by Lucy Lambert
I moved closer to him and he put an arm around my shoulders and held me close. I didn’t like the quiet of the bar, then.
It was the sort of quiet where the past could creep up on you.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” I said.
He went home with me. The sheriff’s car wasn’t waiting.
It was one of those rare, perfect nights. The cold stars winked and blinked down from a sky so clear I thought I could reach up and pluck them from their black background.
The air was crisp and cool, even inside the house.
Everything was so still and silent that I could hear only the rush of blood past my ears and the press of air in and out of my lungs.
And Dash’s breath, too, of course.
We stole breaths from each other, fitting our mouths together in deep, longing kisses. His mouth was fire in the cold night. He pulled me hard against him, our bodies more than a match for the chill.
He smelled faintly of beer, and I could taste it on his lips. A rich, earthy, hoppy flavor. I wanted to drink him up. I could get drunk on him, I knew. Or maybe I already was, and had been since he’d shown up outside the laundromat.
I ached inside, deep and low. I throbbed for him, flushed with heat and desire for him.
I could barely stand the bare moments it took for him to pull my shirt up over my head. I grabbed his shirt and ripped it open.
I put my hands on his bared chest. My breath caught in my throat when I felt the way his heart hammered inside of him. Hammered from desire for me.
“I thought about you all day,” Dash said.
His hands slipped down to my hips and pulled them against his. The hard ridge of his desire pressed against my body.
“What were you thinking about me?” I said. My shoulders rose and fell sharply. I couldn’t get enough air. My lungs, my muscles, my blood all demanded more oxygen than I could supply.
His chest and shoulders expanded and fell in similar, sympathetic rhythm.
The darkness left Dash’s sculpted, angular face shadowy. His eyes were twin reflective pools that considered and searched me with incredible intensity.
“I was thinking about what I wanted to do to you the next time I got you alone,” he said.
He leaned in close before I could reply. He set that fiery mouth of his on my neck, just below my ear, and traced a line of heat down to my shoulder.
He kept his mouth in motion. It moved down the ridge of my clavicle, down between the twin swells of my breasts. Down farther still.
He kissed down my stomach, moving lower until he knelt before me, until his lips could find no more bare skin and instead found the button of my jeans.
This he undid. Then he slid my jeans down, revealing skin that the moon and starlight left pale and smooth like marble.
He kissed the sensitive, dimpled skin where my thighs met my hips. The brush of his lips left me shivering and covered in gooseflesh.
“Kiss me again,” I said.
I took his upturned face in my hands and leaned down. I let my lips trace over one sculpted cheekbone, following the curve of his jaw to his chin, then up to his mouth.
I couldn’t get enough of the taste of him. Even though we were so close together I still felt apart from him. I couldn’t take that any longer.
“I need you now,” I whispered.
Again he regarded me, searching. He stood up and took me by the hand. He led me over to the couch.
There, we stripped the rest of the clothes from our bodies.
He retrieved a foil wrapper from his jeans pocket. Before he could tear it open I took it from him. He watched while I tore it open. His breath caught in his throat when I rolled it down him, slowly, savoring the way he trembled, savoring the naked desire and need in his eyes.
He sat on the couch and I mounted him, straddling his hips. His hands explored up my body, cupping the curves of my breasts while his fingers teased me.
I sank down onto him, both of us gasping in unison as he filled me.
His hands slipped from my breasts to cup my bottom. He lifted me up and then allowed me to slide back down.
We picked up our rhythm. Beads of perspiration stood out on both our bodies.
We couldn't stop the inexorable rise of our shared passion. His fingers squeezed hard into my flesh while I squeezed around him.
Our shared climax struck with all the electricity of a thunderbolt, rushing with its unstoppable fury through us. My back arched and my toes curled.
We finished and I collapsed down onto him. His strong arms encircled my waist, keeping me from falling.
He kissed and nuzzled at my throat.
“I want every night to be this,” I said.
“Me too,” he replied.
But I knew every night couldn’t be that night. With the temporary insanity of our lust and desire passing, I thought again about the sheriff’s car sitting out at the curb opposite my house.
It was near the end of those three weeks when I thought things might go wrong. I sat at the bar. Brutus and Dash took care of the few customers there. It was mid-afternoon, and Jennie had given me the rest of the day off from my shift at the diner.
A big old TV hung from a mount in the ceiling over one corner of the bar.
Normally Brutus kept it switched off, or on mute. But on account of the slow day it was both on and audible.
The words “Special Report” flashed across the screen.
“What’s this?” Brutus said. He paused in his endless wiping of the bar, the rag bunched up in one hand.
“It’s now officially been eight months since the disappearance of New York billionaire and socialite Dashiell Beaumont,” the reporter, a man with short-cropped blond hair and an angular face said, “The FBI say they’re still looking, but sources from within the agency say that this far along, hopes to find the man once called ‘New York’s most eligible bachelor’ are at an all-time low…”
Dash’s picture appeared over the reporter’s shoulder. He was clean-shaven, wore a tailored suit, and his haircut probably cost more than I made in a week at the diner.
Dash himself stood at the other end of the bar. The real Dash. The one with stubble on his cheeks and dark hair that fell almost to his shoulders. The one who wore an apron over jeans and a tee.
The two of them looked like they were brothers. Twins from a feel-good family comedy who were separated at birth, one receiving every advantage and the other receiving nothing but a scholarship to the school of hard knocks.
Brutus looked from the TV to Dash, then back again. I sat up straighter. My body tingled with a sudden, electrical awareness.
“Beaumont Industries is still offering their $500,000 reward for information leading to Beaumont’s whereabouts…”
Brutus again looked at Dash. My mouth went dry. I grabbed the bar and squeezed. I didn’t know it, but my knuckles had gone white from the pressure.
“Anyone ever tell you that you look like him?” Brutus said to Dash.
Dash glanced at the TV and then went back to rubbing down his end of the bar, “I’ve been told so. I think it’s because we both have the same first name.”
Suddenly I thought of Clark Kent, Kansas’ most famous citizen. And just how damn obvious it was that he was just Superman with a pair of black-rimmed glasses on.
No one would expect Dashiell Beaumont to show up on a motorcycle in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas. Especially looking like he did now, with the long shag of hair and permanent shadow of stubble across his cheeks. He didn’t even carry himself the same way as the man they showed in the interviews and pictures.
Just like they wouldn’t expect a certain, mild-mannered reporter to be Superman. They looked similar, sure. But they were different. That was how he, they, got away with it.
“Right,” Brutus said. A curious look stole over the old biker’s face.
“Oh come on,” Dash said, “Someone kidnapped that guy. Like if I were him I’d work for less than minimum wage at a ba
r. Hell, I wish I were him. It would make things easier.”
Brutus snorted and then went back to wiping down the bar.
My back relaxed a little, and I released my death grip on the bar. Dash and I shared a look. I didn’t like the way Brutus paused before going back to his work.
It was a reminder that whatever thin margin of safety and comfort in secrecy I thought Dash had here in Pleasant didn’t actually exist.
Chapter 19
DASH
There was something so satisfying in working at the bar. I could reach the end of my shift and look across at all the chairs and tables and the pool tables and the bar itself and see the results of my efforts.
The wood gleamed, the bright work shone, the brass on the taps was clear enough to see yourself in.
It was honest work. Something missing from my most recent years as head of Beaumont Industries. I could watch the company’s stock valuation climb. I could see my own bank balances accumulate.
But there was no tactility in it. No sense of touch or feeling. It was all abstract.
I sat down on the stool I just finished cleaning. It stood at the corner of the bar, where the bar curved against the wall and left a little alcove for the jukebox, now silent.
My shoulders ached, and the soles of my feet, now lifted from the floor, tingled and burned without the pressure of my body weight on them.
They were earned pains. Satisfying pains. They made the rest at the end of the day all the sweeter in the way even a particularly trying board meeting couldn’t.
Is this what I came here for? I wondered. I put my hands on the smooth, polished surface of the bar. It was pleasantly cool against my palms.
No, I thought. This was nice, but I could have picked up some under-the-table gig at any of the places I'd passed through since leaving New York.
I thought about telling the story about my old suitcase to Ellie. I hadn’t shared that with anyone. I even told my mother once that I threw that old thing away.
The difference between Pleasant and all those other places was that Ellie wasn’t in any of those other places.
I remembered more now, too. I remembered the days spent at school, the days in the park.
Mostly I remembered Ellie, and the way I felt about her then. It was that purity of first love. An initial, intense flame that burned hot and bright. And short, as so many do.
My mother had moved us out of Pleasant before I could get my young mind around what all those feelings meant.
A couple glasses brimming with foamy beer clinked against each other on the bar when Brutus set them down in front of me.
I jerked away from my thoughts and memories.
“Startle you?” He said. He pushed one of the pint glasses across the bar to me.
“Yes,” I said. Perhaps a tough guy might have made up an excuse, but I didn’t want to make excuses for myself anymore. I took the offered glass and swallowed. The beer was cold refreshment after an honest day’s work.
“What were you thinking about?” Brutus said. The pint glass looked like a child’s toy in his hand.
Looking at Brutus, I thought immediately of that news story and of the way he looked at me. I think he knows the truth, I thought.
“I was thinking about Ellie,” I said.
I had come to really like Brutus over the last few weeks. He kept mostly to himself, let people mind their own business. On the outside, he looked every inch the retired biker, enormous and frightening.
But on the inside he was a thoughtful guy, in more ways than one. The clever bar name showed that. That he gave the mysterious stranger a room and a job showed it.
And if he does know the truth about me, he hasn’t turned me in for the reward. As near as I could tell, anyway. Black-suited FBI agents hadn’t invaded Pleasant in search of me anyway. Yet.
“Better to think about something beautiful than something ugly,” Brutus said.
I raised my glass to that and took another gulp. I wondered if I should confront him yet.
“Her dad used to come around here,” Brutus said between mouthfuls of his beer. “Before all the trouble, anyway.”
I perked up. Ellie didn’t like talking specifics about her father. I could glean that something happened to him, she took care of him for a while, and he passed on.
But that was a story outline. I wanted the novel version. Although even a short story or anecdote could serve.
Brutus saw through me. “She hasn’t told you, has she?”
“No specifics,” I admitted.
“Some things weigh on a person,” Brutus said. He stared down into his mostly empty glass, watching the beer foam flow slowly down the sides towards the bottom. “And they definitely weigh on Ellie.”
Ellie. Even just thinking her name lifted me up. She helped me so much here, coming with me again and again to the places I remembered here in town.
She was like the skeleton key to the many closets and safes of my memory.
Those nights and days with her just melted away, seeming both endless and short. Like perfect summer days.
But over the past week or so I hit a wall with Pleasant. If there was something here I needed to discover about it, I couldn’t find it yet. Not even with Ellie’s help.
“Maybe someday she’ll tell me,” I said.
Brutus finished his pint and put the glass behind the bar. “Sometimes people need help. They can’t get that weight off their shoulders alone, or think they need to hold it all by themselves.”
“Tell me what you know,” I said.
Brutus watched me with sharp eyes that belied his appearance. I could feel those eyes weighing me on some invisible scale. Perhaps wondering whether he should, in fact, tell me what I wanted to know so badly.
“She was supposed to go,” Brutus said.
“Go where?”
The big bartender shrugged massive shoulders, “Somewhere better than here is what I gather. He wanted her to go. She had it all together, too. He’d come in here talking about different schools offering her scholarships. How she was going to do great things.”
I leaned forward, putting my elbows on the bar. The aches in my shoulders and feet faded. “So why didn’t she?”
“Bobby for one. He was different in high school. Different from his daddy. He wanted to stay, so she did, too. She might have still gone, but then her father got in the accident.
“He worked for the electric company, going up in one of those bucket trucks to fix transformers and all that. Linesman. His partner that day brought a flask with him and was more interested in that than making sure all the safety procedures were followed. Long story short, Ellie’s dad fell forty feet onto the blacktop. Both legs broke, hip too.”
“But he didn’t die,” I said. I finished my own beer and Brutus took the glass and placed it behind the bar.
“This is all second hand, mind you,” Brutus continued, “But the way I hear it, the insurance money wasn’t enough. That, and there were complications with the surgeries her dad kept needing. Infections, fevers, that sort of thing.
“Way I hear it, he begged her to go and leave Pleasant, but she stayed to take care of him, took a job, lived with him, all that. Then she brought him to the hospital for the last time. Another infection. This was three years or so ago now.”
“And she’s still here,” I said, more to myself than him.
Brutus shrugged again. “Memory’s a powerful thing, especially when it’s all you’ve got left of a person. Sometimes it makes you stay. Debt, too. Dying’s not cheap, even out here. Can’t go if you don’t have the means.”
And sometimes memory makes you go.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
Then I thought about how quiet it had been for Ellie and me these past few weeks. No Bobby, no sheriff breathing down our necks. I’d taken that as a blessing. I liked the quiet time together, liked having the space to explore our connected pasts.
A chill ran cold, tickling fingers down my spine. I kne
w Bobby’s type, and the sheriff’s. They weren’t the sort to leave well enough alone.
I wondered how much quiet time the two of us had left.
Not much, as it turned out.
Chapter 20
ELLIE
“I’m really not a fan of motorcycles,” I said. Even I could hear that I didn’t sound enthusiastic about that complaint.
“It’s fun. Freeing. A million times better than being in a convertible. Or a pickup truck bed, whatever it is the people around here ride in,” Dash said.
He stood beside his bike, which leaned on its kickstand in my driveway. Dash wore his armor again, dark leather-like material with patches of bulletproof Kevlar in various places.
His helmet, visor open, hung from one end of the handlebars.
A second helmet hung from the other end. Mine, I understood. I don’t know where he got it; as far as I knew no one in town sold that sort of thing.
“Here,” he said. “This will make you feel safer.” He took off his riding jacket and handed it to me. Underneath, he wore a plain white undershirt tight enough to outline his well-formed chest and shoulders.
“You just want to see me in your clothes again,” I said. The jacket was, of course, too large for me. But when I swung it over my shoulders it did feel good.
I swiped at a lock of hair that the light breeze tugged over my face. The air smelled lightly sweet from all the corn fields surrounding Pleasant.
“Actually, I prefer you to not wear my clothes at all. Or yours, for that matter.”
The blush of heat started in my chest and worked its way up my neck to my cheeks in a matter of moments. I looked around, self-conscious. “We’re outside!” I hissed.
“And doesn’t that make it more exciting?” Dash said. He grabbed me and pulled my hips against his. My breath caught in my throat.
“Dash!” I said. I smiled hard enough that my cheeks ached.
“We’re going for a ride today. Outside. You get to choose which sort,” Dash replied. His eyes glinted and I knew that he was serious in his threat.
“Okay, fine, you win. Just don’t go too fast, okay?”