11

It was two weeks of absolute bliss. Tom worked on the weekends, gone from Friday to Monday, and I spent that time glued to my computer, working more than I had ever worked in my life. I was suddenly inspired. The words flew from my mind onto the page and sometimes I would wake in the morning and not remember a certain turn of phrase or paragraph. It had flowed that easily. Tom’s devotion deserved much of the credit, for my work improved in direct proportion to my sensual confidence.

During the weekdays, we were like a couple that had been together for years. We did little things together, took small trips, spent time watching television and occasionally went out to dinner, but more often than not we were in the kitchen, making something at home while listening to the evening news. My clothes had found their way into his closet, and my home hadn’t seen much of me at all. We were both more comfortable out in the wilderness.

And the sex – it was better than it had ever been.

Then came the phone call.

I was at my home on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, putting a few necessities into boxes. Tom and I were gradually moving everything over to his house, even if neither of us had put it into words. We could hardly stand to spend a night apart, so when he was home I was always right there with him, lying in his bed, cooking in his kitchen, wandering in his forest. His home was the more comfortable one, and I fit into it as though I had always been there.

I was almost done, almost out the door, when the phone rang.

Michael.

I knew who it was before I looked at the caller ID. In the same way I had always had a sixth sense when it came to Michael, I knew. It was something I had once joked about, how strange it was that I could anticipate his calls. This time I wished I was wrong.

I picked up the phone before I could convince myself otherwise.

‘Where have you been?’ he said warmly. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’

Despite my admonitions to myself, my heart leaped in my chest.

Stop that, I warned myself. Stop that right now.

‘I’ve been busy,’ I said. It wasn’t a lie. ‘How have you been?’

Hearing his voice was like a lifeline to a world that I knew was almost dead and gone. Even as he talked, telling me about his son and his truck and his job, I was wondering where he really had been. Had he been with her? Had he been seeing anyone? Had he been trawling those Internet dating sites, like he used to?

It was none of my business, but I wondered anyway.

‘You’re too quiet,’ he said to me after a while. He was reading my mind in that maddening way he always could. ‘Talk to me, Kelley.’

I didn’t mean to ask. It just popped out. ‘Are you dating anyone?’

The silence was so complete, a pin drop would have sounded like a gunshot. Michael cleared his throat. ‘Would it matter?’ he asked.

The old frustrations welled up in me. Why couldn’t he ever answer a question head-on? Why did he have to do that thing he always did, the dodging, the question answered with a question, the half-truths that were never a lie, but never quite accurate, either?

‘It matters,’ I said calmly, giving away nothing of the anger I felt.

‘No, I’m not dating anyone,’ he said. His voice took on a sanctimonious tone. ‘But we’re not together any more. You broke up with me, remember?’

‘I think it was the other way around,’ I said.

‘No, it wasn’t. You asked me a question, I answered honestly, and you didn’t like what you heard. You told me it was over.’

The anger flared up, and this time I couldn’t hide it. ‘I asked you if all the problems we were having were about her. I asked you if you would fuck her again. And you said yes. Did you expect me to just roll over and take that?’

Michael sighed. ‘No. But I was honest.’

‘You should have been honest with me from the beginning. You weren’t over her. Why did you break my heart? Was I an experiment to see if you could move on? Is that what it was?’

I knew the anger was quickly approaching the point of breaching emotional levees. I wanted to hurt him with my words, as badly as he had hurt me with his confessions. He knew it, and so was careful with his answers.

‘No. That wasn’t what it was. I thought I was over her.’

‘Are you over her now?’ I asked, and damned myself immediately for doing it.

‘No.’

The anger overflowed. ‘How you could trade me in for a whore like that –’

Click.

Michael had hung up on me.

I stared at the phone in sheer surprise. He had hung up on me?

Then the reason occurred to me, and the anger became raging fury. He hung up on me because I had said something bad about his precious bitch-on-a-pedestal. He was too caught up in his fantasy world to see her for what she really was.

And he was attacking me for telling the truth. My goodness, wasn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?

I dialed his number.

‘What?’ he snapped on the first ring.

‘Don’t you ever hang up on me for saying how I feel about that woman,’ I growled.

‘She’s not a whore. I don’t appreciate you calling her one.’

‘You just can’t see her for what she really is.’

‘Look,’ he said, exasperated, ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘How could you do this?’ I asked. I was falling back through time, remembering that night he had torn my world apart. I was remembering the pain that was like a physical blow, the way he had never apologized, not once, for leading me on for months and months. It all came back in a vivid rush.

‘I want my life back, dammit!’ I hollered.

Michael sat on the other end of the line in stunned silence.

‘I was so happy,’ I said, trying hard not to cry. ‘I was never as happy as I was then, when I was with you.’

‘You’re not as happy now, with Tom?’ Michael growled, and a furious blush flooded my face. It was confusion and anger and sadness and shame, all rolled into one. He knew how far things with Tom had gone? No. No, he couldn’t possibly.

‘You don’t know what it has been like,’ I said.

‘I really have to go,’ Michael said then, and his voice was filled with jealousy. The shock of that rocked me to my core. Jealousy? Where had that come from?

‘Michael?’

‘Look. If I say anything else we will both regret it.’

I sat in silence. A tear slid down my cheek.

‘I’ll call you later,’ he said, and then I was listening to the empty dial tone.

I dropped the phone. It clattered on the floor, flipped over on its face, and obscured the caller ID that would still have his name on it. I covered my face with my hands and slumped into the chair.

He was jealous. It was more than evident in the dripping anger that laced his words. And if he was jealous . . .

‘Stop that,’ I said out loud. ‘Don’t go down that road. You’re too smart for that. You know it’s over and you know you need a man who will put you first. You need a man like Tom.’

Tom’s name seemed to hang in the air. The first shards of guilt wormed their way into my head. How could I want Michael back after all this? Why did I let his voice get to me the way he always had? Why didn’t I have more respect for that man in the cabin across town, the one who was waiting patiently for me to come back?

The tears came then, and I didn’t know which one of us I was crying for – Michael, Tom, or myself.

I cried the whole time I was packing that box, preparing things to take to Tom’s house. I cried as I coiled the water hose in the backyard and brushed leaves from the picnic table. I ignored the hellos from the neighbors and instead went back into the house, locked the door, and slid down it until I was sitting on the floor. I buried my face in my hands and cried, this time with an edge of hysteria that frightened me.

‘This has to stop,’ I said out loud. ‘This has to stop.’

That is the same thing Tom said later that night, when I told him what had happened. Sitting there on the porch as dusk made its way towards us, I told him everything, certain now that full disclosure was the only way to get past this and make our relationship work. I spilled the whole story and, when I described that edge of hysteria that had frightened me so badly, he reached forwards and took my hands.

‘You need to go away,’ he said.

‘God, Tom, it can’t be that bad –’

He shushed me with a fingertip. We both knew our relationship would begin to deteriorate even before it had a chance to truly begin, and that was thanks to the man I couldn’t get out of my head. The parallels between Michael and me were becoming clear. He had sacrificed our relationship for a woman he couldn’t forget; was I now going to do the same thing with Tom? Was I going to put him through the same kind of pain?

I absolutely could not do that.

‘Maybe I could take a vacation,’ I said through my tears. ‘To a beach somewhere. To clear my head. What do you think?’

Tom nodded, and there were tears in his eyes, too.

‘Why do I feel like this is a separation?’ I asked.

‘Because it is.’

I moved into Tom’s arms. The kiss for comfort soon became a raging fire.

I couldn’t get his shirt off fast enough. He ripped it over his head and before his hands came down, I was halfway out of my own clothes. The swing moved too much, so we abandoned it for the hardness of the porch floor. My jeans were caught on one leg and Tom’s jeans were still on, but neither of us cared.

He bit down hard on the back of my neck as he slammed into me from behind. I braced myself on the wide boards, my knees burning against the unfinished wood as I rocked back against him. His hand tangled in my hair and he yanked hard, making me squeal in something halfway between protest and delight. I reached underneath us and stroked him every time he pulled out. Our bodies made lewd sucking sounds. I played with his balls and finally squeezed them, silently urging him to give me what was in them.

Tom uttered words that made no sense while he fucked me hard enough to force the breath out of me. His final few thrusts drove me to the floor, and then he was above me, thrusting straight down while my fingers found my clit. I was ready to go off like a rocket. I just needed him to go off first.

‘Shoot that load inside me,’ I growled. ‘You know how bad I want that big cock to explode deep in me, don’t you? Give it to me, you son of a bitch!’

Tom cried out when he came. The throbbing of it went through me and set my heart racing. Even as my own orgasm tipped me into the realm of pleasure, I ground against him and reveled in each pump of his cock.

Neither of us spoke for a long while. Neither of us moved. By the time my breathing was back under control, Tom was ready for more. Every muscle was primed and ready, and he was thrusting shallowly. His cock felt as though it had no intentions of giving up.

‘Go down on me,’ I demanded.

Tom didn’t hesitate. He grabbed my hip and pushed me over onto my side. I spread my legs for him and he dove right in. There was no foreplay and no teasing – he went straight to my center and latched onto my clit. I gasped and wriggled, far too sensitive to simply lie still under his attack, but Tom patiently followed my every move. He licked and sucked and then he delved deeper.

‘Do you like the way you taste?’ I asked.

Tom looked up at me in the growing darkness. ‘I like the way we taste together,’ he said.

‘Show me.’

Tom slid up my body and licked my lips. I tasted both of us there, and the thrill of it turned me on enough to wrap my legs around him and guide him into me again. One thrust and he was home, and then we were at it hard and fast again, with no mercy in sight. Tom was slippery with sweat. My hands were hard on his back, and my nails dug in. Though my spine protested against that wooden floor, I didn’t dare tell him to stop. He braced himself and went at me like a raging bull, and I met him with every ounce of strength I had.

There were no words – there wasn’t enough breath for words. But there was the low grunt of satisfaction when I raked my nails down his chest and growled out his name. The sound of our fucking was loud and somehow hearing the evidence of what he had just left inside me turned us on even more. When I thought it would take a long time, Tom surprised me with a quick orgasm, a sudden shuddering moan. I held on and let him ride it out, kissing his slick shoulder and whispering naughty words in his ear.

Tom lay back and pulled me over on top of him. I looked down at him in the thin light of the moon. The stars were out by now, and the night birds had begun to call to one another, a litany of excitement in the darkness.

‘I’m impressed,’ I teased. ‘You’re acting like a teenager.’

‘Fuck me like one,’ he challenged with a grin.

I slid off him. I licked my way down his chest, pausing at each nipple to tease it until he squirmed, then my tongue slid down his belly. I swallowed him into my mouth with one long suck, not taking any time or finesse, attacking him with the same kind of sexual vigor he had used on my clit. There was my own musky and sweet taste, blended with his darker one. I bobbed up and down on him and he responded instantly, thrusting up into my mouth and moaning.

‘Fuck me, oh, God, Kelley. Fuck me,’ he chanted, over and over.

Amazingly, he was approaching orgasm again. His cock was throbbing harder in my mouth. His body was shaking. His muscles were tensing, and his hands were fists of pleasure above his head. Being still was a struggle, and he was losing.

I slid my lips down his cock and sucked hard as I pulled up. I scraped his head with my teeth. Tom erupted into my mouth with a shout of surprise. He tasted different this time, strangely bitter, but I swallowed every drop while he panted there on the porch floor.

I licked my lips and sat up. Tom lay very still, catching his breath and watching me with dark, satisfied eyes.

‘Three times,’ I mused, and shook my head in amazement.

He surprised me when he said, ‘I’m not done yet.’

‘You’re not?’

‘Not by a long shot. And, when I can’t fuck you with my body any more, I’m going to use my hand. Or a toy. Or a cucumber out of the garden. I’ll pick it myself.’

I smiled sadly. ‘I will be back, Tom. I’ll come back home.’

The silence hung between us for a few long moments.

‘Home,’ he repeated softly.

I lay down beside him. His chest was broad and hard under my head as I rested on him and listened to his heartbeat.

‘Home,’ I agreed.

‘You had better come back, Kelley,’ Tom said, and this time the tears were very clear in his voice. ‘You had better come home. You belong here now, and I’m not going to let that bastard take you away.’

It was the first time Tom had ever said anything negative about Michael. I turned my face into his chest and breathed deeply of his skin. He smelled like cotton and clean sweat. He smelled familiar. How I cherished that man – but, until I was free of old ghosts, there was no way he would ever know how much.

‘I love you,’ I whispered.

Tom’s arm tightened around me, and he let out a sob. ‘Oh, Jesus – Kelley – come back to me.’

‘I promise, Tom. I promise.’

That night in bed, we didn’t make love again. What we did was much more fitting to what we were going through. We lay together and watched the moon move across the sky, and we talked.

Our discussions weren’t the romantic kind. They were somehow more important, because we were now talking about things that had molded us. I told him more about Michael, about how we had met, about the things we had done together before the negatives began to creep into our relationship. I told him more about my mother and father, and the way their relationship had affected every day of my life since. I told him everything, the good and the bad.

For the first time, Tom told me about his tours in the military. He told me about his time in a place he either would not or could not name, and the hellish few days there, when he was cut off from all supplies and half his unit, while the rest of them were held down by enemy fire in a bombed-out building. Snipers were everywhere, and there came a moment when he was so weakened by hunger he considered just making a run for it – but two of his buddies were already down, and he was the one left in command.

‘Is that where you got the scar on your leg?’ I asked.

Tom nodded against my forehead.

‘What happened?’

Tom lay very quietly for a long while, almost so long I thought he had fallen asleep. When he spoke, his voice was hollow, and I knew a very big part of him was no longer with me, but back there in that country on the other side of the world.

‘One of my guys – his name was Richard – the stress was too much. He snapped. He was jumping at shadows anyway. We all were. But this was different. Something fell in another room, a brick maybe, or a piece of wood, something simple like that, not a threat – but Richard just started shooting, and he didn’t stop.’

I took his hand in mine. The world Tom was talking about was as foreign to me as the storybooks about unicorns I had read when I was a little girl.

‘He shot you,’ I said, prompting him to go on.

Tom was silent for a long time. ‘I wish I had a cigarette now,’ he said. ‘I used to smoke, you know? In the military. Everybody did. When I came back here, the cigarettes tasted wrong. I stopped cold turkey and I never even crave one, until I’m talking about things like this.’

I rose from the bed. I was familiar with Tom’s house by now, and I knew what was in the top drawer of the dresser. I found the pack of Marlboro Reds and the lighter, and brought them back to bed with me.

Tom sat up and smiled. He shook one out of the pack and I held the lighter. The first drag made him cough.

‘Told you it had been a long time,’ he said. ‘That damn pack is probably three years old.’

I watched as he tapped ashes carefully on the back of the box. Watching Tom smoke made him seem like a stranger. He finished half the cigarette before he spoke again.

‘I shot back,’ Tom said.

I didn’t understand.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, though, as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized that I already knew.

‘He had hundreds of rounds,’ Tom said slowly. ‘He was firing at everything that moved. He killed Saunders, and then he hit Dempsey in the arm, almost killed him too. Dempsey. That’s my friend Jake’s daddy. You need to meet Jake one day.’

Tom drew on the cigarette. He held it in front of him and watched the amber glow as it burned down.

‘It was him or me, you know? I was OK with that as long as the other guy wasn’t an American named Richard, from some little town in Indiana with a wife and two kids at home.’

I pulled my knees up to my chest and buried my face in my arms. Tom exhaled towards the ceiling and watched the smoke dissipate into the darkness.

‘He was my best friend over there,’ Tom mused. ‘It’s hell to see your best friend go down because somebody else shot him. But it’s beyond hell to have to do the shooting yourself.’

I shook my head, uncertain of what to say.

‘We got out of there four hours later. Four hours. Can you believe that? Richard goes nuts and I put a bullet in him and then four hours later the choppers arrive, and they are blasting the whole place to kingdom come. They mowed it flat to get us out. Four hours,’ Tom said again, and this time he looked at me with a haunting so deep that it made me shudder with something very much like fear.

‘They gave me a medal,’ he said. ‘Should I be proud of that?’

Tom crushed the cigarette savagely on the bedside table, leaving a black mark.

‘There were questions, of course. And everybody said the same thing, of course. Dempsey made it, but he lost his arm, and you know damn good and well what his take on the whole situation was. The military decided I had done something brave and good and they gave me a medal for saving the lives of the other guys in the unit. That’s when I learned that most medals don’t mean a damn. Nobody ever truly knows the story behind them, and the ones who do know don’t tell.’

Tom set the box of Marlboros on the table.

‘I got out. Medical discharge, thanks to the bullet in the leg. I came back home and went crazy for a while. Then I strapped on a gun and started protecting people.’

Now I understood.

‘That’s why Melissa left you,’ I said. ‘That’s how it happened.’

‘I went crazy for a while,’ he repeated. ‘It wasn’t her fault.’

‘But it wasn’t yours, either,’ I said.

Tom pulled me into his arms.

‘You come back,’ he growled. ‘You hear me? I know what demons are. I know better than you can ever imagine. You get rid of that man and then you come back to me. I don’t want to pay for someone else’s sins, Kelley.’

Long after Tom had fallen asleep, I lay awake. I stared at the Marlboros on the bedside table.

The next morning, Tom drove me to the airport.

The last-minute flight was booked by an understanding travel agent, and there I was, holding my computer printout in one hand and my carry-on bag in the other. Tom and I stood near the ticket counter, looking at each other while the minutes ticked away.

‘Are you sure you have everything?’ he asked.

‘I don’t need much.’

‘You can buy things there, if you forgot to pack them.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have a calling card?’

‘Won’t you let me call you collect?’

‘Kelley –’

I shushed him with a kiss. By the time we were done, we were both breathing hard and fighting back the tears.

‘I have to do this. I have to make the hurt go away,’ I said, repeating the same thing I had said over and over during the drive to the airport.

‘I know.’

‘You do, don’t you?’

He nodded and braved a smile.

‘Please be here when I get back. Please.’

‘How could I not be here?’ he asked.

One more kiss, then I turned to walk away before I changed my mind. Every step felt like a separation from some vital part of myself. What had I been thinking? Was I crazy? How could I walk away from him? Wasn’t he enough to help me work through this?

I turned around.

Tom had vanished.