by Gray, Ace
I love you Mina.
Mina matches me step for step. I can feel it. Feel her as she walks beside me down the middle of the street. I could reach out and grab her hand—I could pull her in close—but the feeling of her there, magnetic in the way that only she can be, without touching her is a heady feeling.
Being so tuned to someone that they become your gravity source… I wouldn’t believe it happened if she wasn’t mine.
The crunch of gravel beneath my feet has the echo of hers, her soft sighs dance on the breeze, and though I can’t hear her heartbeats, I know they’re there. I have a feeling I could beat the rhythm. That is an intimacy that PDA can’t provide. It’s so much more.
Just like Mina.
“Is it weird that we’ve never seen a movie together?” Mina asks. “I mean we’re engaged. We’re going to spend our lives together, and I don’t know if you talk through movies.”
“Do you think I talk through movies?” I chuckle lightly.
I feel her gaze sweep me and when I peek over, she’s trying to school her smile. Trying and failing.
“I can barely get you to talk through dinner.” She nudges my shoulder with hers.
“You seem to manage just fine.” We’re closer together now, the warmth of her skin radiates toward mine, my sun warming my skin despite the moon peeking out.
Her arm grazes mine as she reaches up to point toward the alley we’re cutting through to get to the movie theater. Shivers shake my spine.
“They don’t have Reese’s here.”
“Why am I even bothering?” I spin and make a show of walking back the way we came.
“No, no, no, no.” Mina runs after me, and her hands clasp around mine, pulling me back. I crash into her, my hands finding the curves of her body as I steady myself. “We’re doing this.”
“We could be doing each other.” I keep her body pressed to mine.
“They aren’t showing all three Lord Of The Rings movies in a row.” Mina rolls her eyes.
“I know.” I cock my head and furrow my brow.
“It was a joke, James.” She laughs. “It means we’ll have time later.”
I nod as what I might get to do later flashes through my mind. “Are you one of those girls that fools around in a movie theater?” I ask without really thinking. Mina is the only person that brings that out of me.
“James.” She sounds scandalized and swats at me again.
“Okay, okay.” I skitter away from her, my hands raised in surrender. After a few breaths, we both keep walking, and she falls back into place beside me. The silence is comfortable, blissful even, but her laughter… “So is that a yes in regards to the hand job?”
“James!”
“Back-row then?”
She closes the small distance between us, and I’m prepared for another playful smack, but she just melts into me, her pointer finger in my face. “You’re incorrigible.” She shakes it mere centimeters from my nose.
“I’m still hearing deflection…”
She uses the full length of her body to press me against the brick of the building. “Kiss me,” she commands with a soft voice and softer smile.
My eyes scan the alley before I lean in and press my lips to hers. A simple, sweet kiss where I just get to whet my appetite. Tease and torment myself with what I’ll feast on later.
“No, I mean really kiss me.” Mina fists my shirt and pulls me into her.
“Meen…” My eyes dart down the alley again. The movie theater is right there. So is half the town if I’ve learned anything.
“Kiss me so desperately that I need you.” She rubs her body against mine.
It’s not that I don’t want to kiss her. I always want her, want the taste of her. And it’s not like I’m not proud she’s mine. She’s beautiful, intelligent, driven, and kind. There’s nothing she does that I’m not proud of. But if I kiss her in public, they’ll see.
And it’s not even the near pornographic way I want to kiss her that I’d rather not be on display, it’s what they’d see in me. Anyone watching would see me let my guard down. They’d see my weaknesses all on display. Because when I kiss her, I’m at her mercy. Completely. I breathe Mina in and go a little shaky at the knees. The world around us fades to black, and for a moment, I am nothing more than that kiss, that moment and the thousand others I will greedily take.
That’s not exactly what I want people to see. It’s far deeper than I want to let them in. It shows just how vulnerable I really can be.
As I scramble for the words to explain, Mina lets out a big laugh from deep in her chest where it presses against mine. “See?” she says as if I’ve proven some point with my silence. “It doesn’t even matter if I’m a hand job in the back-row kind of girl, because you are not a hand job in the back-row kind of guy.”
I smile. Of course she knew what she was doing when she begged me to kiss her. She knew I wouldn’t and I’m pretty sure she knows why. PDE—public displays of emotion, affection or otherwise—has never been my thing, and Mina has never asked me to change.
But maybe I could if it meant her hands on me, scandalously, and within the next ten minutes…
“So, is that a yes?” I ask.
“James Larrabee,” she scolds, swatting me before turning to walk away. I press off the wall and follow her—I’d follow her anywhere.
“Now I’m really curious, Meen,” I say as I easily match her stride. “Would you?”
“Would you?” she counters.
“I mean…” I don’t really know how to answer. The fantasy is pretty fantastic. Her hands on me while people around us are none the wiser? There’s a thrill that builds at the base of my spine just at the thought. But could I keep quiet? Could I keep them all from seeing what she does to me? Body and soul? “What does it say about me that it kind of turns me on?”
“It says you’re human.” She laughs and brushes her fingers along the back of my hand. “And that we should get seats in the back-row.” She waggles her eyebrows and heat radiates through my body.
Well, lust and a little embarrassment. Am I really going to let her—
“Hey guys,” Candace, one of Mina’s bartenders, interrupts my thoughts. I try and swallow it down and say hello but land on a gritty and choked garble instead.
“Hey, Candace. If you’re here who’s watching Holliday?” Mina answers flawlessly with a little chuckle even, as if we weren’t just talking about fooling around in public. In public where people like Candace can see. “Going to a movie?”
“Yeah, that new Tarantino movie, it looks so good.”
“Us too.” Mina mercifully makes easy conversation. I’m still trying to get the image of her hand sliding up my thigh out of my head. That and its shadow that asks what it says about me that I want to be publicly jerked off to what is undoubtedly a bloody movie. Mina said it was human but put in such succinct terms it seems savage, animalistic.
Maybe that’s the appeal.
“James would never.” Mina saying my name shakes me loose again.
“I’d never what?” My words still aren’t quite steady.
“Go to that with me.” She jerks her head toward a display just inside the theater. I’d barely noticed we walked in.
Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey in their Wayne’s World garb are staring back at me. Not once but twice. I groan.
“See?” Mina laughs.
“Who wouldn’t want to go to see both of them, in the theater?” Candace’s voice ratchets up like Mina’s would.
“I’ve never seen them.”
“All the more reason to.” Candace throws out her arms in exasperation.
“See, I figure it’s all the more reason not to. Everyone loves that movie. I’ve heard about it for years, people quote it, dress up like Wayne and what’s his name—”
“Garth,” Mina adds before buying two tickets.
“Yeah, Garth. I’ve seen it so pervasively in pop culture and everyone insists it’s so good and I’m gonna love it, tha
t I just feel like it can’t really live up. I’m better left assuming that it can then being proven right.”
“But what if they prove your wrong, because you are oh so wrong?” Candace asks, crossing her arms across her chest.
I just shrug. “Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the way this is gonna go.”
“Mina, help me. You can’t possibly marry someone who hasn’t seen Wayne’s World.”
“Oh leave him be.” She shoots me a small smile. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that there’s no changing his mind when he gets like this.”
“But—”
“No buts.” She shakes her head. “He’s a man who has logicked his way to a conclusion that I cannot sway with an emotional plea. Even if it is about Wayne’s World.”
“Just tell him you’ll give him a hand job in the back-row. That oughta do it.”
I almost swallow my tongue as Mina bursts out laughing wild and free.
“Do you want to go to Denver with me this weekend?” Mina asks as she’s moving her clothes over, making space for mine in the dresser.
“Sure. What’s up?” I can’t help but smile as I slide my stuff in beside hers.
“My brother just brought his baby home from the hospital.”
“You’re a baby person?” I ask Mina, unsure of her answer. It’s another one of the things that we’ve never talked about—I suppose there are a bunch of those type of topics. What answer do I want her to say? Why haven’t I ever thought about this? About having kids with Mina…
“Not really, but I’m a this kid kinda person. He’s my nephew and he’s adorable.” She grabs her phone and flips to a picture.
I’m still lost for an answer, well, my answer. And whatever the hell it might be. I can picture her with a big ole stomach or a little baby curled against her chest. I can also picture us traveling uninhibited and me getting up the courage to let my guard down enough to get that hand job. No one is getting a hand job in the back of Frozen Two…
“…And my mom asked me.” She finishes a sentence that I didn’t hear her start. I don’t exactly know how we got from baby to mom, but a feeling sinks in my stomach. Her family has something to say and they want me there to hear it.
I focus on the dresser in front of me. On folding my clothes neatly and sliding them in, color-coded, next to each other. Sure this was coming at some point—her family, my family, the realization that our lives are far more than the bubble of Pyramid Peak—but I didn’t expect it today and I don’t know how to respond to it. I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know how I should.
I don’t know how many more of these road bumps we’ll hit. I know the ins and outs of her soul but not her life. I know I want to marry her, but I don’t really know her. Not all of her anyway. Not yet.
My chest tightens. The knot in my throat is even tighter. I kind of want to vomit. But rather than giving in, I just say, “Sounds like fun.”
Two pairs of Mina’s eyes sit, pinched and unfeeling across the coffee table from me and I shift uncomfortably beneath their gaze. Mina got up to get a round of beers about fifteen minutes ago and hasn’t returned. We haven’t said anything in her absence. Instead I’ve been studying the colors of the room—the rug, the woodgrain, and Mina’s dad and brother’s eyes. I only notice them when I have to, when it would be awkward not to meet their stares.
This was suppose to be easy, they were suppose to like me. We were getting married. Mina spent the entire four hour drive from Pyramid Peak to Denver reassuring me. I’d never asked her to, never voiced my concerns, but true to Mina, she knew. She told me they were protective but not crazy. That they loved beer and good books and assured me we’d find things to talk about. She’d even told me that they’d love me because she loved me.
Like a fool, I believed her.
“So…” Lara, Mina’s sister in law, tries to break the silence but either gives up or gets caught up in her newborn’s sounds and movements.
I wet my lips, hoping that words will just come to me. They don’t.
“So you’re marrying my daughter?” Her dad, Francis, takes the opportunity.
“Yes.” I clear my throat. Just because I’m direct doesn’t mean the word doesn’t stick in my throat a little.
“And you didn’t ask permission?” He’s a brick wall, and I have no idea how to read him or answer that question.
“I…uh…asked her—”
“So you know I’m friends with Courtney, too?” Her brother, Michael, interrupts.
I try and swallow again. That could imply a lot of different things.
“I brought beer,” Mina cuts in before I have to answer either of them.
She hands one out to each of us then silence falls again.
“What did you guys talk about while I was gone?” she asks as she settles into the seat next to me.
“Nothing,” her brother says sharply. Her dad shrugs and shakes his head. They both eye me so I say nothing too.
“I don’t believe a single one of you.” She meets Lara’s eyes and we all see the arched eyebrows that wordlessly confirm her statement. “What did you two say?” she asks a little more pointedly, reaching over to rest her hand on my thigh.
“I said I was friends with Courtney.” Her brother sits back and crosses his ankle over his knee.
“I asked about your impending nuptials.” Her dad mimics her brother.
“Stop, please. For me?” Mina asks.
Her brother takes a sip of his beer and her dad mutters something. She eyes them for a moment longer then accepts those non-answers. Part of me wants to gape at her for letting them off the hook, part of me is grateful to stop rocking the boat.
“Cards,” Lara says. “We should play cards while we wait for your mom.” Still holding the baby, she maneuvers toward a cabinet near the dining room table.
“You can tell a lot about a man by the way he plays cards.” Her dad eyes me as he rises and heads toward the table.
“I’ll enjoy beating your ass.” Her brother does the same.
“Don’t listen to them. I don’t know what’s gotten into them.” Mina shifts so she can look me straight in the face. “Do you want to play cards? We don’t have to.”
“Do you mean I know how you’ll get and that’s the last thing we need right now?”
She chuckles low and soft. “Well, being super competitive will either be the manly thump on your chest they need to see to respect you or it’ll be the thing that smashes this flaming bridge to smithereens.”
“So you admit that this isn’t going well?”
She picks up my hand and traces the veins on the back in lieu of an answer. When she’s traced every inch, she looks up at me and that look, full of her feeling for me, makes it worth it.
“I’ll do my very best not to be insane.”
“I know.” She smiles, warm and rich, full of trust. “I can’t promise the same for them.”
“Not the kind of promise I need from you.”
And for a moment I forget about her family, the world around us, and am solely aware of the small swath of her skin showing from where her sweater has slipped off her shoulder. I lean in and press my lips to her skin. Sweet, soft, I breathe in her honey and hint of rose, settling into my skin at the way she consumes my senses.
“Gross” and “Not in my house,” rumble in unison from her dad and brother. I jerk away and land back in reality, the anger palpable, and the smell of pozole, not Mina, filling the room. Just as quick, she grabs my hand and squeezes.
She leans in and rests her chin on my shoulder. “If they keep at this, maybe I’ll be the one to burn the bridge to the ground.”
“Rummy,” I call out. Again.
“Dammit.” Mina laughs, though a little nervously, as I pull her discard and steal the points.
“You’re feeding him cards,” Francis accuses.
“It kinda seems like you are,” Lara agrees but with a hint of Mina’s laughter not Michael’s venom.
&
nbsp; “I know my sister and if there’s one thing she would never do, it’s cheat,” Michael says pointedly at me.
I furrow my brow. His phrasing is too precise to just be a jab, he’s saying something with layers to it, and I’m not sure if it’s about years ago when I was a moron and lost Mina’s friendship or if it was recently, when I was a bigger moron and kissed my ex. Either way, my hope that I was making progress plummets. Michael McLennan has been holding a grudge since before I got here. I want to question Mina about it, about whether she’s sharing personal details about us with them—
“James? Your turn,” Mina says softly, slipping into my line of sight as if she sensed I needed the reassurance.
“Yeah. Fine. Okay.”
She quirks her brow but slides back in her seat behind her cards. I draw and happen upon a third ace. The whole table protests with swears and groans. When the table quiets and play begins again, Francis clears his throat and something tightens in my chest.
“So tell us about the wedding,” Francis starts as if it’s idle conversation.
“Dad,” Mina warms.
“Just wondering if we’re invited, seeing as how you’re not doing things traditionally.” He keeps his eyes on his cards, drawing and discarding as if he’s discussing the weather.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mina shoots him a look over her cards.
“We’ve never even met the guy,” Michael answers, the same detached tone as Francis.
“James is sitting right there, don’t talk about him like he’s not in the room.” Anger tinges the tips of Mina’s ears pink. I bite the inside of my cheek.
I will not make this worse. No matter how badly I’d like to.
“Well he acted like we didn’t exist when he asked you to marry him. No speech, no asking for permission.” Her dad still idly shuffles his cards in his hands without looking up. “Tanner asked for permission…”
Mina folds her cards together a single breath before slapping them down on the table and standing, palms flat against the wood, shoulders up by her ears, and a fury in her eyes I haven’t seen before.