Wanderlust

by A. R. Hadley

  The answer spread across Annie’s face.

  "No," Rosa said with a tender bark. "No, then you have not given him everything."

  "I'm scared.”

  "No, you're not. You’re strong." Rosa squeezed Annie’s thigh. "You can risk giving your love to him without expectation. You’ve made this risk, so tell him so. He needs your love."

  The two women heard the front door open and close. Annie appeared as a child who had done wrong, terrified.

  “Don’t worry." Rosa stood, placing a firm hand on Annie’s shoulder. "I will not tell him we spoke of such things. You think about what I said. El tiempo es precioso."

  As Annie walked out of the bathroom, Cal stepped into the bedroom, swinging the door almost shut as he held onto its edge and slipped off his sneakers and socks. Still donning her sleeveless nightgown and sleepy expression — despite the morning's sobering conversation with Rosa — she watched him from a few feet away.

  Lifting his head, Cal stood tall, and met Annie’s eyes. The sorry he’d written in his note was scribbled in his gaze. His I care for you was in ballpoint pen — no, Sharpie — across his face.

  Smiling, she made her way toward him, and upon reaching him, she buried her face in his chest.

  They apologized in the silence, in their embrace, and through the magnets of their skin.

  Flashes of relief pulsed through her body. She let go and relaxed. Hurt found remedy. Annie found Cal.

  It is love.

  It would be a quiet love, though, an unspoken love, and it would be displayed in the way Cal preferred — through the coming together of their physical bodies.

  Annie lifted his shirt over his head, tossed it aside, put her hands on his waist, and pressed her fingers into his skin. It felt and smelled destined, meant to collide with hers, the way it always had.

  Moving her hands up the front of his body, taking her time, she smoothed her fingers through the hair on his chest.

  "I'm sweaty," he said, exhaling, his eyes closing.

  She continued kissing his stomach, sides, and chest, running her lips over him, up and down, tasting his salty skin, piercing her nails into him, turning her head side to side, aching, needing, wanting the man inside the body.

  "Annie..."

  "What?" she whispered against his chest.

  "Let me take a shower first." Cal hadn’t spoken with much insistence, though. He was aroused, spellbound, and practically unsteady on his feet.

  Annie stopped caressing him, kissing and nibbling him, and she straightened up and met his eyes with rapid-fire energy. Tucking her fingers into the elastic of his shorts, she pulled them down while keeping her eyes centered on his, making sure he heard what the green of her irises spoke:

  Love.

  "No shower." Annie’s voice was a promise, a whispered breath, her desire for him full, cresting. "I want you now. Like this. Just as you are." She choked out the last words and the next. "Make love to me."

  Cal slammed the door shut with the back of his hand and locked it without even looking. His eyes remained fixed on Annie, and his hands were now tangled in her hair.

  She used her toes to finish removing his shorts, and then, the moment she pulled her gown over her head and dropped it, Cal turned her around, pushed her body against the door, and kissed her.

  She started to cry. Her chest shook because she fought it. Not the kiss, but the weeping. Disavowing sound, she let the sobbing get swallowed up with his mouth, his tongue … his love. He ate it. Gobbled it. He took it.

  She risked. He devoured.

  She needed him. He needed her.

  Time was precious. Time was now.

  Holding her hand, he walked her to the bed. He pushed her hair back behind her ears, stared into her eyes, and cradled her face.

  There. He said it. Now. Quiet and in his breath, in his eyes. Without words. Annie said it in return.

  I love you.

  After putting on a condom from the bedside drawer, he lay down first and tugged her hand.

  "You want me on top?" She arched a brow.

  "Are you wet?"

  "Yes."

  He tugged her hand again. "Show me."

  She straddled him.

  "I want to see you." He lifted her hips so she stood on her knees. As she spread her folds, she watched his eyes darken, his chest constrict.

  "Touch yourself," he said, a gruff strain in his voice.

  Sliding a hand down her torso, she palmed herself, letting her middle finger slip between the seam while listening to Cal make sounds. Mostly vowels and breaths.

  The single finger trailed up and down her slit, stopping at her clit each time to circle it while trying to take him inside her body, but he wouldn't allow it. "Not yet," he would say, moan, and breathe. "Not yet."

  "I need you.”

  He groaned, pushing the tip of his cock into the places her fingers hadn’t roamed.

  "Yes," Annie gasped. The fondling from her palm, finger, and his dick increased. "Yes." She tried to sit on him, but he took his dick from her grasp. She gritted her teeth. "Let me have you."

  They both knew what her pleading meant. Her I need you was always about true need, a partner, a best friend, a bagel with cream cheese, a cowboy on his horse, you can't have one without the other — never just the sex.

  "Cal..." She slid her slippery fingers toward his neck, up his chin, and shoved her middle finger into his mouth. "Now."

  He gripped her hips and buried himself inside her warmth.

  Head back, she took him, rode him. The love she made wasn't gentle. It was harsh. Not angry, but harsh. Needy. Necessary. Insistent.

  She passed the need to him where they were joined as he dug his fingers into her waist and met her motion with repeated thrusts, holding her in place while she palmed his cheek.

  "You have all of me,” he said in response to her previous request.

  "No." She shook her head, denying what she knew to be true.

  "Yes." He thumped her womb. God… It bloomed with fresh pain, and she wanted it to.

  "Please … hurt me," she pleaded as she writhed on top of him, her upper body and hair moving like those of a woman at a rock concert.

  "Make love or hurt you?"

  "We do both." Dropping her head to his chest, she grabbed onto his biceps. "It. Isn't. Just. Fucking,” she panted into his ear.

  He flipped her over with the speed of Mario Andretti, stood, and pulled her to the edge of the bed. Her shins dangled off the mattress, feet not touching the floor.

  "Arms up,” he said. “Hands above your head."

  She submitted. Loved it. Needed it.

  His lips trailed from her shoulder to her waist, kissing and biting, softly at first, and on the return trip, he bit harder and harder, until she squirmed and wailed.

  He did the same to her breasts. He nibbled, licked, bit, and twisted her nipples until tears slid down her cheeks and she begged him to take her to the place where she could erase pain with pain, like with like — the place where she could see the love in his eyes, feel it in his thrusts, and own it with each cell in her body.

  "Open.” He bumped her entrance with his cock. “Show me your cunt.”

  Knees taut, stretching her legs, she made garbled sounds and said yes and please with her eyes.

  "Wider." He spread her knees without courtesy. An inimitable sweet pain filled all the available space inside her brain, muscles, thighs. She cried out in broken syllables the second he thrust into her body — three times — to the hilt, then out.

  "Say my name," he said through gritted teeth.

  "Cal," she whispered, throat bare, cut and dry, past words and sense.

  He entered her slowly, torturing her with the lack of movement. He flicked her nipple. "Louder."

  Keeping her arms and hands above her head — she winced in the special way that told Cal she liked it, wanted it — she arched into him, offering her body to him to use and abuse, to make love to.

  He flicked the oth
er nipple, and still she couldn't speak, not his name, not anything. She wrapped her legs behind his hips, only moaning, as she tried to impale herself against his cock. She thrust her hips off the bed, devouring the fuck, the love, the slow, slow sex. The making love.

  She found words, not what he’d asked for, but what she needed. They must've been there all along, waiting … for weeks.

  "Say my name," she said, a bare honesty in her eyes.

  He stopped, didn't move, but he kept the full length of his dick inside her pussy. He pinioned her hips to the bed. Neither of them moved. He hung his head.

  "Do you know what you have?" He glanced up into her eyes. "What you give? Do you know your strength?"

  "Not now." She tried not to sob, not to lose the moment.

  "Yes, now," he growled as he flung one of her legs over his shoulder.

  She bit her bottom lip. "Say ... my ... name," she said as her breath shook and eyes begged.

  "Come for me first." He touched her clit. "Are you close?"

  "Uh-huh."

  He began to move his thumb and dick faster and with the perfect pressure. The assurance in his eyes an agreement. A shake of the hands.

  She would come. He would chant.

  As she released, her jaw tightened, and her toes — one second tightening, the next, jelly. Thighs trembling, and her eyes … God, her eyes, exorcising.

  "Annie, Annie, Annie," he whispered, pleaded, vowed.

  He pushed forward: one, two, several more times into her warmth, each push carrying her name. A whisper, a prayer. Until the last one. The final thrust hit her cervix, and he cried, "Annie," as the last two vowels morphed into a long, satisfied groan.

  He collapsed onto her chest, buried his face into her neck, and strummed her nipple. "What do you do to me?" He bit her neck, trailed a thumb across her cheek. She couldn't see his face, but she knew what he meant. She understood.

  "What do you do?" he repeated.

  What do I do? It's called loving you. For one more week, at least, you fucking bastard.

  Words she couldn’t express formed in her head the way they usually did…

  I love you.

  I want to collapse into his chest

  Breathe his every breath

  I want to die a million deaths

  with him

  Resurrect me

  Save me

  Pull me back

  when I try to escape

  Keep me

  from the nothing

  Hold me

  inside the wordless silent void

  where passion

  is center stage

  where love speaks silently through our bodies

  where our lives

  Come together

  Like two vines

  Twisting

  Wrapping

  Climbing

  A tree

  A sequoia

  We'll lie on the branches

  We'll dream

  We'll sleep

  We'll harness a supreme energy

  We'll lie awake

  dreaming of a place

  where

  —the bitch—

  time

  doesn't exist

  I will resist

  I surround myself with music

  out of my comfort zone

  into the walls of your chest

  I find

  a healing

  in lyrics

  in hard to define places

  and spaces

  of time

  running ahead of me

  with guard rails

  blow up

  imaginary parts

  I come apart

  you rip me

  I hold us together

  you are the needle

  I am the thread

  what you push out of me

  shoves its way back in

  a water jar

  drought takes away

  rain replenishes

  culminating where we are joined

  The Push

  forward movement applied by force or persuasion

  Cal and Annie rode together to their destination in the heart of South Beach with Carl at the helm of the eco-friendly white sedan. It was late Saturday night. In two days, Annie would leave on a plane to Seattle, not knowing whether she was coming back or where her work would take her.

  Neither of them spoke of the plane, the trip, or the future, carrying on as always, avoiding it, causing the tension to mount like bricks building a castle in the sky to nowhere.

  Unusually quiet during the drive to the club, Cal kept his hand over Annie's thigh — her sexy dress exposing lots of skin — but his thoughts were elsewhere.

  He watched the reflections in the window. The city lights flickering and images blurring. Could the squiggly lines and streaks soothe his mind? His thinking? His searching?

  Dancing surely couldn't.

  What had he been thinking agreeing to take Annie to a club? Dancing was something he did not enjoy. Ever. It was rare that any woman — no matter her beauty, brains, or wit — could coax him out onto a dance floor, and Annie was no exception.

  Except Annie was the exception to every rule known to man.

  He looked down at her lap, at her legs. The shiny, silver dress she wore barely covered her thighs. The damn thing, the way she filled it out, her curves, her skin … none of it could ease his pain or his thoughts.

  Why the fuck couldn’t he ignore all of it?

  Cal swirled his hand over the goose bumps cemented on Annie’s leg. They reminded him of the first time the two of them had ridden together in the Tesla — she’d been cold. As he asked Carl to turn down the A/C, Cal smiled on the inside.

  It was a bittersweet memory.

  Each day of the last week had been that way.

  After their fight the night she’d cut her finger, her insistence on talking of the future, his stupid denial — not even the love they’d made all week could usurp the pain swelling within him.

  It overtook him completely.

  He continued to look out the window into the Miami neon.

  Annie and her disposition — her gentleness, her patience, her strength — couldn’t stop the deluge of thoughts he entertained about his mother. He wished to avoid Constance but couldn’t. The guilt of having left her behind last spring had increased with each month that had passed since living in Florida. Another month not taking care of her, being there for her, never being what she needed. Forty-five years of not living up to her ideas. Her ideals.

  How ironic.

  Three thousand miles away, sick, and unable to comprehend the simple fact that it was her eighty-third birthday, and the damn woman still lived under his skin. Constance mixed with Annie in the backseat of the Tesla until the two of them formed a strange concoction.

  Absinthe?

  Funny he should think of that now. His grandfather used to talk about the bitter drink. Talked of women and books … talked of Hemingway. His grandfather had turned him on to music and reading.

  Women he’d found in time.

  Annie slid her fingers between Cal's, keeping their clasped hands over her thigh and watching as their digits intertwined, transferring her quiet love to him while respecting his quiet … what? Apathy?

  No. It was something else, but it was nothing she hadn’t seen before. Whatever stirred within him, she didn't expect to hear about it. She had no reason to think tonight would be any different just because she was set to leave on Monday.

  I'm leaving, she thought as she took in a breath, several. She waited a moment before braving some casual conversation.

  "When is the last time you went dancing?"

  He looked away from the window and toward her but past her face. He paused. "I don't go dancing."

  Cal let go of her hand and ran his index finger in a circular motion over the bare skin on her leg, watching the invisible pattern swirl.

  "You’re impossible.” She smiled, then squirmed a little under his sc
rutiny and touch.

  He smiled too but looked past her face again into the distance.

  "So, you haven't been to a club in South Beach?"

  He met her gaze and answered with his eyes. His fucking magnificent face.

  "The elusive non-dancer has gone to a club?" She pinched his side. "To get laid?"

  "I didn't get laid. You notice my eagerness to return."

  "Maybe you'll get lucky tonight.” She bounced her eyebrows, and he smiled.

  "Why haven't you wanted to go dancing before now? Not because of me?"

  "No." She shrugged. "It's me. Crowds." She released a long shhh sound and hooded her eyes. "Crowds are sometimes hard for me now. I haven't been to a club since before…" She swallowed. "Since Peter died."

  Cal stroked a thumb across her knee. "You benchmark a lot of things in your life by that day."

  He’d said those words tactfully — as tactfully as he possibly could’ve — but it was no good. Annie looked away, out her window, grabbed a spool of hair, and began to twirl it.

  Touching her wrist, he stopped her telltale sign. "I didn't mean to upset you, baby."

  Annie refused to cry. This night would be fun. Death would not suck the fun from their night. Our night. Our last fucking date.

  She balled a fist in her lap as she continued to look out the window. "I wasn't myself for a long time after he died." Annie glanced up in the rearview mirror. She met Carl’s eyes for a split second.

  “Carl, can you please find a place to—"

  “It’s fine, Cal,” Annie clipped. She played with the hem of her skirt, bending its edges up and down.

  “We are only a few blocks away, sir."

  “Good. Park and give us privacy. Please."

  Cal never took his eyes off Annie, watching and observing her with his usual intensity.

  Carl parked, left the engine running, stepped out, and shut the door. After watching his ink-colored clothes disappear against the night, Annie shifted her head to the right and came face-to-face with Cal. The strand of hair she’d abandoned stood out from the rest in front of her face, dangling. Cal ran his fingers down it and tucked it behind her ear.

  The look in his eyes grounded her, melted her, and made her feel safe.

  “Tell me."

  “Tell you what?” she whispered. "You've heard all of this." And more.