couldn’t tell her about the way he made me forget or how when I smiled with him that smile was almost genuine.

  I couldn’t tell her that I stopped breaking apart when I was alone because I found another way to when I was with him. And while it was still as violent and I still got lost in it, I no longer felt like I was wrecked and bleeding when it was over. Because with him I didn’t have to be anything. I was just Rosie. Not a big sister or a caretaker or the poor townie girl who served up drinks in a too-small shirt. And I didn’t even know who I was beyond those things, but with Brandon I felt like maybe I could finally figure it out and even if I couldn’t, it’d be okay. Because with him, I was finally something other than those roles.

  Mama wouldn’t be happy. She’d want to be happy. She’d probably even pretend to be, but it would kill her and she didn’t need anything to help with that. She certainly didn’t need it from me, the daughter she depended on to keep her alive. She had dreams for that daughter, ones that included better than she’d had, better than she could give her flesh and blood. She wanted more for me than just the love she’d known. She wanted the stability she hadn’t.

  So I kept quiet. And Brandon never questioned why I talked so much and so often about my people but never made any mention of him meeting them. Maybe he recognized a poor girl’s reluctance to bring home a poor boy.

  People who lived in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and people from the wrong side of the tracks shouldn’t date in their neighborhood. You were supposed to get out, escape this side of the tracks and make a life on the other side. You weren’t supposed to stay.

  It was easy, though, so easy, to forget that with him. What he lacked in a plan, he made up for in bed. Not my bed, though. Never in my bed. I didn’t want to risk bringing him around Jackson, who I couldn’t be sure wouldn’t say something in front of Mama. Not that I even had a bed anymore to bring Jackson h
ome to. I’d had to sell it to the guy who’d moved in to the apartment below mine. Twenty-five dollars didn’t buy a lot, but it paid part of a prescription.

  But it wasn’t just the sex with Brandon and the fact that he had a bed to sleep in when I didn’t. It was more than that. It was those quiet moments afterward, before I drifted off to sleep, when his rough fingers danced along the side of my neck and his breath was heavy in my ear and everything else faded away. I couldn’t hear his neighbors or feel the weight of tomorrow pressing down on me. The only thing that existed was that moment. There was only him and me, and the only weight I felt was his pressed against my back. And his weight never threatened to bury me.

  * * *

  Mama was sick again.

  She tried to hide it when she heard Jackson and me come in. Well, she tried to hide it from Jackson. But there was no mistaking the painful retching sounds we could hear through the thin walls seconds after she excused herself on shaky legs. At first, Jackson attempted to act as though he hadn’t noticed. But after the fourth or fifth time, even he had a hard time pretending. After the sixth go, he started to shift uncomfortably in his seat, as if he wanted to get up and flee.

  He wasn’t good with this, didn’t know how to handle a mama who huddled over a dingy toilet as she fought to keep down the little food she could mostly stomach. It was why I always came alone on the days when the one thing that was supposed to make her better raged war on her already frail body. Jackson couldn’t handle it and Mama didn’t want him to. Not her baby. Not the boy who looked so much like the daddy he’d never gotten a chance to know. Jackson had to be protected, whereas I couldn’t be. And that was all well and fine until Mama got sick unexpectedly and Jackson came over all jittery and disturbed.

  He leaned slightly in my direction and though bitterness coated the tender flesh along the inside of my cheeks, I took the hand that stretched out desperately toward me. I was rewarded with a slight squeeze to my fingers, the rough palm as familiar as my own. I’d felt each of those calluses develop over time, smooth baby skin that had gradually roughened over the years. Sometimes I felt guilty over them, as though they were my fault, as if I should have prevented them. Mostly I was envious that he only had them on his hands.

  “How long will she be like this?” he whispered, as though he was afraid to voice his discomfort with the situation too loudly.

  I wanted to snap at him, tell him that if he showed up when she got back from her appointments more often, he’d know. That just because Mama wanted him to do something didn’t mean he had to. I bit my scarred tongue instead. It wasn’t Jackson’s fault. He was, as always, just doing what he was told.

  “It varies. Sometimes a few hours. Sometimes a few days.”

  “I’ve never heard it. Is it always so...” He trailed off and I could feel his pleading eyes watching me, begging me to reassure him. He wanted me to finish his thought for him so that he wouldn’t have to. He wanted me to protect him from even giving his worries a voice, even if he didn’t know that was what he wanted.

  The beast in me thrashed and screamed, bloodied the cage I locked it in around Mama and Jackson.

  “Sometimes.” This is nothing, I didn’t add. Usually it’s worse. But you’re here and she’s protecting you, even now. Even in the state she’s in.

  “How do you do it?”

  That angry, wild part of me stilled at the sound of his anguish. Even it was protective of Jackson, despite its constant desire to lash out.

  I squeezed his fingers and shot him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. He returned it, hesitantly.

  “I just do,” I told him before turning back toward the wall we’d been staring at. He followed suit and together we sat, still clutching hands, the sound of Mama’s retching background noise. We were her “precious book-end babies” with matching hair and eyes. One dark and angry, the other light and whole.

  Chapter Five

  “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  I glanced over my shoulder and felt a grin tug at my lips. Brandon’s hair was a mess at the best of times, always too long to be considered stylish, too short to be intentional. After sex, it was nothing short of a disaster. And I liked it. I liked seeing those dark locks chaotic, knowing I was the one who caused it. That this was something I could screw up and that would be okay.

  “The usual.”

  “So, everything then?”

  “Basically.”

  He never pushed for more. Not like some would have. Sometimes that bothered me. Sometimes I wanted someone to acknowledge it all. I wanted someone to take my hand and tell me they saw the worlds I was juggling. I didn’t even want to hear that I was handling it all okay. That it was admirable and I was strong. That my patchwork scars didn’t take away from my pretty face. I just wanted someone to see all of it and if Brandon did, he never said so out loud.

  “What about you?”

  He wrapped one of my curls around his finger, watching closely as he pulled it free and the strand sprang back into place.

  “There’s a game tomorrow night. Probably going to Sharkie’s to catch it.”

  I rolled back onto my stomach and stretched, careful to not do so too hard lest I pulled his ill-fitting fitted sheet free, exposing the bare mattress underneath it.

  “Got a lot on it?”

  “Enough.”

  And I never pushed him for more. Never asked why he chose to make his money by betting on ball games and the odd fight instead of something more “respectful.” Never rode him for not having a plan that involved a retirement package. I never acknowledged his knack for picking the winning side. It was all just another reason to keep quiet about him to Mama, though.

  Speaking of Mama.

  “I can’t stay tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  I shivered as he brushed my hair away from the back of my neck and pressed a kiss there.

  “No. I have shit to do in the morning. Closer to my place than here.”

  “Okay.” His fingers trailed down my back, leaving a line of heat in their wake. Another shiver ran through me and I felt my nipples harden, pressing almost painfully against the mattress beneath me.

  “Brandon.”

  “Hmm?”

  His lips found the space behind my ear that never failed to make me hiss in pleasure, and one hand kneaded my ass cheek with slow, almost lazy movements. I struggled to remember what I’d been going to say.

  “Brandon,” I repeated, a little breathlessly. He nudged my legs apart further as he dragged his mouth across the side of my neck, stubble scraping against skin.

  “Yeah, babe?”

  And then one thick finger was inside me, expertly hooking to hit that spot so many others seemed to forget existed. My lower half arched up, closer to the source of my pleasure, and his responding chuckle vibrated against the shell of my ear.

  “What were you going to say?” He stroked against that spot slowly, dragging his finger across it in a maddeningly gentle motion.

  “Harder!” I gasped, pushing back against his hand.

  “No.” He dragged the word out as he started to pull his finger free and I made a sound of protest. He didn’t reply to it as he moved behind me, hands latching on to my hips and lifting them, bringing me up onto my hands and knees.

  I threw my head back and, seeing the invitation, he reached forward over me to wrap the locks around his fist. I hummed in approval.

  “What were you going to say, Rosie?” He positioned himself at my entrance, pushing in only enough for me to feel his presence but not enough to satisfy the empty feeling I suddenly ached around.

  “Fuck.”

  He slipped in a little farther, but only just.

  “That wasn’t it.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m saying now.” I tried to force myself onto him
but he used the hand gripping my hip to still me.

  “Come on, babe. Think. You’d been about to say something. What was it?”

  “If you don’t start moving, I will hurt you,” I snarled, only for it to turn into a shriek of pleasure when he slammed into me unexpectedly.

  “That’s my sadist girl.”

  And then he was off, pounding into me hard enough that my arms shook under the strain of holding myself up, the sounds of flesh striking flesh and his grunts the only noises we were capable of. Then he angled his hips just right, in that one certain way he seemed to know on instinct, and hit that spot again and I was soaring.

  The noises that fell from my lips were a mixture of cries and moans and pleads and prayers, and through the haze that clouded my head as he refused to let me come down, I could just make out the sound of his.

  When we collapsed into a sweaty heap sometime later, I’d completely forgot what I’d intended to say before. I forgot there had been a conversation to interrupt at all.

  * * *

  “What do you mean it was lost?”

  The lady sitting across the desk from me—Annemarie, her nameplate said—didn’t so much as blink at my tone, leading me to believe I wasn’t the first person to screech between those fuzzy gray cubicle walls. Instead, she offered me a tight-lipped, fuchsia-stained smile. I wanted to tell her how bad the color looked on her. Cakey too. As if she had applied it with a frosting knife.

  “I realize what an inconvenience this is—” she started before I cut her off.

  “No, you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t undermine it with a word like inconvenience.” I took a ragged breath in an attempt to quiet the blood pounding in my ears, and shoved the hair away from my face roughly. I hadn’t done anything to tame it, hadn’t had the time. For all my good intentions of going back home, I’d ended up staying at Brandon’s, oversleeping and almost missing this appointment altogether. I’d only just made it in time, fat load of good that it did me.

  Annemarie was watching me closely, a pathetic version of sympathy plastered on her face. I wondered if they’d taught her that in Caseworker School. Hopefully, if they had, they’d also told her it wouldn’t actually fool anyone. Only piss them off.