House of Steel (2 page)

“Jesus, Theron. Get dressed,” she scolded
before disappearing into the hallway again. She gathered the rest
of his belongings in her arms and turned to shove them into his
hands, now open and waiting a few feet behind her. A third
knock.

“There’s a back door in the kitchen,” she
ordered.

“No kiss goodbye?” He smirked before he put
his head into his sweatshirt and pulled it down to cover his chest.
Delaney exhaled, briefly considering the gesture of thankful regret
she felt obliged to give.

“Don’t forget your pants.” She pointed to
his bare, vigorous legs before pushing him toward the kitchen. She
set her head back to the front door and moved to the sound of a
fourth knock that had transformed into a full out fist bang against
the door. The muffled yell of her brother’s voice followed. She
reached for the handle, stealing a passing look at her reflection
in the mirror to see a disheveled woman with bloodshot eyes and
ratty hair staring back. She licked her fingers, scrubbing the
black streak of mascara underneath her eyes to a dull gray and
matting her hair down to a snarly tease.
From meth addict to
recovering stripper
.
Perfect.
Her hand pulled open the
front door to her brother dressed in a dark gray suit with a canary
tie adorned by blue dots hanging around his neck.

“Sorry for rolling you out of bed so early,
professor. You realize it’s almost eleven, right? Late night with
the students?” Mark joked. His tall, trim body leaned against the
doorframe before he moved his arms to embrace his younger sister.
His high and tight, dirty blonde crew cut contrasted against her
dark, snarly mess of hair.
You have no idea, Mark.

“Delaney,” he said, pulling her body away
from him, holding her an arm’s length away. “How long did you stay
out last night?”

“It’s good to see you, too. Come in,” she
replied as she opened her arms to lead the way into the house, now
empty of Theron’s clothes. Mark walked in and took a sharp left
toward the kitchen.

“Hey,” Delaney cut in, trying to step ahead
of him.

“I’m starving. Let’s eat quick before I head
back to the office.” He stopped, turning back to let Delaney slide
passed him. She led him into the kitchen, pausing to look out the
window to see the back of the twenty-one-year-old student’s head
moving down the sidewalk a few houses down. Theron pulled his
jacket on as he began to jog, creating a white fog that swirled
around his head.
That was close.

Delaney yanked the refrigerator open,
squinting at the fluorescent light that blinded her bloodshot eyes.
A box of leftover take-out Chinese and a near empty gallon of milk
stocked the only shelf. She felt Mark watching her from the table,
studying her unkempt hair and loose clothes that hung from her thin
frame as she heated up his leftovers.

“Leftover sesame chicken sound good?” she
asked, even though he didn’t have a choice. She snapped the
refrigerator door shut before he could see inside the abysmal
nothingness of the shelves.

“Sure. What the hell happened to you last
night? When I left the bar, you were fine.” His eyes penetrated
her, just short of accusing. She slid the paper container of sesame
chicken across the small table that was tucked tightly against the
wall. The same table Theron had just passed seconds before he
escaped out the back door a few feet away. As she moved closer to
sit down, she felt a sudden lurch in her stomach.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, turning on
her heels. “The forks are in the box next to the fridge,” she
yelled from the hallway behind her shoulder.

Delaney broke out into a run, covering her
hand over her mouth as she made her way to the bathroom adjoining
her bedroom. She snatched her loose waves behind her head and bent
down to vomit into the toilet water waiting below. Her body
retched, emptying her stomach over and over. She wiped her mouth
with the back of her hand and flushed the toilet while the smell of
alcohol permeated from every cell of her body.

Shuffling her feet across the cold hexagons
that patterned the bathroom floor, she gathered her hair and tied
it back with an elastic band. As she pulled the toothbrush in and
out of her mouth, she studied the outermost corners of her eyes
where the lines of crow’s feet were setting in deeper on the
delicate skin. She rubbed them, looking back at the reflection of
the woman staring at her. At 5’9”, Delaney had inherited her
mother’s lean body, rich, wavy hair - which they both had always
kept long- and full, peach-colored lips.

Delaney had been “kissed by an angel,”
according to one of her photography professors, who one day had
held Delaney’s face in his hands while emphatically describing the
beauty of the Sistine Chapel. She had heard, several years after
she’d taken his class, that Dr. Bohide had been fired based on
several accusations of sexual harassment. It hadn’t surprised her.
He had triggered her instinctual sexual predator sense; that same
sense that most sane and mentally capable women employ on a daily
basis. She hadn’t doubted the accusations from students for one
moment.

As she thought of Dr. Bohide, her stomach
lurched again while her mind replayed the night with Theron. She
had just jeopardized her career, the last eight years of school and
her accomplishments in the art world. The potential to land in the
gutter right next to Dr. Bohide nauseated her consciousness. She
had slept with a student. Her student. Not to mention that Theron,
despite the fact that he most likely hadn’t known - or at least she
hoped he hadn’t - was the first man she had ever slept with.
Willingly.

Her bare feet fumbled back across the worn,
wooden floor of the bedroom as she felt the ache in between her
legs. The alcohol had dulled her senses early this morning, but she
felt Theron’s after-effects now. She hadn’t meant to sleep with
him, but her growing desire to have sex on her own terms had
culminated through his semester-long pursuit. She had longed to
know what it would feel like to return to the place she had been
raped after she had been freed from his restraints. To be born
again as a woman. Delaney would be standing in the church again in
just one day when she returned home for her brother Ben’s wedding.
The physical intensity between them, along with the liquid courage,
had made her relent to her student.

Theron had locked his brown, unsettling eyes
on her that first day of Drawing II from the back row. He had
lounged back in his chair, smiling with a dimple under his right
eye, and jotted notes as his eyes moved with her across the room.
His hard body had filled most of the small, wooden school chair.
Her first classes in the fall semester, as a newly christened and
not yet revered faculty member, were held in the oldest building
that hadn’t been renovated. She would later find out that he was a
football player for the university, something she despised;
however, it gave reason to his need to regard his body with such
seriousness. She had appreciated the devotion last night.

Despite the fact that Delaney often had men
admiring her, not one of them had made her feel the way Theron had
on that first day. No one had ever made her feel so alive. So
desired.
She had felt her cheeks flush as the intrigue grew,
wondering what it would feel like to brush her lips against his.
Yet she had left that class period vowing to never let a student
destroy what she had accomplished. She had needed to remind herself
of her promise throughout the semester as Theron closed in on her.
Less than eight hours ago, she had recklessly and undoubtedly
shattered that promise.

As Delaney passed the vintage desk she had
salvaged from a curb back in graduate school, she shut the open
laptop and opened the top drawer to sweep the pink domino mask into
the drawer with one single stroke of her hand. She walked back into
the kitchen to see Mark still sitting at the table, finishing the
leftovers.

“So, how was the meeting?” she asked as she
slipped into the chair next to him. She needed to avoid any further
questioning from Mark. Despite her best efforts, she had always
been unable to keep anything from him. Almost anything. He was her
conscious, her sounding board.

“Good, I guess. We presented the progress of
Parker Tower to President Givens and the board. They seem
satisfied. You really don’t have silverware unpacked yet?” he
asked, stabbing the last piece of chicken with the plastic fork.
The utensil bent with his thrust.

“I told you, I’ve been busy. So, three weeks
into the new job, and you’re presenting on the multi-million dollar
building?”

"They don’t pay me the big bucks for
nothing.” He looked up from the food, winking as he held the fork
in the air.

“You’ve earned that right to revel, so I’ll
let it slide,” she said as she watched him shovel the food into his
mouth, just as she had years before.
Some things never
change.

Mark was brilliant, but he had spent the
last six years at an engineering firm down in Milwaukee making less
than half the pay and paying twice as much for the same house he
could get in Appleton. Parker Enterprises had pursued him, offering
him a generous salary and benefits package, enticing him to move
two hours north. He was now an executive for Holston Parker, the
owner of the prestigious and well-known company that specialized in
commercial construction. A business-savvy Parker had developed his
own company, a self-made mogul that began with the construction of
his first building, a small manufacturing facility for lumber,
right in Appleton. From there, it grew exponentially, expanding
from commercial construction to real estate. Parker Enterprises had
made Holston Parker one of the wealthiest men in the state under
the age of sixty, and Mark had gotten the golden opportunity at the
young age of thirty-two to work under him, moving into the
corporate apartments three weeks ago. Over the last ten years,
Parker had notoriously hired young men in their thirties, weeding
them out quickly to find the ones that had what he was looking for.
Mark knew this and decided to take his chance.

“Well, I’ve got to get back to the office.
Thanks for the quick lunch,” Mark said as he got up from the table.
He threw his fork into the sink. “Looks like you might need this
again. It was the last one.” Delaney ignored him, looking down at
her phone that had alerted her to a new message.

She slid her phone out of the pocket of her
sweatshirt and opened it to see a message from Theron.
Thanks
for last night, Ms. Jones.
Her skin tingled as she shoved the
phone back into her pocket to see Mark staring at her.

“Are you sure you don’t want to ride back
home with me tonight?” he asked.

“No, I’ll come down tomorrow for the
rehearsal. Ben doesn’t need me,” she replied, embracing her brother
quickly before he pushed her back to walk out the door.

“I don’t want anyone to smell the alcohol,”
he joked as he ruffled the top of her brown waves like a child. Her
mind flashed to the first time he had showed this doting brother
affection. It was exactly fourteen days after Mark had stepped onto
her uncle’s driveway in his dusty cowboy boots with her younger
brother, Ben. They were her new, adopted brothers, Michael Jones
had insisted. Mark had tousled her hair outside in the yard among
the brittle leaves of the fall afternoon. She was six. He was ten.
That’s all it took. Mark and Ben were her brothers.

“Take a shower, will ya?” he yelled before
he hopped into the truck, giving one last wave before backing down
the driveway. She watched as the snow crunched beneath his tires as
he left.

Delaney shut the door behind her, pausing to
survey the living room scattered with boxes. The only furniture in
the space was the worn leather couch she had toted around for the
past five years as a hand-me-down from Aunt Emma and Uncle Walt.
She couldn’t even consider the small coffee table and mounted TV as
furniture. The house was hers, though, and she vowed she would
start cleaning the space later, just after she emptied her body of
the lingering alcohol that coursed through her veins.

She fell into the couch, letting her body
sink into the leather, as she examined the charred brick on the
fireplace.
A service call
. That’s all she needed, according
to the realtor, to get the fireplace up and running. She put her
feet up on the coffee table and reached for her phone, opening her
previous messages.

Under Olson, she typed a response.
Plans
tonight? – Ms. Jones.

She slid the phone back into her pocket, her
stomach turning at the slightest touch. A groan escaped her lips
before she shifted her legs and pushed her body off the couch and
into the kitchen. She opened the cupboard, revealing bare shelves
except for a near empty bottle of red wine and one green tea bag.
Although she had moved in six months ago, she barely spent any time
here. Her office at the university occupied her entire semester and
existence at the moment, something she had longed for while
finishing her doctoral degree - a career to continue her devotion
to her creative expression.

Cheers.
Delaney uncorked the wine,
swigging the last drops straight from the bottle. She had never
consumed alcohol straight from a bottle before. In fact, last night
had marked only the second time in her life that she had actually
gotten drunk. Somehow, swigging from a bottle felt warranted to
her. The wine settled reluctantly in her stomach as she heated a
mug of water in the microwave. The steam of the hot water welled
into her face as she moved in front of the window, envisioning
Theron’s head moving down the sidewalk. She tried to reason with
herself, despite the uneasiness of treading dangerous, uncharted
territory. She let her chest collapse in, exhaling a deep breath,
before moving down the hallway into her bedroom.