Текст книги "Everything I Left Unsaid"

Автор книги: Molly O'Keefe

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

After locking up the mower and the rest of the tools, I followed the scent of something delicious being cooked over to Ben’s garden.

Part of me insisted that I heed both Dylan and Joan’s warnings. But a larger part of me was tired of taking other people’s warnings as rules. I was done having my mind made up for me by someone else.

Joan had an unforgiving view of the world if she could be angry at Tiffany for being a victim. I wasn’t about to take her word about Ben. And Dylan…I didn’t know enough about him to know his worldview, other than that he was both kind and controlling. I’d never known the two qualities to live in sync like that.

Perhaps Joan and Dylan weren’t looking past the tattoos. Perhaps they were caught up in some black-and-white idea that I wasn’t interested in. Maybe Ben had never given them tomatoes.

I found the old man sitting in front of a fire inside the half-built shell of his brick oven.

“You’ve made a lot of progress,” I said. Through the unfinished top of the oven I could see a cast-iron skillet over a crackling fire.

“Just about done, but I got impatient,” he said. “Thanks for what you finished the other day.”

“No problem. I didn’t want that cement to go to waste. What are you making?”

“Here,” he said, pulling out the pan. Inside, bubbling in oil, were little yellow plants. “Zucchini flowers.” He set the pan down in the grass and pulled off the mitts he’d used to protect his hands.

“My ex used to make ’em,” he said. “She was part Mexican. Fucking amazing cook.”

With a metal fork he grabbed one of the flowers and put it down on a piece of napkin he had with him, and the white paper immediately went clear with grease.

“Want to try it?”

I nodded and took the napkin, still so hot I shifted the little flower from hand to hand so my fingers didn’t burn.

He lifted the other flower out and put it down on his knee.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.

“Nah.” He held out his palms and I could see the thick calluses on all his fingers. Three fingers on his left hand reminded me of Smith’s hand. They looked like they’d been broken and not set properly.

I blew on the flower and then finally bit into it. It was stuffed with a little bit of cheese, and as I pulled the flower away a long string of it came down and scorched my chin. My tongue was singed.

“Ouch. Ow. Wow.”

“Tenderfoot,” he muttered and tossed his flower into his mouth. He chewed contemplatively. “Not quite.”

I finished mine. It was cheesy and fried, which made it pretty damn great. “That was delicious.”

“My ex’s was better,” he muttered.

From a bowl beside his chair he pulled out jalapeño peppers he’d sliced in half, added them to the still-bubbling oil, and put the whole thing back in the fireplace.

“Are you going to just eat those?”

“Fried peppers? No, I’m going to make cornbread. My wife used to put peppers in hers.”

“You’re a really good cook,” I said. He was thinking about his wife and he seemed sad, staring into that half-finished oven. I wished I knew some way to comfort him. Leach away some of this loss he was so clearly feeling.

He shook his head. “Well, I can’t drink, I can’t smoke. Don’t ride no more. Friends are in jail or dead. This is what I got left.”

“You don’t have any family?”

He pursed his lips, staring into the fire as if trying to remember, and then he shook his head. “Nah. My old lady left years ago. Went west to her sister’s.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, responding more to the grief he couldn’t quite hide under those words.

He shrugged. “It’s done business, I suppose.”

“You don’t have any kids?” I asked. I rubbed at some dirt on my elbow, carefully not watching him. I wanted someone—Dylan or Ben—to tell me that they were related, that Ben was Dylan’s father. Otherwise, I didn’t know why Dylan wanted Ben watched.

“Why are you being so nosey?” he asked.

“I can’t drink, can’t smoke. This is all I’ve got left,” I joked. He smiled into the fire.

“No. No family.” He reached into the kiln with his fork to poke at the peppers.

That killed my theory that Dylan was his son. I’d been so sure.

“You took off your scarf.”

I resisted the impulse to hide the bruises with my hands. “I don’t think I was fooling anyone.”

“No,” he agreed. “Your daddy do that? The bruises.”

“Husband.”

“No shit. I thought you’re too young for that kind of stupidity.”

“That kind of stupidity is made for the young.”

It felt oddly crowded around this fire. Like we had all our ghosts with us.

“He didn’t start off mean,” I felt compelled to explain it to him. Maybe to myself. To Joan. I’d never put any of it into words, never looked at how Hoyt had managed to isolate and hurt me so effectively. How I’d let him.

“They never do,” he said, staring into the fire.

“I suppose you’re right. My…mom died, and I was really young and I suddenly found myself alone and in charge of a farm. Mom never taught me about payroll or taxes, or how much credit we had at the grain elevator or who we owed money to. I was in so far over my head, I had no idea what to do. And Hoyt started to help me. Told me he’d take care of things at the grain elevator. Helped me pay bills and talk to people at the bank. He’d been working there a few years already, and he just kind of came up alongside of me so I didn’t have to be so alone. And he seemed…solid, you know? And interested. In me. Like…that.” I’d been able to feel him watching me. His eyes under that hat made me blush. Made me…aware. That and a few polite howdys and I’d…God, I’d been so easy.

“Interested in your land, more likely.”

And yes, wasn’t that just a stunning assessment of my appeal?

“Yes, in the end, I guess, that was true. But I believed he was interested in me. And I was lonely.”

“You didn’t have no one else telling you he was suspicious?”

“One man,” I said. “Smith. Our…foreman, I guess.” Smith and his relationship to Mom and to me and the land kind of defied description. “He warned me that Hoyt was bad news.”

“Smart man.”

“You remind me of him. Of Smith.”

Ben looked up, startled at that. “Well, that’s a mistake. I’m not smart, or I wouldn’t be put out to pasture here.”

“Still,” I said, smiling at Ben. “You two are a lot alike.”

“I guess I’m supposed to take that as a compliment?”

“Yep.” Smith had been the best man I knew, despite the rumors about him. Despite…what I’d done to him.

“Fine.” Oh, Ben was so crusty, it made me laugh.

The jalapeños popped in the grease.

“You stay away from that fuckwit Phil,” he said. “In the double-wide by the laundry. He’s bad business. He’d hurt you and not think twice about it.”

“He was here last night, nearly ruined his son’s birthday party, but Joan stepped in,” I said. “Our neighbor—”

“Oh, I know Joan. And that crazy bitch would do something so stupid.”

I bristled at the name and Ben’s tone. “I thought it was pretty courageous.”

Ben’s eyes lifted to the bruises around my neck and then quickly away.

“Sometimes I miss Maria more than I can stand,” he said. “I wake up at night so lonely it’s like someone chopped off my leg. And then I remember how shitty we were together. How we hurt each other over and over. How much I fucked up, and I think it’s probably better this way. Better to be alone.”

I’d had that same thought just the other day, but somehow it was lonelier when he said it.

He wasn’t a dangerous sociopath. He was a lonely old man trying to re-create something from happier days.

“Thanks for the zucchini flower,” I said. “And for listening, I guess.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll save you some cornbread.”

After my shower I lay down on my bed, the cell phone in my hand. But somehow I couldn’t quite turn it on.

I’d had dessert for breakfast. I’d gone skinny-dipping.

I’d expected anticipation and lust and the throb between my legs and the tightness of my skin.

But somehow the world seemed like it was just too heavy a place right now. All the hard edges were out tonight and I felt each one of them.

I turned the phone on and a text message appeared from earlier in the day.

Dylan: I’m really hoping you found yourself some pie for breakfast…

I smiled, and despite the melancholy, something dark ignited low in my body.

Annie: I did. Well, cake. And I went skinny-dipping this afternoon.

I didn’t expect him to write back right away, but within a minute his answer appeared on the screen.

Dylan: You gonna call me?

Annie: It was kind of a weird day…and night.

Dylan: Call me.

There really wasn’t any question. We were doing this his way. And my way left me alone in my bed and sad. His way I got to call him and maybe…maybe come against my hand.

I called him.

“Layla?” Oh, his voice. His voice just killed me. Part drawl, part growl.

“Hi.”

“You all right?”

I took a deep breath, trying to keep the strange comfort of his worry at arm’s length. “I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“It’s a long story…”

“You got something else to do?” he asked.

“No.”

“Me neither. Might as well tell me.”

I flung an arm out across the bed. Night was falling outside the trailer. I could hear the sounds of the kids on the other side of the rhododendron playing at the swing set. Someone somewhere was grilling hamburgers.

“This…is just kind of a sad place, is all. Sad people.”

“And you’re feeling sad?”

“Not very sexy, is it?” I said with a little laugh. “How about I call you—”

“How about you tell me what happened?”

Something sharp and thorny turned in my chest. “A guy showed up and almost beat up his wife. Nearly ruined his kid’s birthday party. I ran away but this other woman just…charged right in. Made the guy leave.”

“Christ, that was risky.”

“I know. But it was really brave, you know? And I ate the kid’s birthday cake for breakfast and that’s my brave and I just felt…stupid. And awful.”

“Well, that’s not really fair, is it?”

“Fair has nothing to do with anything. Ever.” I sounded bitter, far more bitter than I thought I felt. But it was there all along, this bitter and angry sea, dark and awful and full of monsters, just waiting for me to dive in and get eaten.

Dylan laughed. “This is true. My whole life…I just wanted to be like my brother. My whole life. He was the toughest. The bravest. The most badass guy around. And I just followed that guy around trying to do the shit that he did.”

“What happened?”

“I learned I’m not that badass. And that some people just don’t give a fuck what happens to them. And I don’t know if that’s brave or just crazy.”

I thought of Joan beside the pond today and how she seemed to have a thick armor of I-don’t-give-a-shit. And how lonely that was.

And Ben. God. So lonely it hurt. So lonely he was like a feral mountain man or something. Cooking food that reminded him of a woman he’d driven away.

“I’d rather care,” I said, thinking about the night I ran and the dozen nights before that, when I felt myself slipping, slipping, slipping into not caring. I’d run away so that I could find something to care about.

That was my brave, I realized. Risking everything so I could feel something again. And I suddenly felt proud of myself.

“Me too. Every time. All the years I spent not caring. Or pretending I didn’t give a shit—they were bad years. I’m not saying she wasn’t brave trying to protect that woman. I’m just saying what she did doesn’t make you not brave.”

“Thanks,” I said, more sigh than anything else.

“No problem. But the dessert…what was it?”

“Yellow cake with chocolate frosting.”

“And?”

“Can’t say I loved it.”

“You gotta try tres leches cake.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s pretty much the best thing going.”

“Noted,” I said with a smile.

“So dessert for breakfast was a bust,” Dylan said. “How about skinny-dipping?”

I smiled and rolled onto my back, eager to think of something else. Eager to not be lonely. This connection with Dylan was strange. But it was real. And the world could be a cold place without connection.

“Skinny-dipping was awesome.”

“Yeah?”

“It was so hot today and I’d been working hard and the water was so cold. So…perfect.”

“Sounds like you did it right.”

“There was another woman there.”

His chuckle lit me up from the inside. “Do tell.”

“We just…swam. You know?”

“Tell me swam is some kind of code word for making out.”

I laughed, but I couldn’t lie; I felt hot at the idea. A blush rising up my body making me dizzy. “No…but I saw her kind of naked and…she has an amazing body. She’s a stripper.”

“Oh Jesus, baby…”

Somehow, somehow I’d gone from uninterested and sad to hot. Hot and wet in no time. A chuckle from this man and I was ready to go, my hand in my underwear, testing the swollen edges of my lips.

“I want you to touch yourself tonight,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because…I don’t want to do this alone. Alone…isn’t the point when I’m with you.”

“With me?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Baby, you can’t be building any fantasies around me. Around this. I’m not…”

He trailed off and I held my breath, waiting for him to reveal something about himself. “You’re not what?” I prompted.

“Anything a girl like you should build fantasies around.”

“A girl like me?” I asked.

“Innocent, young…”

“You’re only twenty-nine,” I said, because if there was one thing I didn’t feel most of the time it was young.

“On the outside,” he said. “Inside I’m ancient.”

Inside I’m ancient. I totally got that. Maybe that’s why this thing we were doing worked. Because we were ancient on the inside.

“But what we’re doing…this is all this is. All it’s ever going to be.”

“How do I know you’re not building fantasies around me?”

“Oh, I am,” he laughed. “I’ll be thinking of you and a stripper swimming later on tonight. But a man’s got to have rules, and I know nothing comes out of breaking them.”

Nothing comes of fantasies.

“I know.” Because I’m lying to you and you might be lying to me, and I’m breaking every rule there is because I’m married. “But I still want you to touch yourself tonight.”

He was silent for a long time, as if he were sizing up the reality from his side. God, he might be married too. And he said he wouldn’t lie—but he could have been lying. “Okay.”

“I want you to do it right now.” I bit my lip, incredulous at my boldness.

I heard the clink of a belt, the loud undoing of a zipper.

The connection between us buzzed and I wondered if he was waiting for me to tell him what to do—like he’d done the other night.

Good lord, if he was waiting for that, this would take forever.

“I don’t…Tell me what you’re doing,” I whispered.

“Where’s your hand, baby?”

“Between my legs.”

“Good. Keep it there, but don’t come…”

“What?”

“Not till I tell you. Not until I let you. You feel yourself about to come, you pull your hand away.”

Sweat broke out across my body. Between my legs I was wetter than ever. “Okay.”

“Say yes.”

“Yes,” I swallowed. “Yes, Dylan.”

“You been doing this all week?” he asked. “Touching yourself.”

“Yes.”

“You figured some stuff out? Shit you like?”

“Yes.”

“Details, baby. You need to give me details.”

“I used my underwear the other day, between my legs. It hurt a little—”

“Good hurt?”

“Yes. Good hurt. I got so wet. So…it was all down my legs and my underwear was soaked.” His groaning laugh made the hair stand up on my body. “Now, you tell me.”

“I’ve been hard all day thinking about you,” he said.

I doubted that was true, but whatever. It was hot.

“And it’s quiet here now. Quiet and dark, and I got you in my ear and my cock in my fist.”

My breath shuddered in my throat.

“You like that word?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I stroke myself slow, because that’s how I like it. Hard and slow. Bottom to tip.”

I whimpered, closing my eyes, imagining it as best I could, a dirty movie on the back of my eyelids, gathered from bits and pieces. The book. That one time when I was sixteen with my cousin in town. Dylan’s voice.

“I got come leaking out the tip, and I smear it all over my cock…”

Again that word. I pulled my fingers away from my body, the tension in my belly, between my legs, about to explode.

“I go faster,” he said, his breath sawing in my ear. And I could hear his movements. The click and squeal of the chair maybe. The slap of his skin.

“Tell me,” I whispered. The lake of bitterness and anger was gone, replaced by a desire for everything. A hunger for it all. I felt empty and wide open to the world. Waiting for experience to fill me up. To satiate me.

“I gotta slow down,” he moaned.

“No,” I said, reaching for myself again because I could feel the orgasm coming, touching myself or not.

“Stop, Layla.”

I pulled my hands away. “Come on,” I moaned.

“No, let’s slow down for a second.”

I growled at him but he only laughed, panting a little.

“How many men you slept with?”

“Why?”

“Cause we’re taking a break…slowing shit down.”

“One.”

“One man?”

“Yes.”

“Other than that dirty book of yours, you ever watch any porn?”

“Oh my God,” I laughed, trying to imagine how that would even work. How or where I would find it, much less watch it. “No. No porn.”

“What’s the naughtiest, dirtiest thing you’ve ever seen in real life?”

I barely had to think; the memory was right there. Plugged in like it had been waiting.

“My cousin…” Shit, I was already using Layla’s name. “Annie. My cousin Annie and my aunt came to visit my mom and me on the farm. And I think…maybe because my aunt was there, Mom let me take my cousin into town for ice cream. She never, ever let me go into town by myself.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen.” It was a year before Mom got sick. Hoyt had just been hired but I hadn’t really met him yet. Saw him in the barn every once in a while, a big blond guy with his hat pulled down low.

God, it seemed like a lifetime ago.

“What happened?”

“Town was like a half hour away and we drove the old station wagon in, but once we got there my cousin decided we should get beer instead of ice cream.”

“Naughty girl. Were you on board with that?”

“I was terrified, but I didn’t want my cousin to think…or to know, really…how weird things were in my life, with Mom and being out so far. I mean she probably knew, but I wanted her to think I was…normal.”

“Normal?”

“You know…”

“No. I got no damn idea what a normal sixteen-year-old does.”

“You were sixteen once.”

“But I was never what anyone would call normal. So what happened?”

“We went to the liquor store parking lot and sat out on the hood of our car…just waiting I guess for someone to come by and offer to buy us beer. It took like five minutes. My cousin was real…pretty.”

“So you got a six-pack and got loaded?”

“No, the guy…the guy asked if we wanted him to buy us beer and my cousin said yes. And he asked what was in it for him? And my cousin told him she’d give him a hand job in the back of the station wagon.”

I remembered that night like it was yesterday all of a sudden. The hot summer air, the smell of the fried chicken place up the street and Layla’s clove cigarettes that truly did make her seem like the coolest girl in the world. The cowboy had been rail thin, his belt buckle nearly bigger than his waist.

“How old are you girls?” he asked, his eyes making me feel dirty. And scared. And…excited.

“How old do you want us to be?” Layla said, twirling the end of her ponytail with her finger.

“What happened, baby?” Dylan asked.

“He said yes,” I said, “but he wanted me to watch. My cousin shrugged like it was no big deal, like she gave hand jobs to strangers with me watching all the time, and she just hopped off the front of the car and then climbed in the backseat. The guy jumped in after her and I…I went to sit in the front seat.”

“I want you to watch, sugar,” the guy said. “Back here with us so you get a good view.”

“She can see just fine,” Layla said in the backseat. “Just tilt the mirror, Annie.”

“I tipped the mirror,” I told Dylan. “So I could see what was happening in the back.”

“And did you see?”

“It was dark, too dark really. I could see her hand…moving. But mostly I just heard it.”

“What did it sound like?”

“Wet, sort of. And the guy talked a lot.” I squeezed my legs together remembering what the guy said, the filthy things that came out of his mouth about what a good girl Layla was, and how he wanted to fuck her.

“Were you turned on?”

“I guess…I mean, I think I’m more turned on now, thinking about it, than I was then. Mostly, then I was scared.” But I wasn’t now. The ache was back. That empty throb.

“Did he buy you beer?”

“Yep. I drove around while my cousin drank a six-pack and talked to me about how to give a hand job.”

“Yeah, what was her advice?”

“Spit. She said you need to spit on your hand.”

At the time I’d never heard anything so disgusting, but right now I wasn’t so sure.

“I’ve never told anyone that story.”

“No?”

“Not a single person in my life would appreciate it.”

“I appreciate the fuck out of it, baby.”

I laughed. “How about you? How many—”

“How many men have I slept with? None.”

“Hilarious. How many women?”

“Lots. But I used to be wild.”

“Wild?”

“Following around my badass brother. It wasn’t pretty and I’m not proud of it, but it was wild.”

“What’s the wildest thing you’ve done?”

“Baby, it’s not—”

“Tell me.”

“A couple women at once, I guess.”

Lightning struck my body. “How—?”

He groaned as if my curiosity turned him on, or maybe he was remembering those women. “Truthfully, I was so messed up I barely remember. Mostly, they did each other and I watched. By the time I got around to actually fucking one of them it was over pretty quick. I was wild, but I was young.”

“Well, there’s the difference between us. I’ve never been wild.”

“You want to be, don’t you? That’s why you’re calling me?”

“Yeah, I guess…maybe…”

“Yes or no. There’s no one else here to hear you and I ain’t judging.”

“Yes. Yes, I’d like to be wild.”

I had my doubts that I’d ever really get there. I was after all still in my underwear. But just today I’d gone skinny-dipping. There was no telling what could happen. A girl had to have goals.

“All right, you listening? We’re going to get back to it in a few seconds and we’re gonna come and then I gotta go, but before you call me again, I want you to go out to that strip club your friend works at and watch the girls dance.”

“What?” I cried. How did I graduate from cake for breakfast to going to a strip club?

“You heard me, and before you start acting like you’re not interested, remember it’s just you and me here right now. And I do not judge you.”

I do not judge you.

The problem was not him. Not at all. It was these ghosts in my head. My mother and Hoyt and a lifetime of trying to appease the unappeasable by suppressing everything about myself.

That’s Annie, I thought. Annie is the one with ghosts.

Layla is the one giving hand jobs in the backseats of cars for a six-pack of beer.

“Okay,” I whispered.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I’ll go out to the strip club,” I said.

“You want that?”

I thought of Joan’s perfect body and how hard I’d tried not to stare at it.

“Yeah…I do.”

Again that laugh of his did something to my blood because my whole body got hot.

“Fuck, that’d be something to see, baby. That would be something to see. Now, where’s your hand?”

“In my pussy,” I whispered, feeling brave and bold and flush, and the word came out of my mouth on a gust of air, so easy. “Where’s yours?”

“Around my cock,” he moaned.

We were silent for a moment, just the sound of our breath between us. Harsh and raw.

“Dylan,” I groaned.

“Right here. Right fucking here.”

It was fast and hard and quick and over in seconds, and I listened to him gasp and groan and wished, more than I could say, that I could see him right now.

“Layla?” he asked after a moment.

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

I laughed, boneless and weak on the bed. “Yeah. I’m good. You?”

“I’m good, baby. Real good.”

“Can I ask you something…that’s not dirty?”

“As a rule I only answer dirty questions.”

“Dylan,” I laughed. “I’m serious.”

“Shoot.”

“Have you ever done this before?”

“Phone sex? Sure.” Part of me was crushed at his words, though it was ridiculous. I had no reason to care. “But this other stuff?” he continued. “Talking to a total stranger like this? Totally new.”

Ah, not so crushed anymore.

“Me too.”

“You grew up on a farm?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Worlds away from here. Where did you grow up?”

“You changing the subject?”

“I am. My past…is…”

“Complicated?”

“Very. So where’d you grow up?”

“Outside of Jacksonville.”

“Now where do you live?”

“Does it matter?”

Because we’re never going to meet. That’s what he wasn’t saying. We were never going to meet, so this…small talk didn’t really matter.

“I guess not.”

The silence between us hummed for a second, nothing bad. Just quiet. Just space between two people. It was kind of comforting.

“Why are you going to all this effort to watch Ben?”

“You’re full of questions, aren’t you?”

“I guess so. You have any answers for me?”

“And sassy. I like this.”

I did too. I really did.

“Tell me about Ben.”

“Are you talking to him?”

“No. Not really. Today I did a little bit. He said he has no family.”

Dylan didn’t say anything, and I guess I’d been hoping that he’d tell me Ben was lying.

“Why are you having him watched?” I asked.

“He’s fucked up my life more than once. I feel better knowing where he is and what he’s doing.”

“How did he fuck up your life?”

“I’m not talking about this.”

“But—”

“Layla, we’ve got to have some rules about this thing between us. And one of them is I’m not talking about Ben.”

There was something so naked in his voice. So raw, and I was suddenly sorry to have put it there.

“Okay,” I breathed.

“What are you going to do before you call me again?”

“Go look at naked ladies.”

He laughed, sounding satisfied, and though I had no basis to even consider it—or know—he sounded happy, too. “That’s right, baby. Do that and call me when you’re there.”

“Call you?”

“Yeah.”

“Like while I’m watching?”

“Yes.”

Heat bloomed again in my stomach, between my legs. The idea was unbearably exciting. Unbearably hot.

“What are you going to be doing until then?” I asked.

“Waiting for you.”