by Ruthie Knox
“You all right?” she asked. “Need me to read that to you again?”
His eyes were streaming. “I’m trying to drive here.”
“You’re doing great, though. Plus, the road is totally straight. So, Christmas turkey carver? I’m worried about carpal tunnel if you did it too long, but—oh, wait—oh my God, this one is terrible. Who would do that?”
“What?”
“I can’t say.”
“Ash!” He swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand and tried to get his breathing under control.
“No, you should thank me.” She tossed her phone in the direction of her open purse. “I’m doing you a favor by not telling you. I’m not sure I can even have regular sex now. The Internet has ruined sex forever.”
“The Internet has a knack for that.”
She grinned. “Just so you know, I’m sleeping in the Airstream with Stanley tonight.”
They were in the middle of nowhere. Roman signaled and slowed to a crawl. When he’d pulled the truck off the side of the road, he punched on the hazards, released his seat belt and Ashley’s, and yanked her across the console into his lap.
His breathing was still broken, his grin maniacal, his heart sore. But it was worth it just to see her face, bright and beaming up at him when he kissed her. She tasted like gum, and then she passed him the gum, tongue to tongue, and he felt young, innocent, as though the future really was his to lay claim to.
He pulled away, spat out the gum into his fingertips, and stuck it in the well behind the wheel.
“Roman Díaz,” she said, scandalized.
“Ashley Bowman,” he muttered against her neck. “I’m going to do every single one of those things to you tonight, and—”
“Except the last one,” she interrupted.
“Every single one except the last one, whatever it was, and you’re going to love it.”
She wound her arms around his neck, kissed her way from his jawline to the base of his throat, and said, “Okay.”
They stayed there like that, happily intertwined, until the third time Ashley accidentally honked the horn with her ass.
“Madre de Díos, woman.”
“Oh, say more Spanish things.”
“All I know are swearwords and some random nouns from the eighth grade.”
“Does that mean you could tell me you spit on my whore of a mother, but you can’t whisper sweet nothings?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s a disappointment.”
“So is the size of this seat.”
“I guess Cadillac men don’t fuck in their trucks,” she said.
“Cadillac men fuck wherever they like.”
“As long as they don’t want to do it in the front seat. Because, as we have just proven, it’s basically impossible.”
“It’s certainly not impossible. If you turned around and kind of draped yourself over the wheel—”
“Cadillac men have sex in bed,” she stated. “With the lights off. And probably one of those expensive noise-making machines to drown out any unfortunate moaning.”
He kissed behind her ear. “I like it when you moan.”
“I know, right? I like it when you grunt. Let’s get back on the road so we can arrive somewhere and moan and grunt all over each other before the old people in our traveling circus show up and make judge-y eyes at us.”
“It’s a deal.”
Ashley bit his earlobe, climbed off his lap, and buckled herself back into her seat.
When he pulled out onto the highway, she propped her bare feet on his dashboard again, unwrapped a new piece of gum, and held out the wrapper.
Roman picked her used wad of gum off the speedometer well and stuck it on the paper. She folded the edges shut, pinched it into a little ball, and placed it in her cup holder.
“I’ll throw it away later,” she said.
Roman looked out the window and smiled, because he didn’t care.
He wasn’t a Cadillac man.
Episode 8:
Stripped
CHAPTER ONE
Roman sat on the upholstered bench in Ashley’s Airstream trailer, his feet propped on a stack of boxes, and watched her through the propped-open window.
They were parked for the night at a campground located on a spit that stuck out into a lake in Coldwater, Michigan, just over the border from Indiana.
The trailer door stood open. He heard her voice, the rasp of her laugh like a cat’s tongue licking up his spine.
She stood by the flames with her hands sunk into her back pockets, chatting with Jamie and Carly, who perched on a log by the campfire. They’d tucked their daughter into bed hours ago, after Roman got the fire started. He’d also found forked sticks to roast hot dogs, whittled the tips until they were green-white and sharp, and handed them out to the community Ashley had collected around herself.
It fascinated him the way she collected people. Without even trying hard, she’d brought together a troupe of six companions to travel to Wisconsin with her on the spur of the moment.
He thought if he asked her, she’d call it an accident. She would tell him that every one of the people who’d joined her had reasons of their own.
She’d deny they’d come for her, that this trip was really about her, and in a way that was true—no one was here precisely for Ashley. Stanley wanted to see Esther, and Nana didn’t want to miss the fun. Long past retirement age, financially secure, both of them could afford to leave home on a whim.
So could Nana’s granddaughter, Carly, and Carly’s new husband, Jamie. Roman had overheard Carly telling Ashley that the week and change since she and Jamie eloped had been overwhelming—the crush of paparazzi, planning the wedding shower, dealing with the avalanche of well-wishers and gifts. She and Jamie had jumped at the chance to spend a few days nowhere in particular, with no agenda and no demands on them. Dora, of course, went wherever they went.
Roman, it seemed, went where Ashley went.
But to think of each person’s individual motivation diminished the extent to which Ashley’s personality was stamped all over this trip. Watching Carly and Jamie’s camper roll into the campground this afternoon, Roman had thought of funeral caravans making their procession through his hometown, driving slowly with the lights on.
He’d thought about how funerals were one way that the living created meaning from loss.
Maybe this trip was Ashley’s version of a funeral—her way of asking her friends to help her honor and commemorate Susan Bowman. Because Ashley wouldn’t put her grief on display; instead, she would celebrate life. She’d turn a funeral into a holiday.
Even as she’d cried in her trailer, sorting through her grandmother’s effects, Ashley had found a way to keep her focus on living. You want to see a ghost town? she’d asked him, and she’d taken him there not to mourn the town that had died but to be alive herself, with him. To study the asphalt wangs and climb the steps, sweat and talk and hold hands and kiss.
That was Ashley. Defiantly alive.
Ahead of them, they still had a long haul up to Door County, Wisconsin. One long day’s drive or two shorter ones, if they broke it up. Then Ashley could finally have her conversation with Esther.
I want Esther to tell me why Grandma felt like she needed to keep so many secrets, Ashley had said in Camelot this morning. I just need to understand why.
Roman hoped she got her answers. He liked to think Esther would have something to say to Ashley that would put the hurricane of her emotions to rest and give her some peace. But he had his doubts.
He thought maybe Ashley’s peace was going to have to come from inside her.
He thought, too, that it was already there, waiting for her to find it.
He wondered what it would take to get her to stop moving long enough to look.
She hadn’t stopped moving all afternoon. The moment they rolled into the campground, she’d become a liaison—securing a two-room cabin with comfortable beds where Nana and Stanley cou
ld sleep, demanding sites on the water with a good view, checking the gradient and making sure the water and power hookups were working for Jamie and Carly.
She’d organized dinner, taught Jamie how to make s’mores, mixed gin and tonics, and set up a card table so she could play a few hands of poker with Nana and Stanley.
And all the while, Ashley had been winking at Roman across the fire ring, circling her arm around his waist, brushing her ass against his fly when she knew no one was looking. He’d spent half the night fantasizing about getting his hands on her hips. Inhaling a deep breath of the smell of her neck, bug spray and soap, artificial citrus and salt.
She played him the same way she played the rest of them, giving him just enough of what he needed that he felt satisfied. Coming and going, leaving him slightly stoned on gin and fizzy tonic water. Drunk with anticipation.
She played them all—from Nana and Stanley down to that sweet little toddler—and she was so fucking good at it, he didn’t even resent having to share her. He sat and observed, content to wait his turn.
Content to stay on this ride until it came to a full and complete stop.
Ashley started toward the trailer, then turned around, laughing.
“No way! …”
“Right, right …”
“Okay, you guys sleep well. If I’m not out here when you get up, just knock. I don’t need much sleep … What?”
“No! Well, okay. Maybe. But wake me up anyway. I promise we’ll be decent.”
The metal treads rang as she mounted the steps, and then he had a nice view of her taut calves and hamstrings as she leaned out to get the door.
It shut with a bang.
Ashley pivoted on her tiptoes, arms above her head like a ballerina’s, and then let gravity take her down—hands dangling, shoulders slumped, head dropping as if she barely had the energy to hold herself up. “I am so tired, I could die.”
She kicked off her flip-flops.
“Long day,” Roman said.
“So long.”
“Come here.”
The boxes from her grandmother were stacked in a row in front of the bench like a coffee table. Ashley skirted around the end and crawled across the upholstery to him. She threw herself across his lap facedown, legs stretched out.
Roman stroked her back. Stretched over his thighs, she was damp and hot. He’d been sitting here a while, waiting. Cooling off.
“This trailer is well designed,” he said. He’d given himself a tour, pleased by the clever way the pieces fit together—the hidden storage areas, the efficiency with which the designers had used the allotted space.
“It’s a classic,” she boasted.
He stroked her ass and down her leg to her knee, then back up, trailing the pad of his thumb over her inner thigh. “In what sense?”
“All Airstreams kind of are. People love them. This one isn’t precious or anything—it’s not that hard to come by a Sovereign from the seventies. But it’s still great. Well designed, made to last forever. I’d like to fix it up someday.”
“What would you do to it?”
“Strip it to the bones and refit it. Update the carpet, fixtures, oven, furniture, everything.”
“Why not just buy a new one?”
She lifted her head enough to wrinkle her nose at him. “Because I already have one.”
“You could have a better one.”
“Exactly. By fixing this one up.”
“You’re misunderstanding me on purpose.”
“And you’re teasing me.”
“No, I really think you’d be better off buying—”
“I meant with your thumb.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Roman grinned. “That.”
He’d been tracing the seam of her shorts from hem to crotch, then up over her ass to the small of her back and down again. Over to the side. Up around her hip. Drawing her in a circuit of fabric.
He paused with his thumb pressing against the hard bump of sun-bleached cotton where all the seams met. “You like it?”
“I don’t like being teased.”
“Okay. I won’t tease you, then.”
On each side of the seam, the fabric was thinner, softer, and through it he could feel the shape of her lips. He investigated the whole area. Thoroughly.
Ashley bit his thigh.
“Ouch!”
She kissed the spot where she’d bit. “You were still teasing.”
“This isn’t teasing. It’s exploring.”
Ashley flipped over. Roman placed his palm flat on her chest, spanning her collarbone. “Here, for example, is a new vista for my hand to investigate. I’m going to start with these hills, then work my way to the valley beyond.”
“You’re such a geek.”
“I’m not a geek.”
He explored her hills for a while. If the squirming was any indication, she liked it just fine.
“Did you ever want to see more?” she asked.
“Mmm.” Roman pulled up the hem of her T-shirt to expose her stomach.
“Like, did you ever want to get in the car and drive and keep driving until you run out of road?”
“Sure.”
“When?”
“Today.”
Ashley smiled. “You just wish we weren’t bringing all these people with us.”
“They don’t bother me.”
Ashley arched an eyebrow—an expression he recognized as his own.
“Okay,” he admitted. “They bother me some. But you want them here, so it’s fine.”
“What is it, then?”
He’d talked to his assistant, who’d made it clear that if Roman spent much more time out of the office, he might not have an office to come back to. “Work stuff,” he said. “Worrying about what’s going on back in Florida. More than a few times today I thought it might be easier to make a break for it.”
Ashley rested one arm on his chest, cupping the back of his neck in her hand. Roman let his head fall, enjoying the play of light and shadow over her face.
“Go on the lam?” she asked.
“Bonnie and Clyde.”
“You can be Bonnie. I’ll grow a mustache.”
Roman huffed a laugh, and she broke into a grin, twisting on his lap to tickle his ribs. He captured her hand and brought it to join the other on his neck, and then he ducked down as she rose up to meet him, and they kissed.
There was nothing like kissing Ashley.
Nothing like the way she felt in his arms, warm and sinuous, light and full of hope. He would follow her anywhere to feel like this, do whatever she asked. It had been this way from the beginning, although he hadn’t understood at first.
What bound him to Ashley was Ashley.
When she gave herself, she gave everything, and when he took from her, he wanted nothing more than to give it back, give her more.
He loved her.
That was what you called it. That was the size and shape of it, the tough kernel of hope at the center of it, the tenacious tangled neediness of it.
Love.
It didn’t scare him anymore. There was no one he would rather love than this weird, wild, wonderful woman.
Roman hauled her closer. Their kiss kindled and lit, tongues dancing, bodies sinking and shifting until they were side by side, legs interlaced, hands moving anywhere they could find a plane to glide over, a curve to hug, a hill to climb, or a crevice to sink into.
“We can do this in the trailer, right?” he asked. “It won’t fall off the blocks?”
“It won’t fall. It’ll just, you know, bounce.”
“So anyone who happens to walk by to take a leak or brush their teeth—all those little kids riding around on bicycles—they’re all going to know I’m getting laid.”
“You’re getting laid? Nice.”
He pushed her hair behind her ear. Caught her eye. “We’re making love,” he corrected.
Her tongue hit the back of her teeth. He felt the shift in her breathing against his stomach.
Her lashes lowered.
She leaned forward and nipped his collarbone, a sharp bite that hit him hard between the legs. “I don’t think the kids will know,” she said. “They probably won’t even notice, and if they do, they’ll just assume we’re …”
“Bouncing vigorously on the couch?”
“Playing one of those Wii games, maybe, where you jump around.”
Roman braced one arm and used his thigh to scoot Ashley to the inside of the bench so he could move above her and fit his aching erection between her legs. She sighed, a happy sound.
She hadn’t rejected his description. Making love.
It would be his first time.
“We’ll have to take this to the bedroom,” he said. “I’m pretty sure my head’s sticking up, and the window’s open.” He covered one side of her neck with kisses, then found the smoothest patch of skin beneath her jawline and traced the boundaries of it with his tongue.
“I’d be delighted,” she said. “As soon as—yes. Do that again.”
Roman made a slow, rolling thrust against her clit, and her mouth fell open. “Jesus. Kiss me.”
He did.
They let their bodies speak for a while, let their arms say I missed you and I want you and You make me feel amazing. He watched her expressions shift, blissed out one moment, tense with need the next. Drifting, yearning, troubled. Beautiful. She ran her fingertips along his hairline, over his temples, around his ears. “I want to see your hair curly someday,” she said.
“I can’t let it get long. It’s out of control.”
“I like it when you’re out of control.” He thrust again, and she brought her legs up. “I like making you lose your grip.”
“You’re good at it.”
She grinned. “Right? I feel like it might be what I was put on this earth to do.”
“Annoy me?”
“Make you mad, sad, happy, cross-eyed with pleasure. All those things you’d given up.”
“I’m a fan of the last one.”
“I noticed. Speaking of things we’re fans of, take off your shirt.” Roman lifted up enough to wrestle the T-shirt over his head. “Yeah,” she sighed. “I’m a fan of this view.”