by Pauline West
“Wonderful, my dear,” Mrs. Calhoun said, breezily, lifting her glass. “How is your meal?”
“It’s great, mom.”
“Uh, so um…” How did you start a conversation in total silence, when two out of the three people you were with hated each other? “So I’ve heard that a lot of the houses in this neighborhood were occupied by Yankee soldiers during the war. Is that true, Mr. Calhoun?” I said.
Incredibly, the ruse worked like a charm. I smiled back at Ry’s father as he visibly warmed to the subject. The icy old man began to ramble about the occupying soldier- the little notes they’d carved into the mantle, the buried silverware they hadn’t been able to find, and so on.
I wondered how many times his kids had done the same trick, coaxing him to act a little more human. And how many times had Ry had to listen to the same droning? I glanced over at my lover conspiratorially and read my answer on his face: hundreds and hundreds.
Amazingly, Mr. Calhoun talked at us for hours after that. Every now and again I’d prod a little to keep him going like you would a dying campfire. Every question was another log on the fire, and he flared up happily. It was so easy, it almost felt like a trap.
But after dinner Mr. Calhoun came outside to sit on the porch with Ry and I- and talked to me for another hour!
After what felt like forever, he finally pitched forward in his chair, clasping his hands together eagerly before he creaked to his feet. Ry’s father took my hand. “Lily, my darling,” he said, “it’s been a pleasure. I hope to see you again soon.”
“Thank you, sir, I’d like that,” I said.
He put his hands in his pocket, turning towards his son. “If I thought I’d get away with it, I’d try to take her away from you!” Some political candidate you’ll be, I thought, traitorously. Mercifully, I didn’t feel so bad about the footage of me and Madison any longer.
After Mr. Calhoun went inside, Ry beamed at me. He was thrilled. “I haven’t talked to my dad that long in years! He loves you!”
“You’re kidding…”
He took my hand and kissed it. Then he began to rub my fingers over his lips, his eyes darkening with heat.
“Have I been good?” I murmured.
“Very,” he said.
“Back to the burger cave?” I said.
Ry laughed. “It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as, um… how about I show you my place? You haven’t seen it yet.” His face grew more serious. “I have a surprise for you there.”
His ‘place’ was a larger version of his childhood bedroom- minus the burger bed. He’d graduated to a dark, sleek four poster with a charcoal bed spread. His rooms took up the whole upper floor of an old warehouse, and the open floor plan was all the more incredible for its beautiful view on downtown Charleston; the windows jutted out slightly, giving you what had to be one of the best panoramic views over historic America.
“Dang,” I said.
“You like it?” he said, curiously, following me around as I drifted from thing to thing, touching the things he’d chosen.
“It’s all so you,” I said, hugging myself. “It’s like being inside your head. I love it.”
He grinned like a boy. “Check this out.”
“-” I was speechless. He’d clicked the light on in a long, glamorously lit bathroom. His and her silk black nightgowns hung on the wall, and in the adjoining closet I could see the suggestion of long, whispering dresses. “What…”
“I thought you’d be more comfortable… staying here from time to time… if you had a few things,” he said.
I covered my mouth, turned around, and then turned around again. I opened my mouth and closed it. I shook my head in wonder.
“You like it? Nod yes or no,” he said, smiling, teasing me, and I scootched into his arms, pressing my face against his wonderful chest. It was amazing how fast he’d come to feel like home.
“I guess you were sure things were going to go pretty well back there,” I said, my voice muffled against him. He held me tightly.
“I’m sure about you, Lily” he said, looking down. “I’ve looked for you a long time. I knew who you were the moment I met you.”
“Oh, is that why you kept grabbing me?”
“Mm hmm.”
I gazed up at him, feeling my core melt and swirl. That slow, steady look in his eyes; watching it sharpen into a deep want that turned his eyes almost black with hunger. His hands tightened, dropping down my back.
I’d never felt so possessed, so held. I wanted to dissolve in Ry; I wanted to disappear in him. I wanted to become the woman he thought that I already was.
“You know that thing I said, about how there was something in me that wants you to- destroy me?” I said. “Maybe it would be like alchemy. You take the bad in me and turn it to good.”
He picked me up and carried me to the bed. “There is nothing bad in you, Lily,” he said, his voice low and rich. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
I stretched out full length on top of him, my chin resting on my hands. His cock felt hard and sweet against my womb, and I began to move slowly, slowly against him.
“Don’t you know how diamonds are made?” Ry murmured. “Deep source volcanic eruptions. You’re made of fire and ice. I love the fire in you.” He held me tightly. “I love your strength.”
I sat up, still teasing him with tiny, stroking movements of my body, and slipped off my shirt. His hands cupped my breasts, his thumbs swirling over my nipples, and they sharpened shamelessly against his palms. Ry looked steadily into my eyes and euphoric warmth climbed through me. I felt dizzy. I felt high.
I laughed. “You are brave, you’re a warrior.”
Ry started to shake his head slightly. “I’m not-”
I traced my fingers down his cheek and let them run into his mouth as I began to move against him again, pressing him back into his bed. I slipped from my pants, and while I had one leg briefly in the air, he shimmied instantly free of his.
Then Ry sat up, so that I was sitting in his lap, my naked legs curving around him. His cock drove instantly deep and hard into my body. He took my breath away; just like that, we were as deeply wound together as it was possible for two people to be. He was engorged, flaring inside me like an opening fist, stroking in and out relentlessly, thrillingly. His gorgeously muscled chest gleamed with sweat; his tattoo flashed as he moved me the way he wanted. I made sounds I never knew I was capable of.
Suddenly he stopped and drew me to him for a kiss, as if I were a ripe fruit he was pulling down from a tree.
“Don’t you know how heroes are made?” I whispered, running my teeth along his ear. Lingering there, savoring the salt of him. “They do the hard thing.”
“I should have stayed with my team,” Ry said, quietly. “In Afghanistan.” His hands tightened on my waist, trapping me against him.
“You saved your mother.” I grabbed his hands, making them dig into me. “Harder. Harder.” I moaned softly, rolling my hips so the hard edge of his swollen cock rocked against me deliriously. “You save me. Oh, you make me… come and come and come...”
Ry moved up again, licking my neck, his teeth hot and edged against my flushed skin. “Spill for me, beauty,” he said, in a tense, hoarse voice. The sound of it was rough with lust. His fingers pressed me hungrily.
I spiraled over the edge, my want for him made liquid, and came in wet pulses that drenched both of us. He sighed and fell back, still holding me, and I felt him throb out as orgasms spread through me like drops of rain quickening a warm pond.
========== Chapter ================================
The next morning, drinking coffee together on his porch, wrapped in black silk, we watched the morning dawn over the skyline. I could feel the firm heat of his body through the silk. Coupled with the heat of the coffee and the cool, smooth patio tiles beneath our bare feet, I wriggled with a deep, quiet pleasure.
“Happy?” he said.
I nodded, curling against him silently.
“Good.”
We kissed goodbye in the door as an Uber came to scoop me up. I had an interview at a radio station- with Casper Graham.
Ry tried not to let the jealousy show in his face.
“I’ll see you tonight,” I said, firmly.
“You better,” Ry said, squeezing my ass possessively. His fingers curled down between my legs, searching towards my center.
“Oh god,” I said, hotly, “not here, the guy is watching!”
“I don’t care who sees,” Ry said, lifting me into the air, taking my full weight in his hand so that his fingers drove more deeply into me. I grabbed his arms, which were swollen taut now, and squealed.
“Jesus!” I said.
He worked his fingers briefly, teasingly against the seat of my skirt before I finally wriggled free, flushed and panting. “Tonight!” he called after me, as I ran, laughing, to the car.
“Well, good morning, miss,” the driver said, grinning at me.
“Good morning,” I said, primly. And that was all I said, til the moment he dropped me off. After all, my heart was racing so fast with the private X-rated movie in my head that I could hardly speak.
But my perfect day was about to turn into a perfect nightmare.
From the moment I walked into the studio, Casper wouldn’t stop hitting on me. Practically everything he said was an eye-raising innuendo. Worse still, the DJ seemed to think that we were actually a couple, and just pretending to play coy.
I fended them both off as well as I could while still being a good sport- and then they opened the line up to callers.
“Do you remember that old show, ‘This is your life,’ Lily?” the disc jockey said, spinning towards me. He was skinny and bug-eyed, but his voice was that classic radio sound, all low and jokey. He was the human version of a rum and coke. At nine in the morning.
“Uh, nope,” I said.
“Well, do ya recognize this voice?” he said, clicking a button. He watched my face eagerly.
The woman who spoke next sounded like she was talking out the side of her face and through a straw. “Lily,” she cooed, flatly, “this is yore mama.”
“I don’t have a mother,” I said.
“No, baby, I’m your tummy mommy,” she said. The phrase made me squirm in my seat. “Your baby daddy and me used to call you Eensy, Beensy, something like that.” I heard her click and fiddle with something, a cigarette maybe.
“Eensy Beensy,” the dj broke in, loudly, “That’s quite a name for a House candidate’s girlfriend!”
“Sorry?” I said, snapping to. “I’m not anyone’s girlfriend.”
“Haven’t you been linked with the Calhouns, too?” the man said to me. His eyes were shiny and wet, like a rat’s.
“Well, I just wanted to call and say hii, I’m in town, maybe we can meet up. I hear you fell inta some money. I’m real proud of you, sweetheart,” the woman said.
My face drained of blood. The humor finally went out of the dj’s face, but he seemed riveted by the absence of my reaction. Casper waved frantically for him to cut the caller off.
But her flat, sour voice continued on in my ear, like a fly trapped behind glass. “So um, maybe you could-”
“Well, that’s nice!” the dj said, finally depressing the button.
Saved by a button. Wow. I sat back against my seat, sweating freely. “Sorry baby, you never know who’s gonna call in,” the dj said. “Heather! You’re calling in from Greenville this morning?”
“Hi Kevin, longtime listener, firsttime caller- Casper, I love your new album!” the caller said.
I faded out. This is your tummy mummy. As much as I wanted to pretend otherwise, I knew it was her. My biological mother. She’d finally found me…
I felt dizzy. I felt sick- as if I were falling through the floor. The chattering around me began to recede. I felt as if I were entering a long, dark tunnel.
“Lily?” Casper’s voice broke through the fuzziness. “Lily!”
I fainted onto the carpet.
It’s a strange thing to jump back into consciousness with a circle of people standing around you, staring down while your mouth is hanging open.
I snapped back to, and could tell I’d been in the middle of saying something. But what had I said? How long had they been watching me? What had happened?
I jackknifed up too quickly. The room swirled.
“Easy, girl,” Casper said, grabbing me. He lay me back down on the floor, cradling my head.
I swatted him away. “What, what,” I said. “What happened?”
“I think maybe you stopped taking deep enough breaths,” Casper said. “How you feeling?”
“Shit damn!” the dj said. “You ain’t gonna die on us, girl?” He crunched up off his knees and went back to his rollie chair and his microphone. Thankfully, the show seemed to be on commercial break.
“Let’s go,” I said to Casper, weakly.
He nodded. We left without another word.
Blinking in the sunlight, out in the clean, blissful light of day, all that bad weirdness suddenly seemed very far away.
“What did I say back there, when I was out?” I said.
Casper looked at me slowly, looked away. Shielding his eyes as if he was looking for his car, he pursed his lips a moment before he spoke.
“You said, uh, ‘Mommy,’” he said.
“Oh.”
Mommy. Mommy the crack whore. Lily, the crack whore’s daughter. And Ry had been listening. No, you can’t fool anyone for long.
I wasn’t surprised when Ry wouldn’t pick up his phone.
============== Chapter ======================================
But he called me back.
“Lily?” he said, nakedly.
I tried not to let the relief show in my own voice. “What’s wrong, babe? You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I need to see you,” he said. “Right now.”
When Ry showed up in my door, his face looked pale and drawn, but he swept me into a huge bear hug. I rubbed my face against his chest, inhaling his sexy, familiar smell. I couldn’t get enough of it. But something was different about this hug- about this Ry-
I tried to pull back to meet his eyes. He wouldn’t let me.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” I said again.
He held me tighter, kissed the side of my head. “Hang on. I need this.” He sighed into my hair. “Okay. Sorry. I’ve been waiting for that all day.” He let me go long enough for us to come inside. He led me by the hand to the couch, and we lay in one another’s arms.
His whole body felt tense and rigid. I was quiet, waiting. I could tell he had something big to say, something he didn’t even know how to begin saying, and once he started, it all fell out in a tumble.
“Something’s happened with my- father. I would keep this from you if I could, but I don’t see how I can.” Ry held my eyes. “He’s threatened to cut me off if I keep seeing you.”
“Because of who I am?” I said, in a low voice. “Because of what happened on the radio show earlier?”
Ry nodded. “He’s afraid you’ll hurt the campaign. His people were listening. This stuff with your biological mother…”
I looked down.
“Well, they looked into it. Her, and the stuff with Casper… the stuff with Madison… they said it’s just too much, it’s too big a risk. He’s a hard man, you’ve seen that. And even though he likes you personally… I don’t care, Lily,” Ry held me more tightly, “it doesn’t change this. It doesn’t change you and I. But… there are some things in my life that will be affected. If he does cut me off, I mean. And now my mother and he are fighting. Not that that’s new, but I always…” Ry swallowed. “I worry about her so much. I didn’t re-enlist because of it. You know she… gets hurt.”
Ry’s face looked like the little boy he once had been.
“Because of her drinking?”
He nodded.
“You took care of her when you were still just a k
id, didn’t you?” I said.
“People like my parents... divorce is still so frowned on. But they can hardly stand to be in the same room; at first I think she drank to try to make things work. To take the edge off, to make things easier to swallow… but that doesn’t work. I don’t know what to do for her, anymore.”
“Just love her, I guess. Be with her.”
“She stood up to him last night. Said that if he cuts me out, she’s out, too. He slammed the door on her, Lily.” He smiled wryly. “We’re in a hotel.”
“Your apartment?”
He shook his head. “It’s my fault, really. I’m not great with change; I should have moved things around a little more so he wouldn’t have so much control…” He looked out the window. “In a way, maybe they’re not so different, our mothers…”
There was a quiet knock on the door. “Honey, whenever you’re ready,” Steve said, from out in the hall. “No rush. I’m here.”
I sat up and put my head briefly in my hands. I looked at Ry through my fingers. “Speaking of mothers. You want to come with us?”
I’d called the radio station earlier that afternoon, wondering if they kept the phone numbers of callers on file. And they did.
So I’d called the number my mother had given them. She was staying at some kind of group home or something, no surprise there. The woman who answered the phone at first sounded curt.
“Is… Snow there?” I said. It was strange to say her name. My mother’s name is Snow. My mother’s name is Snow, and she named me Lily.
The woman put the phone down without a word. “Snow!” she hollered. “Somebody on de phone!”
I heard raucous laughter in the background, the shuffling of bodies and chairs.
Then the quality of the sound on the other end changed- I could hear it even through the earpiece- and I knew my mother was listening to me breathe.