Take One With You

by Oak Anderson

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  Chapter Eleven

  Sarah never admitted to Charlie that she showed up early on purpose just to fuck with him, and he never came out and asked her, either. But it was pretty obvious that she was used to doing things her own way, and Sarah’s way was very often the way that fucked with other people whether it was necessary or not.

  It was almost as if it amused her.

  He had joked about it with her online, long before they met in person, and she admitted that there was something inside her that liked messing with people, that liked the conflict, needed it, and while it kind of scared him at first, there was also something exciting about it. Sexy, even. That was why he had agreed so easily that day to make the drive to see her. Even though he knew his mother was acting strangely.

  Charlie hadn’t been getting along too well with his mom back then, but he should have known better than to leave her that day. He should have been with her.

  Except that he had left. Because he wanted to see Sarah.

  Sarah, who was a coiled spring held back with a single pin, always in danger of releasing her kinetic energy your way. Sarah always seemed to be in motion, even when she was standing still. There was an unpredictability that Charlie found incredibly attractive.

  She reminded him of an old silent movie he’d watched in school, some Russian film about a mutiny on a ship or something. There was lots of death and dying, and some really cool stuff on the steps of a big building, but what he remembered most was that he never knew what was coming next. There was a tension and uncertainty about it.

  Just like with Sarah.

  “I’m more like a hand grenade,” she’d told him at the restaurant the night they first met in person. “There’s your loose pin, dude.”

  They’d laughed and had a great time until the unpredictable intervened. What attracted him to Sarah drove them apart the night of his mother’s death.

  But it was a separation that proved short-lived.

  They were connected, just like Jesus Two Bears and Melissa were. What Charlie wasn’t sure of was whether they would remain so. He was acutely aware of what happened to the other “connection”.

  Charlie stared at himself in the mirror. His mother always told him from the time he was a little boy, that he would grow into his looks. He’d never really understood what she meant until after she was gone. He’d always taken it as a kind of backhanded compliment, like she was calling him ugly, but maybe he’d look good when he got older. Even after she explained what she really meant, he never quite understood until it was too late to share with her.

  “It means I can see the man you’re going to become one day, Charlie.” His mother looked at him with sad, wizened eyes. “I wish sometimes you wouldn’t take things so much to heart.”

  He tried to smile, but tears filled his eyes instead.

  She pulled him close, and unlike so many other times since the death of his father, when Charlie felt too self conscious to fully embrace her, as if being “the man of the house now”, as Minister Webber had put it, precluded such gestures, Charlie hugged his mother back so tightly she had to physically loosen his grip in order to breathe.

  His mother rocked him gently, loving his acquiescence but hating his anguish. After a few moments, she pulled away and held his face in her hands.

  “You are a kind, sensitive boy, Charlie. And you’re going to grow into a kind, sensitive man. The kind of man any mother would be proud of.”

  Charlie looked down at his phone. He should have told Sarah to come earlier. Charlie messed with his hair some more, but there was only so much he could do.

  Then he heard laughter. Female laughter.

  He checked his phone again. Too early. It couldn’t be her. One of Brad’s girlfriends. He hated the thought of having to walk past them when Sarah arrived. Maybe he should sneak out the window and wait for her out front.

  More laughter. This time it sounded familiar.

  No. Please no. He cracked the door and listened. He could hear Brad talking, and then…her voice. Charlie threw open his door and ran downstairs.

  When he walked into the living room, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Sarah was sitting on the couch next to Brad, and they were sitting really close.

  Really close.

  The three of them just looked at each other for a split second, and then Charlie completely lost it.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted, and for a moment neither of them knew who he was talking to. Charlie wasn’t sure, either.

  “We’re just talking, dude, chill,” Sarah said. Her blue jean skirt was very short, and Charlie couldn’t help but notice how high it rode up her thighs before she quickly stood up. He hated the fact that she had included the word just in that sentence.

  Brad remained seated with a stupid grin on his face, as if he was gloating, or something. At least, that was how Charlie saw it. He wanted to smash him with something, anything, to make him stop smiling.

  “Ready to go?” Sarah asked brightly, a little too brightly, if you asked Charlie. Sarah was not a chipper person, which made her sound really, really fake. At least, that was how Charlie saw it. He felt like he was in some kind of a carnival funhouse, with everything he heard and saw distorted beyond recognition.

  There probably wasn’t much of anything either of them could have said or done at that moment that was beyond his paranoid misinterpretations, but he was too mad to allow that fact to derail his focus.

  “What the fuck were you doing?” Charlie screamed.

  “Charlie, relax.” Sarah said.

  Hearing that word only incensed Charlie more. Brad had told him to relax the week before in his room just before landing on his chest.

  “Don’t tell me that!” he screamed.

  “We were just talking,” Brad said, standing up. Again with the just. Whenever someone said they were just doing something, chances are they’re doing that and a whole lot more. Brad started to move towards Charlie, but Sarah stopped him by putting her hand on his arm.

  If there was any possible way she could have made things worse besides straddling his stepfather right in front of him, that was probably it.

  “That’s right, C,” Sarah said, stepping in front of Brad, her eyes boring into Charlie’s. “We were just talking.”

  “Stop saying that!”

  Sarah suddenly rushed towards Charlie and got right in his face. “That’s right,” she said. “I was just about to come get you. Now let’s go.”

  There was something in her voice that made Charlie shut up and obey, but he wasn’t going to let this go. No way. Sarah took his arm and the two of them awkwardly strode to the front door, side-by-side.

  Charlie threw open the door and walked out, but Sarah turned.

  “Nice meeting you, Brad,” she said, before quickly closing the door, leaving Charlie’s stepfather sporting that stupid grin and a guilty erection.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Charlie demanded once they were in Sarah’s car. She ignored the questions and tore down the street, narrowly missing an elderly jogger who flipped them off.

  Charlie closed his eyes and tried to calm down, but it wasn’t working. He hated the fact that he was so upset even more than the fact she had been sitting and talking to Brad. It wasn’t even like he believed there was something going on, it was that Brad had seen her. Had his eyes on her.

  He’s probably jerking off right now.

  Suddenly the car veered to the curb and Sarah slammed on the brakes, nearly throwing Charlie into the windshield. He’d been so upset he had forgotten to put on his seatbelt.

  “What did you say?” she demanded.

  Charlie looked at Sarah, confused. How could she be mad at him?

  “What?”

  “Who’s jerking off?”

  Charlie’s confusion intensified, then turned to surprise. “Did I say that out loud?”

  Sarah stared at him lik
e he was an alien being for a moment, and then she burst out laughing, and as mad as Charlie had been, he couldn’t help but join her. Every time he tried to stop and bring up what had happened back at his house, they would look at each other and start laughing all over again.

  It was probably the laughter that made Charlie so unprepared for what happened next. He should have been ready, he really should. After all, he’d been thinking of little else ever since they made the date, which wasn’t even really a date, but who cared? Nobody actually went on dates, anyway, they just hung out.

  Hell, he’d been obsessing over it for a lot longer than that. Probably since they met online.

  The point was, Charlie had been imagining the kiss forever, but he was still totally shocked when Sarah suddenly leaned across the center console and kissed him.

  He kept his eyes open, probably from the shock, but as she slid her hands from the back of his neck around to his face, gently caressing him, Charlie felt himself ease into it, like descending into a warm bath.

  Her tongue was full and insistent, alternating between pure eroticism and playful teasing. She moaned and sucked, and he felt himself instantly and fully erect. He wanted to move his hands over her body but instead they fell to his sides like limp noodles, as if to contrast with the teenage monster raging uncomfortably in his jeans.

  He felt her body push towards his as she practically climbed into his lap, her arms around him now, pulling him in as if she wanted to force her way through him. Charlie responded with his suddenly working arms, pulling her on top of him. The feel of the bra strap across her back was incredible, his fingers toying with the hook and clasp through the thin material of her blouse.

  When they finally allowed space between their lips, the windows of the car were fogged and the only sound either of them heard, in spite of the cars whizzing past on the busy street, was their deep, heavy breathing, synchronized and sensuous.

  Neither of them could speak, so they simply held the embrace.

  After several lifetimes had passed, Charlie finally found his voice, and the words he spoke made her love him even more than she had only recently realized she did.

  “Best first kiss, ever,” he whispered.

  It was not Sarah’s first kiss. As a matter of fact, she was quite experienced in that regard. It was also her experience that most guys her age were braggarts and liars, always looking at sex as if it was some sort of contest, like some video game that gave them extra lives if they scored so many points. They were always trying to impress her, something they had in common with older men, all of them somehow missing the point entirely that she wanted to feel special, and that meant she had no interest at all in prior conquests.

  Charlie made her feel special. By simply being honest and open and vulnerable.

  Sarah climbed off his lap and settled back in behind the wheel.

  “So what do you think?”

  Charlie looked at her. He was so crazy in love right then, or maybe just crazy, that at first he thought she wanted him to rate her kiss with some sort of numerical value, like a score at the Olympics.

  Fortunately, Charlie thought before he spoke.

  This time.

  “About what?”

  She lowered her chin and looked up through the passenger side window, and he turned around. There was nothing out there, just an apartment building with a sign in front that read No Vacancy.

  No Vacancy.

  “Did you – ?”

  She smiled and nodded. “I did.”

  “But...”

  He looked around. Sarah had rented an apartment right around the corner. They couldn’t have driven more than a few minutes from his neighborhood.

  It was that thought that ruined everything. As Sarah laughed and leaned over to hug him, what had happened back at his house flooded back into his consciousness like a sour tide, refilling the void that her amazing kiss had only recently vacated.

  Charlie knew he shouldn’t say it, but he did, anyway. Like untold numbers of men who came before him, Charlie was about to learn something about women by saying the exact wrong thing at the worst possible time.

  The benefit of leaving well enough alone.

  He pulled away slightly and blurted out what he was thinking.

  “So. What were you guys doing?”

  Sarah’s eyes changed, and he immediately regretted his words. He had taken what was a wonderful moment of bonding and turned it into shit, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  She sat back in her seat and stared out the windshield, grasping the steering wheel tightly.

  “Get the fuck out of my car.”

  “Sarah – ”

  “Get out!” she screamed, and reached past him for the door handle, yanking it open. He was hyper-conscious of her body even then, her breasts pressed against his thighs for the briefest of moments.

  Better not say that out loud.

  “Get out!”

  “Sarah, I’m sorry.”

  She laid on the horn, and finally Charlie got out of the car and closed the door behind him. He leaned down and peered in the window, but she refused to look at him directly, turning her face to the opposite window and watching him walk away in the side view mirror through regretful, teary eyes.

  Chapter Twelve

  Thane downed his third and slammed the glass down on the bar, probably a little too loudly, causing the bartender to glare at him again from the other end of his workstation. The detective shrugged and held up a finger to signal he wanted another while he had the guy’s attention, although it wasn’t the preferred digit he would normally have used on the little prick. The bartender had been a shit since he sat down, like he was on parole and smelled cop, which he probably did.

  I don’t give a shit what you did, dickless. Just fill my fucking glass.

  He watched as the bartender poured him another double Jack.

  Probably queer.

  Thane gave him another look. Maybe not. Too bad, though. I’d get better service.

  Thane had had words again with his boss, big fucking surprise, and had been in a foul mood ever since.

  What was really bothering him though, was his ex-wife. She’d been riding his ass about child support even though he’d never missed a payment. The latest burr up her ass was that she wanted him to pay in cash, which he wasn’t about to do. Thane had paid her with money orders since the very beginning, closing all their joint accounts and opening new ones in his name at smaller banks she didn’t know about.

  It probably wouldn’t make any difference to her cunt of a divorce attorney if they really wanted to find out his information for whatever reason, but he wasn’t about to make it easy for her. As long as she got paid, she couldn’t do shit. The two of them could suck his dick.

  He smiled as the thought of that image rumbled around in his fevered brain. Thane had to admit that lesbian counselor was a pretty sweet piece of ass, in spite of her fucking disposition. The first time he’d met her in arbitration he’d had wood the entire goddamn meeting. His own attorney kept asking if he needed to get up and stretch or go to the bathroom whenever they took a break, but fuck if he didn’t sit there with that raging boner for two solid hours so nobody could read his mind.

  He still occasionally rubbed one out to her smug little ass, imagining how it would feel to spread her out for a couple of hours across the mahogany desk in her office he’d probably paid for.

  Just then the bartender poured him another and Thane looked up with a dopey grin on his face, causing the guy to roll his eyes and walk away like a felon at the policeman’s ball.

  As long as you’re around for my rounds, dickhead.

  “Detective Parks?”

  Shit. If I wanted to talk to another cop, I’d fucking pull some overtime.

  He turned around and was pleasantly surprised to see that the voice belonged to Officer Goodbody from the day in the alley with the deaf kid.

  What the hell was her name?

  “
Officer Hellstrom,” Thane said, standing up and silently congratulating himself on his stellar memory.

  She laughed. “Anita, please.”

  They just stood there looking at each other for the briefest of moments, but it wasn’t awkward. At least not to Thane.

  It was one of his “quarter moments”, as he called them.

  The first time he’d ever gone to Las Vegas, Thane was eighteen years-old looking twenty-five, and right away he’d hit triple sevens on a quarter machine with three coins in. That was back when silver actually spilled out when you won.

  He’d stood there as his buddies hooted and hollered around him while six hundred quarters poured out, but the thing that struck Thane the most was that he’d just had a feeling the second before that he was going to win. He knew that he’d hit before it happened.

  Thane had quarter moments sometimes during an interrogation, when he knew all he had to do was shut up and let the perp confess, and ninety percent of the time that’s exactly what happened. It was uncanny.

  As he stood there looking at Hellstrom, he knew he was going to get laid tonight.

  Nice quarter moment.

  “Call me Anita,” she affirmed, and Thane smiled and offered her a seat, which she took. He leaned in close as he sat, smelling her perfume. It was just as intoxicating as the liquor he’d been swilling.

  Good thing I only had three.

  Thane dipped a finger in the freshly poured shot and licked it like a frosting spoon. “What’ll you have, Anita?”