Breaths ragged, we grapple with the drawstring, our fingers colliding in a clumsy hurry to get it undone. So hard I’m hurting, I shove my shorts down and kick them the rest of the way off even as I thrust into her.
She feels so damn good. Just as I remember. Slick and snug, like a tight, moist fist.
Burying my face against her neck, my breath gusting against her throat, my chest crushing her full breasts, without a modicum of control, my hands grasp her hips and I plunge harder and deeper, making up for the thousands of nights we’ve been apart.
She wraps her legs around my lower back and meets my thrusts with a fury of her own. I pound. Her inner muscles pull. Our moans, raw and frayed, fill the room. A thin sheen of sweat coats our skin. I angle to connect with that hard little kernel of flesh, and moments later we’re both coming in a rush of heat and violent shudders.
I clench my teeth, hissing her name, and somehow manage to pull out in the nick of time and shoot across her belly. Drained, I fall into a post orgasmic haze, hugging her tightly and panting. I’m dimly aware of the incessant thrash of the rain.
When her legs slide off my hips and I finally recover my strength, I lift my head and look down into her face.
I flinch.
Tears cling to her lashes and seep from the corners of her eyes. The impact of my behavior floods my conscience. I began the evening with a promise to keep my hands to myself, and just moments ago I’d been going at her like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. There’d been no finesse, no tenderness. Just pure, raw hunger. After everything she’d been through…after everything I’d put her through, Dee deserved a hell of lot better than a quick, graceless fuck.
I open my mouth, but the words of apology get stuck in my throat. Rolling off her, I swing my feet to the floor and pick up my shorts. In the bathroom, I stand at the sink, turn on the water, and wash the sticky residue off with a washcloth.
Shit.
I got her pregnant. I left her when she needed me. I wasn’t there when she suffered a miscarriage. Yes, I did those things out of passion or ignorance, not malice. But is that any excuse? And after all the serious mistakes I made with Dee, how could I have taken advantage of her vulnerability and let this happen? Without protection again, no less.
I yank on my shorts and run another washcloth under the water before returning to bed. She’s sitting up. The sheet is covering her lower half, and her arms are crossed over her breasts. I meet her eyes in apology and sit on the edge of the mattress, using the warm washcloth to wipe my semen off her sweetly rounded belly—where our baby had once been.
She stares at me through the sheen of her tears, the silence thick between us.
“I’m clean,” I offer to at least ease her mind on that score. “I’ve never had sex without a condom. It’s only with you that I’ve ever broken my rule.”
She releases one arm to grope around the bed for a T-shirt. I can’t resist glancing at the ripe swells of her breasts and the still-hard nipples I didn’t take the time to taste. I watch as her mass of curls pushes past the neck of a shirt, the one I was wearing, and her curves disappear beneath the cotton. She licks her swollen lips, reminding me of just how hard I took her. Without a word, she pulls the sheet around her and gives me her back.
My heart plummets. “I shouldn’t have lost control.”
“I wanted you to,” she says huskily.
“I was rough.”
“Yes, and it was perfect. I needed to feel something stronger than my grief. I needed
you
.”
I’m so fucked up over everything that I don’t know what’s right from wrong in this situation. But I let her words buffer my guilt. Tossing the washcloth to one side, I slide in under the sheets behind her. “You’ve got me, baby.”
“I don’t want your regrets, Mick.”
I drape my arm around her waist and rest my chin in the crook of her shoulder. “My regret is not taking the time to make love with you. I’ve made so many mistakes, Dee.”
“I’m the one who made the mistakes. If we ran a tally, I’d win hands down. So if you need someone to blame, it should be me.”
“I don’t blame you.”
She shakes her head. “Not telling you about my pregnancy was wrong. But at the time, it seemed to be the right choice. I didn’t want you to feel burdened or to give up your dream of being a writer. That was your future.”
“The only future I cared about was the one with you.” I flatten my palm against her stomach. “I wouldn’t have felt burdened by any baby that was ours, Dee. I would have wanted you both.”
“I know that, Mick,” she whispers, bringing her hand to cover mine. “I wish I’d done so many things differently.”
“I wish that I had.”
We fall silent, lying together. From the warmth of the bed, we listen to the downpour.
“Did you have morning sickness?” I ask a few moments later, needing the details.
“Not really. A little nausea.”
“Is that how you knew?”
“That, two missed periods, and tender breasts.”
“I remember. They felt fuller than usual.”
“I was terrified you would notice and connect the dots.”
“That’s why you hid out?”
“Yes. And then I panicked when you touched me that night.”
I kiss her hair in between our quiet whispers. “I shouldn’t have left you in the rain.”
“I shouldn’t have hidden myself away from you.”
We both bear our own guilt and probably always will. “I’m glad I found you again.”
“I was shocked when you did.”
“I thought you were going to Mace me.”
She laughs softly. “It was pepper spray.”
“Ouch. Cayo and I looked for you in Amherst.”
“You did?”
“Um-hm.” My lips find her neck beneath a clump of sable curls. “To think that all that time you were in Chicago.”
“I didn’t have money to go very far. I hoped to start a new life in a big city and put the past behind me. But I quickly learned you can’t outrun what’s inside you. I thought of you and my family every day. Missing you all so much.”
“I missed you too,” I say, relieved that we can finally talk openly about what happened. “I started drinking heavily.”
“I’m sorry, Mick.”
“No, baby, that’s not on you. It’s how I chose to cope—how I chose to cop out. Just like my old man. Over the years, it got so bad, I wasn’t sure I would ever dig myself out of that dark hole. I held it together to get through classes and practice, but alone I would drink until I passed out. Then do it all over again, despite promising myself that I’d stop.”
“It’s an awful feeling for something to have that type of control over you,” she says, as if she knows what it’s like. “How did you dig yourself out?”
“At the worst of it, during my final year, I ended up in the hospital when I was home one weekend from NC State. Alcohol poisoning. Even though I was pretty much estranged from my old man by then, he tried to cover it up,” I say with all the hatred I still carry for him. “Not because he gave a damn about me, but because he didn’t want the news to leak out to the NBA that their star draft pick couldn’t control his liquor. It was Cayo who kicked my ass and got me into a detox program. I fell off the wagon many times before I finally got my head together. I haven’t had a drink now in more than ten years. But sometimes I crave it. When Cayo got sick, for example. And tonight.”
“Is that why you think you’re like your father?”
“I inherited my drinking and my temper from him.”
“You’re nothing like him!” she says with a spike of feistiness. “Aren’t you the one who told me when you showed up at my office that biology doesn’t mean shit?” I smile at the reminder. “You had a drinking problem. But you were strong enough to get help and get sober. And so what if you have a temper? You’re not violent or cruel with it. You’ve always reminded me of Papa T. Generous and strong. Protective. When you love, you love completely. Your father has none of those qualities.”
I give her a squeeze. “Thank you. Being compared to Cayo is the highest compliment.”
“You’re a good man, Mick. You’ll make an amazing father someday, just as he did.”
“And you’ll be an incredible mother.”
Her body tenses. “Children aren’t in the cards for me.”
“You’re not your mother either, Dee. She couldn’t handle parenthood, but that has no bearing on the kind of mother you’ll be.”
“My mom wasn’t always bad,” Dee says. “She had serious problems. Court-ordered counseling never did her much good. And she hated taking medication. She said it made her feel lifeless. But without it, she had huge mood swings.”
This is the first time Dee has told me this much. Holding her close, I encourage her to open up: “The unpredictability must have been tough on you.”
“It was better than being sent away. When my mom was in a high mood, she was fun and happy.” I can hear the smile in Dee’s voice. “She’d catch fireflies with me in the woods. She’d take me to the movies. I got my love for black-and-white films from her. When I was older, we’d have girls’ nights and paint our fingers and toes. She’d choose the brightest colors she could find. She was full of hugs and laughter. I like to think that was the real her. The mom who wanted me.
“But when she was down, she was a different person.” Dee’s tone shifts to sadness. “She couldn’t stand any noise. She just wanted to sleep. I tried to keep quiet and not give her any reason to send me away. But it was inevitable. She always did.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, baby.” I now understand why Dee didn’t tell me about her pregnancy right away. Not only to protect me. She learned at an early age to keep quiet and not rock the boat. To rely on herself because she couldn’t count on anyone else.
Flashing back on what Mama T let slip, I ask Dee a delicate question: “How did your mother die?”
“She was sick, but not in the way I led you to believe. It happened in one of her bleak moods.”
I have a pretty good idea what’s coming and I hug her close.
“I got home after school one day, hoping to find the happy-go-lucky mother I’d left that morning. But Mom didn’t come out to greet me. I knew she must be in her room, sleeping. I stayed quiet, tiptoeing through the house. I didn’t want to do anything that would trigger her calling Child Protective Services. But I thought if I brought her something to eat, maybe she’d feel better. I made her macaroni and cheese from a box, extra cheesy, the way she liked it.
“Her room was so dark I couldn’t see much, but I didn’t want to turn on the light and wake her up suddenly. When I reached the bed, I noticed the blanket was pulled up to her neck and her eyes were closed. I gently shook her shoulder at first. But she just kept sleeping. I saw the empty bottle of pills on her side table. I guess I knew, but I just kept shaking her harder and harder. At some point, I must have called 911. I don’t remember doing it. But I woke up in the hospital with an oxygen mask on my face. I had passed out from an anxiety attack.”
“Oh baby.” I shift her around, kissing her hair and her temple, and bringing her trembling fingers to my lips.
“My social worker was the one who told me my mother had taken an overdose. I didn’t cry then. I didn’t talk about it. What was the point? Resources were dismal in our county, so I was sent over to the Springvale General Hospital. That’s where I met Mama T. She was the nurse on duty and the one who held me when it finally hit me that I’d never see my mom again. There’d be no more girls’ nights. No more catching fireflies. No more anything. I had no family left and I had no home.
“For so long, I thought it was my fault. If I had been a better daughter. Quieter. More patient. Less demanding. Maybe if I’d been more lovable, she wouldn’t have sought a way out. That was why I didn’t tell you, Mick because I didn’t want you to know I wasn’t enough to live for.”
“That’s not true, Dee. That was your mother’s lack, not yours,” I say. “She should have taken her meds. She should have done everything she could to get better. It was her mental illness that failed you. And it was mental illness that took her life.”
Dee shakes her head. “I keep thinking that I lose everything I love because something’s wrong with me. If I hadn’t considered an abortion, maybe I wouldn’t have miscarried. If had eaten better. Not been so stressed. If I hadn’t run away. If—”
“Ssh…don’t do this to yourself. Your mother’s death isn’t on you and neither is the miscarriage. You deserve to be loved…you deserve to be happy…to have as many babies as you want.”
She draws in a shuddering breath and when she releases it, her voice is barely audible. “I can’t have babies, Mick.”
I angle my head to look at her. I see the tears for yet another loss. A fat drop falls over her bottom eyelid and slides down her cheek.
“Because I was so far along, after my miscarriage I had a…” She pauses, clears her throat, and tries again, her sentences choppy. “I had a D&C—a dilation and curettage. It’s a procedure where they scrape the uterus to remove the…the fetus. After that, I had issues with my periods…bad cramps and heavy blood loss. Test results showed severe…damage to the lining of my…uterus. Doctors said the scar tissue had thickened and hardened. Surgery may be required at some point…but even so, the odds of me ever having a…baby are negligible.”
My heart breaking, I press my mouth to hers and let the sorrow roll through both of us.
“Dee.” I pull back to look into her eyes. But I can’t find the words. She was right, there is nothing I can say or do to fix this.
“I just need you to hold me, okay?” she says through her tears. “All night long…just hold me without letting me go.”
“I can do that.” I gather Dee as close as possible.
Her palm slides across my chest and comes to rest on my heart.
Exhausted, she soon falls asleep, while I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, finding no comfort in the shadows that embrace me.
I lose everything I love
.
First, her father, who was too weak-assed to stick around and left his unstable wife with their child. Next, her mother, who abandoned Dee in the most devastating way imaginable. Then there was losing me, her family, and her baby in one fell swoop. And if that wasn’t more than any person should have to handle, she discovered she probably couldn’t have children. No wonder Dee hasn’t ever gotten over the miscarriage—she carries around the aftereffects in her body.