Torch

by Roxie Noir

  My dick practically jumps in my hand, and I have to clench my jaw to control myself, the ball of fire inside me already threatening to explode.

  “Where are you?” I gasp, bewildered, because I thought she was in public.

  “I’m in the handicapped bathroom of a grocery store,” she says. “I’m leaning against the ugly tiled wall and I’ve got one hand down the front of my jeans, rubbing my clit furiously, thinking about you.”

  “What are you thinking?” I ask.

  “Besides how I want to make you come in my mouth?” she asks. “You do it to me, so it’s only fair.”

  Jesus.

  This is the dirtiest she’s ever talked to me, and it went from zero to sixty in seconds. I’ve still got my fist around my cock, barely moving, because I know the moment I do, I’m going to come.

  “What else?” I ask, because I can barely form coherent thoughts.

  “There’s a sink and a mirror in here,” she says. “And I’m thinking about you bending me over the sink and then watching in the mirror while you fuck me.”

  “Shit, Lula-Mae,” I whisper, and my cock jerks in my hand as I come, the muscles in my body clenching. I manage to cover my dick with my hand, and I just sit there, groaning, gasping into the phone.

  She’s half-panting, half-laughing.

  “That was easy,” she says, breathlessly.

  “I just imagined you were bent over that sink,” I say, swallowing. “There’s this noise you make when I hit exactly the right spot with my cock.”

  Mae gasps. My dick is limp in my hand but I keep going.

  “And I’m hitting that spot over and over, as hard as I can, because I know that’s what you want right now,” I say.

  She makes a strangled moan, like she’s biting her lip.

  “Keep going,” she whispers. “Fuck, I wish you were here.”

  I can tell from her breathing that she’s close, and I grin at the shower curtain.

  “And when I can feel you’re about to come I lean over and whisper I fucking love being deep inside you.”

  “God, Jackson,” she moans.

  “Shh,” I say, smiling. “Come quietly for once, Lula-Mae.”

  “It’s pretty hard when you talk dirty to me,” she says, then gasps.

  “I wish I could watch you come,” I say. I’ve got my eyes closed, imagining it, her body beneath me, writhing and shouting.

  She makes another noise, almost a whimper. Then she gasps and holds her breath, and I have to imagine what she looks like, standing in a grocery store bathroom, fully clothed, coming undone. It’s fucking sexy, and I love knowing how crazy I drive her. That she couldn’t wait to get home to call me, that she just had phone sex almost in public because she couldn’t help herself.

  Mae pants into the phone, then starts laughing.

  I grin.

  “What?” I ask.

  “It’s only been a week and a half,” she says. “And I’m masturbating in public bathrooms.”

  “That was a special test run,” I say. “Thanks for helping me make sure it still works.”

  “I’m happy to help,” she says, still laughing. “If you need to make sure your video chat still works, I can help with that too.”

  “When I’m out,” I say. “Only a couple more days, but I don’t want anyone else hearing the filthy things you say to me.”

  “Good,” she says. “I’ve got a reputation as a nice girl to uphold.”

  She clears her throat.

  “Can I call you later?” she says. “I was in the middle of getting groceries.”

  “Love you,” I say.

  “Love you too,” she says.

  I hang up my phone and take care of the mess.

  I do a lot of jerking off in the bathroom. Sometimes Mae’s on the phone and sometimes not. The nurses probably think I have some kind of problem.

  With the wheelchair, I can at least leave my room. There’s a ten-year-old on my floor in a wheelchair with two broken ankles, so we start racing up and down the halls. I mostly let him win. He’s already figured out how to spin in a circle while balancing on two wheels, so he shows me.

  The nurses yell at us both, but especially me. Something about being a role model.

  I show him my scars, from the compound fracture in my arm and the big one on my chest, and he thinks I’m super cool. He tells his mom that he’s gonna get a tattoo when he’s eighteen, and she glares at me.

  When the Sports Weekly comes out, he knocks on the door of my room and then wheels himself right in, holding up the article inside. The big spread picture is me, Raylan, and Clay standing in front of the cattle stalls, and I’ve got one hand on my hat and we’re all laughing. Mae’s name is right beneath it.

  “Is that you?” he asks, suspiciously, pointing at my face in the middle.

  “Sure is,” I say. “My girlfriend took it.”

  He couldn’t care less about my girlfriend, and flips to the front. I haven’t even seen the magazine yet, but it’s a photo of me on Crash Junction, his back hooves in the air and his front hooves on the ground. Above my head, the clock says 8.03.

  I swallow, and for a moment, I don’t say anything to this kid because I’m thinking about riding Crash, the pure, sheer high of being up there and knowing I’d won. I have no idea if I’ll ever get to do that again. At the very least, I won’t be doing it for another year.

  “That’s also you,” he says.

  “Yep,” I say.

  “That’s how he broke all his bones,” my mom says, walking in.

  The kid looks suspicious. My mom glares at me.

  “She’s right,” I say, because she is.

  I don’t say, it’s also one of the greatest feelings in the world.

  “Will you sign it?” he asks.

  I do. Then we race down the hallway, though I forget to let him win this time.

  I get the MRI. The fractures are still there in my vertebrae, but they’re healing. I hear the word “lucky” a lot. After a few more days, I get to go home. Twelve hours in the back seat of my mom’s Ford Taurus isn’t ideal, but when we get back to the ranch, my dad’s put a wheelchair ramp up the back steps and converted the downstairs den into my bedroom.

  After dinner, we sit in the living room and he brings in two bankers’ boxes worth of papers. I just stare.

  “You’re gonna be laid up for a while,” he says. “Seems like a good time to digitize the ranch accounting.”

  “I haven’t been here four hours and you’re already putting me to work,” I say.

  He claps me on the shoulder.

  “Welcome home, son,” he says, and then chuckles. “No free rides.”

  30

  Mae

  A couple weeks go by. Jackson goes home and I go to Mexico, then to New Hampshire. I get more postcards from Wyoming and I send back ones of New York. We talk most nights. Eventually, the neck brace comes off and his face heals and from the shoulders up, at least, he looks like I remember.

  I cry myself to sleep that night and I don’t know why. It’s part gratitude that I didn’t lose him, part the awful, gnawing ache that tells me I should be there in person.

  Finally, I’ve got the money for a plane ticket to Riverton, Wyoming, the closest airport to Sawtooth.

  “I told Janice I can’t do anything from the 22nd to the 1st,” I say, looking at a calendar. “You got anything going on then?”

  “Not a thing,” he says.

  “And your parents don’t mind picking me up in Riverton?”

  “Not at all,” he says.

  I exhale. It’s expensive, but I don’t even care. I’m just relieved to finally have a date when I’ll see him again.

  “I’ll buy tickets tonight,” I say. “Did I tell you the NYPD dredged a shipping container full of dildos out of the East River?”

  Jackson laughs.

  “Is that what they were looking for?” he asks.

  A few minutes later, I get an email confirming my plane ticket reservati
on from La Guardia to Riverton, connecting through Denver. For a moment, I’m just confused, and then I figure out what happened.

  “Jackson,” I say, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Did you buy me a plane ticket?”

  “I did,” he says. “I’ve got eighty thousand dollars and no way to spend it, so I may as well get what I really want.”

  I don’t say anything for a moment.

  “That’s you, for the record,” he says.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I say.

  “I wanted to do it,” he says, and then he’s quiet for a minute. “Mae, I’m still ten kinds of busted, I haven’t actually showered since the morning before I rode Crash, and I’m stuck in my parents’ house in the middle of nowhere. Let me do something I want to do and don’t be stubborn about it.”

  I look out my bedroom window at the brick wall past it. I’ve been contacting photographers in other cities for a week now, networking. I asked Janice how bad it would be if I moved to Austin or Denver or somewhere out west, and she sighed, but she said that we could make it work.

  I haven’t told Jackson any of this yet, even though I tell him everything else. I don’t know why I haven’t, but every time I start to open my mouth, I change the subject.

  “Thanks,” I finally say.

  The plane from Denver to Riverton is one of those tiny planes with only two rows of seats on either side, and it’s a rough flight. Everyone but me seems totally fine, reading their books and magazines, but I’ve never been the most relaxed flier to begin with so I’ve got both armrests in my hands, knuckles white.

  My impending doom is probably the only thing that can get my mind off the fact that I’m finally on my way to see Jackson for the first time in six weeks. I’m half excited and half nervous.

  The part of my brain that loves to think about all the ways that something could go wrong, and it’s been in full force these last couple of days. He’s still in a wheelchair, and I’m afraid that I’ll get there and suddenly not want him anymore. Never mind that I’ve seen him plenty and he still makes my mouth go dry with lust.

  I’m afraid that when we’re out in the open, when we’re not sneaking around, it’ll be less thrilling. I’m afraid that when we’re not at a rodeo, and he’s not a big star, I suddenly won’t like him anymore. I’m afraid that he’s boring and I never noticed, or that he’s dumb and I never noticed, or that he has a giant collection of something weird, like mint-condition action figures, that he never told me about.

  I don’t believe any of these things, I just can’t stop my brain from thinking about them. At least, not until I’m on a tiny plane landing at the Riverton, Wyoming airport and all I can do is hope we don’t crash.

  We don’t. No one but me even seems to notice the rough flight, so I collect my wits, grab my carry-on, and walk across the tarmac toward the terminal. The Riverton airport isn’t big enough for a jet bridge.

  Outside the doors, I take a deep breath, and every stupid anxiety and fear I’ve had for six weeks bubbles to the surface. I take another one and slowly, they simmer down.

  I go through the doors. I follow the other passengers through a long, windowed hallway and around a corner. Then we go through another door and we’re at the baggage exchange, a crowd of people milling around.

  My heart’s beating out of my chest as I look around for a guy in a wheelchair, but there isn’t one.

  Maybe he couldn’t come, I think.

  I skip right over the tall, dark-haired guy on crutches the first time I scan the crowd, because I’m just looking for a wheelchair.

  Then I look again, and this time I see him.

  He smiles at me, and I can’t stop myself. I run.

  I don’t leap on him, even though I want to, but I wrap my arms around him and bury my face against his chest and I think I squeal. Something clatters to the floor but I ignore it as Jackson squeezes me so hard against him I can barely breathe.

  I’m not nervous anymore.

  After a minute he loosens his grip so he can bend down and kiss me, and I have to remind myself we’re in public.

  “You didn’t tell me you were out of the wheelchair,” I say when I finally pull away. “How long has it been?”

  “Day before yesterday,” he says, grinning. “I wanted to surprise you.”

  I just laugh. I’m pretty much giddy just to be here, with him.

  Then he lets me go and turns slightly to his right.

  “Mom, you remember Mae,” he says.

  His mother is standing about two feet away, and I didn’t even notice. I feel my face flush.

  “Of course I do,” she says, and I think she’s amused.

  “Thank you so much for picking me up,” I manage to get out.

  We hug quickly and politely. The crash I heard was one of Jackson’s crutches, and I pick it up for him since bending down looks like it’s an ordeal.

  On the ride back to their house, Jackson sits in the back seat, his right leg stretched out next to him, and I ride shotgun. His mom interrogates me very politely, with Jackson interjecting from the back seat.

  I do my best to make myself sound like a polite, high-achieving, Good Texas Girl, because I want to impress Jackson’s parents, and the fact that he told me about his dick in front of them almost the minute we met is always somewhere in the back of my mind.

  I also want to distract her from the fact that I’m going to fuck his brains out the second I get a chance.

  When we get to the ranch in Sawtooth, there’s snow on the ground, though it’s just a couple of inches. Jackson valiantly tries to balance his crutches and get my suitcase out of the trunk until I stop him. His mom walks toward the house, out of earshot for a second.

  “If you break yourself again before I get some I will not forgive you,” I hiss.

  “I’m just trying to be a gentleman,” he says, grinning.

  “Gentlemen don’t leave their girlfriends frustrated after not seeing them for six weeks,” I whisper.

  From the front door, his mom looks back. I shut the trunk of the car and follow her inside.

  The ranch house is surprisingly cozy and warm, even though it’s pretty big. His dad made chili and cornbread, and it smells wonderful. I take off my snowy shoes and shake out my coat, scarf, and hat.

  “Here, I’ll show you to your room,” his mom says.

  I glance at Jackson, then follow his mom up the stairs. Jackson trails us. Stairs are kind of a challenge on crutches.

  “It faces west, in case you like to sleep in,” she says. “There are extra blankets in the closet, and some extra pillows, too. Feel free to use the alarm clock.”

  I put my stuff down and nod at everything she says, but I’m really wondering what exactly her expectations are. Is this just a polite fiction, or am I really expected to sleep here and not in Jackson’s room?

  If she catches me in Jackson’s room, is she gonna be mad?

  Jackson gets upstairs as she’s showing me the bathroom, the linen closet, where the towels are, and how to keep the window in the bathroom open just enough that the steam escapes.

  “Okay,” she finally says. “I’m going to go see how Hollis is doing in the kitchen.”

  She goes downstairs, and leaves Jackson and me alone in the hallway.

  “What does it mean that I have my own room?” I whisper.

  He glances down the stairs.

  “They’re kind of old-fashioned,” he says.

  “Do they think we’re not gonna have sex?” I whisper.

  “I think they kinda want to think that,” he whispers back.

  I narrow my eyes.

  “It means I sneak up to your room and if I get caught, I say I was getting another towel,” he says, grinning.

  “I don’t want them to hate me,” I say.

  He blinks at me, genuinely surprised.

  “My mom’s told everyone about how when she met you, it was eight in the morning and you were arguing with the nurse at the desk, trying to tell her you
were my sister,” he says. “She’s given everyone in town a copy of the magazine, and the first thing out of her mouth isn’t that’s Jackson, it’s Jackson’s girlfriend took that picture.”

  “Then I don’t want them to change their minds!” I say.

  Jackson leans one crutch against the wall. Then he grabs me by the hand, pulls me closer, and puts my hand right on his cock.

  He’s half-hard, but in seconds he’s at full-mast, and heat floods my entire body. I squeeze, and he growls quietly in my ear.

  “If you think I’m gonna behave myself while you’re here you’ve lost your goddamn mind,” he whispers, his lips against my ear.

  I curl my other hand around the back of his neck. Oh, my god, I missed this.

  “And if you think I’m not sleeping in your bed, you’re crazy,” he says, and nips at my earlobe.

  I kiss him, hard, my hand still on his cock, and he presses me against him. I open my mouth against his and he pushes his tongue against mine.

  “Dinner!” calls his mom.

  I pull my hand off him like it’s a hot stove, and a millisecond later her face appears at the bottom of the stairs. We were obviously making out, but at least I’m not practically giving him a hand job any more.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Dinner’s ready.”

  “Thank you!” I say. Her face disappears.

  Jackson kisses me again, laughing.

  “You’re still terrible at breaking the rules,” he teases.

  “Shut up,” I whisper, and hand him his other crutch.

  Dinner is delicious, even if I’m still nervous around his parents, and it’s made worse because Jackson keeps looking at me. With that look. The sex look.

  Afterwards I try to help his parents clean up, but his mom shoos me out of the kitchen despite my protestations. Jackson’s just standing there, laughing at me, and I make another face at him.

  He kisses the top of my head.

  “I think we’re gonna take a walk,” he calls to his parents.

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “It’s cold out,” his mom calls back.