Dirty (11 page)

“No.” My fingernails dug into the shoulders of his tux. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” His other hand came up to caress my breast.

I pushed him away a little bit to look into his face. “Because I’m with you tonight.”

He looked into my eyes, and his hand stilled for a moment before he started moving it again. “You’re ready for me, aren’t you. You’re always ready for me.”

An arrogant statement, but he made it seem like I’d given him a gift. He stroked me, made me shudder, then put my hand on the front of his fly.

“I’m ready for you, too.” He smiled and moved my hand up down, stroking him through the fabric.

I looked automatically toward the door, which could have opened at any moment. “This turns you on. Sex in public.”

He barely paused. “Sex anywhere.”

I might have been indiscriminate when it came to choosing my partners before I’d met him, but until I’d met Dan, I’d never fucked in public. This would make three times. Thrice a charm. Or maybe our luck would run out this time, and we’d be caught.

I couldn’t decide if the thought excited me or not. His touch did. His hands and mouth did. The way he looked at me did. And the way he said my name.

“Elle,” he whispered. “I want you.”

His touch skated me closer to the edge, and I wanted him, too. “My purse.”

He nipped my neck, then looked up at me. “You really are always ready, aren’t you?”

“I believe in being careful.”

He shook his head a little, as though my answer amused him, but it took only a minute for him to put the condom on and slide my panties down to my thighs.

“Put your hands up. Grab the bar.”

I grabbed the bar. It was cold. My fingers curled around it without effort, the tips of my nails meeting my palms.

He thrust inside me without resistance, his sole noise a grunt. His hands gripped my hips, lifted my leg to wrap around his waist. I grabbed the bar harder. My nails dug into my skin, but even that little pain wasn’t a distraction to the pleasure of his cock filling me. He put his hands under my ass, holding me up as he moved.

It must’ve looked awkward, but I was spared the sight of it. No mirrors reflected the way he fucked me, nothing to show our faces twisted in lust. I looked at him as he looked up at me, and he slammed inside me so hard it moved my entire body.

I couldn’t hold on to him. If I let go of the bars, we’d both fall. I couldn’t move, either, balanced so precariously. It was all Dan, his job, his skill, and his brow furrowed in concentration as he moved.

I’ve said it before. I’m not small, and he’s not large. Yet that didn’t seem to matter now. He moved inside me without effort, his pubic bone hitting me in just the right place, over and over again, so he didn’t have to slide a hand between us.

My orgasm surprised me more than it did him. I didn’t think I’d come that way, skirt around my waist, hands numb from gripping a cold steel bar, heart pounding in anticipation of the door opening and our illicit behavior being discovered.

I came with a low, small cry, my eyes open and watching him, and he smiled. I closed my eyes immediately after, turned my head, but he didn’t like that.

“Don’t look away from me,” he whispered, voice hoarse and breath short from exertion and arousal. “I love to watch your eyes.”

There was no good reason for me to do as he said, not then, not ever. I want to make that very clear. No matter what Dan asked of me, I always had the ability to say no. I simply didn’t take it.

I had the ability to refuse, and I did not.

I opened my eyes and looked into his, blazing with passion. That sounds funny, doesn’t it? Do eyes really blaze with passion? Can they?

Yes. I don’t know who said the eyes are windows to the soul, but I believe it. I saw passion there. And enjoyment. And as always, that hint of disbelief, like even though he was doing this he couldn’t quite believe it.

I knew how he felt.

He fucked me harder. I adjusted my grip on the bars. The ring I wore on my right hand clattered on the metal. The hangers jangled. Our breathing sounded very loud.

His thrusts grew ragged, and beads of sweat formed on his brow. He bit his lip, shifting my weight and sinking into me one last time with a low grunt that brought a smile to my lips. It might be nice to be elegant and eloquent at the moment of orgasm, but most of us aren’t. I watched his eyes flutter and the line of his throat as he swallowed hard. He put his face against my chest, bared by the gown’s décolletage.

“I have to put you down,” he murmured. “Ready?”

We disentangled with a minimum of awkward fumbling. I kept a hand on the bars above my head to keep me steady. My legs trembled.

My dress fell down around my ankles. He took care of the condom with a handful of tissues from a box on the shelf above us, zipped himself, tossed the evidence in the small brass wastecan by the door.

“Hey.” He grinned.

“Why is everything so easy with you?” I asked him.

The words surprised me as much as my orgasm had. I think they surprised him, too, because his smile turned quizzical. He reached to smooth a curl that had fallen to my shoulder.

“What do you mean?”

Heat rose from my belly to my throat to cover my face. The dress revealed enough of it to be obvious. I couldn’t meet his eyes anymore.

Shame and I are no strangers to each other. I’m well acquainted with the feeling. Oh, I force it away easily enough, pretend it’s not there, deny it. Much of the time, I can even convince myself I have nothing to be ashamed of, and most of the time, it works.

Not then. It made me stagger, the shame that hit me in the gut like a punch. My ears rang with it. My vision blurred. I’ve fainted once or twice in my life, consequences of low blood pressure and anemia, or too much heat and too little hydration. I recognized the feeling. I ducked my head and kept my grip on the bar above my head, fearing if I let go, I’d fall.

“Elle? You okay?”

The solicitude in his voice was too much. I pushed past him, out of the closet, into the hall. I put my hands to my burning cheeks. I needed to get out of there, fast, and my feet found the swiftest route, toward the end of the hall and the door marked Exit.

I came out in a dark courtyard littered with cigarette butts and smelling of stale smoke. I gulped in blessedly cool night air as the metal door clanged shut behind me. The brick wall of the hotel still held the day’s heat and was rough beneath my fingers. I let it support me for a minute while I breathed.

I wasn’t crying, at least. But then, I didn’t. Tears were a relief that had abandoned me a long time ago.

Sex is not wrong. Sex is not dirty. Not even sex in a public place with a man you barely know. It’s not. Sex is a gift, a built-in human pleasure, something to enjoy and cherish and utilize. Sex rejuvenates. Sex replenishes. Orgasms are just one more miraculous function our body provides, no more shameful than a sneeze or the beating of our hearts. Sex is not dirty, not even in public places with someone you barely know. Liking sex, liking a man’s hands on me, coming with him, letting him inside me…that doesn’t make me dirty.

The night was cool, not cold, but I’d gone from heat to chill in minutes. Goose bumps humped my arms, and I rubbed them, furious with myself.

Sex is not dirty. I am not dirty. I’m not.

The door opened behind me. Dan came out. I straightened, the near-frantic motion of my hands on my arms ceasing abruptly.

“Hey,” Dan said after a moment. “Elle, are you all right? Too much to drink?”

“No.”

He stood next to me, but didn’t touch me. I kept my gaze straight ahead, though I had nothing to see. Now I not only felt ashamed, but embarrassed.

He rustled in his coat pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offered me one. I took it, though I’m not much of smoker. He lit it for me, then one for himself, and we stood in silence while the red tips of our cigarettes glowed red in the darkness.

“Are you mad at me?” He asked after a while.

“No, Dan.”

“Okay.”

He tossed the butt to the ground, where it still glowed. He didn’t crush it out. I watched the ember flare and go dark, then tossed my cigarette down to meet it.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He turned to look at me, his face in shadow. “I wish you weren’t.”

I swallowed, my throat tight, glad of the darkness that hid my face from him. “I think I should go.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“The night’s almost over, anyway,” I said.

“Elle.”

One word, my name, but it fixed me as firmly as if he’d reached out and grabbed my arm.

“I don’t want you to ever be sorry,” Dan said. “Because I’m not.”

I didn’t mean to laugh, but that’s what came out. One short, sharp laugh, full of cynicism.

“I don’t imagine you would be.”

He scuffed his shoe against the courtyard’s stone floor. “You think I’m just the sort of guy who picks up women and fucks them all over the place.”

“I don’t know you!” My reply came out sharper than I’d meant it to.

“So get to know me,” he offered. “I’m easy to know, Elle. I promise.”

“I’m not.”

I heard the smile in his voice. “No kidding.”

“Do you…do you think I’m the sort of woman who just lets guys pick her up and fuck her all over town?”

“Are you?”

“Apparently.” I sounded resigned.

He touched me, then. He put his hand on my waist and pulled me closer to him. He moved into the shaft of light from the security lamp. It made his eyes look very blue.

“So what if you do?”

I could only stare at him. He smiled. I didn’t return it. His fingers moved on the slippery fabric of the gown he’d bought me.

“I don’t think you’re the sort of woman who picks up guys and fucks them all over town. No matter how many men you’ve been with.”

“Seventy-eight.” The answer slid from my mouth like an oil spill spreading between us.

He blinked and hesitated. “You’ve been with seventy-eight men?”

“Yes.”

I waited to see disgust or censure cross his face, but he only reached up to smooth his finger around the curl of hair that had come loose from my chignon.

“That’s a lot.”

“Does it bother you?” I asked.

He looked thoughtful. “Does it bother you?”

“Yes, Dan,” I told him after a second. “It does.”

“Before you I dated lots of women. Does that bother you?”

“No.” That was different. Dating women was different from picking up men and taking them home and fucking them to prove I could.

He inched me closer, adding his other hand to my waist. He smelled of cologne and sex. His shirt looked rumpled.

“I don’t care what you did before. All that matters is what you do now.”

I shook my head, silent.

“If you wanted pretty words, I’d find some for you. But something tells me you wouldn’t believe them, anyway.”

That tilted my mouth upward a bit. “That’s probably true.”

He pulled me in front of him to cradle me from behind, his hands linking through mine. His embrace chased away the goose bumps. He rested his chin on my shoulder and lifted our linked hands to point at the sky.

“What stars are we looking at?”

“That happens to be the Big Dipper.”

He held me closer, keeping me warm. “How come you wanted to study astronomy?”

I leaned into him, looking up at the pinpricks of light against the night’s black sky. “I used to think I could count them all.”

“The stars?”

I nodded. “I thought I could count them all, or at the very least, learn all I could about them. Figure out how they hung there in the sky like that without falling down. Find a way to reach them, maybe. Discover if there was life out there.”

He laughed, low, his breath a brush of heat on my skin. “UFOs?”

“It’s a legitimate field,” I murmured. “But I never studied UFOs. No.”

“Just the stars.”

“Believe me, that was plenty.”

We stood, quiet for a few moments. His thumbs traced repetitive lines on the fabric over my stomach. His lips pressed the skin of my shoulder.

“Do you ever miss it?”

“Every time I look at the stars,” I told him.

“Did you ever figure out how many there are?”

I turned my head to look at him. “No. Nobody can count them. They’re infinite.”

“So…you gave up?”

I frowned, pulling out of his arms a little. “Abandoning a task that is futile and pointless is not giving up.”

He didn’t let me get far before tugging me back against him. “I know.”

“So then why did you say that?”

I felt the lift and drop of his shoulders as he shrugged, and the shift of his lips on my shoulder as he smiled. “I wanted to see what you’d say.”

I said nothing.

“So how long did it take you to decide it was a futile and pointless task?”

I pulled away again to look at him. “Who says I have?”

We studied each other under the light of the stars. Then I looked away, back up to the sky. Dan looked up too, holding my hand, and we stared together at the night.

“I didn’t give up,” I said after a moment.

Dan squeezed my hand. “I’m glad.”

“Me too,” I said, and squeezed back.

“E
lla.” My mother’s voice, as always, twisted my mouth. “Have you gained weight?”

The choice had come down to meeting her for lunch in a neutral location, having her come to my house or meeting her at hers. Dutiful daughter that I was, I’d chosen lunch. We both knew why, but neither of us spoke of it.

“Probably, Mother.”

She sniffed. “No man’s going to want a woman who doesn’t take care of herself.”

I’d been buttering a roll. Now I added extra butter and gave her a completely insincere smile. “I’m not worried about it, Mother.”

She sniffed again, sipping water with lemon in it. I should explain that my mother is not old or infirm, or even in failing health, though she’d like to make the world pity her for being so. My mother is an attractive, well-preserved woman in her early sixties, who spends more money on her weekly beauty appointment than I do on groceries. A minor car accident more than fifteen years ago left her with an almost invisible scar on her left leg and the utter inability to drive herself anywhere, due to “nerves.” And though we never discuss my father’s drinking, she’s not stupid enough to expect him to drive her anywhere. Frankly, I’d rather get over my nerves than be trapped at home with a man I hate and have to rely on the kindness of others to get me anywhere…but then again I have my own issues to work through and perhaps more of my mother’s martyr complex than I’d like to admit.

The waiter arrived to take our order, and my mother ordered her usual, a house salad with dressing on the side. I ordered a cheeseburger and fries with a chocolate milk shake.

“Elspeth!” You’d have thought I’d ordered a roasted baby with a side of cute little puppy, from my mother’s horrified expression. I’m not sure which offended her more, the food itself or the fact I was ordering something as plebeian as a cheeseburger in a restaurant as fancy as Giardino’s.

“Mother,” I replied, calm because that infuriated her more.

She shook out her napkin. “You do it to upset me, don’t you.”

“Oh, Mother. I’m just hungry, that’s all.”

She made no secret of her appraising look. “At least black is very slimming.”

I glanced at my black sweater and black fitted skirt. I don’t think there’s a woman alive who doesn’t wonder if her thighs could be thinner, her ass flatter. But overall, I’ve made peace with my body and the shape it takes.

“You’ll get heavy again,” she continued. “And after you got so slim, too.”

I had been “heavy,” as she put it, in self-defense, and slim from circumstance. It wasn’t a diet I’d like to go on again.

“I’m happy with the way I look, Mother. Please drop it.”

“Nobody’s ever happy with the way they look,” she said, echoing my thoughts of the moment before. “It’s woman’s curse, Ella. We’re doomed to always want to be thinner, have bigger breasts and longer legs.”

“I am more than tits and ass. I have a brain, too.”

She wrinkled her nose at my use of language. “Well, nobody can see your brain, can they?”

As I’d told Dan, abandoning a task you know is futile and pointless is not giving up. It’s being smart. I didn’t bother arguing with her. She’d been giving me the same lecture for years. I sipped some water, instead, using the ice in my mouth to keep my tongue from snapping.

For once, she let it go. The detailed, gossipy story she began telling me next was a little better, in that it in no way involved me, my weight or my brain, but instead was the story of my mother’s friend Debbie Miller’s daughter, Stella, who’d just had a baby.

“…and she named it Atticus!” My mother shook her head, her opinion of such a name quite clear.

“Atticus is very nice name. At least she didn’t name him Adolf.”

“You’ve got a smart mouth,” my mother replied, “to go along with that smart brain.”

“I’m sorry.” Funny how being an adult doesn’t always change our relationship with our parents. I wasn’t worried she’d reach across the table and smack me…but some part of me reacted as though she might.

The waiter brought our food, though I was no longer hungry for it. I sipped the thick shake anyway, just so she wouldn’t have anything to remark upon.

“Ella,” my mother said at last, her salad half-eaten and pushed away with a sigh. “I need to talk to you about your father.”

“All right.”

I put my own fork down and wiped my mouth with a napkin. I didn’t speak to my father much. We talked if he answered the phone on the rare occasions I called the house, and my mother referenced him often in terms of her daily routine: “Daddy and I watched that show about psychic pets” and “Daddy and I are thinking about redecorating the kitchen,” when really, the truth was my father spent the day in front of the television with an ever-full gin and tonic in one hand and the remote in the other.

“What do you want to talk about?”

I’ve seen my mother shed enough false tears to fill a swimming pool. She does it so expertly her makeup never runs. So when a tear glittered in her eye that smudged her carefully applied liner, alarm shot through me.

“Your father,” my mother said, “isn’t well.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

She made a little fluttering motion with her hands, and my alarm grew. She might be a martyr, but she was rarely without words. I watched her mouth work and nothing come out, and I had to link my hands in my lap to keep them from shaking.

“What’s wrong with him, Mother?”

She looked around before she answered, like the other diners might care about what she said. “Cirrhosis,” she whispered, then clapped a hand over her mouth as though she hadn’t meant to say it.

It was no surprise, of course. My father had been a heavy drinker for most of his life. “Has he been to a doctor? What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s been too tired to get out of his chair, and he’s lost weight. He won’t eat.”

“But he won’t stop drinking.”

She lifted her chin. “Your father deserves a little relaxer in the evenings. He’s worked hard to support us all these years.”

I didn’t push her on it. “Will he have to go to the hospital?”

“I haven’t told anyone,” she whispered. She dabbed her eyes, and the brief moment of honesty we’d shared disintegrated.

“Of course not. We wouldn’t want the neighbors to know.”

She gave me a glass-edged glance. “Absolutely not. What happens at home stays at home.”

What happens at home, stays at home.

How many times had I heard that, growing up?

We stared at each other across the table, two women any stranger would have guessed belonged together. I was the child who looked like her, with the same full mouth and the same crooked hairline. My eyes were more gray and hers more blue, but they were the same shape and size, wide set in a way that could make us both look innocent when we were not.

“Won’t you ever forgive me?” I didn’t want my voice to shake but it did. I gripped my napkin again. “Mother, damn it, won’t you ever let that go?”

She sniffed again, like I wasn’t even worth a response and I wasn’t Elle anymore but Ella again, and I hated it.

She didn’t deny my question though, or pretend she didn’t know what I was talking about, and I set my gaze on my half-eaten burger in order to gain some perspective. The waiter saved me from blurting more by asking if I wanted a box.

“No, thank you.”

That made her cluck her tongue again. “Waste!”

“I’m paying for lunch, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

“That’s not the point,” she told me. “Ella, you can’t afford to go throwing your money away.”

“Because I don’t have a man to take care of me,” I finished for her. “I know. Can we have the check, please?”

The waiter, caught between us like a dolphin in a tuna net, backed away. My mother glared at me. I had no more glare left inside me. I could only stare.

“The waiter doesn’t even know you,” I told her. “And what’s more, he doesn’t care.”

“That’s not the point.” She shifted in her chair, frowning.

I couldn’t fight her any longer. My lunch had settled in my stomach like a stone. I wiped my mouth again, then my hands, and set the napkin over my unfinished lunch so it could no longer accuse me.

“You really should come visit. Before it’s too late.”

Ah, simple. The real purpose of this lunch had raised its head at last. I shrugged.

“I’m very busy with work.”

She reached forward, too fast for a woman who complained her fibromyalgia made her too clumsy to do her own cleaning. She flicked open the top button of my blouse, exposing my skin. Her face twisted.

“Work. Is that what you call it?”

I put my hand over my throat in automatic response, then rebuttoned my shirt over the small purple mark she’d exposed. “I have a job—”

“Are you a whore?” She sneered. “Is that your work? Or maybe it’s not just work that keeps you from doing what any decent daughter would do. Maybe it’s something else? Maybe you’re too busy being…dirty.”

Unless you’re staring into a mirror it’s impossible to know what your own expression looks like, but I felt mine go cold and blank. It must have looked something like that, because her mouth twitched in the familiar way that meant she’d triumphed, earned a reaction from me. Oh, the games we play, even when we know we can’t win.

“Are you screwing your boss, Ella? Is he the one who gave you that suck mark?”

“I thought you were worried I’d never find a man,” I replied in the same sickly sweet tone she’d just used.

We share more than eyes and hair. We share a keen sense of vengeance, too, my mother and I. She’s the queen of holding grudges, but I might well be the duchess. I learned how words can wound more than a knife, and I learned it from the best.

She shook her head. “I’m so ashamed of you, Ella.”

I said nothing. Not a word, and thus, won. She couldn’t stand against silence. She needed fuel to continue her tirade, and I gave her none, though my tongue ached later from biting it.

She stood, clutching her fashionable bag. “Don’t bother to walk me out. I’ll catch my own cab. And, Ella, you really should visit, if not for me, at least for your father.”

“And for the neighbors, maybe?”

And thus, I lost, because I couldn’t manage to keep my silence.

My mother didn’t believe having the last word was most important. An aggrieved sigh could be far more effective, and she gave me one before she swept off, carrying her righteous indignation around her like a cloud.

Me, I paid the check and then, my father’s daughter despite my best efforts, I went to the bar down the street and found a spot in the back where I wouldn’t have to speak to anyone.

The painting in my dining room progressed with painful slowness. Guilt plucked me every time I saw the paint cans and bucket of brushes soaking in my laundry room, but closing the door solved the problem neatly. I blamed Dan. Since the night of his class reunion a week ago, he’d called me almost every night. Our schedules hadn’t allowed for more than phone conversations, which was fine with me. Most nights when I got home from work all I wanted to do was reheat something for dinner, shower and crawl into bed. Dan seemed to understand and hadn’t asked for another appointment. I was a little disappointed.

None of that was helping my dining room. I love my house. It was the first thing that was really mine. I bought it before I even bought my first car. My house is my haven, my refuge.

But I hated the dining room. Not for its odd shape that wouldn’t easily accommodate a table and chairs and sideboard. Not for its lack of windows, or the horrendous hanging fixture I hadn’t yet replaced. I hated the dining room because it mocked me with its state of disrepair, and because every time I passed it I was reminded of how unmotivated I was to finish the task I’d begun.

I’d bought what had once been a decrepit row home in a part of town the mayor called “underprivileged.” The neighborhood hadn’t been great, but it was getting better. The city government, attempting to revitalize the downtown Harrisburg area, had put substantial financial support into projects assisting its efforts. It was nice to have neighbors who drove sports cars instead of stealing them.

I’d renovated, not remodeled, preferring to keep the house’s original rooms intact, though it meant some inconvenience in such matters as closets and bathrooms. I’d worked room by room as money and time allowed, hiring professionals to repair damage done by time and neglect but doing all the cosmetic work myself.

Not that I had a flair for decorating. Like my wardrobe, I preferred to keep my decor simple. Neutral. White walls. Sturdy furniture, most of it acquired piecemeal from auctions and thrift stores, not because I couldn’t afford new but because I liked old pieces. I had some framed black-and-white art, a few candlesticks and vases, mostly gifts. I had built-in bookshelves filled with books, and a working fireplace to read them by.

Tonight I also had Gavin. I had seen little of him for the past week or so, though I’d heard the muffled sound of shouting voices from next door more than once. He waited for me on the doorstep, a book clutched in his hands. Despite the temperate weather, he wore a giant black sweatshirt, hood up, looking so much like Anakin Skywalker on his way to becoming Darth Vader, I couldn’t help commenting.

“The dark side of the Force is just too hard to resist, huh?”

My joke fell flat. Gavin looked up from the shadows of his hood, his pale face not smiling. He stood up.

“Huh?”

“The dark side…never mind.” I wasn’t going to ask him if he’d seen the Star Wars epics. I unlocked my door and he followed me inside. “Come to help me paint?”

“Yeah.”

He’d never been a chatty kid, but this was uncommunicative, even for him. I gave him a glance as I settled my mail and my bag on the table. He headed for the dining room, stripping off his sweatshirt over his head and hanging it neatly on the back of a chair. Beneath he wore a plain gray T-shirt. He bent to pry open the paint can, and the fabric pulled out of his jeans, exposing the knobs of his spine. He looked thinner to me than he had before. I hadn’t seen his mother’s car lately, which meant nothing other than she’d been out when I was home. Maybe she hadn’t been home to make him dinner.