No Place Like Home (18 page)

“It really is pleasant to appear in public with a sex god.”

He laughed. The first time all day. “We do have our uses.” We reached the table and he held on to me for a minute, putting our bodies close as he looked down at me. “I guess you’d know a little about that.”

“About sex gods?”

“About being one.”

I pulled away lightly. “That would be goddess, wouldn’t it?”

Another small laugh, one that felt like a victory, as he slid in across from me. He blinked and pushed hair off his face. “I remember when I thought Michael was going to be really, really famous,” he said.

“Me, too.” I thought of those old days, the promise that gilded every moment, the slightly drunken sense of possibility that somehow just never materialized. They’d had decent sales on the first album, and the second had produced “Longing,” the song that made Michael’s voice famous, but the third bombed.

“You were there, Jewel. What do you think happened?”

“Oh, I know exactly what happened—Michael fell in love with Andre, and love was more important to him than fame.”

Malachi’s face went very sober. “Did he make the right choice, Jewel?” The words rasped out, raw and rumbling.

The waitress brought our drinks and he paid for them, and I thought back. “Did you ever meet Andre?” I asked. There was a little tightness in my throat and I took a sip of tomato beer to cool it.

“What the hell is that?”

I grinned, familiar now with the horror the concoction roused in the uninitiated. “Beer and tomato juice. It’s a fixture here—I was amazed when I left town and bartenders had no idea what I meant when I ordered a red beer.”

He made a face and I pushed the glass across the table. “C’mon, alligator man, try the local cuisine.”

Suspiciously, he lifted it and took a ginger sip. His mouth turned down at the corners and he took another. “Not bad.” Another. “In fact, it’s excellent.”

I motioned to the waitress to bring a glass of tomato juice for us to share. She nodded and Malachi gave me back my glass. “So,” I asked. “Did you ever meet Andre?”

“Once, a long time ago. I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t always real comfortable with it, you know, the gay thing.” He shifted, turned his shot glass in a perfect circle on the table. “I don’t know why I thought it mattered. And it wasn’t like he was ever—” a distant little frown “—anything
but
gay. He loved Andre, I know.”

“Yeah.” I thought about it. “When I think of what might have been if Michael had stayed in the music business, I remember a trip we all made to Ireland when Shane was about ten. Billy was . . . on his way down, and we didn’t see him too often, but the money was good in the restaurant, and I was doing well with a catering firm. Andre booked the trip for all of us, as a surprise for Michael’s birthday, because he always wanted to go to Ireland so bad, you know?”

Malachi nodded.

“Andre did everything, and he found ways to make it particularly good for each one of us. We stayed in these wonderful little bed-and-breakfasts all over, which was for himself, because he was just besotted with the service industry on all levels. Blarney castle for Shane, who was madly in love with the idea of kissing the stone. An evening at a music festival for Michael.” I felt the sudden pierce of tears in my throat and had to stop.

“What was yours?”

“A goddess site.” Considering all that had happened today, the memory was somehow a cheering one. It was hard to imagine a goddess of any ilk caving in to family pressure to behave herself. I looked at Malachi earnestly. “What I remember, though, is the way they looked at each other when Michael saw the shores of Ireland the first time. We flew into London, then took a ferry across the channel, so Michael could arrive as his ancestors left. He just stood at the rails and stared at that green, green coast and Andre was beside him, and—” I had to blink hard, pause for a minute. I could see them so clearly in memory, Andre as dapper and dashing as Armand Assante, dark and swarthy and clean, Michael taller and leaner and stronger, so blond. Both of them healthy then.

Malachi touched my hand.

I brushed away an escaped tear. “Anyway, he was just a very special person. He and Michael were as in love as any couple I’ve ever known. They made each other happy. I don’t think music would have given Michael what Andre gave.”

He looked at me. AIDS hung between us, loud and unspoken. I shook my head. “It could have been either one of them, Malachi. It’s not like Michael was celibate before they met. And it doesn’t do any good to blame. It’s an awful disease and no one should have to go that way.”

He bowed his head, ashamed. “Yeah. I just hate it. You want to blame something, anything. Make it right.”

“I know.”

“Whew.” He inhaled, exhaled hard, blowing it all out. “What a day, huh?”

It rippled through me, the thorns of Michael and my father sticking in my heart. “Yeah.” I scowled at him. “We don’t have to talk about it, do we?”

A glitter in those bright eyes. “Not much of it. But I’m dying to know what your father said to you in Italian.”

“You were there for the whole thing?”

“Even more than that.” With a quick, focused gesture, he slung back the shot and slammed the glass back down. “I saw you and Jordan come out of the dressing room.”

“Oh, brother.” I winced, then grabbed my shot and drank it. Coughing a little, I sipped some cooling beer, then said, “So you got the entire show of my humiliation.”

“I’d say yeah. My favorite part was the tattoo.” He chuckled. “You’d have thought you’d come out of there without your clothes on.”

I laughed, touching the scarlet rose. “Like it?”

“It does draw the eye.” He sipped some beer. “Wasn’t quite as popular with the family, was it?”

“I’m the family slut. They’d be disappointed if I didn’t uphold my role.”

“Now.” He leaned forward. Hair fell down and touched his cheekbone. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Playing like you’re so bad for them, when you know you aren’t.”

A wash of heat touched my face and I looked away. “You just get stuck, you know? The good sister, the bad sister, the smart sister, the pretty one.” A shrug. “You and Michael only had to divide things in half. We had to go a little farther to define ourselves.”

“Just doesn’t seem like you’re enjoying yourself much. Why keep it up?”

I drew a line in the condensation on the outside of my glass. “I
don’t
want it anymore,” I said quietly. “I’m tired of it. I want my father to see me as I am, as a normal woman. I want my mother to stop looking at me like I’m going to screw up every second. I want my grandmother to stop telling me I’m too old to leave my hair down.” My heart started to pound. “I want them all just to see that I made some mistakes, but I wouldn’t trade it. How could I? If I hadn’t walked the road I did, I’d be someone else entirely.”

There was something very gentle in his smile just then, a smile that softened those Hershey’s chocolate eyes and made him look—oh, I don’t know—normal. “Exactly.”

“Maybe I don’t even believe all that.”

“Why not?”

“What are you, my psychotherapist? It’s not exactly like you’ve dealt with your issues any better.”

“We’re not talking about me right now.”

“And I don’t want to talk about me.”

“So just tell me what your father said in Italian.”

A slow, agonizing twist of the knife. “It’s a really nasty version of
whore
.” Quickly I lifted my bottle and took a long drink. “Bad to the Bone” came on the jukebox and I said, “You want to dance?”

“Not right this minute.”

It annoyed me. “Well, then we get to turn the table, Mr. Psychoanalyst. You get to talk about why you won’t forgive your father after twenty-five years. He made a mistake. One mistake, and he lost everything over it.”

“He killed somebody, Jewel. That’s a lot worse than one thing.”

“He killed your mother’s lover in a jealous rage.” Inclining my head, I added, “And I believe it was because he caught her in bed with the man. Not exactly an uncommon story, you know?”

“He did it with his ten-year-old son in the house, sleeping in the other room!”

“And your mother brought her lover home to that same sleeping ten-year-old.”

“Not the same.”

“I think it is.” The waitress stopped at our table and Malachi motioned for two more shots. I said, “Your parents were so caught up in the drama between the two of them that they let their children down. Over and over.”

“Does Michael actually talk about this shit?”

“Malachi, we’ve hardly spent a day apart since the night I met him. I was bound to hear the story sooner or later.”

He bowed his head. Turned the beer bottle in circles, one exact rotation at a time.

“What do you remember?” I asked. Then, because the shutters went up, added, “About your parents, I mean.”

He took a breath, wiped his face, looked over my shoulder at the past. “Fights. They fought so much. And then everything would be cool for a long time, usually after we moved to a new place. Then they’d start in on each other again.”

“Was it your mother who was a toucher?”

“A toucher?”

“Yeah, you know, both you and Michael have that habit of touching people. I figured your mother was demonstrative like that.”

A strange expression touched his mouth, made his eyes distant for a moment. “Maybe it was Michael, then. My mother wasn’t like that, really.”

“This gesture,” I said, and picked up his hand and kissed the back of it.

A soft smile broke over his mouth. “Now
that
was my mama. She also used to sing all the time.”

“That’s where Michael got it.”

“I think so.”

As if it had been conjured by our discussion, “Longing” poured into the room. Michael’s voice, low and slow and rich, flowed into the room. I saw heads lift and faces smile as they remembered the song, or maybe just something they’d been doing when they heard it. It was a love song with heart, one of yearning and hope and with a deeply erotic undertone of need. A pair of lovers moved out onto the dance floor to do an easy bump and grind to it, gazing into each other’s eyes. “I think he’d just met Andre when he wrote this.”

Malachi’s eyes twinkled. “Think they’d mind if they knew?”

“Some of them.” I smiled.

He stood up. “I’ll dance to this one.”

I hesitated for a minute, not sure I could really manage this particular song and Malachi’s long, taut body all at once. He tipped his head, a dare, and held out that big hand. I stood up and let him draw me onto the little area cleared in front of the jukebox.

So big. It was a rare pleasure to stand chest to chest with a man, hip to hip, and still have him be taller, tall enough I had to tip my chin up to look at him when he pulled our bodies close, his thigh boldly sliding between mine, his hand on the small of my back, his eyes glittering with sex and the need to forget the rest of the world.

“Take me away, darlin’,” he said.

I closed my eyes and let it go—let it all go—thought only about his hands and his hips moving so close, and the promise of his mouth. He smelled like Safeguard and shaving cream and Tide, and beneath my hands, the muscles of his back moved in sleek shifts.

After a long time, I looked up to find him looking down at me. There was no shift in his expression, no smile this time or light word, just his big dark eyes steadily looking down at me. And for some reason it was okay to look back, to just let him see inside as we swayed. I had enough sense to think,
Uh-oh
, but not enough to do anything about it.

Right there in front of the whole bar, he bent and kissed me. “Wish I’d met you about fifteen years ago,” he said.

I heard the part he didn’t say,
Before it was too late.
I only smiled and took his hand and we walked back to the table.

FROM THE
PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
WEDNESDAY FOOD SECTION:

Our Favorite Entries in the Annual Chili and Frijole Festival

#7 Crudo Chili—The only true cure for a hangover. Fresh Pueblo, jalapeño, and serrano chilies stewed with pork, onions, and tomatoes. Hot enough to blister the roof of your mouth, but it works. Not that we know from personal experience or anything.

Chapter 13

The night was soft when we tumbled out of the bar. “I don’t think either of us is in a state to drive,” I said.

“Nope,” he agreed cheerfully. “What do you suggest, darlin’?”

Overhead the stars stretched—endlessly both tempting and unattainable. I tilted my head back to admire them and nearly overbalanced. There’d been a
lot
of tequila. “I dunno. A cab?” But this made me laugh. At two A.M., no cabs would really be available.

“Too far to walk.”

“Yep.” I peered up at the sky. “Is that Jupiter, d’you think?”

“Which one?”

I pointed, but my finger wouldn’t stay. I dropped my hand. “The bright big one.”

“Mmm.” He tucked his hands in his pockets, three sheets to the wind if balance was any indication. “Maybe.”

Three guys came out, and I recognized one of them. “George! Is that you?”

He brightened, which was good for my ego. “Jewel? I saw you dancing.”

“And you didn’t come over to say hello?”

He put a hand on his chest. “And get my heart broken?”

I laughed and moved closer. “Are you anywhere close to sober, George? And driving?”

“A little.” He looked at Malachi. “You need a ride, maybe?”

“We both do.” I tossed my head and pulled away the long strands of curls that fell in my eyes, knowing even as I did it that he wasn’t looking at my hair at all, but the shift of breasts that came with that gesture. “Not far—’member my aunt Sylvia’s place?”

“Oh, sure, sure.” His hand moved on my back, a hand that said he wished he didn’t have to bring Malachi, too. “I’ll drive you.”

His buddy rode in the front and they got into a mysterious discussion of engines. Malachi took up 67 percent of the available backseat with his thighs and shoulders and arms, and it was only that much because he was trying to give me enough room. Streetlights flashed through the window, showing me glimpses of his big hand resting on his thigh. Flash-flash-flash. Each flash gave me something new—the taut, iron-hard appearance of that thigh. The curl of his long thumb. The half-moon shape of his nails. Really good hands, good wrists. Not too much hair on the forearm.

Giddy with dancing and liquor, I wasn’t careful about keeping to my space. There was just too much to like about sprawling. I leaned my head back, not daring to close my eyes, and rested my hands on my belly. Our thighs touched. My elbow bumped his, and he moved, trying to give me room, then let it settle back and slide close.

And then I did close my eyes, risking the swirl of too much drink in order to immerse in the steam coming out of our pores. Mine. His. Desire was thick and sweet between us, basting my flesh and sinking into my muscles and swelling up basic molecules. I loved the smell of him—that scent of sun and wind, mixed with a little hot man and smoke from the bar and a hint of caramel.

He moved his arm again, a slow drag against my breast, and his hand fell on my thigh, rubbed down to my knee. I turned my head, smiling a little, and he was looking down at me with an odd expression, not what I expected. “What?” I asked with a smile.

He flickered a glance toward the front seat and back to me, shaking his head.

It might have been all of six or seven minutes before we got there. A long time to feel your blood boiling for a particular man who really does have exactly what you want. It was way past the point of simple want, at least on my part. Every cell in my body hummed with it. Lust, I thought with a hint of laughter and turned my face into my hair. Just call it lust and be done.

George leaned around. “Take care, Jewel.”

I waited for Malachi to unfold his long self. Put my hand on George’s arm. “Thank you.”

“Any time for you, babe.”

I kissed him, once on the lips, surprising him and myself, then scrambled out of the car behind Malachi, who was standing there under that wild canopy of stars, waiting for me.

But was he
waiting
, waiting, or was all the sex in my head? Because he only took my hand as we walked up the steps. No wild hot kiss, which I’d been half-expecting.

And, okay, there’s a time to be the maiden, a time to be the pursued and the hunted. There’s also a time to call a bluff. At the top of the stairs, I tugged him to a halt, then jumped up another step and turned to face him. I put my arms around his immense shoulders and bent in and kissed him.

He kissed me back, but with restraint. I frowned, straightening. “Did I miss something?”

His hands rested easily against the flare of my hips. “I want it to be better than this.”

“Better?”

“Yeah.” His eyelids went heavy, smoky, and I saw the rumbling heat there. He lifted a hand and put it around my breast. “I want to remember how it tastes. How it feels. What you look like. I don’t want it all lost in some tequila haze.”

His hand nearly covered me, and I ached to feel it there, exactly where I’d wanted it, but I didn’t like the depth of what was coming out of his mouth, and it made me reckless. I covered his hand with my own. “It’s not such a big thing. Just a little friendly lust.”

He didn’t say anything, just hooked a hand around the back of my neck and pulled me down to his mouth for a kiss so deep, so rich, so full of promise I found myself dizzy. “Really?” he said quietly. “You really think I’ll be just one of your guys?”

“It’s not that.”

“What then?” His mouth closed on my neck, hot and wet, and his tongue made these amazing little patterns over my skin. Somehow, then, we were sitting on that top stair, me in his lap. I think he picked me up and just sat down, but it was while he was doing that thing with his tongue and I didn’t really notice we’d shifted until he stopped. “Why don’t you tell me, Jewel?”

“Tell you?”

His hand moved. “Tell me why it won’t be such a big thing.”

“No,” I said softly. “That’s not where we were.” I struggled a little against him, wanting to get my hands on that shirt. If I could put my hands on his skin, I thought it might be possible to convince him it would be okay if we went upstairs. But he held me with no effort, my left arm pinned against his oaken side, my right arm caught at the elbow in his massive, easy grip. It didn’t hurt. My head was cradled against his bicep, my bottom neatly in the dip between his legs. Against the side of my left thigh, I could feel his erection, fierce and steady, and with a little sigh, I wiggled against it. “You don’t want to be just one of the guys.”

“Right.” His hand tightened on my elbow, holding me still.

I relaxed my body, looking up at him, feeling the slight brush of the wind move my hair against his leg. “I just
want
you, Malachi,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to wait.”

He slid his fingers along the edge of my leotard. I wished, suddenly, for something easier to take off. Hadn’t thought of that. Looking down at me steadily, he moved his fingers over my skin, teasing. “Is that right.”

“Yeah.”

“I think I can give you a little something, sugar. A taste to tide you over, hmm?”

“Not fair!”

“No?” He said it kindly, but with distraction, because by then he was working that leotard off my shoulder, catching my bra strap with it, and I felt suddenly dizzy and closed my eyes. In a swift, electric movement, he freed one breast, and I went soft at the feeling of air on my naked skin, the sound of his voice, that erotic bass. “Ohh, that’s pretty,” he said, but didn’t touch. Not for a minute. His fingers hovered just above it, as wind chilled the spot and I started to quake a little. All at once, he bent his head and took me in his mouth while his other hand slid between my thighs, hard. Hand, mouth, and me like a kerosene-soaked rag—I’m embarrassed to admit it took about three seconds. Malachi moved his mouth from my breast to my lips when I fell over that edge, kissing me to keep the little mewling noises down, and maybe to absorb my protests. “Will that hold you till morning?” he asked, eyes glinting.

I broke away from him, humiliated. Or tried to break away. He didn’t let go and until he decided to do it, there wasn’t much I would have to say about it, though I tried. “Let me go!”

Instead he pulled me into him, kissing my ear and my cheek, laughing as I fought him, and it was frustrating to realize that he was still hard as rock beneath my thigh. “Jewel, listen,” he said, laughing and ducking as I got one hand free and smacked the back of his head. “Listen!” He caught my wrist and gave me a look, raised eyebrows that meant business.

I stopped. “What?”

“Tried to get out of this gracefully, but you’re gonna make me say it all out, aren’t you?”

“Say what?”

He shifted up into me, pressing himself close to my body. “I want you—God knows I do—but we had way too much tequila back there, and it’s just not gonna be all that good tonight.” The gravelly voice was low, echoing through his chest into my body. “Get it? I want it to be better than that, Jewel. It’s worth waiting for.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.” And nodded. “Sorry.”

He laughed, putting his face on my neck. “Nothing to apologize for.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said, pulling my shirt up. “Stick a needle in my eye.”

“All right.” Now how to depart gracefully? Get up, go in the house, and fall into my bed.

Luckily, we were both drunk. Together we stood and shifted and brushed ourselves off, then went upstairs and made out at his door for a long time before I ambled into my room, stripped off my clothes, and fell into bed naked for the first time in years. It felt good, at least as long as I could stay awake to enjoy it. My last thought was that I should have taken some aspirin and had some water. The hangover would be a doozy.

I read once that John Steinbeck liked his liquor, but he hated to admit to hangovers. There is a story—I have no idea if it’s true—that one morning after he and a group of friends partied hearty, as we’d say now, a friend asked him how he felt. “Oh, I’m fine,” Steinbeck replied. “Of course I do have a headache that starts at the base of my spine.”

Exactly.

The first hour or so, I had to be careful not to jar my delicate head in the slightest. The second hour, after three cups of strong coffee, three Advil, and some scrambled eggs, the physical misery had eased enough that humiliation could take first place. I couldn’t sit still to read the paper, because the damned evening kept rising up in front of my eyes, taunting me with my hands on Malachi, then his hands on me . . . oh.

So I tackled the kitchen, which was stuffed with food from my cooking spree the night before. Malachi was still asleep, so I put my music on the headphones. Upbeat stuff. Silly songs, like “Please Mr. Postman,” and music by the Temptations. Good rhythmic beat for the work. By the time I finished scrubbing the cupboards with a mix of Murphy Oil Soap and water, I’d worked up a light sweat and felt about a thousand times better. The oak cabinets gleamed that soft, warm yellow, and I stood back to admire them in the fine, soft light of morning, singing along with the Marvelettes.

His hands were around my waist before I even caught a glimpse of him, and I startled so hard I dropped the broom, hastily tearing off the headphones as he swung me around.

Malachi, of course, the one I’d been dreading and anticipating in almost equal measures all morning. He seemed to have no such ambivalence and pulled me over his big thigh, his hands sliding up my back. “Morning,” he said, and his eyes were a deep, smoky color, thick with anticipation.

For one second, I wanted to give myself up to it. To him. To the lure of those hands and that mouth—oh, I knew what they could do—and that wicked grin.

But my own actions of the night before, my needy wish, rose up to humiliate me, just as I’d been afraid they would. I ducked away from him a little.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, “don’t you dare.”

“What?” But I couldn’t look at him in the eye. It was hard enough just to stand there, smelling soap and feeling the humid dampness of his skin beneath his clothes. A freshly showered man is surely one of God’s greatest pleasures.

“Steal away.” He captured my head in his giant hands and kissed me. A sweet kiss, and one I could resist.

“It’s a bad idea, Malachi,” I said, slipping away from him like I knew what I was doing. Blindly, I went to the sink and started running water. “I was drunk last night or it wouldn’t have gone that far.”

“Liar.” He came up behind me and put his hands around my waist very lightly, the heat of his palms crumpling my shirt against my skin. I could feel his body all down my back. Then he bent and put his mouth on my shoulder, on the skin just beside the fabric. An openmouthed kiss, full of wiggling tongue I wanted elsewhere.

“All I’ve been thinking about since I opened my eyes is getting you naked,” he said. That soft baritone rumbled. He moved his mouth a little higher, on the side of my neck, and kissed me again, his hands staying perfectly still, which I was not entirely certain I wanted. “I’ve been thinking about sliding my tongue all over this hot body of yours, sugar.
All
over it.” His teeth captured my ear. “And I’ve been thinking about yours on me.”