“You can make it. You trust me?”
She stared at him blankly for a moment then managed a small nod.
Matt lay the paddle across the gunwales in front of him and reached forward to wrap his fingers around Nora’s slim waist. She startled at his touch, but after a moment started lifting her feet up over her low bench. As she turned, the bottom hem of her shirt caught on his hands, giving Matt ready access to her warm skin. He skimmed his fingers up to her ribs before pulling his hands away.
“If you had just wanted to cop a feel there are safer ways to go about it,” Nora panted.
“Oh, if I were going to feel you up, I wouldn’t worry about being subtle, baby.”
Get used to it.
Nora raised an eyebrow at him. “So, about Chad?”
“Chad.” Matt’s voice was heavy-laden with venom and his formerly smooth strokes into the water became violent stabs. “Chad and I made friends in eighth grade. We played middle school football together and then high school ball. He was the place kicker,” he added as an aside and then scanned the leafless trees on the banks. “He’s the kind of guy who gets bored easily, which is funny.”
“Why’s that?”
“Why, are you interested?” He cut his eyes toward her and found her face to be perfectly blank.
“Why, are you interested in me
being
interested?”
Matt ignored the question. “It’s funny because his soon-to-be ex-wife seems to have a boredom problem, too, and this time she cheated on him before he could cheat on her. They’d been married for about five years and she got pregnant by this other guy.”
Nora’s jaw dropped. “That is seriously twisted.”
“Nope. What’s really twisted is that she owns half the business because his daddy willed it to her when he died and they have to work together.”
Nora winced. “So I suppose every time she needs to take time off to take the kid to a doctor’s appointment, his wound gets ripped open again.”
Matt nodded.
“Well, the reason I asked is because I think he and my friend Bennie hooked up last night and she’s seriously geeked out about it.”
Matt was so relieved he could have melted right into the canoe bottom. He didn’t want to beat Chad into the next year, but if he had to … “Oh yeah? How’d that happen?”
“She drove down to pick up my painting yesterday. We went to Christine’s Tavern for dinner before I showed her where her hotel was and Chad was there with some buddies. The moment we walked through the door he made a beeline for us and started buying us a lot of booze. Of course, I didn’t drink any since I had to drive home.”
“Oh yeah? That’s interesting,” Matt said. By “interesting” he meant, “I’m going to fuck him up anyway.”
“Why? Am I not cool enough to rate being talked to?”
“Cool isn’t the issue. I told Chad pointedly to leave you alone. I was absolutely unambiguous about that.”
Nora crossed her arms over her chest and furrowed her forehead with her hard squinting. “Why would you do that? It’s a small place. I can’t be intentionally avoiding everyone who rubs you the wrong way.”
“Because I know how he is.” He didn’t care to elaborate.
She shrugged. “Yeah, anyhow, I don’t know if Bennie is looking for a relationship or what, but she was mum about the encounter when she left this morning. Normally she spills all the details. This time, she just skipped right out of town without calling.”
“Does Bennie look like you?”
Nora shook her head. “No. She’s this short, Rubenesque Chinese woman, believe it or not. She works hard at it. She has to eat non-stop and she has this little book of exercises that are designed to emphasize certain, uh, womanly features. Why?”
“I think Chad would have been happy to lay either of you,” Matt said gruffly, his shoulders tensing up to his ears. He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing, letting the muscles of his neck, shoulders, and back uncoil one by one. He opened his eyes again and looked at her. “He treats women like collectible trading cards. No offense,” he said, averting his gaze again. “I know you’re one of a kind, but Chad sees women as flavors.”
“Yet he’s your friend? Sounds to me like sour grapes.”
When Matt cut his eyes away from the water he found Nora’s jaw sliding in a way that Matt knew for certain meant she was grinding her teeth. Should he just come out with it? Tell her he wanted her for himself? He couldn’t rightfully tell her to stay away from Chad. She was a grown woman. She needed incentive.
“Not my friend so much lately. We’ve been growing apart for a while, ever since he married my girlfriend.” Nora’s face relaxed and without pause she reached over and wrapped her fingers around Matt’s on the paddle.
“I’m so sorry. That’s … well, it must have been rough.”
“Yeah. He asked me to be his best man, but I made other plans for that weekend.” Matt snorted and shook his head, pulling the paddle into the canoe and laying it on the floor. “Truth was they had been going at it before me and Patricia hooked up, but hadn’t made it official. They were carrying on the entire two years we were dating, and then Chad decided they might as well come out with it.”
“And you were still his friend after that?”
“I’m a forgiving sort. Hey,” he looked her in the eyes and squeezed her hands gently inside his. “Can we change the subject?”
“Okay. You tell me what you want to talk about, and I’ll be so cheerful your teeth will hurt.”
Matt forced a smile for Nora’s benefit. He released Nora’s hands reluctantly and picked up his paddle again. “Tell me about your name. It’s not one I’ve heard much.”
Nora uncapped her camera lens and took a shot of a periwinkle-colored houseboat floating near the bank as they glided past. Matt was pretty sure it wasn’t legal to be there. There was a man on the porch with his feet up on the railings and a hat over his face — obviously asleep. His hound dog, a brown hunting sort with long floppy ears, sat at the edge of the porch and yapped at them quietly as if he’d been trained for silence.
“Well, my name is actually how I got to be interested in genealogy,” Nora said after they put some distance between themselves and the floating house. My grandmother named me after her grandmother, or at least in part. My name is actually Manora.”
Matt whispered it. “Manora. That’s pretty. Unique.”
“Well, apparently the first Nora was a very sweet woman. Her father always referred to her as ‘my Nora,’ so when a census taker was recording the inhabitants of their house, that’s what he heard her name as: Muh-Nora.”
My Nora
. “Manora would sound pretty good partnered with Vogel,” he said lightly, and turning his gaze to her slowly to assess her reaction.
She smiled and giggled. “Now I know you’re flirting.”
“You couldn’t tell?”
“No. You don’t have to try so hard to be nice to me, Matt. We can still be friends without you inflating my ego.”
Matt opened his mouth to refute her cynicism, but thought better of it. Time was the only cure for that.
The breeze was starting to pick up and Matt took note of Nora rubbing her hands together and then putting them up inside her shirt against her skin to keep them warm.
“You ready to head back?” Matt asked, already steering back toward the ramp.
“Do you mind? I’m not built for cold.”
“I don’t mind at all.” He would have minded even less if he got to be the one to warm her up, pulling her naked body against his under the covers, sharing heat they created from love-making. That is, if they lasted long enough to make it under the covers.
*
“You want to come in for a beer?” Matt asked after pulling the canoe out of the bed of his truck and stowing it in its rack in the carport. He gave Nora a churlish wink. “Floor’s dry.” And Karen wasn’t home.
“No, I really want to dump my camera files and see if there’s anything there worth painting. I’m having a hard time with this schedule and want to get as much as I can done before the holidays get distracting.”
“Well, okay. Don’t be a stranger.” He put one hand out to chuck her chin again, but once his finger was there on her smooth skin and she was staring up at him daringly, he found himself not
drawing back his hand, but using it to caress the skin along her jaw. Nora seemed startled, but didn’t resist. With their eyes locked in that intimate stance, it felt right for him to wrap his other arm around her back and press her against his chest. She put up one hand against the firmness of his belly, not to resist him as he initially thought, but to steady herself for she was shaking like a leaf, and not from the cold. “What’s wrong?” he asked, putting his lips so close to her ear that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck.
“Nothing. I guess I’m just surprised,” she said, closing her eyes as he laid slow, light kisses on her chin and neck.
“By what?” He was whispering now.
“I think you like me.” Her voice went breathy as Matt slid one hand down her back to grab a possessive handful of her rear.
“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. When her bottom jaw fell to speak some excuse, he slid his tongue between her lips and gently probed her mouth until she reciprocated by grabbing his lip between her teeth. His hands, warm as his heart, crept up the back of her shirt and found their way around to her ribcage where he cupped the bottoms of her breasts in the bowls made by his spread thumbs and forefingers. It was a dream for Matt merely having his hands there, molding them to her perfection, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted to pull that shirt off over her head and lay her bare so he could caress, stroke, lick.
Nora obviously felt his aroused state as she shoved her hand down the front of his jeans and found the warm shaft that was starting to engorge at her attention. “Jesus,” she whispered, her eyes going wide as she wrapped her fingers around his girth.
“That scare you?”
“No … I mean … ”
Matt didn’t let her answer. He lowered his head down to hers and crushed her lips beneath his, devouring her mouth and darting his tongue into its far recesses. Nora moaned beneath him, and Matt felt like he was becoming completely undone. He needed her in the house. Now.
That didn’t happen. Karen pulled up and parked in her usual spot beside Matt’s motorcycle, although they didn’t hear her or separate until she got out, slammed the door, and clicked the lock button on her key fob.
“I’m all for you getting laid,” Karen said cheerfully, adjusting her glasses so they sat higher on her nose. “But can you commence doing so inside? Mrs. Herring is having a good ol’ time watching y’all through her sitting room window.” They all turned on cue to look at the house across the road to find a small, wizened face beside a drawn-back curtain panel.
“I … I’ve got to go,” Nora said, batting Matt’s hands down from her chest and then hoofing it across the yard toward her own.
“Nora, wait!” Matt called, adjusting his pants as he jogged after her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have — ”
“No, it’s not you,” she said, quickening her pace. “I don’t feel used, so don’t even say it. I just … I can’t right now.” Then she took off at a run. Matt let her go because making her explain against her will didn’t seem right, either.
*
The following Saturday, Matt and Karen perched in a rickety tree stand on a property belonging to an old woman who had a hankering for venison for Thanksgiving. Not being a hunter herself and not having indulged in game meat since her husband died five years before, she put out an announcement through her church network and word eventually got back around to Matt, who jumped at the opportunity to hunt on a property that large. The women had held a raffle and the four winners got alternating weekend hunting permissions on her property with the caveat that if they felled a deer, she got half the meat.
“So, what’s going on between you and Nora?” Karen whispered, holding her Remington 700 steady, waiting for the deer they’d spotted to quit nibbling and come out from the tree where it had taken cover. Karen generally preferred her bow over her gun since she didn’t have to wear ear protection when shooting arrows, but she’d accidently ran over her crossbow with her car the night before, not realizing it had fallen over from the wall it was usually perched against.
Matt was slumped against the back wall of the stand with his Thompson/Center rifle across his lap, making no effort to line up a shot. He wasn’t in the mood for it, but since it was his name scribbled on the “Permission to Hunt” form, he figured he should accompany his sister. “Nothing’s going on. Haven’t seen her in a week.”
“Doesn’t look like she’s moved her car all week, either. I saw her outside on Wednesday when I was driving home. She was talking to the contractor. He finally got that side wall put up now that the stairs are built in. She looked kind of tired and was yawning while the guy was talking to her.”
“Hmm.”
“Did you try calling her?” She squinted into her gun’s scope then muttered “shit!” as the deer’s shoulders became obscured by a large oak trunk.
Matt scoffed and the small sound made the deer jerk back a few paces and scan the area for the source of the noise. “I don’t even know her phone number. Haven’t needed it.”
Karen set her gun down flat again to wait, and turned to her sulking brother. “You know, I don’t need you to take care of me anymore. My feelings won’t be hurt if you decide to get married or whatever.”
Matt crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the waif laying in the stand opening. Maybe she didn’t need him anymore. The thought had crossed his mind several times before then. She had a pretty good job as a nurse’s aide at the hospital and was studying for the SATs so she could enroll in college to get a nursing degree. He knew she was good about saving her money so even if she did quit working to attend school full-time, she’d be okay for a while. Matt’s annoyance was due to her preposterous guesswork that she was holding him back. And what made her think he wanted to be
married
? He did, but Karen was certainly putting the cart ahead of the horse.
“I know that, Karen,” was all he said.
“I mean, just tell me if you ever want me to leave. I can live anywhere. I’m going to want to live closer to school, anyway.”