She focused on my phone. “There. You’ve got…my home number, my cell number, and…my e-mail address.” She pressed a last button and held the phone by her shoulder. “Don’t lose it. I don’t know when I’ll get out to this part of Brooklyn to visit the base.”
I stepped into the space that seemed to yawn farther even as I moved into it and reached for my phone. I wrapped my fingers around hers. “I won’t.” I glanced at the quirk of her lips.
When the urge hit me again it didn’t seem so crazy—a compulsion that started as a pressure in my chest and jumped in time to the heartbeat in my neck—and when I kissed her, I hit the button on my phone that she still held.
Her lips were wonderfully soft and I loved, absolutely loved the way they moved with mine. They felt so good I wondered why I’d waited so long to find out.
She jumped when her phone rang, and I reached around her waist to retrieve it from her back pocket.
“Now you have my number,” I told her as I handed it back to her, “so you can find me if you want to.”
As she released my phone and I put it back where it had come from, she stared at me, an expression I couldn’t read in her eyes.
She put a hand on my waist and cupped my cheek with the other. “Kiss me again?”
Her mouth was delicious, with that sweet beer taste, and the play of her tongue was elegant, skillful, but with a tenderness in it too, a sincerity that made my heart race and my stomach tighten with need as her fingers grazed through my hair and I held her tightly.
She leaned her head against mine, then nuzzled against my neck as we held each other. “Hey.” Her voice was low with concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. You?”
She nodded against my skin, then kissed it, a whispery touch that made me close my eyes. “We should go talk somewhere, not here.” Her fingertips drew me even closer, and I sighed at the feel of her long, lean body pressed against mine: solid, and real, and strong.
“Where do you want to go?”
She chuckled softly into my hair. “I’d like to take you home, but that’s probably not a good idea. Everyone still wants to get me drunk.”
We separated though we remained touching, her hands on my waist, and I slipped my fingers through her belt loops.
“Actually, I do have to get going. I’m on tomorrow.”
Jean smirked at me. “Think they’ll think we’re fucking in the bathroom?”
“Uh, considering all your forlorn complaints to dispatch on air? I doubt it.” I grinned at her.
“Can I walk you to your car?”
“Sure, I’ll meet you outside the door.”
“You’re not gonna leave?”
“Like you couldn’t call me anyway?” I teased.
I waited outside for about a half minute before she came out.
“Where are you parked?”
“This way.” I pointed, then shoved my hands into my jacket pockets to keep them warm, and Jean walked quietly with me.
“Are you still seeing…?”
“Trace?” I finished for her. “Sort of.” I leaned against my door.
“I thought so.” She gazed at the ground. “Listen, Tori, I know Trace’s okay with the sharing thing, but,” and she gazed at me, “I’m not.”
“I’m not either,” I said, my breath frosting in the air.
Jean rested against the car and brushed a strand of hair off my face, then pushed it behind my ear. “If I’m with you, I want to be with
you
, not you and anyone else. I want to
know
,” she closed the distance between us, “that when I touch you, you’re not thinking of someone else.”
We had our arms around each other and I kissed her neck, the skin almost too warm in the chill that surrounded us everywhere but where our bodies met. She shivered slightly under my lips.
“Tori, I don’t want to be your rebound from Trace, either. I want you to call me when you’re free, when you know what you want, and if it’s Trace, that’s fine too. We can be friends, that’s okay. I just want to know you, Tori. I really like you.”
I could feel the pressure of her fingertips through my thick jacket, and I didn’t know what else to say or do. Trace…even if I was okay with her offer to share, it didn’t matter, because Jean wasn’t. And that was wrong somehow, wrong in a way I couldn’t name—to fuck Trace and want to…what did I want with Jean, anyway?
I wanted to hear her laugh, really laugh, for no reason other than she was genuinely happy. I wanted to brush the hair behind her ears and feel her skin under my fingers, then run them through her hair again. I wanted to hold her, like I held her at that moment, but I wanted to feel her move under me, over me, with me, and I wanted to wake up next to her and do it all over again. But more than anything, anything else I could think of at that very second, I wanted to kiss her again, to feel the promise of her lips and the fulfillment of the tenderness behind it, and I wanted that so much it scared me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I hope you’re not sorry you kissed me. I didn’t think I was
that
bad.”
I chuckled. “No, it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, I…” I pulled back to look at her.
“You need time.” Her voice was soft and low.
“I…I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted, my voice just as quiet.
Jean kissed my forehead then stepped away, and I instantly missed her warmth. “Can I give you a word of advice?”
“Sure.”
She took a deep breath and stared at my car a moment before gazing at me. “Trace doesn’t—she doesn’t have any safe words. She doesn’t…she doesn’t play that way.”
I just stared, waiting for her to explain.
“Christ,” Jean muttered as she rubbed her forehead, “you don’t even know what I’m talking about. Look, let me put it this way. She doesn’t ask, ever. She’ll push, she’ll retreat, then she’ll take it any way she wants it. But she’ll never, ever ask you if it’s what you want. And, Tori? Make sure you’re okay with that.”
I nodded. “I’ll be careful.”
“You need to be,” she said solemnly.
Awkward silence grew between us.
“Hey.” Jean’s usual smile appeared and her tone lightened considerably. “Will you run away with me if I show you my pee-pee?”
I laughed, relieved, glad to be on normal territory again. I shook my head. Typical Jean. “Good night, Jean.”
“Hey, just say the word and I’m yours.” She smiled. “Good night, Scotty.”
I watched her walk away before I opened my door.
“Yo, Scotty?” she called from the corner.
“Yeah?”
“Call me if you need me?”
“I will,” I promised, and slid behind the wheel as she disappeared around the corner, her arrogant slouch a fading shadow on the sidewalk.
I decided to actually have a cigarette before I drove off. I definitely wasn’t feeling any sort of buzz anymore, but I certainly wasn’t feeling any type of sane, either.
Safe word. Huh. I couldn’t think of a single one that could possibly apply to Trace; in fact, the words “safe” and “Trace” had not, could not, and would not ever go together, I thought as I drove over the bridge.
Trace. What did I know about Trace, really?
I considered her as I paid my toll. Nothing. She was hauntingly pretty, she was damn good at her job, great hands actually, and she didn’t like to drive too often, said it was a waste of gas and polluted the air when she could walk during the day or take the bus door to door in the evening.
Her parents were alive and lived somewhere in the Island, maybe somewhere in the South Shore? I wasn’t sure.
We never went
out
anywhere—unless that first visit to the beach counted. She…didn’t really eat meat, but would cook just about anything with protein when she made dinner for us because she said I was still growing. She liked to make me breakfast when I stayed, but then she liked to fuck afterward.
She would say she loved my touch, but only if it was directly sexual or leading to sex or right after. Anything else she’d move away from unless she initiated it—casual hugs, that sort of thing.
She was appealingly intelligent and had very interesting ideas about ecology, world hunger, and poverty; I’d woken up a few times to walk out to her living room and find her crying over a documentary or infomercial on needy children somewhere in the world. I’d shut the set off and wrap her in my arms, rocking her until she calmed and quieted. Only at those times, when she was crying, I reflected, did she actually let me hold her. And that always evolved into sex.
No matter how I examined the entire situation, I found it strange, especially when coupled with the desperate way in which she always wanted to fuck, not just have sex, but
fuck
, repeatedly: she had to come at least three times before we’d stop. Well, that might sound like fun, and maybe, when this had started, it had been, but then it would get weird; she was always pushing, pushing for something…
Damn, though. When I wanted to end it altogether with Trace, she’d do something, say something—a touch, a look, a tear-filled confidence—that would shake me, wreck me, make me need to either bask in the embrace, give in to the sensual, or ease her pain; and somehow, my feelings would twist and overlap one another until, eventually, someone was bleeding, usually me.
The scratches, the bites that drew blood, the bruises she left on me, or the way she tied my wrists after holding them for so long—that and the insistence, the insistence on just one more, always, still bothered me.
Yet…something about her called me, because she
hurt
, so badly my chest squeezed, and I kept thinking that somehow if I cared enough, I could fix it, I could help, somehow.
And then…there was Jean. I smiled to myself, a lightness growing in me. I knew so much about her: how she loved her family dearly and saw them at least once a week, how her dog substituted as a pillow sometimes and ate slippers instead of chew toys—in fact, Jean bought Dusty slippers for that very purpose. So many things, like she loved a good black and tan with a burger, medium rare, at Peggy O’Neills after a long shift, and sometimes had to be dragged away from the raw bar at Lundy’s; her favorite color was red, cardinal red specifically, not fire engine red.
She had a scar on the outside that I instinctively knew was probably nowhere nearly as large as the one she carried inside, and…she liked me. And I liked her too, maybe too much, I thought, considering that kiss we’d shared, the memory of it sending a pleasant tingle under my skin as I parked in the driveway. What I liked about Jean best was, well, everything. I liked that she was crazy, I liked that she was so good at what she did, I loved the way she walked and talked and stood, and I couldn’t think of a single thing I didn’t like, I mused as I trooped as quietly as I could up the steps.
It would have been nice if I’d been able to say something to her other than “I like you too.” In fact, I would have liked to take her out for a nice dinner, go see a roundball game, because she shared my obsession with the New York Liberty, and maybe grab a drink afterward. But I couldn’t, because no matter what Trace said about sharing, even if Jean had been okay with it, I wasn’t.
*
As I entered my room I found an envelope taped to my door and held it carefully, trying not to crush it as I placed my bag in a corner and paid scrupulous attention to where I placed my jacket and uniform; I had taken off my boots by the back door in the kitchen. I was mindful of the fact that I walked in and out of hospitals all day, and I didn’t want to track something into the house that might negatively affect Nina and my developing niece or nephew.
Ugh, I had to shower, and I put the letter down with my stethoscope on my night table. I didn’t know what I wanted to do most as I quickly soaped and rinsed: call Trace tomorrow, never call her again, or just let everything drift.
Since I was thinking in strange directions, why not call Kerry while I was at it and see if I could work that out too? At least I knew where we stood, and hell, Trace wanted to share anyway.
Truthfully, the thought made my skin crawl as I scrubbed it. I wasn’t a cheater like my fuckhead father, and I wasn’t going to become one. I hadn’t been enough for Kerry somehow and she’d needed someone else, and here I was being a jerk, because maybe Trace thought she wasn’t enough for me in some way; maybe that’s why she needed so much reassurance, said it was okay if I went outside of “us” for something.
Maybe I’d let her insecurity rub off on me, and yes, Jean was great, and she was pretty and…I owed Trace something, didn’t I?
Nina had stuck a sky blue Post-it note to the back of the envelope.
“Miss you—any free days coming up soon? Love, Nina.”
I smiled as I put it back down and toweled my head. Yeah. I missed her, and Samantha. I missed Bennie and Roy, I hadn’t visited my mother or my sister, and I knew I would work over Christmas and the New Year because I still had no seniority. I sighed as I sat down on the edge of my bed.
When I wasn’t at work, and I was there most of the time, I’d spent my precious free time with Jean, or got lost at Trace’s, because even though I saw her occasionally, those occasions would last two or three days. This had to stop; I needed to know what we were doing, where we were going. We never discussed “us,” and I sometimes got the impression that Trace would be perfectly happy if I stayed there forever so long as I was ready to fuck when she wanted, hold her when she cried, or be petted like the dog the rest of the time.