by J. C. Allen
Well, the good news is it did remind me. But the bad news was sexual arousal and thought wasn’t something that was really enjoyed alone, at least certainly not when I had someone who could provide an emotional bond to compliment it. So, after only getting halfway through the exhibit, I left.
This was dumb, I thought, but I realized even as I had this thought that I was thinking of this incorrectly. These spots, on their own, didn’t have any connection to Derek. I would have enjoyed the history museum even if I’d never met Derek, and I certainly would have enjoyed the library without his company. While I appreciated it, it didn’t magically make these locations special.
But… there was one place that did. One that I wished I’d just gone straight to—one that would take up something close to a full afternoon, but one that would give me the emotional happiness and nostalgia I was looking for.
His old home.
I thought about asking Matty for a second ride—he’d given me one to the history museum—but that seemed a bit much to ask of him, especially since he kept grumbling about how he hated to not be on his bike yet. That, and it wasn’t like going to Samsville was the same as going to the nearby 7/11.
Instead, I found the nearest bus station and sat there, quickly looking up the route and seeing I needed to take the 72M Bus to get to Samsville. I put my phone down, looked around, and had a strange but warm feeling.
No one was gawking at me. No one was giving me the look of shame for being dressed like a hooker, because I was. I still was underdressed compared to some of the classier patrons of the museum, but I looked more like a college student who hadn’t bothered to give much thought to their outfit instead of a young professional.
Which, given that’s where I had come from just before Chuck had sold me into a slut’s life, seemed kind of appropriate.
I did see one guy approach, appearing to give me a look, with sunglasses and a baseball hat on. I gave him a few looks but he didn’t seem to reciprocate the glances—although with his sunglasses on, that was an impossible thing to conclude. He stood at the edge of the bus stop, leaned against it, and began texting something on his phone.
It seemed a bit odd—he definitely did not look like the kind of guy who wanted to be noticed or identified—but I had much more important things to worry about. I felt pretty confident he wasn’t a Black Falcons spy, anyways. He didn’t carry himself with the swagger and arrogance that their kind usually did—it seemed more almost scared and fidgety.
The bus arrived a short while later and I sat near the front. The man moved to the very back and I lost interest in keeping track of him, figuring if he wanted to keep tabs on me, he would have sat closer to me. Instead, I let my mind wander, thinking of how nice it was to be on a bus for reasons other than hurrying to work.
I’m traveling. Well, kind of.
But I’m free. I’m free to go here. I’m going to Samsville because I want to and because I can, not because Rock has forced me to. Not because I had a John there. But because I want to.
Briefly, another thought flashed to mind—can you really claim independence in action if Derek brought you here?—but I ignored it. I loved Derek, and I didn’t need to justify this decision if I had love as the reason. I smiled, ran my fingers through my hair, and let out a soft sigh thinking about that handsome, handsome man… who had better wake up soon before I sent Tara in on him.
A man sitting across the aisle from me saw my self-congratulating and offered a strange leer of his own, one that would have been all teeth… if he’d had any teeth to begin with.
Just like that, I was missing Derek even more and missing the privacy our rides on his motorcycle.
Goddamnit. Freedom is pretty fleeting when you get some old fuckin’ creeps looking at you like they’d look at a fresh piece of meat.
I put the thoughts behind me, though, as I began to think about Derek and his bike.
There was peace and joy and freedom with him, and, on his motorcycle, there was flying. That was not metaphorical, either—the way Derek took some hills, I truly felt the wheels lift off the ground, giving me the sensation of flying, if only for a few seconds. And while the first time it had almost literally scared me to death, the times since had brought a feeling of breathlessness, heaven, and complete safety.
Unlike this bus.
Shit, I really need to do a better job of controlling those negative thoughts.
Here, on this bus, there was a stress-inducing labyrinth of routes and schedules and, on board, an overwhelming sense of being on display to the wrong sort of people. It was, unfortunately, not an unfamiliar sensation.
Though it wasn’t a street corner and I was most certainly not hooking anymore, nor did I ever, ever intend to go back to such a life, I couldn’t help but feel like a juicy, blood-red piece of meat. And, just like when I was hooking, the sorts of people that were prone to ogle weren’t exactly the sort I’d ever want to display myself to.
Not that I’m displaying myself for anybody besides Derek.
But if Derek wasn’t here? I’d sooner pleasure a woman than some of the “men” on this bus.
Considering all of this, I remembered all the times Tara and I had taken the bus to our corner, already fully donned in our outfits. I thought that anybody seeing us would have no problem figuring out what we were and where we were off to, but now, dressed in a pair of comfortable khakis and a loose-fitting tee, I imagined that anybody who might have ridden one of those late-night busses with me and Tara wouldn’t even recognize me now. It was crazy how much things had changed in only a week’s time.
The follow-up thought that came was wondering if I had serviced any of these men myself in the half-year or so that I had worked the streets. That seemed unlikely—I had repeat customers, and even if I had ten clients a day, over six months, that only would come out to a little over fifteen hundred men in that time. I also really didn’t remember many clients, save for the especially unusual ones—the boy whose dad watched, the John who asked me if I was a whore or not, the last man who had bought me…
In any case, I only really cared to remember or think about one man now.
Derek.
Damnit, Derek, you should be here.
I’ll take you being in my thoughts, though.
Taking some comfort in thinking of him, I decided to close myself off from the outside world and replay the fondest memories I had of him—of us. In a testament to the kind of man Derek was, there was no shortage of happy memories to dwell upon, to say nothing of the town I was about to visit. I gazed out the window, replaying everything from start-to-finish and bringing myself back around to the present as the bus continued on, leaving the urban sprawl behind in favor of trees, homes, and the occasional street of restaurants.
The rest of the trip was enough to get my mind off of all the ugly thoughts I’d dredged up early in the journey. At one point, a woman got up and left behind an issue of Cosmopolitan that listed fifty-nine “erotically different” positions to try. I made a game out of challenging each of the fifty-nine ideas, realizing most of them were either weak variations on the same thing. Almost half of them were total nonsense, and of the ones that had any merit to them only a half-dozen seemed even remotely promising.
Deciding that the woman who’d wrote the article had obviously never consulted a man—I’d honestly be surprised if she’d ever even tried all of what she was suggesting—I began to play with the idea of writing one of these myself.
While my whoring days were over, I figured there was nothing wrong in carrying what I’d learned over to educate other women. If nothing else I’d be doing a service—without actually doing any service—to the men those women went on to hook up with. I had the experience, after all. A little too much experience… but it wasn’t like… there was no reason…
The fuck, Eve? You wanted to be a finance major at one point and work in banking and now you want to go and be a sex writer? You’re just a whore with your fingers instead of your pussy if y
ou do that.
C’mon. Focus on what you had wanted to do. When Derek gets better, you two can have a long talk about your future and how you can make it happen. There’s literally zero reason you can’t get a job in banking like you planned to—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but in the future for sure.
Have some belief in yourself. Don’t just settle. Remember who you were, Eve Kellerman.
A strong woman.
Tucking the idea away so I would ideally and hopefully never have to consider it again, I glanced back out the window as the familiar landmarks of the small town came into view. A few of the “taller” buildings—ones over two stories—poked up in the distance ahead.
I found myself getting excited. It was packed, which not only meant I was likely to be safe from the eyes and ears of the Falcons, I would also feed off of the energy of the area. Though I wasn’t sure how likely it would be that any members of the Black Falcons might be out this far, I knew that none would dare attempt anything so stupid as a shootout in a street like this.
I was a target, but I wasn’t the target.
Derek is.
I grimaced as the bus finally came to a stop. The hydraulics hissed as the street seemed to rise up. Finally, the doors opened, the sound of life and activity slipped in to greet me, and I made my way out.
Stepping off the bus, I paused to look around, appreciating how different everything looked this time around. Though it had also been daylight, today actually felt brighter, even without Derek by my side. The main street had been closed off to traffic, and all of the shops and businesses had either been operating outdoors or featuring a great deal of their goods out on the street.
While much was different, I still got a very homey and comfortable impression of community from the stretch. Realizing I was smiling, I started on down the road, letting my eyes lead my way as my heart would thump whenever it saw something I recognized.
And, as I made my way down, I decided it was worth exploring things and stores I didn’t recognize for a slightly different reason.
I’d made a loose decision, though I wasn’t sure quite when the decision had been made, to get something for Derek while I was out this way. The decision, existing like an apple bobbing about in a washbasin of water, had been there for quite some time, though every time I tried to grab at it for a specific idea of what to get, it would sink away into dark depths and refuse to come back up until I abandoned the effort. I mean, what did a girl like me get a man who could buy almost anything he wanted himself?
Wandering the stretch all over again, however, it dawned on me that I already knew what to get him; in some ways, I’d known ever since the night Derek had first taken me here. Satisfied that I had a plan, I committed to enjoying myself for the time being until I finally came upon my decided target.
Stepping over to a vendor selling a variety of chocolates, I bought myself a small bag of candied brownies. Once again walking through the market, I thought back to my date with Derek here.
“There’s a couple here—a family, I should say—who are here every year selling these candied brownies. I think they’re, like, the second or third generation to carry on the recipe, and I can remember my old man taking us here when I was a kid. Those brownies are something of a tradition for me. They have a hell of a sugar kick, but—”
“And that’s the only kind of high I’m going to get, huh?”
“Get high on life, Eve, and enjoy it.”
Well, Derek, I was getting high on life, and I was enjoying it so very much. I was free, I was free to get high, and I was free to get high in the corny dad-joke kind of way.
I smiled at the memory, continuing to look around the market. I saw the various vendors that I remember passing by but not really stopping at—the stores which I thought I’d have to visit on a second pass but just hadn’t gotten around to.
Then, finally, I happened across what I’d been hunting for.
The vendor, a local photographer who’d made a career out of traveling and snapping pictures abroad, still operated from a kiosk on the side of the road. A fair number of prints hung like fruit from a tree with no real symmetry or reason to their placement, and a small pang of worry started to creep up my spine as I realized I couldn’t find what I’d decided to come here for. I was growing evermore certain I’d have to begin an awkward line of questioning with the photographer to track down the particular image.
And then, there it was.
“I’ve been here before.”
“Really? Where is this?”
Even as the thought played out in my mind, I could picture Derek speaking to me, telling me what it was that he had discovered. It flashed in my mind, bringing a smile as his words returned.
“It was a small fisherman town in Rome. My family went on a vacation there before my brother graduated high school. We ended up getting lost and stopped at a small restaurant to get something to eat and get our bearings. The view we had from there wasn’t much different than this picture, actually.”
“Wow, that sounds amazing. I’ve actually never left the States. I always wanted to travel, but never got around to it.”
“You still could.”
I still could, I mouthed to myself.
Smiling just as much in response to the memory as at the find, I grabbed the photograph and stepped over to the vendor. My smile only grew as I paid for the purchase, parting with it only long enough to let it be bagged and returned to me, and I practically skipped off, holding it to my chest. I don’t think I’d ever so valued a photo in my life—hell, I don’t think I’d ever valued a possession so strongly in my life.
“You still could.”
The words held promise of an adventure yet to come, of a life that we’d be sharing. This picture, something I’d wanted to give to Derek even on that first night but had no way of offering, would be a symbol of both what had been as well as what would be.
“You still could.”
I wanted to do that. I wanted to go all around the world with Derek. My hand went to the pendant—the bird captured in mid-flight—against my neck, the one he’d gotten me that night from another vendor, and I gently squeezed it as memories and plans swirled in an excited storm within me.
Freedom. The pendant and all the memories of the night that brought it to me, the events with Derek, and everything I dreamed we could do together…
It all made me feel so free.
“You still could.”
No, Derek.
We still could. We.
As I continued through the market, I looked around at various shops and stores and all of the items they offered, wondering if I should buy anything else for Derek. I looked back down at the photograph and ran my thumb over the edge that poked out from the bag, imagining myself there, in Rome, with Derek.
I was so entranced with the fantasy that I could almost smell the sea water. I stopped at a nearby bridge, overlooking the river that flowed through—fresh water, but a reminder all the same of what I was going to. I closed my eyes, letting my sense of smell overtake me.
I opened them, looked right, and the smile wiped off my face.
That same guy, the one who had worn the sunglasses before and the baseball hat, approached me with what could only be described as a lecherous smile on his face. I took a quick glance around us to make sure that I was surrounded—I was, but it never felt like enough, not without the Savage Saviors nearby—and stared at him.
“Can I help you?” I said.
The man came about three feet away from me, close enough that he could have grabbed the bag and ran off with it. I squatted down slightly, prepared to sprint or throw a defensive kick if need be.
“I’m sorry, but do I know you?” I said.
My voice was sounding far more aggressive than I had intended it to, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? Months of getting approached by creepy men and days of having the freedom made me especially paranoid and hating of the idea of having any unwanted advances from
any men. If it was too aggressive, it was better than the alternative.
“Hah,” the man said.
Even just that, the voice sounded deathly familiar. Like…
“Looks like you’re letting your mind wander,” he said. Oh no. It’s… “Eh… sis?”
The familiar voice was like a dark claw rocketing up from those black-and-white waters—something too dark and far too sinister to grace the scene in my mind—and yanked me back into the unforgiving depths of reality. The unforgiving depths of reality, where I was supposed to be keeping an eye out—where I was supposed to be mindful of my surroundings—so I didn’t wind up back on a street corner or, worse yet, wind up dead.
But this…
I froze at the voice, not wanting to believe I was hearing correctly.
It couldn’t be…
He was in prison…
Dramatically and slowly, the man—I knew his name, I just wanted to deny it as long as I could—removed first his hat, revealing a shorter buzz that allowed for some doubt compared to his normal curly hair.
But then he removed his sunglasses, and I knew even on the day that I became Rock’s slave, I would never forget how the most evil eyes I’d ever stared at belonged to a family member.
And now, those eyes stared right at me. Stared through me. Stared into me.
I hadn’t been wrong, no matter how badly I wanted it to be so.
It was my brother.
It was Chuck.
“No…”
I blinked, shaking my head a bit, still trying to figure out how this could be, and took a cautious step back.
“Not even a hello, huh,” he said, but he didn’t sound in the least bit hurt by it—instead, sounding more like he relished the chance to mock me and harass me for having anything but perfect manners. Not that that would have spared me either.
* * *
My brother met my one-step retreat with a one-step advance of his own, but…