Everything I Left Unsaid

by M. O'Keefe

It took a while, a few minutes anyway, and I thought at one point I might just give up or ask him what was wrong with me, but then I slipped my fingers down to directly touch my clitoris and everything changed. All of it.

  Bold, I squeezed it between my fingers and there was an explosion behind my clit, behind my eyes. In my head. Every muscle along my back spasmed and jerked and I had to pull my fingers away because it hurt again, but I kept grinding myself against the mattress and the explosion went on and on.

  Until it faded away, leaving me sweating and panting and utterly changed.

  I lifted my head from where I’d buried it and looked around for the phone, which I’d knocked from the pillow to the edge of the mattress.

  Now what? I thought, trying to catch my breath. I had no idea how long that took. What he might have heard.

  A hot wave of mortification practically lifted my skin right off my body. I was light-headed with shock at what I’d done. At how far that had gone.

  Despite wanting it, despite manufacturing the moment, despite actually doing it—the reality was too much. Like my body had traveled far too fast for the rest of me and now I was yanking it ruthlessly back.

  Without checking to hear if he was there, without saying thank you. Without any of that.

  Cowardly, ashamed and buzzing, I hung up.

  And I quickly turned off the power and threw the phone in the drawer.

  This was dangerous on every level. That man—Dylan—undoubtedly knew where I was. He could find me. He could find me.

  God, I couldn’t think of that an hour ago?

  Quickly, I flew off the bed and went to check the locks on my door. And then made sure the windows were closed. So that not even fresh air could find me. I turned off all the lights, pulled the blinds until the moonlight was filtered and dim.

  Mom caught me when I was ten, rubbing myself on the edge of a chair. She took me right to church. Every day after chores. I didn’t go to school for the week. I prayed for forgiveness in the church, in my pastor’s office. Under my mom’s careful eye and the pastor’s terrifying sermons about hell, I prayed those feelings right out.

  In a cerebral way I understood that I didn’t deserve that. But I had a set of mixed-up scales in my head that told me over and over again that what I deserved was what I got. This awful belief was reinforced every day with Hoyt. Every moment.

  And I couldn’t shake it. In my lowest moments, when everything was stripped away, that was all I had left.

  I got what I deserved.

  No, I thought.

  I am better than this, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut. I’d run so I wouldn’t feel this way.

  But somehow I couldn’t quite stop it.

  The shame was old and familiar.

  And unstoppable.

  A tide that rolled and rolled and rolled, over me.

  DYLAN

  Dylan was a rich, distrustful son of a bitch. So rich he owned the mountain where he lived and worked. So distrustful his employees—just to get to work—had to pass through an iron gate.

  Clients were dealt with by Blake, who did all the face-to-face stuff. Dylan handled steel and engine schematics. The garage employees.

  All of which meant it had been a very long time since Dylan had been surprised.

  And tonight he had no fucking idea which surprised him more.

  That Layla had called him for phone sex.

  That she’d just gone from never having touched herself to having what sounded like a pillow-biting orgasm.

  Or that she’d hung up on him.

  Despite the raging hard-on nearly boring a hole in the zipper of his jeans, he tipped his head back against his chair and laughed.

  What the hell just happened?

  Part of him was suspicious, as he’d been taught to be, over and over again by hard experience. No one was that innocent, and that eager at the same goddamn time.

  But somehow he knew, down in his gut, that this wasn’t an act with her. Or a game. And she was undoubtedly sitting out there embarrassed by what they’d done. Maybe punishing herself.

  The thought just brought him to his knees.

  Because what he heard in her voice told him everything he needed to know about her. That she was scared, but she was trying; in order to get what she wanted she was pushing past her own bullshit fears and being brave. In her voice, he could hear every dark and forbidden thing she craved. And he wanted to give it to her. Everything she wanted and the things she didn’t know to want, yet.

  How far would she go?

  She wanted dark? He had all the dark. All of it. And he’d show her every midnight corner of it.

  The shiny surface of the phone in his hand reflected his face, macabre and twisted, back at him.

  He wanted to call her. Well, that was bullshit. What he really wanted was to drive down off his mountain and find her in that shitty trailer park and get a front-row seat for what he’d just heard. He wanted to see her in action.

  But that would never happen.

  She’d take one look at him and this would be over. She’d run for safety.

  There were rules, after all. And those rules were there for a reason. When he broke them, people got hurt.

  Someone pounded on his office door.

  Tonight, he and his team were working out in the warehouse on the engine build and he was sitting in the smaller office attached to it. It was a windowless box, dark and closed, the way he liked it. The only light was the lamp next to his computer. No one would dream of coming in here without knocking.

  He’d been short-tempered and impossible and basically every single kind of a dick he could be. But he paid his guys a small fortune to offset his strangeness, and the glory helped too. His gearheads loved the glory.

  “What?” Dylan yelled and Blake opened the door. He and Blake had been together since the beginning. The good years before the fire. The better years since. Blake rarely came to the garage anymore; that was Dylan’s kingdom and Blake didn’t like to get his manicured hands dirty, but today had been that kind of day.

  “We heard you laughing,” Blake said. He’d traded in his suit for a red tee shirt with a black smiling skull on it and 989 Engines beneath it. Their company logo. “Thought the world might be ending.”

  “Hilarious,” he said. “How’s it going in there?”

  “We got the planetary gearbox working.”

  “How’s it look?”

  Blake’s bottle green eyes lit up. “We will be gods and people will bow before us.”

  “Well, that is the plan. Be there in a second,” he said.

  “I wanted to thank you for giving my brother a chance. Mom appreciated it.”

  “I’m sorry I fired him without talking to you first.”

  “The garage is your world. You did what you had to do.”

  Blake was a good guy, one of the best. And his mom was Margaret and both of them deserved better than that shit-bag Phil. But whatever; if everyone got what they deserved, Dylan would be dead a few times over.

  “How did he leave?”

  “Like a dick, spewed some hate at me and Mom before he finally got in his car.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Back to whatever rock he lives under, I guess. It’s not like he keeps us up-to-date on his address changes.”

  “I don’t know why the hell you bothered.”

  “Some of us can’t just leave our family behind, man.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s too bad for you.”

  “Mom wanted one last try,” Blake said, making it clear he wouldn’t have done it on his own. Blake had inherited his father’s darker skin, green eyes, and business brain. He got Margaret’s blond hair but none of her soft heart. “And it’s done now. For good. Come check out the gear set,” Blake said and without another word he left, closing the door behind him.

  Dylan remained in his chair, staring first at the door and then at his phone. Without thinking about the consequences, because after all, he was a god, Dyla
n grabbed his phone and sent Layla a text message.

  Call me.

  She might be embarrassed. But she was innocent, and she had no idea how fucking compelling, how addictive, what they’d just shared could be.

  Dylan was a patient man and it might take her a while, but she would learn.

  And she would call back.

  ANNIE

  A few days later, I walked the field for the last time before mowing. The tall grass touched my legs just under my shorts and my thighs were wet with dew. It rolled down into my socks. I pushed and shoved the big boulders into the brush along the edges, shoving a long stick in the ground next to the ones that were too big to move so I didn’t accidentally hit them when I mowed.

  I worked until my body hurt and my muscles were twitching. My hands, despite the gloves, were raw.

  I worked until what happened with Dylan on the phone seemed to be something I’d read. Maybe in that dirty book. But not something that happened to me.

  Stuff like that didn’t happen to Annie McKay.

  Walking back to the trailer after locking up, I saw Ben in his garden, taking bricks out of a wheelbarrow and struggling under the weight.

  “Here, let me help you,” I said, rushing to his side. I didn’t even think about what Dylan had said. His dire warnings about this old man’s danger. Frankly, I just didn’t believe him.

  “I got it,” he breathed, clearly straining.

  “Stubborn man,” I muttered and ignored him. I grabbed a bunch of bricks, setting them down beside his pile. I got another load before he could straighten his back.

  “I’m not helpless.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t need to treat me like I am.”

  “I’m not. I’m just helping you.”

  He grunted, which made me smile.

  “You don’t got enough work?”

  “What else am I going to do?” I asked, taking out the last of the bricks.

  He sighed. “I hear alcoholism is time consuming.”

  I was worn down and thin with all my worries and that joke just made me howl.

  “It’s not that funny,” he said with a smile, watching me sideways.

  “I know,” I said, wiping my eyes.

  He started clearing the bricks off the cement pad that I’d placed my stacks on. “Thanks for the pasta sauce,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “It was better once I put some of my oregano in it.”

  I sobered again, shackled by the reminder of my own gutlessness. Can’t ask for what I want. Can’t enjoy what I’ve got. Can’t even touch my body without being pulled apart by all the shit I’m trying to leave behind.

  That night…after the thing with Dylan, I’d taken Fifty Shades of Grey and thrown it in the drawer with the gun and the phone and shut it. I’d been enjoying that book, was excited to read the rest of it, but I denied myself that because I’m a gutless dummy.

  Because in the end, I get what I deserve.

  I started an Agatha Christie novel. Because who doesn’t love Agatha Christie? But the whole time I wanted to be reading the book in my bedside table.

  “I’m sure it was,” I said, crouching down beside him to clear the cement pad. After my shower I was going to finish that damn book. I was. No one was going to stop me. Not even myself. “What are you working on?”

  “A little brick oven,” he said, brushing leaves away with his hand. “It’s too hot to cook in the trailer during the summer.”

  He pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and I saw again under his white shirt the shadow of that big, black tattoo.

  It seemed ominous.

  “Where did you live before here?” I asked.

  “A bunch of places.”

  “What did you do?”

  “A bunch of things. Why are you asking?” His suspicion was uncomfortably threatening.

  Because I’m trying to figure out why I’m supposed to be watching you.

  “We’re neighbors,” I said with a shrug.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Oklahoma.” I surprised myself with the truth. “A farm.”

  He grunted and took the wheelbarrow back over toward his trailer, where a pickup truck was parked. I followed and helped him move a bag of cement and a bucket from the truck bed into the wheelbarrow.

  “You want me to help you with that?” It was hard watching him struggle.

  Smith, who’d helped Mom and me on the farm, broke his hand once fixing a tractor. He’d had the whole thing in this weird splint, and then in a sling, but he wouldn’t stop working. Trying to do everything with one arm. I followed him around relentlessly until he snapped and demanded to know what I was doing.

  “Waiting for you to need me,” is what I’d said.

  I was doing the same thing with Ben. Waiting for him to need me.

  Memories of Smith were best not contemplated. They were best kept behind their locked door.

  “I don’t need your damn help,” Ben said, and wheeled it across the rough ground toward the bricks and cement pad.

  I ignored him and followed. Once he made it there I helped him unload it, despite his grumbling, and he took the bucket over to the hose he had coiled up and hanging around a fence post, connected to a spigot in the ground.

  His bad mood, with its familiar undertones of begrudging tolerance, made me feel better.

  Smith again.

  “What brought you to this place?” he asked over the gush of water into the bucket.

  “I was running,” I said.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  He turned off the hose and brought the bucket back over to where I stood. When he set it down, water sloshed over my feet. I watched puddles form around my beat-up tennis shoes and didn’t answer. Didn’t have an answer.

  Running had been such a wild departure—a giant crack—and I was still running. I didn’t know what happened after running.

  “Seeing the sights?” he asked when I didn’t answer, oddly paralyzed by his question.

  What am I doing, now?

  “No?” he asked, with a smile. “Finding yourself? No, I know…finding God.”

  I shook my head. “I think…I think I’m just…waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s not waiting, girly. That’s hiding. And I got a lock on both.”

  Those words were a punch in the gut and I could barely breathe as I watched Ben, shaking and in stages, get down on his knees.

  Silent, shaking as much as he was, I crouched down beside him.

  Shoulder to shoulder, I helped Ben start work on his oven. We mixed the cement with an attachment to his drill and we troweled a thin layer over the cement pad and then slowly, carefully, started to build something. “What are you hiding from?” I asked.

  “Done a lot of bad things. To a lot of people. Here’s as safe as anywhere.”

  “What are you waiting for?” I asked after we’d been working for a long time.

  “Something that’s never gonna come. Not for me.” I wanted to ask more, but we were three layers up and it was obvious he was getting tired.

  “You want a break?” I asked.

  “No.”

  But a few seconds later he was coughing and then he was bent over coughing, holding a handkerchief from his back pocket over his mouth as he hacked away.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he said. “But let’s call it a day.”

  “Really?” I looked down at the bucket of cement. It was going to harden and be ruined.

  He got to his feet, refusing help from my outstretched hand.

  “Yeah, too hot.” He walked away, looking bent and frail.

  I watched him walk to the trailer and then I bent and kept working a little bit longer, spreading the cement on with a trowel. Placing the bricks, scraping away the curl of excess. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

  Until the cement was gone and the first
few layers of the brick oven were in place.

  Ben’s trailer was silent, his hiding spot secure.

  —

  Later, I took another cold shower and then, still too hot and too out of sorts to eat, I crawled into bed.

  I’d made that promise to read the book, but I didn’t want the book.

  I wanted Dylan.

  In the bedside table I practically heard the phone taunting me.

  Annie McKay—runs away from her old life only to keep living by its rules. It was sad.

  And it made me angry.

  I opened the drawer, grabbed the phone, and made a deal with myself.

  If he’d called or texted, I would call him back. If he hadn’t, I’d forget about this whole situation, finish my book, and if and when I felt like it—masturbate on my own like a normal person.

  And honestly, why would he call? I wouldn’t call me. I would quickly forget the whole thing.

  My first ever orgasm to the sound of his voice probably didn’t even register in his life.

  I turned on the phone, my heart pounding in my clumsy fingertips.

  Call me.

  That was it. One text message.

  And say what, I wondered. I’m a freak. A total mess. I don’t know what I want, other than it’s not what I have.

  Other than it’s more.

  I didn’t give myself a chance to be scared. Or nervous. I called him back. I was utterly and totally compelled by that demand.

  “Layla.” He answered right away. How had his voice gotten so familiar? I felt like I’d been listening to his voice on a loop for a week.

  “Yes.”

  He sighed and that was it. Just a sigh and then silence. And I didn’t know how to fill it. All I knew, really, was to keep my head down and work. I’d done one audacious thing in my life, and that was steal three thousand dollars from my husband and run out in the middle of the night.

  And that night—with Dylan. That had been pretty audacious. So two, I guess.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Fine.” My voice was shrill. Strange. And I closed my eyes, praying for some kind of map in this situation. For that voiceless instinct to rise up and lead me out of these terrible, dark woods. But the instinct must have been taking a nap, because it was silent. “I’m fine.”