by J. D. Glass
We’re staying over at a friend’s in Manhattan tonight—do you remember Fran? You’ll meet her again sometime if you’re ever home!
By the way? The only thing left to do in the garden house is hook up the gas. Let me or Sam know if you want to go furniture shopping. Dude, your place should be totally ready in a few days!
Don’t stay up too late reading. Miss you, stranger.
Love, Nina and Sam
PS: Happy Thanksgiving!
PPS: You have our cell numbers if you need anything.
I’d completely forgotten it was Thanksgiving, though I should have remembered—Trace had called me earlier in the week to ask me if I had plans.
Staying away from Trace was hard, I reflected as I found the promised meal and, more importantly, my “other” turkey leg and the pecan pie.
And I hadn’t stayed too far away, either. I still met her for dinner on occasion, and when I’d drunk too much the last time I was there we’d ended up having sex that thankfully didn’t leave me marked in any way—well, not too badly, I mentally amended. In fact, it had actually been really nice, and not just the first time either. It had only gotten weird later, after however long it had been and she lay half on top of me, that she’d asked me if I’d given any thought to, uh, sharing.
I told her quite bluntly that I hadn’t, and she dropped the subject.
*
Jean left the company a week later; her acceptance to the academy had come through, and in seven days she started what would be several weeks of training to “do it city-style,” as she put it.
Barbara put herself in charge and took up a collection among the crews, and Marcus treated us all to dinner and drinks at Peggy O’Neills on a night a great Irish band was playing.
We were all a little trashed, and I can’t speak for anyone else, but as happy as I was for Jean, and I really was because this was a hell of a career step for her, I was a little down too, because I’d miss her. She’d been great to work with, great to learn from.
The jokes, the food, the banter, everything was tremendous fun, and the music was grand; but when I looked at my watch, I knew I had to go. I still had to get up the next day for work, and just as I was about to say my good-byes, Jean stood.
“I just want everyone to know”—she paused, with a pint held above her head—“that it’s been real, it’s been fun, it hasn’t been real fun, and you all kiss lousy!”
Everyone good-naturedly groaned, laughed, and protested.
“I’d like to amend that!” she added. “There’s an exception. Scotty, why don’t you tell them who it is?” Her eyes sparkled at me across the table.
“No, no. I’ve no clue.” I really didn’t.
“Hey, c’mon, Scotty, tell us,” Chuck asked.
“Yeah, Scotty, tell us,” Barbara seconded with a quickly hidden smirk.
“C’mon, Scotty, yeah!” everyone started insisting.
“Okay, okay! It’s you, Jean, I’ve seen you kissing that mirror!” I saluted her with my beer.
“I can’t believe you told them!” She laughed. “That was supposed to be our secret! And hey, I only did that so you’d know I was good at it.”
“Hey, you asked me to tell ’em.”
“What do I have to do?” She spread her arms. “Do I have to walk across the table on my knees?”
She pushed her plate aside. “Excuse me, Chuck.” She leaned on his head and jumped up on her chair. “I’ve shown you my tits, I’ve poured out my heart…”
She did it, I couldn’t believe she did it. She knelt on the table and crawled over. “I’ll even give you my beer,” she said as she carried the glass, held like a torch before her.
“Did you show her your pee-pee?” Barbara asked while everyone else hurriedly moved their beers and food out of her path.
Jean paused. “You know?” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I haven’t.” Carefully holding her beer up with one hand, she began to pull her shirt out of her pants with the other.
“Do I have to show you that too?” she asked me from three feet away.
“Yeah, show her!” somebody encouraged.
“Hell, show us!” another voice said.
“That’s not necessary,” I told her as she fumbled along her belt.
Finally I reached over and held her hand as she reached the top button of her fly. “Stop,” I said, looking up at her on the table. It was a very good thing, I thought, that it was solid oak.
“Stop,” I repeated quietly as her eyes shone down on mine.
The whole table quieted, waiting to see what would happen next. She put the beer down.
“You’re out of your fucking mind.” But I couldn’t help smiling as I said it.
“Yeah, yeah, I am,” she agreed, nodding. “I’m the psycho bitch…but I really like you.”
She covered my hand that still held on to the edge of her belt with her own and leaned down. “I really like you a lot.”
“And now all of Bay Ridge knows you like me too.”
“Everyone knows it but you, everyone but you.” She got off the table and stood before me.
She still smiled, but her eyes, her eyes held something that sparked, a deeper glow that told me there was more that she wanted to say. I spoke to that glow.
“I like you too, Jean,” I told her eyes, and reached for her face. As I stroked the smooth skin of her cheek, I could hear her sharp intake of breath. Then I kissed the spot my fingertips had traced. “I’ve got to go.” I grabbed my jacket and waved my good-byes.
*
Considering the drive home and the fact that beer was “something you rent,” as Roy, Bennie, and I often joked, I decided to visit the facilities before I left. Jean and I bumped into each other as I was coming out of the bathroom.
“Hey, sorry,” I said as I banged into her arm.
“Sorry,” she said at the same time, and we laughed.
I leaned back against the wall as we smiled at each other. She had very light lines in the creases around her eyes when she smiled, and they added character and depth to her beauty.
“I’m gonna miss you,” I blurted, then bit my lip before I said anything else I didn’t want to.
“Yeah?” she asked, almost a whisper, as she angled in closer. I had this insane urge to kiss her as she wrapped an arm around me and her chest brushed against mine when she reached into my back pocket and pulled out my cell.
“You can call me whenever you’d like,” she said into my ear before she straightened. It must have been the beers, because the few inches between us seemed really far.
She focused on my phone. “There. You’ve got…my home number, my cell number, and…my e-mail address.” She pressed a last button and held the phone by her shoulder. “Don’t lose it. I don’t know when I’ll get out to this part of Brooklyn to visit the base.”
I stepped into the space that seemed to yawn farther even as I moved into it and reached for my phone. I wrapped my fingers around hers. “I won’t.” I glanced at the quirk of her lips.
When the urge hit me again it didn’t seem so crazy—a compulsion that started as a pressure in my chest and jumped in time to the heartbeat in my neck—and when I kissed her, I hit the button on my phone that she still held.
Her lips were wonderfully soft and I loved, absolutely loved the way they moved with mine. They felt so good I wondered why I’d waited so long to find out.
She jumped when her phone rang, and I reached around her waist to retrieve it from her back pocket.
“Now you have my number,” I told her as I handed it back to her, “so you can find me if you want to.”
As she released my phone and I put it back where it had come from, she stared at me, an expression I couldn’t read in her eyes.
She put a hand on my waist and cupped my cheek with the other. “Kiss me again?”
Her mouth was delicious, with that sweet beer taste, and the play of her tongue was elegant, skillful, but with a tenderness in it too, a sincerity that
made my heart race and my stomach tighten with need as her fingers grazed through my hair and I held her tightly.
She leaned her head against mine, then nuzzled against my neck as we held each other. “Hey.” Her voice was low with concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. You?”
She nodded against my skin, then kissed it, a whispery touch that made me close my eyes. “We should go talk somewhere, not here.” Her fingertips drew me even closer, and I sighed at the feel of her long, lean body pressed against mine: solid, and real, and strong.
“Where do you want to go?”
She chuckled softly into my hair. “I’d like to take you home, but that’s probably not a good idea. Everyone still wants to get me drunk.”
We separated though we remained touching, her hands on my waist, and I slipped my fingers through her belt loops.
“Actually, I do have to get going. I’m on tomorrow.”
Jean smirked at me. “Think they’ll think we’re fucking in the bathroom?”
“Uh, considering all your forlorn complaints to dispatch on air? I doubt it.” I grinned at her.
“Can I walk you to your car?”
“Sure, I’ll meet you outside the door.”
“You’re not gonna leave?”
“Like you couldn’t call me anyway?” I teased.
I waited outside for about a half minute before she came out.
“Where are you parked?”
“This way.” I pointed, then shoved my hands into my jacket pockets to keep them warm, and Jean walked quietly with me.
“Are you still seeing…?”
“Trace?” I finished for her. “Sort of.” I leaned against my door.
“I thought so.” She gazed at the ground. “Listen, Tori, I know Trace’s okay with the sharing thing, but,” and she gazed at me, “I’m not.”
“I’m not either,” I said, my breath frosting in the air.
Jean rested against the car and brushed a strand of hair off my face, then pushed it behind my ear. “If I’m with you, I want to be with you, not you and anyone else. I want to know,” she closed the distance between us, “that when I touch you, you’re not thinking of someone else.”
We had our arms around each other and I kissed her neck, the skin almost too warm in the chill that surrounded us everywhere but where our bodies met. She shivered slightly under my lips.
“Tori, I don’t want to be your rebound from Trace, either. I want you to call me when you’re free, when you know what you want, and if it’s Trace, that’s fine too. We can be friends, that’s okay. I just want to know you, Tori. I really like you.”
I could feel the pressure of her fingertips through my thick jacket, and I didn’t know what else to say or do. Trace…even if I was okay with her offer to share, it didn’t matter, because Jean wasn’t. And that was wrong somehow, wrong in a way I couldn’t name—to fuck Trace and want to…what did I want with Jean, anyway?
I wanted to hear her laugh, really laugh, for no reason other than she was genuinely happy. I wanted to brush the hair behind her ears and feel her skin under my fingers, then run them through her hair again. I wanted to hold her, like I held her at that moment, but I wanted to feel her move under me, over me, with me, and I wanted to wake up next to her and do it all over again. But more than anything, anything else I could think of at that very second, I wanted to kiss her again, to feel the promise of her lips and the fulfillment of the tenderness behind it, and I wanted that so much it scared me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I hope you’re not sorry you kissed me. I didn’t think I was that bad.”
I chuckled. “No, it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, I…” I pulled back to look at her.
“You need time.” Her voice was soft and low.
“I…I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted, my voice just as quiet.
Jean kissed my forehead then stepped away, and I instantly missed her warmth. “Can I give you a word of advice?”
“Sure.”
She took a deep breath and stared at my car a moment before gazing at me. “Trace doesn’t—she doesn’t have any safe words. She doesn’t…she doesn’t play that way.”
I just stared, waiting for her to explain.
“Christ,” Jean muttered as she rubbed her forehead, “you don’t even know what I’m talking about. Look, let me put it this way. She doesn’t ask, ever. She’ll push, she’ll retreat, then she’ll take it any way she wants it. But she’ll never, ever ask you if it’s what you want. And, Tori? Make sure you’re okay with that.”
I nodded. “I’ll be careful.”
“You need to be,” she said solemnly.
Awkward silence grew between us.
“Hey.” Jean’s usual smile appeared and her tone lightened considerably. “Will you run away with me if I show you my pee-pee?”
I laughed, relieved, glad to be on normal territory again. I shook my head. Typical Jean. “Good night, Jean.”
“Hey, just say the word and I’m yours.” She smiled. “Good night, Scotty.”
I watched her walk away before I opened my door.
“Yo, Scotty?” she called from the corner.
“Yeah?”
“Call me if you need me?”
“I will,” I promised, and slid behind the wheel as she disappeared around the corner, her arrogant slouch a fading shadow on the sidewalk.
I decided to actually have a cigarette before I drove off. I definitely wasn’t feeling any sort of buzz anymore, but I certainly wasn’t feeling any type of sane, either.
Safe word. Huh. I couldn’t think of a single one that could possibly apply to Trace; in fact, the words “safe” and “Trace” had not, could not, and would not ever go together, I thought as I drove over the bridge.
Trace. What did I know about Trace, really?
I considered her as I paid my toll. Nothing. She was hauntingly pretty, she was damn good at her job, great hands actually, and she didn’t like to drive too often, said it was a waste of gas and polluted the air when she could walk during the day or take the bus door to door in the evening.
Her parents were alive and lived somewhere in the Island, maybe somewhere in the South Shore? I wasn’t sure.
We never went out anywhere—unless that first visit to the beach counted. She…didn’t really eat meat, but would cook just about anything with protein when she made dinner for us because she said I was still growing. She liked to make me breakfast when I stayed, but then she liked to fuck afterward.
She would say she loved my touch, but only if it was directly sexual or leading to sex or right after. Anything else she’d move away from unless she initiated it—casual hugs, that sort of thing.
She was appealingly intelligent and had very interesting ideas about ecology, world hunger, and poverty; I’d woken up a few times to walk out to her living room and find her crying over a documentary or infomercial on needy children somewhere in the world. I’d shut the set off and wrap her in my arms, rocking her until she calmed and quieted. Only at those times, when she was crying, I reflected, did she actually let me hold her. And that always evolved into sex.
No matter how I examined the entire situation, I found it strange, especially when coupled with the desperate way in which she always wanted to fuck, not just have sex, but fuck, repeatedly: she had to come at least three times before we’d stop. Well, that might sound like fun, and maybe, when this had started, it had been, but then it would get weird; she was always pushing, pushing for something…
Damn, though. When I wanted to end it altogether with Trace, she’d do something, say something—a touch, a look, a tear-filled confidence—that would shake me, wreck me, make me need to either bask in the embrace, give in to the sensual, or ease her pain; and somehow, my feelings would twist and overlap one another until, eventually, someone was bleeding, usually me.
The scratches, the bites that drew blood, the bruises she left on m
e, or the way she tied my wrists after holding them for so long—that and the insistence, the insistence on just one more, always, still bothered me.
Yet…something about her called me, because she hurt, so badly my chest squeezed, and I kept thinking that somehow if I cared enough, I could fix it, I could help, somehow.
And then…there was Jean. I smiled to myself, a lightness growing in me. I knew so much about her: how she loved her family dearly and saw them at least once a week, how her dog substituted as a pillow sometimes and ate slippers instead of chew toys—in fact, Jean bought Dusty slippers for that very purpose. So many things, like she loved a good black and tan with a burger, medium rare, at Peggy O’Neills after a long shift, and sometimes had to be dragged away from the raw bar at Lundy’s; her favorite color was red, cardinal red specifically, not fire engine red.
She had a scar on the outside that I instinctively knew was probably nowhere nearly as large as the one she carried inside, and…she liked me. And I liked her too, maybe too much, I thought, considering that kiss we’d shared, the memory of it sending a pleasant tingle under my skin as I parked in the driveway. What I liked about Jean best was, well, everything. I liked that she was crazy, I liked that she was so good at what she did, I loved the way she walked and talked and stood, and I couldn’t think of a single thing I didn’t like, I mused as I trooped as quietly as I could up the steps.
It would have been nice if I’d been able to say something to her other than “I like you too.” In fact, I would have liked to take her out for a nice dinner, go see a roundball game, because she shared my obsession with the New York Liberty, and maybe grab a drink afterward. But I couldn’t, because no matter what Trace said about sharing, even if Jean had been okay with it, I wasn’t.
*
As I entered my room I found an envelope taped to my door and held it carefully, trying not to crush it as I placed my bag in a corner and paid scrupulous attention to where I placed my jacket and uniform; I had taken off my boots by the back door in the kitchen. I was mindful of the fact that I walked in and out of hospitals all day, and I didn’t want to track something into the house that might negatively affect Nina and my developing niece or nephew.