“You always look at me like I’m the last woman in the world,” she said.
“And what if you are?” I asked, squeezing my hands around her waist.
The smile was shy, and she played with the ends of her mermaid hair. “You really shouldn’t say things like that, you know.”
“Why not?” My hand traced the line of her hip, over her side, up to the center of her chest between full, rounded breasts. Her heart thundered underneath my fingertips, and I had to wonder, if I lingered long enough, would I feel it saying the same thing as mine? A ventricular Morse code.
“You’re going to make it really hard to say goodbye.”
So, don’t. “Maybe it’s supposed to be hard.”
Her lips parted in a shallow gasp, and the sun caught the dew glistening in her eyes. My hand crept up the length of her neck, cupped her cheek, and I eased myself into a seated position. Chest against chest. Heart to heart. I pressed my lips to hers in a kiss that should have felt more wonderful than painful, but bittersweet memories from the past few days seeped into the moment. They coalesced with the dull agonizing ache in my chest, twisted the knife, and before her tongue could taste my lips, I pulled back.
“What?” she asked, pressing her forehead to mine.
I forced a smile, kissed the tip of her nose, and eased her from my lap. “I, ehm … I just need to brush my teeth,” and I rolled out of bed to find myself within the security of the bathroom walls.
“What are ya doin’ Sean?” I whispered to my reflection. He stared back, equally clueless. “This was such a feckin’ mistake.”
I said the words out loud, to make myself believe it, in the way that simple words can make us believe in things like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. But there was no magic in believing she was something not meant to happen, and the result was the irritating prick of tears at the back of my eyes. I sat on the edge of the bathtub, pushing tired hands through my hair.
When did I last feel afraid of that William Fuller statue?
I couldn’t remember.
It was her, and that wasn’t a mistake.
I left the bathroom and went back to the bed. My t-shirt had swallowed her slender frame, blonde hair piled into a bun of disarray, and a book laid open on her lap. She bit at a thumbnail as she read, engrossed in the story, and I sat down. She looked up, fresh-faced and free of makeup, and smiled.
“You okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“You have that look again, like you’re going to write more poetry for me,” she said, laughter cinching the corners of her eyes.
“I haven’t written a single poem, I’ll have ya know,” I said, reaching out to stroke her cheek with my thumb. I could never touch her enough.
“Would you write one for me?”
The request pushed me to cock my head, but I nodded. “For you, I’ll write a book of ‘em.”
“I just want one,” she said, leaning forward to kiss me.
I was ready. I was ready to ask her to stay, to never leave, but then she surprised me with mind-reading abilities. “You know I have to leave Sean.”
“I’m not makin’ ya leave,” I assured her, in case that made a difference.
“My parents want me home,” she said, and I heard the regret.
“What happened to livin’ your life for you?” I asked, unable to fight the bite in my tone. “What do you want?”
She shook her head, leaning back against the pillow she had been using. I could picture myself, alone again, holding that pillow while I slept. “It doesn’t matter what I want Sean. It never has. They want me to go home, and make a new life for myself.”
“Ya can make a life here.”
“What? With you?” She laughed, and it hurt. “Sean, we’re having fun. We’re both sad, sorry people who have allowed ourselves to fall into a shitty routine due to different circumstances, and we agreed to do whatever we wanted for one week. But after this week is over, we have to get back to our lives. We can’t live in this fantasy world forever.”
“And what if it isn’t a fantasy? What if this is your last chance at livin’ the life you want?” I threw at her. God, my voice sounded restricted, twisted with the tangle of emotions tying themselves around my heart and my guts.
Lindsey shook her head and lowered her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does!” I reached forward, grabbed her chin, lifted it. Her eyes blinked rapidly at the sight of mine, tears welling, and I swallowed. “Did somethin’ happen while I was sleepin’?”
She shook her head, wiping at her eyes. “This was always the plan, Sean.”
“No, somethin’ changed. Things were good, things were—”
“Things weren’t real! They never were! God, why are you doing this right now?”
My mouth clamped down, pinning lips between teeth, and I nodded. I stood up from the bed, still nodding, and I grabbed my dirty clothes from the floor. Nodding. So much nodding. I got dressed, pulled on my boots, and didn’t bother announcing my departure as I grabbed my keys and slammed the door.
Because she had made it very clear that things weren’t real, and so, neither was she.
❧
I went to work.
I had taken the week, but I went to work, because, what else was there? Ryan and Patrick were working. Jules was working security at Harold’s. Everybody was at work, living their lives, while I was out living in some fairytale land of make-believe where men fell for women in less than a week and wrote verbal poems about Goats-beard.
What a stupid feckin’ name. Goats-beard.
I stared at the lit screen of the register, and Jules knocked on my counter. I looked up at him from behind my glasses, and he shook his head.
“This sexy nerd thing works for you brother.”
“It’s not intentional,” I grumbled, tapping along the screen with no particular destination in mind.
“Oh, really? I thought you wanted to come into work wearing your laundry basket and smelling like sex. My bad.”
I groaned, scrubbing both hands over my face. “I left in a hurry.”
He nodded. “You need a drink,” he stated with a light punch on my shoulder. “After work? Or do you have to be home for dinner with the missus?”
“Go to hell. I’ll meet ya at the Tavern.”
❧
And so, we sat together in that secluded booth, where Lindsey and I had first crawled through the proverbial wardrobe into our Narnia. I vividly remembered the moment: her golden hair weaved into the first braid I had seen her wear, the flickering candlelight across her features, the very beginnings of that stirring within my soul. With my face in my hands, I relayed the morning with Lindsey to Jules, through to my hurried escape without a shower or breakfast, and he nodded. Sipping his beer as I talked, listening in the way a best friend should, and when I was finished, he nudged my Guinness toward my hand.
“You drink. I’ll talk.”
“Don’t gotta tell me twice,” I mumbled under my breath, tipping the bottle back. I wouldn’t get drunk. I never got drunk, but …
Feck it. Maybe I would get drunk. Maybe I’d get completely blasted, just to forget the deluge of emotional hellfire raining over my head.
“She wants you to write her poetry and worship her body all day long, but she doesn’t want you to be anything more to her than some week-long fantasy boyfriend? Do I have that straight? Just nod if I’m right.” I shrugged and nodded, enjoying it less when he spelt it out like that. Jules chuckled, and shook his head. “Bro, she is so full of shit, man. It’s not even funny.
“Listen, my guess is, she got it bad the minute she saw you. Like one of those lame chick flicks Naomi has me watching. You know, like, um … Serendipity or You’ve Got Mail or some shit. But this Lindsey chick probably had already made these plans with her folks before she met you, right? So, now what is she supposed to do? Call them up and tell them she met the man of her dreams, who happens to be this Irish nerd w
ho sells mattresses for a living, but he’s a fuckin’ wizard with his mouth?”
“I never said—”
Jules tapped his finger against my bottle. “Did I say you could speak? Keep drinkin’.”
I rolled my eyes, but kept listening. I was a great listener.
“And what the fuck is wrong with you man, that you won’t speak up about this shit? Women want to hear this shit, bro! You tell her she looks like a fuckin’ flower, but you won’t tell her you want her to stay? And making suggestions doesn’t count, dude. You have to tell … her, man. You have to go up to her and say, “Rapunzel, I am falling hopelessly in love with your fine ass, and, if you are feeling anything like what I’ve got going on in this little Leprechaun heart of mine, I wish you’d reconsider.’”
I laughed, finding my smile underneath all those goddamn feelings I had never intended to have. “I don’t think it’s that simple, man.”
“Seanie,” he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “I never gave you permission to speak, but I’m gonna let it slide this time. Bro, it really is that simple. God, you have some backwards shit goin’ on in that head of yours. And this is why I get all the ladies and you can’t manage to keep one.”
He shook his head, clapped a beefy hand against my back. “God, man, I love you like a brother, you know that, and I’m telling you this from the bottom of my heart: Grow a fuckin’ pair of balls and do what you have to do, to tell her what you’re feeling, and preferably in that suit. I can’t believe I even have to tell you this crap, man. I mean, shit …”
❧
I opened the door, kicked off my shoes, and found Lindsey at the kitchen table. She looked up at me with swollen bleary eyes, and it took her all of two seconds to jump up and rush over to me. Her arms were wrapped around my waist, and her face was pressed to my chest. Tears soaked through my t-shirt, dampening the hair on my chest.
My arms circled her shoulders, holding her close. “Lindsey, come on …”
“I-I realized I don’t even know your phone number,” she said between watery sobs.
I angrily pinched my eyes shut. What a feckin’ arsehole. “That’s my fault. Christ, I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t know where you were, and I had nobody to call, and … I went to the deli, because you said Kinsey worked there, and—”
I gripped her shoulders, pulling her away. “You went to my family?”
She nodded, sniffling. “I didn’t know what else to do. I’m sorry, I was—”
Shaking my head, I said, “No, no … Don’t apologize. It’s fine. I just … You felt ya could turn to my family.” The magnitude of symbolism was far from lost on me, and I wasn’t sure she could see it. “What did Kinsey say?”
Lindsey reached into her pocket. “She said you’re an ass, just like your brother, and she gave me your number, but … you were so upset, I didn’t know if I should call, and I—”
There she was. The scared girl inside that wild field of goldenrod and Goats-beard. Timid and worrying her fingers around the scrap of paper, already thin and worked from hours of anxious fiddling.
I shook my head, lowering my gaze to hers. “Hey,” I said. “You never, ever need to be afraid of talkin’ to me. Ever.”
She nodded and stepped forward. Skirting the edges of affection with a gentle rub of her nose against mine. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, brushing her lips over mine.
I nodded, tangling my fingers in her hair, and resolving to not bring up the desperate topic just yet. “I’m sorry too.”
Words dangled between us, forehead against forehead. I held her to me as my kisses coaxed the moans from her mouth. Pressed a hand to the curve of her lower back, pushed her into me. Arms looped around my neck, legs encircled my hips, and with arms more powerful than I ever imagined, I carried her to the bedroom.
It wasn’t sex. It wasn’t fucking, and it wasn’t fantasy.
It was raw, it was desperate. It was real.
She clung to my skin with the fear of letting go, knowing again what it was like to be purely alone in this world. She sunk her teeth into my shoulder, clawed at my back, fought against those imagined chains as her soul tethered itself to mine. I felt it, every threading of the needle, every tightened stitch. And when her brown eyes finally opened, I knew she had felt it too.
And all I could wonder was, what the feck was I going to do to make her stay?
❧
That night, as I laid in bed, drenched in a sex-sated daze and darkness, I drew slow, patient circles over the soft arm wrapped around my waist. Lindsey’s deep, even breaths pushed and pulled her breasts from my side. Pressing, retreating. She had fallen asleep fifteen, twenty minutes ago, thoroughly and perfectly satisfied by every part of me capable of bringing her to orgasm, and I wished I could follow suit. To find her in my dreams, just to spend more time with her.
But that feckin’ mind of mine …
It woke up while she was asleep. When she was both there and somewhere far away.
I realized, living actually wasn’t so great. Living kicked the clock into high-gear. How was it already almost Thursday? How had time slipped through my fingers so quickly, despite my constant attempts to put the brakes on?
Or was it the falling that did all that?
Because I was falling.
No—I had fallen.
I was in love with Lindsey Molloy, and nothing else about me made sense anymore.
The very act of meeting her, of allowing her to temporarily share my space, of putting aside my worries … It was chaos, and it was beautifully out of control. Beards and pancakes. My brain spun with my inability to look beyond life with her, and the only thing I found myself afraid of, was telling her.
And then … letting her go.
CHAPTER TEN |
Birthdays & Temporary Girlfriends
Thursday
The sun didn’t reach all of River Canyon on Thursday.
It stayed in my apartment, while clouds and rain touched the rest of the town. I saw its residents through the window, bustling with their coats and rain-slicked umbrellas, hurrying to reach their destinations. I chuckled, remembering the town law Mayor Connie Fischer had set into place, that no cars were allowed to line Main Street. Everybody had been so on board, until the first rainfall. They weren’t so pleased then, and I bet they weren’t all that pleased now.
Lindsey was lying on the couch, legs outstretched, a book in hand. I watched her from my chair, next to the window in my kitchen. I saw as she grinned and wiggled her toes excitedly, anxious to turn the page. Shifting her legs from side to side.
“Is this part of that livin’ thing ya were talkin’ about?” I asked, disrupting her sacred reading time, and she promptly shushed me. “Oh, so sorry to interrupt ya, your Highness,” I said, dropping my voice to a whisper.
She dropped her book against her thighs and looked over at me. “Sean,” she said my name with disgust, and I laughed. “This is actually the perfect way to spend a rainy day.”
“It’s one way you can spend a rainy day,” I pointed out, “but I wouldn’t call it the perfect way.” I stood from my chair and walked over to the couch to kneel at her side. “To me, the perfect way to spend this day would be to have my face buried between these legs, worshippin’ your body until I don’t have a choice but to come up for air.”
Her cheeks pinked, and I leaned in to kiss the place where her heart palpitated at the base of her throat. A giggle escaped her lips and floated to my ears, and she gently pushed me away. “You know, when I met you on Sunday, I had no idea you were such a sexual deviant.”
“Deviant?” And I laughed, running a hand through my hair.
“Yes! The second we started getting physical, it’s all you want to do. You couldn’t keep your hands off of me last night—”
“Hey, that was makeup sex,” I pointed out with a grin.
“Oh, of course. Silly me,” she laughed and tossed one of her socks at me. I caught it and let the soft fabric thread t
hrough my hands. “You’re lucky the sex is good, which is also a surprise, by the way. I would’ve guessed you to be a fumbling idiot in bed.”
“It’s always the ones you don’t expect, that turn out bein’ the best,” I said, cocksure and all grins.
“No, I’m pretty sure you thought I’d be amazing,” she teased, crooking a finger under my chin and leaning toward me. Kissing me. Nursing that ache that seemed to be growing by the second in the pit of my chest. Breathing life to that fear of saying goodbye.
“You’ve got me there,” I said, muffled against her mouth. My hand slid across her thigh to ease between her legs, and she hummed her approval. “See? Ya already want me.”
“I don’t think,” she kissed me, “I could ever not,” kissed me again, “want you.”
“What happened to reading?” I asked, teasing as my hand worked its way under the waistband of her little shorts.
“Well, suddenly, I can think of a more perfect way to spend a rainy day.” Her mouth pushed against mine, tasting my lips with her tongue, and she pushed those tiny, cumbersome shorts off.
I grabbed her hips. Pulled her to the edge of the couch, and made good on my promise.
With a mouth desperate to please, I manipulated her through a blend of tongue, lips, and teeth. I licked and sucked, while she pulled my hair. I probed and prodded, while she dug her fingers into my shoulders. I bit and devoured, while her head fell back against the couch, chanting and moaning my name like it were a prayer. And it was only then, when her legs eased their grip around me that I came up for air, breathing her in and breathing her out.
“Oh my God,” she panted, thrusting a hand into her hair. “That mouth …”
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