by M. O'Keefe
Memories of that night landed like sparks from a fire against my skin.
The brush of my thumb across my hip bone.
The chapped skin of my lips.
The way the bottom of my foot felt hot.
The quilt against my nipples.
The way I’d felt…for a while there…like I could do anything to myself and it would feel good.
Good. What a ridiculous understatement.
For a while there I’d craved everything. Anything.
The things in the half-read book, the things those girls did in those trucks at the truck stop. The things his voice alluded to.
I wanted all of it. And with equal force I wanted to not want any of it.
“I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.”
“I turned off the phone.”
“You embarrassed?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“That’s bullshit, you know. You shouldn’t feel bad about anything that feels that good.”
“I think that’s easy for you to say.”
“It’s easy for you too. Just say it.”
Laughter humphed out of me.
“You’re twenty-four years old. How come you never touched yourself like that before?”
“It’s complicated.” Understatement of the century.
“What kind of complicated?”
“The kind I’m not going to talk about it,” I snapped, and then winced. But I had no intention of telling him who I really was. What my life was really like.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I just…”
“Don’t want to spill your guts to a stranger? I get it. We all have secrets.”
Of course, immediately, I wanted to know his.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For the other night. Really. Thank you. That was—”
“Good for me too. Until the end when you hung up.”
“Sorry.”
“It was pretty intense.”
“It’s not…I’m not…virgin kink. Or whatever.”
I’m just me.
“No shit,” he said. “You might be all the kinks.”
There was a delicious amount of respect in his words. And that respect delighted me.
“I appreciate you texting me.”
“I want you to call me again,” he said.
“To tell you about Ben?”
“Right now I don’t give a shit about Ben. I want you to call me so I can listen to you come again.”
My breath clogged in my throat. And those random sparks of desire, they coalesced into something big. Bigger even than my body.
“All right.”
“But Layla?”
“Yeah?”
“We are going to do this my way.”
“What does that mean?” Why did that thrill me somehow? Currents sizzled up my legs.
“It means there’s no embarrassment over what we do. None. The second you think about embarrassment or shame, forget it. Because it’s pointless.”
“But—”
“Tell me you understand that.”
“I don’t like bossy men,” I said, avoiding the question because really he was asking the impossible. I would try not to be embarrassed. I would work really hard at that, but he couldn’t make the feeling go away just by demanding it.
“No?”
“No,” I answered because I did like this. Because I was contrary and full of opposing forces. And he seemed impervious to these swipes I took at him. Seemed in fact to like it.
He chuckled, proving that he appreciated my claws, and it was just too much. I curled over onto my side, tucking my knees up, holding the thrill between my legs.
“You liked me the other night. You called me when you wanted to come, Layla. I think you like me fine.”
“I don’t want to be…controlled.”
“You can hang up whenever you want. Say the word and this is over. But if you want to keep going, it’s my rules.”
I clutched the phone in my hand.
“Yes or no, Layla?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl. Now, you won’t call me again until you eat dessert for breakfast and go skinny-dipping.”
“Are you joking?” Skinny-dipping and dessert for breakfast? What the hell was this?
“Do those things,” he said. “And then call me. And Layla?”
“What?” I sounded extra angry with him and I was rewarded with that half-groan of his that reverberated down low into my belly, sending all this desire and itchy, angry lust into hyperdrive.
“Hurry.”
And then he hung up.
—
I put the phone back in the drawer and like I was testing the waters, waiting for some kind of protest, or someone to tell me to stop, I eased my hand under my tank top and spread out my fingers over my belly, making the heat coil under my skin.
I wanted to wrench everything out of me that was left over from my old life. The voices, the fear, the guilt and shame—I wanted it all gone. Like the garbage I was clearing out of the campground.
Feeling defiant—rebellious, more like Layla than I had the other night—I jumped off the bed and made sure my door was locked and all my curtains and blinds were shut. In the bedroom I kept the windows open for air.
I took off my shirt and then my shorts, but I left on my underwear. The last of my clean ones. They were a little too small. A pair—blue, with little white flowers on them—that I’d had forever, since I was sixteen, maybe? The elastic bit into the skin of my butt and the front dipped real low, to the point that some of the hair between my legs peeked out. Slipping my hand down low, I felt the wide patch of moisture from my body, and as I traced its edges, it got wider. Wetter.
I slipped one finger past the sharp elastic, pulling the other side harder against my skin, which made me gasp and pull it tighter, until the elastic brushed up against my clit.
“Oh my God,” I breathed and then, experimenting, I pulled both sides of my underwear down between my lips and I nearly shot off the bed. Carefully, I used the pressure, slow and driving, sharp and fast, to find out what I liked better.
And the truth was—I liked it all. Even the touches that didn’t add to the stone-rolling-downhill of orgasm, I liked. The side trip of my fingers against the skin of my leg. The act of pushing my hair—sweaty and damp—off my face. The lift of one arm up and over my head.
It was as if my body—which had seemed my entire life to be stupid and heavy, an entity to be pushed and smacked, a blind and dumb creature made only for work, its only skill a certain kind of stillness, a trick of getting smaller so as not to be seen—had been transformed.
No, not transformed. Not really.
It was as if I’d found buried beneath the skin a secret wisdom. A dark knowledge.
Like it had just been waiting for me to find it.
I came, minutes later on my stomach, my pillow between my teeth. Part of my underwear—a sly little instrument of pleasure—in my fist, the rest of it buried between my legs.
Huffing for breath, I pulled the blue cotton with the white flowers off my body. It was wet. Totally wet. My hand, too.
I laughed, delighted and embarrassed. Horrified and pleased. Exhausted and exhilarated.
As I rolled sideways on the bed, stray sparks shot up from my pussy, from where I’d crossed my legs, giving my clit a sort of thick pressure.
Oh God. Again?
I put my head down, my fingers eased between my legs.
Again.
An hour later I had gathered up all of my dirty clothes, my generic laundry soap, and another one of my books—Pride and Prejudice. The cover was new and featured a Hollywood actress. The one that was all chin and cheekbones.
My dog-eared and beloved copy from high school English class had been burned in the burn pile.
The laundry was on the other side of the rhododendron with the families, where the trailers were packed in a little tighter. But most of the trailers were in really g
ood shape and a few families had worked hard to make them look homey with scrappy flower gardens, and a few of the little wooden decks were hung with twinkle lights.
Or maybe those were just Christmas decorations that never came down.
The trailer right next to the laundry was one of the few double-wides. And there were balloons tied to the door. Birthday streamers across the back of the trailer.
A line of kids screamed around the corner of the trailer, five in all; a few of them I recognized from that day at the grocery store. Danny was there. The others were strangers. But they all had face paint on. There were two pirates. A tiger and a Spider-Man.
I sidestepped the kids and flattened myself against the aluminum siding of the laundry.
“Boys!” The mom, the woman from the grocery store, came out of the trailer, carrying a little tray of paint and a paintbrush in her hand. Two little girls clung to the long, colorful dress she wore. One daughter had a rainbow across her forehead. The other, in diapers, had half a sun. “Boys, take it over to the playground. We’re going to have cake in a half hour!”
The boys switched direction on a dime and raced over to the swing set and slide that were set up across the dirt road.
The mom turned to go back inside and I wished I could somehow vanish before she saw me, but no such luck.
“Hey,” she said, looking as awkward as I felt. “You do live here.”
“Over there,” I answered, jerking my thumb over toward the rhododendron. “It’s your son’s birthday?”
The woman reached down a hand and cupped it over Rainbow-face’s blond hair. “Yes. Danny. He’s five.”
“That’s great.”
“It’s loud is what it is,” she laughed. “I’m Tiffany, by the way.”
“Annie.” The second I said my real name, I wished I could suck it back.
“Mommy!” cried the girl with half a sun. “Finish me.”
“I’d better go,” Tiffany said.
“Have fun,” I said.
“Thank you.”
I ducked into the laundry as fast as I could. For some reason my heart was pounding hard. That woman stressed me out.
All my clothes together made only one load. Tee shirts, bras. Cutoff shorts. My nightgown. A few of the towels. Underwear.
I shoved the blue ones with the white flowers in first, as if someone might come in and see them. Smell them, even, and guess my secret. Know what I was doing.
I was smiling as I dumped in the half-cup of soap and a few of my precious quarters.
In the far corner of the small room there was a lawn chair with frayed plastic ribbing and I grabbed it, took it outside to the other side of the building, away from the birthday party and Tiffany with the bruises and dark eyes who somehow managed to still give her son a birthday party with pirate face paint.
A gesture so full of love and hope it made my heart hurt.
I settled the chair down in a small copse of dandelions next to a dark trailer that seemed empty. The sun was hot today, but there was a rare breeze blowing, keeping things moving, and in the shade of the trailer it was actually quite nice.
It had been years since I’d been able to sit down in the middle of the day to read. It felt…decadent. Sighing with pleasure, I opened up my book and slipped seamlessly into Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet’s world.
It took a while for me to notice the girl standing nearby, but when I finally did, I jumped, startled. The little girl had three suns, one on each cheek and one on her forehead, with a flower on the bridge of her nose.
“Hi,” I said with a smile.
“Cake?”
The girl held out a plate with a piece of yellow cake with chocolate frosting and roughly a pound of sprinkles on it.
“For me?” I asked. The girl nodded and walked over to me, nearly tripping on the uneven ground, but I caught her and the cake in the nick of time.
“Thank you so much!” I said.
“You welcome,” the girl said, with very nice manners and a sparkly grin revealing a mouth full of little teeth. She had a pink barrette barely hanging onto her curly light brown hair.
She skipped off as quickly as she came. And I looked down at the cake. The sprinkles, the half a Y written in blue frosting.
Birthday cake.
God, how long had it been…
Even though I didn’t want to, because the memories were bound to disappoint, I tried to remember the last time I’d had one. For myself. Or for Mom. Hoyt. And the only one I could remember was when I was really young. Walking with my mom out to the cabin behind the barn where Smith lived. He’d opened the door to his cabin, wearing his jeans and a white undershirt and nothing else, and Mom had looked away, her eyes on the far fields.
I stared at his tattoos. He’d had lots. Army stuff from the Gulf War.
“Morning,” he’d said with that rough, gravelly smoker’s growl he had, but Mom had stayed silent. Eyes averted. Cheeks red in the dawn.
“We made you a cake!” I had said, jumping a little because there’d never been a cake-making experience in my life.
“Take it,” Mom had said, still not looking at him. She shoved the plate at Smith, who caught it just before it went all over his white shirt. “Come on, Annie, we got work.”
And there’d never been a cake-making experience again.
My long sigh came out in shuddery stages, the memory an uncomfortable one. All those adult motivations and feelings still shrouded in shadow and mystery. Mom had been…unfathomable, at best.
I stood, my butt numb, and went to push my wet things into the dryer.
In the distance there was the rumble of a car engine that needed a serious tune-up. Which was weird, because almost no one got off the highway on this road, or used it to get to the highway. It was nothing but swamp and forests past the campground.
The engine roar got louder and then nearly deafening as it turned into the drive of the RV park.
Heart in my throat, I glanced out the door of the laundry only to see an old blue Dodge muscle car come to a stop right next to Tiffany’s trailer. Blue and red balloons collided and bounced off the side of the trailer.
When the man behind the wheel turned off the motor, the silence was deafening. And my old sixth sense about danger crackled.
This wasn’t good.
“Hey, Phil,” Tiffany said as she came out of the trailer. No little girls clinging to her. No face paint. Just her and enough tension to make the air too thick to breathe.
There was not anything about Tiffany that I didn’t recognize from my worst memories. That false smile spreading only so far over a fear she could not hide. The rounded curve of her shoulders as if she was already figuring out how to protect herself from his fists. The preemptive kiss, dry and full of self-loathing, placed on the rough plane of the man’s cheek once he got out of the rusty blue car.
“I didn’t think you were going to be home until next week,” Tiffany said to a small man wearing a tee shirt and jeans a few sizes too big. He had mean eyes and big hands. A terrible combination.
The hair rose on my neck.
My throat closed with fear.
Quickly as I could, I ducked back inside the concrete walls of the laundry room, but through the open door I could still hear Tiffany and Phil talking.
“No, I fucking quit that bullshit job,” he said.
“Wait. What?” Tiffany asked, her voice suddenly shrill.
Careful. Oh God, be careful.
I moved my wet things from the washer one at a time into the dryer, wishing truly that I were anywhere but that laundry room.
“What happened?” Tiffany asked, obviously strained.
“It was bullshit. The whole thing. Supposed to be such a hotshot, but that dude was just an asshole like the rest of them.”
“Phil, we need that money—”
“Jesus Christ, Tiffany, I just got here and already you’re ragging on me?”
“I’m not…I’m not, I’m just saying, we’re alread
y behind on everything—”
“Maybe if you wasn’t spending money on shit like this?”
“Don’t! Phil!” Tiffany cried, and I jumped at the sound of a balloon popping.
I wiped my hands under my eyes because I was crying. Terrible stress tears.
Desperate, I looked for a back door or something, some way to get out so I wouldn’t have to walk by them. Wouldn’t have to see them.
“It’s Danny’s birthday,” Tiffany breathed.
“Where is the little shit?”
“Please,” Tiffany begged. “Please don’t ruin this—”
“Ruin it? The fuck you talking about, Tiff? I’m paying for this shit. Your mom sure ain’t giving you enough to pay for jack.”
“You’re right. Phil. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But we’re having a nice party. Look, there’s cake, honey. Why don’t you have some cake?”
This conversation was engraved on my heart, beaten into my brain. I knew exactly how this was going to go.
Tiffany would keep apologizing. Over and over again, swallowing all her anger so that this man wouldn’t raise a fist to her. To her children. So he wouldn’t demolish the small bubble of normalcy she’d so painstakingly blown for her children with all the air and hope she had in her.
But in the end it wouldn’t work.
It never worked.
Because guys like Phil—like Hoyt—they walked into the room knowing what was going to happen. Whether they would smack a person around or not. They had all the power. Her apologies were for naught. Her pain and fear—irrelevant. All that mattered was what that man wanted to do to her and he’d made that decision way back in his lizard brain—miles ago. Maybe years ago.
I have to leave.
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t sneak out, that I had to walk right past them and their awful domestic drama, the miserable unhappy end of which I knew too fucking well. Gathering up my book and laundry soap I ducked out the door, my head down, hoping not to garner any attention. This was the last situation I wanted to get pulled into or bear witness to.
Holding my breath, I got past the rhododendron bush and ran smack into someone.
“Careful,” Joan said, picking up the book I had dropped. Joan wore a pair of short cutoffs and a tee shirt with the neck and sleeves ripped out, the ties of a bright pink bikini visible underneath. She had her eyes over my shoulder, trained on Phil and the blooming catastrophe.