by Roxy Harte
I touch between her legs, pushing aside the thin panties to find her damp core just as ready as she promised.
Not to be left out, Veronica pulls her summer knit sweater over her head to reveal a black lace bra. She pushes her way forward. Wanting me to notice her too.
Releasing Claire’s nipple reluctantly, I catch Veronica’s hand, stopping her from taking off her short floral skirt. I like the skirt, the fullness of it, and want to see it bunched up around Veronica’s hips. Eventually. “Share me, ladies. We have all night and I promise to leave you both satisfied.”
I take off my silk shirt, revealing a tight white wife beater beneath. I’ll leave it on. It’s a rare thing that women ever see me completely naked.
Scooting to the center of the bed, I pat the space beside me. “Lie down, Veronica.”
She’s quick to acquiesce and I move to kneel between her bent legs. The skirt is bunched just above her thighs, just as I imagined in my mind, hiding in part her bony thinness. I rub her legs, drawing a sigh from her lips.
Claire stands awkwardly beside the bed and I am relieved when Veronica holds out her hand. “Join us, silly head.”
Claire climbs onto the bed, still seeming uncertain but tentatively angled to kiss Veronica. I hope she figures out what she needs to do on her own because one of us having to direct every maneuver will definitely put a damper on things.
They kiss. I watch. Then it seems everyone relaxes a little.
I slide my hands up Veronica’s long, smooth legs, catching the hem of her skirt as my hand slides higher. I like watching the slow reveal of thighs then mons, liking the fact that Veronica is shaved bare. Bending forward, I kiss the waxed smooth skin before pushing her flesh apart to expose her hood-covered clit. She’s quiet. Still. But I don’t doubt my skill. I’ve defrosted some of the coldest ice princesses in town, leaving them gasping, screaming, begging…
Claire leaves the bed and a moment later I feel her hands running tentatively over my back and around my waist. I stop licking Veronica long enough to look over my shoulder and smile. The small encouragement works magic because Claire is soon brave enough to undo my belt, unbutton my slacks and slide down the zipper. She slides her hands up and down my cock.
Thank god I remembered to remove the soiled latex condom back at the party.
With me on my knees and bent over Veronica, it is fairly easy for Claire to pull my pants and briefs down to my knees in one smooth motion. I feel her hands pushing my shirt up and tense a little. I don’t bare my breasts usually. I’m uncomfortable enough looking at them. Having them under someone else’s scrutiny would be unbearable. But Claire soon makes it obvious she isn’t interested in anything above my waist by pushing apart my ass cheeks. She rims my anus with her tongue and as delightful as it feels, I’m left feeling unexpectedly exposed.
These women don’t know me. They have no way of knowing that I don’t like penetration. Usually, in moments such as this, I ruin the mood. Overreact. I try to stay calm even though my heart starts racing. I fear the push, opening me. Lifting my face from Veronica’s pussy, I pivot enough to grab Claire and push her forward. “Suck Veronica, I want to watch the two of you go at it.”
I must have said it right, with enough command and sass, because both girls giggle but then immediately get to it.
I didn’t blow it.
I breathe a sigh of relief and watch them, still nervous the moment will turn awkward. For all my sexual bravado behind the podium, in real-life situations I’m pretty self-conscious and not nearly as self-assured as I should be.
Veronica moans, a raw, needy sound from deep in her throat. She’s coming, or close to it. I’m surprised when she reaches for me and meets my gaze. “I want to suck your cock.”
Hell yeah.
Opening a nightstand drawer, I rummage for a condom and quickly slide it in place—taking too long according to Veronica.
“Hurry, Danson. I need you in my mouth. Now.”
I inch nearer on the bed, trying to figure out a smooth move to straddle Veronica’s face without kicking Claire in the head, but Veronica doesn’t wait. Rearing up, she grabs my hips and pulls me forward. She sucks my cock deep.
Regaining my balance, I thrust a little and can feel her throat’s resistance to the silicone. But she takes it. Takes all of it. Gagging. Swallowing. Moaning.
I can hear Claire still lapping Veronica’s clit.
I’m torn between watching Veronica’s mouth work my cock and watching Claire suck Veronica’s clit.
Claire looks up at me over Veronica’s mons and when our gazes lock we’re of one mind. She doesn’t miss a lick as she angles the rest of herself onto the mattress, putting her own ass in the air and within easy reach. Touching her, I find her wet. Ready. And go to work pleasuring her with my fingers.
Within moments, what seems like mere seconds, I have two luscious women moaning and on the edge of orgasm in my bed. God, what a glorious night.
Hours and many orgasms later, I put both women into a taxi. The sun is coming up over the city with the promise of a glorious day. Exhausted and blissed-out on endorphins, I sit on the steps leading to my apartment. I’m sure I look exactly like I feel—sexed up and barely able to string two thoughts together following a night of complete debauchery.
I should sleep.
And eat.
No. Sleep first.
Standing. Mostly standing, I head up the steps, wishing I could just sleep where I am. A grating sound above my head leads my gaze to a neighbor’s window just as Mrs. Rizzo leans out. “Danni!” Her Italian accent is heavy even after a decade in this country. “Why you no answer your phone?”
“What?” I feel for my cell in my pants pocket, remembering I put it on silent last night. I can’t imagine why my neighbor would be calling me this early. I know my walls are paper thin but we weren’t that loud last night. “Is something wrong, Mrs. Rizzo?”
“Call your mother.”
“My mother called you?” Seriously? It hasn’t been that long since I’ve talked to her. She was worried enough to call Mrs. Rizzo?
“Danni, it’s your father. He’s in the hospital. Call your mother. Now.”
Oh shit.
Chapter Two
Going Home
When I first arrived in New York City, I embraced each new experience with the line, “I’m not in Kansas anymore,” and found it absolutely hilarious. Stepping off the bus to face miles of blue skies and golden fields, I can’t find the same humor in my return home. From the bus stop I can see the entire town. It isn’t much, brick buildings and dust. Will’s Hardware and Yah Yah’s Pizza both beckon with sweet and sour memories.
Here, I’m not Dan’s son. I’m Denise. The only child of Dan and Edna O’Brian, who would never be good enough, no matter how hard I tried to prove I was. This small town never provided a home. It was purgatory.
I escaped and spent the better part of a decade getting over its small-mindedness and the alienation I felt growing up as the outsider in this town. God, what am I doing here?
The rev of the bus engine pulling away from the curb fills me with panic.
“Wait!” Shouting, I drop my bags. “I can’t stay here!”
The bus doesn’t stop.
I’m not sure how long I stand there. Dumbfounded. Long enough to forget how to breathe as I suffocate on all the old rules, archaic ideas and prejudices I ran from in the first place. Long enough to close my eyes and hope and pray that when I open them again I’ll be back in the city and this will have been a bad dream. Of course when I open my eyes I’m still in Kansas.
The messages Mom left on my voicemail replay through my brain. Her voice was halting, as if she was trying to hold it together long enough to get all the words out without breaking down. Your dad had a stroke. Several small strokes. I’m at the hospital with him now. He isn’t conscious and it’s obvious he has some paralysis. His face. The doctor won’t give us a prognosis for several days but I know he’s getting good care
. Don’t you worry.
The second message, left several hours later by the time stamp, was more jarring. Danni, you need to come home. I need you to be here. Dad needs you.
That last part was a lie. My dad wouldn’t want me there. And in fact, my very presence would be so unsettling it would probably interfere with his recovery. But that part hardly mattered. I wouldn’t let her down. Not when she needed me most. Getting on the bus wasn’t even debated. I just did it.
Six hours into the drive I actually talked to my mom.
“How is he?”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Danni. He’s not good. He’s going to need months of rehabilitation to recover from this.”
“But he’ll recover.” That’s good news.
“Yes,” her voice cracked, making it obvious she was crying. “I have no right to ask you this, Danni.”
“What?”
“I want you to help me do some things when you get here. Manage things. We need to sell the garage and I don’t know anything about dealing with real estate agents.”
“No! You can’t sell the garage.”
“What do you want me to do? We can’t afford to pay someone to keep it open. So, unless you’re willing to come here and run the garage while he can’t—”
Run the garage? Once upon a time that was the dream. But that was before college. Before I wrote my first manuscript. Before I branded myself as Dapper Dan. I was young and believed I could change the prejudices by being kind and helpful. I was so wrong. There wasn’t enough kindness or charm or even good deeds to make up for being queer. To be offered what I wanted then now seems a cruel jest. I don’t want the damn place. I have a life. A good life. And that isn’t here in the middle of fucking nowhere. “That isn’t a good idea.”
There was a silent moment between us, filled with all the hurt and heartache of what I’ve been brave enough to say only once. “I can be your son, Dad. God damn, open your eyes. I am your son.” He’d slapped me—the only time he’d ever raised his hand to me—and I left for college the next day. We haven’t spoken since.
“He loves you, Denise.”
“I love him.” I hate it that my voice cracks a little, betraying my weakness, my pain. “And that’s why I won’t sell the shop out from under him.”
“That garage sits empty for a month or two there won’t be a business for him to come back to.”
“I don’t believe that. Dad’s customers are faithful.”
“Not that faithful. Not with that new auto super store opening a town over. It’s already hurting business with their twenty-dollar oil changes and fuel discounts.”
Automotive super store? “You never mentioned Dad was having trouble with the business.”
“It didn’t seem important before. Now it is. Will you help me or not?”
And there it was—will you help me? And how could I say no to my mother? “What are you thinking? A month? Two months? I can’t put my life on hold indefinitely. I’ll have to ask the university for a leave of absence.”
“It’s summertime. You don’t have classes in the summertime.”
“Actually, I teach several classes summer quarter.”
“Then it’s too much trouble. I’m sorry I asked. Just stay in New York.”
Oh god. Even without trying to lay on a guilt trip, she laid on a guilt trip. Just the tone of her voice screamed of it. “Mom, please don’t do that. I’m on my way. I’ll work the garage as long as you need me to. I just need to know how long I’m requesting off.”
“Two months. All this will be resolved by then, right? He’ll either be able to go back to work or he won’t, and if he can’t, it won’t be your problem anyway.”
But it’s my problem now.
“If I’m coming back for that long, there’s going to have to be some changes.”
“Changes?”
“You know I go by Danni now. Can you please just refrain from calling me Denise?”
“I do try—Danni—but it’s hard to remember.” Her voice cracked. “Even though that’s what your father always called you. From the time you were born. I guess I can blame him for stealing my daughter away from me. My little girl—”
“Blame God, Mom, if you need to blame someone for how I turned out—” Shit. I wanted to take the biting words back as soon as exited my mouth. “I don’t want to fight.”
“No fighting. Agreed. Just don’t try so hard to be weird when you come back to town. I’ve seen that website of yours—”
The more compromising photos came to mind…
“It’s an embarrassment. I raised you better than to flaunt your business for God and everyone to see. Dapper Dan.” She says my brand like it is a foul taste in her mouth. “Leave the flashy suits and fedoras in the city. There’s no place for such flamboyance here.”
“I got it, Mom. Don’t embarrass you, don’t embarrass Dad, and I promise to do my best, but I can’t stop being who I am.”
So much was left hanging between us when we disconnected. Coming home was such a bad idea.
Hefting my duffle bag onto my shoulder, I walk to the north end of town. It isn’t far. Two blocks. And I can feel people watching me through the windows of the stores as I pass. And the gossip starts now. Who’s the stranger in town? Is it a boy? Or a girl?
Words like transgender and genderqueer don’t exist in this place. Freak does…
Don’t think about it—about how horrible it was. A lot has changed in ten years. Right?
I take a deep breath and push away the ghosts of my past. As much as I want to run screaming back to the city, I keep walking and when I stop, I’m standing in the shadow of my father’s three-bay block-and-mortar garage. Danny’s. He’s always been known as the best mechanic for five counties. At least until Friday night’s stroke left him with paralysis on his right side.
In the meantime, I’m here, the second-best mechanic in five counties. Or at least that’s what he always told me.
Unbeknownst to Mom, I called the hospital from the bus. I needed to know what she wasn’t willing to tell me. The doctor couldn’t say how much he would recover, or if he would recover at all. Only time and rehab would tell that. I’d said, “He’s a fighter. He’ll turn this around.” And I believe that, but I’m not here with blinders on. His recovery is going to be tough and allowing Mom to believe he’ll be as good as new in a month or two may be what she needs emotionally right now to get through the moment. I didn’t need any such coddling. I requested summer and fall quarters off. Come winter, he’ll either be willing to return, or we’ll all be forced to make hard decisions. I hate to sell the place, but…
“God, what a wreck.”
Crossing the street, I can’t believe my eyes because even though the building is a derelict of the sixties, Dad always kept it in tiptop shape. When I left, fresh white paint glistened in the sun, but now…faded gray chipped paint peels off the sides and the whole building seems to be listing a bit to the side, I can only assume from the close encounter it had with a tornado Mom told me about. This is bad.
I look left and right, down the main drag, seeing what I didn’t see before. The town seems damaged as well, obviously in an economic decline. No wonder business is down. “This town is dead.”
Dropping the fifty-pound rucksack filled with clothes, books and more notable possessions I didn’t want to disappear from my apartment while I was away, I’m suddenly glad I packed more than was necessary. I bend to retrieve the key I know will be under the mat. There used to be a knack to opening the door and without even thinking about it, I jiggle the key as I turn the lock to gain its cooperation. As soon as I hear the soft click, I lean all of my weight and then some more into the metal door, because the upper right corner sticks. And when it finally gives, I stumble with it, the bell hanging over the door clanging sharply.
I look up, having forgotten the bell. A million memories and a flood of emotion return with the jingle. My chest is suddenly filled with a heavy weight and I take a deep br
eath. The scent of my youth sweeps away the present.
Metal clangs on metal, air hisses through a compressor, and a man curses softly. “Don’t you be telling your mother I said ‘fuck’ out loud now, you hear, Danni?”
“I hear, sir.”
I was young, no more than seven or eight.
He never called me Denise. Hot tears sting my eyes. I never thought I’d step foot back into this place again.
“I just get so mad sometimes. So disappointed. This place has no future. Someday it will be a rusted pile of nothing, blown away by the wind. I’m working my life away for nothing. No legacy. No sons.”
“I’ll be your son, sir.”
He’d winked. “You’d be a good son, Danni. The best. Don’t tell your mother I said that either.”
But when the time came I just wasn’t good enough. “Looks like the joke is on both of us, Dad, ’cause I’m back, and I’m gonna be runnin’ the place for a while.” I wipe at the tears sliding down my cheeks. I flip over the little plastic sign that hangs in the center of the glass, secured by a rubber suction cup yellowed by time and cigarette smoke. It pops off. The window is so coated with grime there isn’t much hope of it reattaching. Spitting on the suction cup, I push it back against the glass, and by some miracle it stays stuck. Danny’s is once again OPEN. Fuck! “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
A flash of soft yellow rear panel beckons from one of the bays and I step into the bowels of the garage. I finger the tarp covering the vehicle before whisking it off to reveal the prize beneath. “I can’t believe he kept it all these years.”
The Buick GSX was the seventies supremo muscle car and I’d had to have it. Together, my father and I rebuilt the engine, reupholstered the seats and applied new paint—all original colors, of course, and nothing less than the best in materials. She was one of only six hundred and seventy-eight produced. And she was perfect.
The coupe was a sexy beast when we finished with her. I called her Lola.
Of course, I have to start her—and climb inside. The key is in the ignition and she starts on the first try. The engine purrs as if we just finished the rebuild yesterday. “Still perfect.”