by Liz K. Lorde
My eyebrows went up when I remembered some of the other things that I’d heard throughout the years of living in the household of Ives.
“What?” She asked.
“Nothing,” I replied.
“Oh, Jessica,” she said, “nothing is always the furthest thing from it.”
“It’s just,” I started, and then chuckled to myself, balling my hands up against my thighs. “I remember hearing a lot of things. Like how you guys used to fight.”
She grumbled something low and nodded. “We did. Couples fight, sweetheart. You can fit together in every way and still want to rip each other’s throat clean off. Your dad mostly just did it to my clothes,” she shrugged.
“Oh, mom,” I closed my eyes and shook my head, wanting to throw my head into a bucket of bleach. “I don’t want to hear that.”
“Oh please,” she said, “like you said. You were a kid but you had ears!”
“Yeah well I can also choose not to listen!”
“Bullshit!” She argued, and we found each other wrapped up in our own apparent joy.
I didn’t want to lose her. Didn’t want these to be the last conversations that we would ever have. The anger found me again, the sorrow biting at my chest and sucking the energy right from my bones. I couldn’t let this be any longer, what kind of daughter am I? Unable to keep my mother in this world, the one that brought me into it.
“Jessica?” She asked, noticing that something was wrong. It was just too hard to come to terms with what’d happened to her. I remembered how she was; how she and dad were back in the day. Wearing her milk-white shorts with her hands firmly planted on her hip – the sun striking her hair in a way that made it look like captured fire.
“Sorry, just dozing off or somethin’ I guess.” But I wasn’t. I could feel the strings of my soul tightening, being pulled taut.
“Oh and now I’m boring?” She pretended to be hugely offended.
“Did Bernstein get back to you?” I asked.
She gestured no.
“Damn him, how many times did you call?”
“Tried six times at least the past few days. He won’t pick up.”
“This is such bullshit that they won’t cover you all the way. You’ve never missed a payment and you’ve never been god. Damn. SICK.” The last word came out in a rage and I threw my arms out in anger.
“Jessica—“
“No!” I shot out of my chair and immediately felt overcome with a dizzy sensation, a sickly warm feeling spreading through my body like an unstoppable disease.
I couldn’t even pretend to imagine how she felt. “It’s not right, mom.”
“I’m not saying it is but you need to keep your voice down.”
“I know,” I sighed, rubbing at the temples of my head now – I almost didn’t notice the stinging as I pinched away a warm tear. I sniffled and drew in as big a breath as I could. “I’m just tired of it,” I wasn’t looking at her anymore, maybe it was too painful to do so. “I’m tired of it, I’m so damn tired of it. I just can’t do this anymore – I just can’t have you here dying and wasting away.” Pacing became my newest friend. “Even at only twenty percent of the final bill, it’s more than I could make in years of work, even with what I’m doing now; it only might be just enough to have them start your treatment. And probably only towards the end of the year.”
Beatrice froze in her sick bed. We’d been fighters all of our lives, but fighting something you couldn’t touch or see or smell? Fighting something inside of you, there was nothing more impossible. She swallowed hard, “What are you doing?” She asked weakly and I swore that I could hear the smallest ray of hope. “It’s nothing I wouldn’t want you doing…is it?”
“No,” I snorted, “it’s nothing bad per se. I was offered a special project at the paper.”
“I always told you that you had talent, Jessica.”
“It’s not that,” I tried to brush the compliment off. I’d written a lot in college and DJ’d on the side, though in those days I was more about partying than worrying about earning a serious income. “The girl that was assigned the case got strep or something,” I said, “and I think my boss picked me because I’m a bit of a wild card, more so than for my actual writing merit.” I didn’t want to tell her that the status of her health definitely had a role to play in it.
“I see. What is it?”
I sidled back to my chair and sat down, trying to push away the draining moss that wrapped itself around me. “I’m tasked with the great duty of having to investigate a gang,” a club, I mentally corrected, “of bikers. Supposed to go into detail about how they’re dealing drugs and killing people and whatever other kind of dirt they might be into. I’m only certain that they’re pushing drugs right now,” I blabbed. “The pay’s really, really good though,” and the men are walking and breathing sex incarnate, of course.
“That sounds dangerous, Blue Jay. How’re you going to stay safe?” Her voice was thick with concern.
“Please mom,” I whined, “you know I can handle myself. Do you think I just walked up to these guys and announced I was here to screw them over?” That’s what I was doing, too. They’d fall if I kept digging and writing.
That vicious and cruel knife of hurt plunged itself deeper.
“You shouldn’t underestimate them,” Mom said, and then cleared her throat. She picked up her cup and drank deeply from it. “Sorry,” she needlessly apologize – I gestured that it wasn’t a problem. “People that break the law like you’re suggesting they do, they’re a different breed honey.” Mom sat the cup back down and clutched at her blanket, the book she was reading tumbling to her side. “It’s not worth getting hurt over, or worse.”
“It is,” I argued through grit teeth. “For you it always will be.”
“I’m not going to bury my daughter,” she whispered, her lip trembling almost imperceptibly. “Even if I wouldn’t be able to. I’m not going to bury you.”
“You won’t, momma,” I pleaded, getting up from my chair and moving over to her, leaning in and hugging her tightly.
She locked her arms around me and buried her face against my shoulder and neck. I’d do anything to take her pain away.
Even if it cost me the man that made my heart soar.
16
Jessica
Opening up the fresh bag of dog food, I poured the content of the stupidly heavy bag into my large plastic bin that I’d gotten years ago from a yard sale. Barristan sat patiently on his hind end beside me, his tail wagging up a little storm; a thoughtful rumble rolling from the dog’s chest. He always tended to do that. Kind of just grumble without opening his maw.
But I found it cute, and it was very much decidedly his thing. It helped to make him, him. “Okay buddy,” I said in sing-song, “it’s dinner time.” I grabbed the red scooper and plunged it into the sea of wood colored pellets, and then brought it over to his metallic bowl, which loosed a hundred tiny rings for every drop of food.
Barristan swaggered his way over to the dish and dutifully looked up towards me with those thankful brown eyes; they still reminded me of when he was just a puppy. The long-haired retriever dipped his head down to the bowl and started chowing down, his tail wagging dying down considerably – though it still thwacked my leg.
I gave the boy a couple of pats and strokes against the length of his back before heading over to the fridge, my sore and impatient muscles flaring up in pain once again. Pain was a strange thing like that. You get used to it, comfortable with it almost – but when you rest and find peace, when you stop thinking about it for long enough, it all comes roaring back at the slightest remembrance.
Staring at the handle of the fridge, I must have stood there for several minutes just spacing out. Focusing on my breathing, focusing on the constricting pains in my legs and the hurt dwelling deep in my heart – fighting off the crawling repulsion that the tiniest flicker of Jerry brought me.
Be strong. You are strong. I pushed out a long breath t
hrough my nostrils and then opened the fridge, grabbing the half gallon of milk and unscrewing the cap. I brought it to my nose and sniffed for cautions sake, even though I knew that I’d just bought it less than a week ago.
Good thing there was nobody around to judge. I brought the mouth of the opening to my lips and tilted my head back, spending a few seconds drinking it right out of the container.
After having my fill I wiped my mouth with a paper towel and discarded it into the trash, moving past Barristan who was still going to town on that late dinner. I brought my feet up to the wall and started undoing the laces, taking off my boots and tossing them with one hand sloppily towards the door.
One knock, from my boot hitting the wall. Then a second.
…And then a third. My eyebrows furrowed hard and I craned my head towards where I tossed the boots, and when I heard the knocking sound again – I honed in on my door. Just who the hell was that and why did they have the audacity to provoke me before I had the chance to plant my ass down and rest? I huffed to myself and announced aloud that I was going to the door.
The knocks just came louder, and the pulsing pain flanking either side of my head pounded in rhythm with it. “I said I’m coming!” I repeated myself and practically glided to the door, taking a peek through the seeing hole.
My heart stilled and the hair on the back of my neck stiffly bristled. Hunter was at my door and he looked to be bringing hell with him. I froze up and a dozen thoughts raced through the mental maze of my mind, I wanted to let him in and I wanted to tell him to go away – I wanted to rip off his clothes and I wanted to ignore him completely.
“It’s Hunter,” he called out in that gruff, if not impatient, voice.
Barristan loped over to my side and looked between myself and the door as if to ask: aren’t you going to let my new favorite friend in? If only things were as simple as you made them out to be, Barry.
“I can’t let you inside,” I croaked, the shame cloaking itself over me. What are you doing? You have to let him in, he’s your connection to the club.
“What?” He sounded confused, “why the hell not? Are you alright?” His voice thick with concern, “you left without a word this morning…I mean you already know that, but still.”
“I know,” I replied, spying the chain lock on my door. I have to do this, I scolded. I have to do this for mom, for her treatments – for her bills. Even if it feels so damn wrong. I’m lying to this man, I’m pretending that I – that we can be together even through the absurdity of it all.
“Jessica,” his voice smoldered with anger and curiosity and hurt. “Please,” he said, “let me in?”
I considered it for a terribly long moment, feeling my heart tap against my breastbone as Barristan looked up to me with that adorable face. I turned my head back over to the door, “Alright,” I conceded, pushing out a breath through my nose and undoing the lock on the door, opening it for the man.
He stood there in all his glory, his pale blue eyes cutting me down without so much as a blink. Hunter was dressed up in his leather jacket, a gray shirt beneath it and a torn up pair of faded blue denim for pants. “What happened?” He asked as he purposefully strode inside of my apartment.
I shut the door behind him as Barristan sniffed at the man’s dark boots, “I just…I had to get out of there. What happened shouldn’t have happened,” the words came out in a tangled mess.
“That’s not how you felt last night,” Hunter reminded. He wasn’t wrong.
I turned to face him, “I was drunk,” I tried to brush it all off.
“Not the whole damn night,” he said, “not to the point of blacking out. You did plenty of consenting to this so called mistake,” he made little air quotes before puffing out his chest.
“Yes, but it’s not a so called mistake,” I mirrored his gesture, “it was a mistake,” I stepped closer to the man, my eyes hanging on his lips.
“So that’s how you wanted to leave things? That’s it, huh? You just gonna throw it all away?” He raised his voice to the point of which it practically boomed across my petite household. Barristan laid down dutifully between the two of us.
“There’s nothing to throw away. We had fun. That’s all.”
“Bull. Shit. I’ve had plenty of fun in my time, and what we had last night was not fun. We had something special, and I’m not just talking about the sex – and you what, never intended to see me again? Is that what you hoped, Jessica? I’m not so easy to toss out,” he spat with a caustic venom, “not just some toy. Trust me on that.”
“I—“ dammit all to hell, “no. I did want to see you again,” I admitted, a flourish of heat sprouting within me, “I loved everything about that perfect night.”
Hunter drifted closer automatically, his eyes pinioning me in my place.
“There are things about me that you don’t know, that you shouldn’t know,” I thought for a moment of my mother, “things that nobody should have to know.”
“I want to know those things,” Hunter lowered his voice, “all of it,” he said. “I want to know everything that I can about you.”
“Why?” I asked and it sounded so stupid when the word left my mouth, I sounded completely dumbfounded like I couldn’t even fathom how the man had anything more than a cursory interest in my existence. I rubbed my index and thumb together in a nervous tic.
“Why? Because, well,” for once Hunter was the one cursed with a tying of tongues. “It’s pathetic,” he announced quietly, cutting himself down before he even began.
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
His eyes rounded slightly and he looked away for a moment, over towards the dog, and then back to me. “The time we’ve spent together? Some of the best moment’s I’ve ever been lucky enough to have – and I don’t want them to end here because you’re feeling uncertain,” Hunter was nearly against me now, save for the maybe two feet at best that separated our bodies. “I want you, and I want you to be certain that you want me – and I’ll pay any price to earn that sweet smile I could drink in for a lifetime and never tire of.”
I brought the tips of my fingers to my mouth, resting the elbow of that arm against the arm that I draped just below my chest. Every inch of my body glowed in this man’s presence, and that’s precisely the moment that I knew: I was in too deep. “I want to be certain too,” I admitted in a cowardly tone, “you make me a puddle of just about damn near everything. But, I don’t, I don’t normally do that, what I did – what we did. Not with just any man.”
Hunter closed the last gap between us and brought a hand to my waist, pulling me into him – the gravity of his character seducing every fiber of my being. “I am not just any man,” he husked, his blue eyes searching mine for a brief moment.
And then his lips crashed hard and hot against my own, and everything that I ever thought that I knew about love flew out the window.
17
Jessica
We stumbled across the room in a clumsy frenzy of kissing and explorative touching and gasps, making a symphony of desire all our own. I did my best to guide us toward the bedroom, but all we could seem to do was end up running into walls.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you, baby,” Hunter husked, barely managing to pull himself from me. He grabbed me by the neckline of my shirt and pushed me firmly against the wall, pressing his hard body against mine.
“You haunted me all day,” I whispered, finding his lips once more and embracing him long and deep, our smacking sounds filling the air. A great rush of warmth flooded my core, and a tight golf-ball sized hole of need made itself known. Even just his lips were enough to waken up my nipples; they were tingling with awesome delight and stiffening for every beat of my heart.
“Good,” he crooned and then a deep, joyous laugh vibrated from his broad chest.
The laughter was infectious, “If you stop acting like a randy teenager that just discovered tits for two seconds…”
He pawed at my breasts again, this time with
a renewed vigor.
I loosed a moan and stepped away from him, grabbing his wrist and tugging him towards the bedroom, “This way,” I said whimsically.
If the door to my bedroom had feelings and we were in some alternate universe, we’d have probably made it want to rest on the couch and sob into a beach bucket of Rocky Road for the way we treated it; crashing past it and collapsing onto my wonderful bed. Hunter pinioned me against the soft white blanket and pristinely kept sheets, the foam of the mattress taking in my shape and forming lines around me. His hands swept through my hair as he assaulted me with kisses and whispers of sweet affections.
My hand found the bulge against his pants, rubbing it up and down and causing my lady parts to get further and further excited. I frantically worked at the stupid button of his jeans, the silent protector that was getting in the way between me and satisfaction so glorious I’d expect angels to shine a light and blow trumpets.
Hunter moved his face from mine and chuckled, clearly noticing my frustrations.
“Condom,” I breathed, looking up into his eyes – feeling my nose flare just a tad, “now.”
“You’re bossy when you need it,” he noted, planting another hard kiss on my lips, devouring all that I was and stealing my breath from me. He kissed all down my jaw and neck, straddling me after a moment and undoing his jeans, stripping himself of all his clothes. What remained was a pure, toned body of muscle and tattooed flesh – his erect cock pulsing in attention.
“I’m bossy because I need this,” I whined, grabbing ahold of his thick shaft and stroking at it – an almost dizzy kind of lightheadedness overcoming me. “I need you,” I bit down on my lip so hard I feared that I might draw blood, my clit fully alive with ever ripening desire. Even the slightest movement against my panties, against the bed, was enough to send chills up the back of my neck.
Hunter smirked and pushed my hand away, removing my clothes in a right quickness – leaving my naked body exposed and ready for the taking. “God, I could never get enough of seeing you naked.”