Wuther

by V. J. Chambers

  She skipped to him, and he opened his arms to her.

  She melted into his embrace, his lips finding hers, the sensation of his fingers on her skin slicing through her, making her go weak.

  But she still saw Eli, standing in the open door. Watching.

  Heath saw him too. He smirked.

  He shoved her into the truck, tossing his cigarette on the ground. He climbed in after her.

  And then his mouth was on hers again, and she was lost to him. To the world.

  * * *

  Cathy’s dress was pushed down around her waist, and Heath was staring at her.

  Cathy giggled shyly. She was lying under him in the cab of the truck. They were parked on the farm, out in the fields on one of the back roads.

  He wasn’t sure exactly how he’d ended up like this.

  He thought he’d just done it. Just picked up the straps on the dress and eased it over her shoulder. She hadn’t stopped him. And she hadn’t been wearing a bra.

  And now he was supposed to be doing something, wasn’t he?

  But he was just looking at her.

  “Heath?” Her hand on his chest. He wasn’t wearing a shirt either, if it came to that.

  “Uh huh.” He was whispering. He was pretty sure she was whispering too, but he wasn’t sure about that. He was a little distracted at the moment.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled at her.

  She smiled back.

  He kissed her. His bare chest brushed her breasts.

  She gasped.

  He gasped.

  He kissed his way down her body, trailing down her neck, over her collar bone, across the swell of them. He kissed one of her nipples.

  She moaned softly.

  His crotch throbbed.

  He gathered her breasts into his hands, rubbing his thumbs over them. They were so soft. He hadn’t realized that anything could be quite that soft and wonderful.

  She kept moaning through it. Her moans got louder and louder.

  He liked making her do that.

  He kept making her moan. He kept touching her, kissing her, running his tongue over her, listening to the noises that he wrung from her. They were turning him on so bad.

  He didn’t think his cock had ever been quite this hard. It was uncomfortably hard. It was like there was some kind of stone monument sticking out between his legs.

  She had to feel it. He was pressed up against her leg, the fleshy part of her thigh, and he couldn’t help thrusting into her a little bit, and she had to know, she had to feel what she was doing to him.

  “Heath?” Cathy’s voice was thick and deep.

  “Mmm?” He wasn’t about to take his mouth away from her breasts.

  “Do you have, like, condoms?”

  He shook his head into her skin. “No.” And he didn’t think he’d ever been more disappointed with himself than at that moment.

  “Oh.” She sounded disappointed too. And a little winded. Had he been making her breathe hard?

  He smiled, feeling proud of himself.

  “We should probably stop then,” she said.

  He groaned. Stop? Did that mean she was going to pull her dress back up? He didn’t want her to do that. He covered both of her breasts with his hands again, and waited for her to make noise.

  She didn’t.

  He pulled back. “Okay.”

  “I don’t want to either,” she said. “But, I mean, there should be condoms.”

  “It’s not like we have diseases.” He didn’t know why he was arguing about this. She was being perfectly reasonable, and he even agreed with her. But his cock throbbed, and he felt irrationally annoyed with her.

  She slipped her dress back up over her chest, covering herself.

  He sighed, missing the sight of her breasts already. “We’ve never been with anyone else. I mean I never have.”

  She didn’t say anything. She rearranged her dress, smoothing out the skirt.

  “Cathy?” he said. “Have you?”

  “Have I what?”

  “Had sex with someone else.”

  “What?” She made a face at him. “Of course not, why would you say that?”

  He rubbed his nose. Why? Maybe it was because he watched her getting out of that Linton boy’s car every day. He watched the way she smiled at him. Heath was losing her. He could feel it. It was Matt’s fault. Matt kept him working constantly. Heath barely saw Cathy anymore.

  But there was still something powerful between them. They were still Heath and Cathy. When they were close, he could feel it. It was magic. She felt it too, didn’t she?

  Fuck.

  “Did that guy know you weren’t on a date with him?” Why was he bringing this up? He had her here. He’d practically had her naked. That should be enough, shouldn’t it?

  “Eli?” She let out a sullen sigh. “What does he have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know, Cathy. You’re the one who’s spending a lot of time with him.”

  “God, you’re impossible to please.” She folded her arms over her chest. “I thought what we did tonight would show you how I felt about you.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. Fuck it. He needed to let it go.

  “If you had condoms, I probably would have let you—”

  “Let me? You make it sound like it’s something I want to do, and you don’t.” He fished his shirt off the floor of the truck. He shrugged into it.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Do you want to do it?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t intend for us to do it tonight, but when we were in the middle of it, it felt really good, and I…” She touched his face. “I want you, Heath. You should get condoms.”

  He closed his eyes. She wanted him.

  He kissed her again, as deeply and as thoroughly as he could. He tried to kiss Eli Linton right out of her head. “I love you, Cathy. You know that right?”

  “I love you too,” she murmured. “You’re my Heath. You’re my everything.”

  * * *

  Cathy opened the refrigerator in the kitchen and took out a can of beer.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” came Matt’s voice from the kitchen table. Stacks of papers were spread out in front of him.

  Cathy popped open the beer and took a long drink. “Like you weren’t sneaking beers when you were my age.”

  Matt chuckled. “The key word there is sneak, Cathy. Walking into the kitchen and casually taking a beer is hardly trying to hide what you’re doing.”

  “You gonna stop me?”

  He rubbed his face. “Oh, Cathy, I don’t know what to do with you.”

  “It’s just a beer, Matt.”

  “Get me one?”

  She grinned. “Sure.”

  Matt took the beer when she handed it to him. He opened it and drank some, closing his eyes. “Thanks.”

  She sat down next to him at the table. “What are you doing?”

  “You would not believe what a mess Dad left this farm in.” He shuffled through the papers. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I couldn’t find anyone to rent the tenant house, but I managed to get some extra hands for the harvest who’ll work for room and board, and they’re going to stay there. Thank god, because we can’t afford to pay them.”

  She peered at the papers, but they just looked like rows of gibberish numbers to her. “It’s bad, huh?”

  “It’s bad,” he said. “It’s bad enough that I doubt I’m going back to college any time soon.” He sighed. “Not that it matters, not with Fran here, and Gage, and… you.”

  “Me?”

  “I’m responsible for you, Cathy,” he said. “It’s like one morning I woke up, and I was an adult, and I spend every day wondering where the rest of my youth went.”

  She felt sorry for him. “You don’t have to stay, Matt. I could manage without you. If you want to go back to school—”

  “No money for school,” he said
. “Add that to the pile of fucking debt I’ve inherited.”

  She touched his arm. “Sorry.”

  He patted her hand. “It’s not your fault. It’s Dad’s fault. He drank too much. He was either drunk or hung over, and he didn’t pay any attention to what was happening to this place.” He went back to his papers. “Don’t make a habit out of stealing my beer, okay?”

  Cathy knew he was dismissing her, but she didn’t get up. She couldn’t help but think about how badly Heath wanted the farm. But Matt wouldn’t ever agree to let Heath run it, even if it meant it would give him freedom from the place.

  Matt had never wanted the farm any more than she had. It was Heath who’d seemed interested in it, Heath who’d questioned her father on harvests and plantings and plowing and selling at markets. Cathy suspected that sometimes he’d done it because he wanted to distract her father, keep him from getting too drunk and angry, but he still knew things. And hadn’t he said that he wanted Matt off the farm?

  If Matt wanted off the farm too…

  “Hey,” said Matt. “Fran said you went to homecoming with that Linton kid last night.”

  “It was a group thing,” said Cathy.

  “But he was there? He takes you to school, right? You know him?”

  “Yeah.” Why was Matt asking her this?

  “You think you could get him to feel out his dad? Maybe we sell fifty acres or something, you know? We could use the money.”

  “Sell the farm?” Cathy asked. Isabella had asked if they wanted to sell. But maybe she was joking. Isabella had a tendency to say whatever popped into her head.

  “Not all of it,” said Matt. “You think you could do that for me?”

  Cathy wasn’t sure if Eli was going to speak to her again, not after he’d seen her with Heath in the parking lot. But even if he hated her, he might still be persuaded to talk to his father. “Okay.”

  “Thanks, Cathy.” Matt smiled. He downed the rest of his beer and crushed the can with his hand. “Get me another beer?”

  She went to the refrigerator. “Hey, um, Matt? About the tenant house.”

  “What about it?”

  She handed him the beer. “Well, it’s going to get cold outside, and Heath’s still in the barn.”

  “Not this again,” Matt groaned. “I don’t want you with that boy. He’s not good enough for you.”

  She swallowed. “It’s not like that, Matt. I’m moving on, going to dances with other guys and stuff.”

  Matt raised his eyebrows. “I thought it was a group thing?”

  “You know what I mean,” said Cathy. “It’s only that Heath and I were friends as kids, and I still care about him. And there’s nothing in the barn. There’s no bathroom. There’s no heat. And there are four bedrooms in the tenant house, and if there’s space, I don’t see why he can’t have the same deal as the other workers. Why can’t he live there for room and board?”

  Matt sighed. “Because he can’t, that’s why.”

  “Because you hate him?”

  “I don’t hate him.”

  “Really?”

  Matt opened his beer. “No, he’s just full of himself. He thinks he’s something he’s not.”

  “You can’t blame him for what Dad did, you know. That’s on Dad, not Heath.”

  Matt sighed. “He can move back into the tenant house. But only if he keeps working. I can’t afford any other hungry mouths that sit on their asses all day, like you do.”

  “He can?” She hugged Matt as hard as she could.

  He laughed a little. “Now you’re excited?”

  She kissed his temple, a big smacking smooch. “And you know I always help out with the harvest. I’ll even stay home from school if you need me to.”

  “Oh, you’re making such a big sacrifice, I can tell.” But he was grinning.

  “Thank you.” She released him.

  Matt took another drink of his beer. “Yeah, yeah.”

  * * *

  “You got the look about you,” said Saul Ford, one of the workers that Heath was now sharing the tenant house with. “You a gypsy?”

  “Not really.” Heath pushed past him, carrying a box of his worldly possessions. He was glad to be moving back into the tenant house, as far as that went, but he wasn’t about to act grateful, like Cathy wanted him to. Letting him live here wasn’t some big concession on Matt’s part. It was only restoring what he’d had before. And even then, he wasn’t restoring it all, not properly, because he was sharing the house with three other guys.

  “That’s good,” said Saul. “Never play cards with gypsies myself. They cheat.”

  Great. More racist bullshit. Heath stomped up the stairs, determined to ignore Saul. He threw his stuff into one of the bedrooms. The smallest one.

  He went back to close the door, but Saul was there.

  “You know how to play cards?” Saul asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Heath, leaning on the door. “What game?”

  “Poker, of course,” said Saul. “Is there another game?”

  “I don’t have any money,” said Heath. “Thanks, though.”

  Saul got his wallet out of his back pocket. “Five dollar buy-in. I’ll spot you, if you want. You can pay me back.”

  Heath furrowed his brow. “Why would you do that? What are you trying to pull?”

  “Trying to be friendly,” said Saul. “Besides, the game’s better with four people instead of three.” He slapped the five dollar bill into Heath’s hand.

  Heath looked down at it. “I never played poker in my life.”

  “Well, it’ll probably be a short experience for you, then,” said Saul. “Like most things you do the first time.” He chortled.

  “All right, I guess I’ll play,” said Heath.

  “Good,” said Saul.

  Heath followed him out into the hallway.

  “How old are you, anyway, boy, that you never played poker in your life?”

  “Seventeen,” said Heath.

  “Seventeen. Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”

  Heath wasn’t going to spin his personal sob story to this guy. “Fuck school.”

  Saul laughed.

  They descended the steps to the living room, where the other two workers were smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap beer. One of them was shuffling cards.

  Saul was right. His first experience playing poker was short. He lost his first hand and the money that Saul had lent him. But he watched the next several hands, and he started to see that the game was less about what cards you were dealt and more about how you let those cards affect you. And about how much of the effect showed on your face.

  Later, all of them with more beer in their bellies, someone spotted him another five bucks and dealt him back in.

  He didn’t clean up, but he did better. He made enough money to pay back the ten dollars he owed and then some.

  He went to sleep feeling satisfied with himself for the first time since he’d pushed Floyd Earnshaw down the stairs.

  * * *

  Cathy opened the door of Eli’s shiny blue car and slid inside. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come today.”

  She had been halfway down the driveway when he’d pulled up, heading for the bus stop, even though she usually just sat on the porch until Eli showed up to pick her up.

  “Here I am,” said Eli.

  The backseat was empty. “Where’s Isabella?”

  “I made her take the bus,” said Eli. “I wanted to talk to you alone. I feel like we never get to do that. You keep inviting Isabella whenever I try to ask you on a date. You turned homecoming into a group thing. And then you ran off with that Heath guy on Friday. What’s up with all that, Cathy?”

  She sighed, scrunching down in the front seat. She wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t know what was going on with her. Everything was too confusing. She felt like her life was simply sweeping her along, and it was all she could do to react to every crazy thing it threw at her.

  She di
dn’t answer, and they drove in silence for several minutes. They left the farm behind, and the scenery outside the window changed to houses and trailer parks. The leaves were falling off the trees.

  “You gonna give me the silent treatment?” asked Eli. “You think that’s the right thing to do in this situation?”

  She laughed. “The right thing. That’s all you do, isn’t it, Eli? Whatever’s right?”

  “I try to.”

  “You wear your preppy little clothes and spike your hair and drive under the speed limit and listen to girls when they tell you they want it to be a group thing. You’d never do anything… deviant.”

  “You’re saying that you want me to not do what you say?” He sighed. “You are the most confusing girl I’ve ever met.”

  “So, why bother with me? Why’d you pick me up?”

  “Because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because you intrigue me. Because you’re like this force of nature, this storm or something, and I want to get caught up in you.”

  A force of nature, huh? That was almost poetry. Heath never said anything that sounded remotely like poetry.

  Of course, she did remember the way it had felt when he’d told her he loved her. Like her insides had all been crushed for an instant, leaving her breathless and ruined.

  But Heath wasn’t here, was he? And… it wasn’t like she and Eli couldn’t be friends, was it? They weren’t doing anything wrong.

  “Turn here.” Cathy pointed at the next road.

  “What?” said Eli. “That’s not the way to school.”

  “Let’s not go to school,” she said. “Let’s do the wrong thing today, Eli. Blow it off.”

  He looked startled. Then nervous. “I don’t know. They call your parents to confirm your absence when you don’t show up, you know?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Forget it. I should have known that you’d never go for it. You play things too safe.”

  Eli clenched his jaw. He turned the steering wheel hard.

  The tires squealed. They barely made the turn. Dust kicked up behind the car. Cathy was thrown into the window.

  She squealed.

  “Whoa,” said Eli.

  Cathy threw back her head and laughed. “All right, Eli.” She grinned at him.

  He looked back at her, flushed and triumphant. His blue eyes were like the ocean in summer.