Fierce (15 page)

“They do. But only you have
your
sad story.”

“Oh. Well. Yeah. That would also be true.”

“Do you and Karen have the same parents?”

“No.” He was easing me into it, I realized. I didn’t know why he wanted to know, but I guessed I’d tell him, because this wasn’t the Hemi from the restaurant. This was the Hemi from the roof. This Hemi, I could talk to. “Same mom, different dads. Mine took off early, and hers took off later. He was a musician. My mom’s boyfriend. Here, oh, maybe half the time, then gone on gigs, you know. And very…volatile. Very moody. It was stormy, always, when he was around. I got used to taking Karen away, I suppose, because this apartment’s too small for fighting. Or too small for fighting when you have kids. Children shouldn’t have to be in the middle of that.”

“No,” he said. “Yet they so often are. How old were you when she was born?”

“Nine.” 

The problems had started right away, and by the time I’d been eleven or twelve, they’d gotten that much worse. Fights over money, over Guy’s dark silences and long absences, over my mother’s suspicions of other women, and over so much more that I tried not to listen to and couldn’t help hearing. Over everything that men and women fought about. My mother pushing, tearful, anxious, and Guy walking away again and again, his voice barbed, contemptuous, darker and darker as the minutes went on. The tension in the little apartment so sharp, it had cut Karen and me like knives. 

Karen’s face would get that pinched expression that meant she was going to cry, and once I got old enough to take her out of there, that’s what I would do. Carrying her at first. She was too heavy, but I couldn’t leave her behind. And once she was old enough, walking with her, holding her hand, her preschooler’s legs slow on the flights of stairs. We’d head to the park if it were still light, or to the corner store if it were dark, hanging around while Mrs. Kim frowned and clucked her tongue at us from behind the counter. 

Eventually, Mrs. Kim had put me to work stocking shelves on those nights. “To pay for magazine your sister is ruining,” she’d tell me with a scowl, destroying her image by pulling an orange juice off the shelf for Karen. And I’d been glad to do it, glad to be useful, not to feel unwelcome. Glad for anything, really. My expectations had been pretty low.

“So that’s how I started my glamorous assisting career,” I told Hemi. “And why Karen’s such a good reader.”

“What happened to them?” he asked. “Your mum, and Karen’s dad?”

“Well, Guy…one day, when Karen was nine and I was eighteen, he left for a gig and didn’t come back. Not even for his clothes. He always said he didn’t believe in ‘things.’ I guess he didn’t. Too bad he didn’t believe in people, either.”

The weight was there in my chest as I remembered. My mother getting quieter by the day, eating less and less, telling me she just “didn’t feel like it.” Almost visibly checking out. The night when she’d finally stuffed all Guy’s things into garbage bags, and I’d helped her haul them downstairs. I’d never forgotten the sight of those white plastic bags landing in the Dumpster with a soft thud, or the finality of the metal lid clanging shut. Or the look on my mother’s face.

She’d walked upstairs like an old woman, had gone into her bedroom and laid down, as she so often did when she got home from work. And once again, I’d made dinner with Karen, had helped her with her homework, and my mother hadn’t come out.

“I swore,” I told Hemi, “that I’d never let a man do that to me, that I’d never let myself care that much. It seemed to me like men only wanted you if you didn’t want them. Because the guys…they just left anyway, you know? It didn’t matter what she needed. They just…left.”

I had to stop a moment and get myself together. Karen was right. I hated to cry. I hated, especially, to cry here, where I’d seen my mother cry so often. Or to cry in front of Hemi. If you couldn’t show a man you wanted him without him losing interest, surely crying in front of him was the ultimate weakness. 

I’d already said too much, but all the same, I said more. Maybe it was the worry, or the day. “I told myself,” I said, “that I wouldn’t have that life. Because men can just leave. They can decide they’re done with all that and walk away like it’s nothing. Like it’s…disposable. Women don’t get to make that choice. Mothers don’t get to walk.”

“No,” he said. “Mothers walk, too.”

Something in his voice made me look at him more sharply. “Oh?” 

He waved a hand. “Never mind. Your mum didn’t, eh. Your mum stayed. But all the same, she’s not here.”

“No. She died. That’s the sad story part. The rest of that’s just normal life, and I know it. Hardly worth talking about, so why did I? Blame the wine. But my mom—it turned out that there was a reason she had to rest so much, that she stopped eating. She had colon cancer, and she went pretty fast.”

I had to shut my eyes a moment at that. Because, yes, that was the hard part. The very worst thing to remember. Those last days in the hospice, my mother’s skin nearly transparent, stretched so tightly over her cheekbones, her hand gripping mine so tightly. 

“Take care of your sister,” she’d said on that last day, her voice a rasp. “Please, baby. Please don’t let them take her away.”

“No.” The tears had threatened to rise and choke me, but I hadn’t let them. My mother had needed to see me strong, had needed to believe I could do it, that I
would
do it. She’d deserved to die in peace. “I won’t let them take her.”

“Promise me,” she’d said again.

I’d sketched the X over my chest with my free hand. “I cross my heart. I’ll take care of her. Always.”

She’d smiled, and I’d seen what it cost her. “And it’s such a good heart, baby. You’re such a good girl.”

I’d laid my cheek against her papery one, and then I
had
cried, because nothing in the world could have stopped me. 

“Say goodbye, baby,” she’d whispered. 

“Goodbye, Mom.” 

The words had barely been more than a breath, but she’d heard. Her other hand, the one with the tubes taped to it, had come up and stroked my hair, and finally, I’d sobbed. And for the last time, my mother had held me while I cried. 

I didn’t tell Hemi all that, though. I didn’t tell him any of that.

“So she died, and you were left with Karen,” he said. “When you were, what?”

“Nineteen. Five years ago. And you know what?” I smiled, tried to lighten it up. “You aren’t even the first guy to take me out with my sister. Because no choice, you know? A movie ticket’s cheaper than a babysitter. But none of them went out with me a second time. You think Karen was snarky today? Believe me, she can be so much worse.”

“Good thing I’ve got a bit of persistence,” Hemi said, with that slight softening around his eyes, his version of a smile, warming his normally stern expression. “Not so easily scared off, am I.”

“Not easily at all, I’d say. Considering that you’re still here.” I looked into those dark, liquid eyes, at the warmth in them, and something seemed to…connect. I could almost hear the
ping
as it happened.

“So,” he said, “want to come over here and sit with me for a moment?”

I went for one last feeble attempt at self-control. “You going to go for it, now that my little sister’s out of the picture?”

“You never know. I may lunge at you and…what was that? Oh, yeh. Stick my tongue down your throat and grope you. Or I may pour you a bit more wine and see if I can get you to curl up against me. I’d like to know that you were able to let go of everything for a little while today, because you were with me.”

And after that, how could I do anything else? 

I never wanted to hear people’s stories. What Hope had said was true. Everybody had a sad story. But I’d wanted to hear hers, because she hadn’t wanted to tell me. And still, she’d sketched out only the barest details. 

I’d have said that I knew a bit about courage, but she’d taught me something new today. About the quietest kind of courage, the kind that kept you going when you wanted to quit, the kind that made you put one foot in front of the other and keep walking, because stopping wasn’t an option. And because you were carrying somebody else, somebody you loved, and you couldn’t let them fall.

And then she did come to sit on the couch, and that was taking courage as well, because she didn’t sit at the end. She sat next to me. 

Don’t be a spider.
When I was with a woman, we normally just got down to business. Courting, the kind of foreplay that was more like “warmup?” Pure inefficiency when both people knew what they were there for. But Hope wasn’t sure what she was here for. She was as nervous as she was excited, and if that excited me, too—well, that would be the bonus. 

I needed to make her want it as much as she feared it, if I was going to make it good for her when it finally happened. And so much of that would be what was in her head beforehand. What she imagined. What she fantasized about. I was going to be fueling those fantasies, and then I was going to fulfill them. 

I pulled the bottle out of its nest of melting ice and refilled her glass and my own, and she let out a soft sigh. 

“I shouldn’t,” she murmured, pulling her legs up under her again as I leaned over to set the wine back in the bowl. And when I sat up again, it was the most natural thing in the world to put my arm around her. 

She tensed beneath my hand, and then, when the spider didn’t pounce, she gradually began to relax. I picked up my glass, touched it to hers, and said, “Cheers.”

She took a sip, her eyes watchful above the rim. I kept my hand where it was, but brushed my thumb over the smooth skin of her shoulder, absently at first, and then, when she shivered, with a bit more intent, exploring the gentle dips and curves.

Her eyes drifted shut for a moment before opening again. “Mm. That feels good.” 

When my thumb traced down the front edge of the sleeveless dress, lingered over that most sensitive of spots at the edge of her small breast, she shifted a little, came a little closer. 

“Hemi…”

It wasn’t a warning. It was a sigh, and an invitation. But I didn’t take it. Instead, I sent the back of my other hand on a slow journey down her other arm where it lay against me. The lightest touch, the gentlest caress. When my thumb began to graze the inside of her forearm, I could tell from the way she was breathing that she was feeling the tingle all the way down her body. She was so responsive, all it took was my touch on her shoulder, her inner arm, to light her up. 

It was going to be good for me, when it happened. And it was going to be even better for her. I was going to make sure of it, starting right now.

I kept it up, a slow, steady, patient assault, touching nothing but her arms, her shoulders, and before long, her eyes were shutting again, and her head was back against the cushions, all her attention going to what she was feeling.

“Hope,” I said softly. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

The surge of power flooded me as she obeyed, as I watched the lids flutter open. Another deliberate trace along the edge of her dress brought another shudder. And then, at last, she said it. 

“Could you…could you kiss me?” As if she couldn’t help it, as if the words had been dragged out of her.

“No,” I said, and felt her jerk back a little in shock. “No,” I said again. “I’m not going to kiss you. Not today. I want you to go to bed tonight and think about me. I want you to imagine me kissing you, to think about how it’s going to feel to have your mouth under mine, to have my tongue inside you. To open your mouth wider so you can take more of me in. And then I want you to keep imagining. I want you to take off this dress tonight and imagine it’s my hand unbuttoning every one of these little buttons.” 

I ran a slow hand down the front of her dress, circling each tiny button-flower in its turn. All the way to her waist, and then slowly, deliberately, below it. Almost to the spot, stopping just short while she waited, frozen, holding her breath. And then moving back up again just as slowly, until I wasn’t touching fabric anymore. Until I was touching skin.  My fingertips drifting up between the wings of her collarbones, up the front of her slim neck, forcing her to lift her chin, to open her mouth at the age-old threat of fingers on her throat. Until my index finger was tracing the shape of her lips, and she was opening up more for me, just like that. Just the way she was meant to do.