Otis (8 page)

“Rode to Austin with a rappelling D-ring hanging out of your ass?” Jack winced.

“Sure did, left it there for a fucking
week
. Don’t know if it was a conscious thing, or just because I had that little rubber plug in there or what, but I didn’t shit for a week. When we got home, I reached back, grabbed the D-ring and gave it a tug. Damned thing popped out, and my little friend the hotdog was gone. Problem solved,” he shrugged.

Biscuit sat back in his seat, crossed his arms, and nodded his head. As Toad shook his head in what was probably a combination of disbelief and disgust, Jack leaned forward and grabbed his second beer from the table. After he took a long drink, he shook his head and laughed.

“You’re funnier than a motherfucker,” Jack chuckled.

“Club joker, that’s me,” Biscuit responded proudly.

Jack shook his head and took another drink. He inhaled a shallow breath and appeared to be preparing to speak when his eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. Toad’s eyes widened slightly immediately following, and his head tilted to the side.

“Holy. Fucking. Shit. Now,
that’s
a woman,” Jack said as he craned his neck to see.

Toad tilted his head to the side as his eyes appeared to bulge out of his head. I turned my head and glanced over my shoulder toward the door.

Holy fucking shit was right.

A lump began to immediately rise in my throat. I blindly fumbled for my beer as I continued to study the tall blonde woman as she slowly walked toward the bar. After taking a drink of my beer and washing the lump down my throat, she was directly in front of me, facing sideways. My eyes fixed on her, I fumbled to find the table, and released the bottle of beer. As my heart began to pound from my chest, I stood from my seat and turned to face her.

It had been fifteen years, but I was pretty damned sure. Not based so much on what she looked like, but how she made me feel when she walked into the room. I swallowed heavily and rubbed my sweaty hands against the thighs of my jeans.

“Sam,” I breathed.

Nothing.

“Sam!” I said with a tone of authority.

Slowly, she turned around.

Her eyes immediately widened, and she raised her hands to her mouth as if in shock.

“Steve?” she whimpered.

As our eyes met, it felt as if my heart completely stopped beating. Somehow, in spite of it, I found a way to take the few steps across the floor of the bar and open my arms. As soon as she wrapped her arms around me and rested her face on my chest, my heart began to beat again.

After a long hug, she released me and pulled away slightly. As she stood in front of me, I glanced up and down her long frame. She looked no differently than she did fifteen years prior. What little she had aged did nothing but add to her beauty. Eventually, I fixed my eyes fixed on her left hand.

No ring.

And my heart stopped beating again.

SAM

I sat in the kitchen wondering if one day an answer would come. I knew - or at least I suspected - my mother’s death would come long before mine; but knowing did little to prepare me for her departure from my life. As I was sure all children did, I wished I had spent more time with her, called her more frequently, and came home on a more regular basis. Changing it now would be impossible, and all I hoped for was to ease what little pain remained.

I lifted my coffee cup halfway to my mouth and gazed down into the cup. Realizing it was one of the cups I used to drink out as a young girl brought back memories, and as they filtered through my mind, a smile came to my face. Although I was a girl, blonde, and somewhat of a ding-dong, I wasn’t so idiotic or mentally impaired that I wasn’t able to accept her death as being just what it was.

The completion of her cycle of life.

No newcomer to losing someone I loved, I grinned and lifted the cup to my mouth with my mind filled with fond memories of my childhood. As my mind slowly searched for even more tender recollections from my youth, her not so dead cat walked into the kitchen and meowed.

Fucking cat.

I hated cats. Now, along with everything else in the home, I had inherited a fucking cat. The grey tabby looked like a small version of her larger vermin cousins, and was possessed by none other than the devil himself. In the several days I had spent inventorying the contents of the house and searching for small pieces of my mother’s life, the cat followed me everywhere I went. When I stopped, it stopped. As I worked, it sat and stared at me with golden snake-like eyes that seemed to burn holes through my skin and into my flesh. The one thing that prevented me from stepping on it or placing it out with the many bags of trash was the fact it was my mother’s only true friend, and my single living tie to my mother’s former life.

“Go away!” I hissed as I swatted my hand in the direction of the filthy feline.

“Meow!” it responded.

“No,” I screeched.

“
This
,” I swatted my hand in her direction again, “Means
go away
.”

She meowed again, obviously confused regarding my demand, and began walking toward me. As I watched in sheer horror, she walked alongside the table, turned at the last moment, and before I could lift my leg, slithered to the side and rubbed her body against my shin. The many hours I spent at the gym combined with my quick reflexes paid off in the form of a swift leg extension which sent her sliding across the kitchen floor.

“Stay over there before I put your sickening ass in the freezer,” I snapped as I stood from my seat.

I stared down at my leg as if I expected to see my calf withering away from some form of staph infection. After brushing her residue from my skin, I finished my coffee and walked to the sink. Gazing into the back yard provided a rush of memories from my high school years, and the time I had spent with my then lover, Steve.

If anyone ever was, we were meant for each other. The type of couple that made everyone else sick when we showed up at a party, we were the two people who always finished each other’s sentences, poked food into each other’s mouths, and tasted each other’s drinks we concocted at parties or fast-food restaurants.

My life had never felt as
in order
as it was then. In Steve’s presence I was able to exhale, and had no worries whatsoever. He was a huge guy, standing more than six feet five, wasn’t overweight, and actually was quite the opposite. In high school, he played football and basketball, and always stayed in great physical condition. After school was over, he continued to stay in great shape by constantly lifting weights and running. His physical presence combined with his protective nature made me feel comfortable that no matter what, no harm would ever come to me.

Other than spending time with me, his only other true love was riding his Harley. He found freedom in riding it, and often spent countless hours on the road - often with me on the back – riding to a place that we rarely
planned
on going. I was young at the time, but there was no mistaking that our love was not only genuine, but it was the type of love most women would never find in a lifetime.

To try and describe the love we shared would be impossible. Words like
perfect
and phrases like
once in a lifetime
came to mind when thinking about it, but there were no words in my vocabulary that would accurately describe our relationship with any level of justice. When we were twenty-one years old, I decided I needed to act as if I was an adult, and the selfish side of me desired children.

Steve wanted nothing more than to live his life free, and love me until the end. In time I’m quite sure children would have been possible with him, but at the time I asked, I gave very little, if any, room for negotiation. His response was not what I wanted but what I should have expected.

And we parted ways.

Incapable of living in the same city as Steve lived without having him in my life, I left the city with tear-filled eyes, a broken heart, and no plan for my future. I moved as far away as geography and common sense would allow, and came to rest in New York City. Within a year I was married to a workaholic who could care less about anything but how many commas were in his paycheck.

After a year of marriage, a terrorist flew a commercial airliner into the building he worked in, and he never came home from work. No body, no clothes, no jewelry, and no closure to a loss I was ill prepared for.

I recovered quickly, as I always did, with the understanding living life was a mystery; and solving it, no different than watching a movie, didn’t come until the bitter end. With the exception of losing Steve, I had accepted life had thrown my direction, and never once complained.

Losing him, however, remained the one thing for the last fourteen years I never accepted. I knew I couldn’t change it and would never be granted an opportunity to fix it, but accepting it as being a good decision haunted me on a daily basis.

After the death of my husband, I left New York and moved to St. Louis - the second worst decision I ever made in my life. There I remained, single, uninterested, and gainfully employed as a hairstylist at an upscale salon I dreamed of one day owning. The untimely death of my mother brought me back to Wichita, a city I had very little intention of ever returning to full time, and in fact I dreaded even the short visits to my mother prior to her death. My underlying fear of encountering Steve, and finding him living a happy life with someone other than me made me feel ill.

Immediately following our breakup, I had snooped on Myspace hoping to find a glimpse of him or a morsel from his life without me. As the years passed, I had spent countless unsuccessful hours attempting to find him on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and even scoured the popular dating forums. It came as no surprise that I never found anything; Steve was always a person who enjoyed living out of the view and away from the scrutiny of others. A few years into this century, and I’d given up any hope of ever learning
anything
about him. In time, I began to live my life as the single
arrogant bitch
most of my clients described me as.

Arrogant?
No.

Dissatisfied with the loss of the one man I loved, and the other who I had simply settled for?
Yes.

I gazed at the concrete bench situated underneath the pergola, recalling the time Steve and I had spent there. As my focus shifted to the entire yard, I appreciated the small changes my mother had made since I’d seen it last. The sides of the brick walkway leading to the fountain in the rear of the yard once adorned with large leaf periwinkle and various hostas was now beautifully landscaped with lavender, daisies, and an occasional black-eyed Susan. The back yard had always been my mother’s place of escape, and in many respects, it was mine as well. She used the yard for therapeutic reasons after the death of my father, and I sometimes felt guilty for my less relaxing use of the beautiful space she had created. The smell of the flowers combined with the seclusion created by the depth of landscape made it a perfect area for sex. Steve and I had spent countless hours in the yard fucking on various large stones, the concrete bench, and even in the fountain. I loved fucking him in my mother’s back yard, and generally speaking, I preferred it to my bedroom. Steve’s bad-boy attitude, his take charge personality and my willingness to please the man I truly loved caused me to agree to some pretty risqué sexual situations in the five years we were in a relationship.

My eyes once again shifted to the bench and became fixed. I grinned, wondering just how many times I had pressed my chest against the cold concrete while arching my back, forcing my ass high enough in the air for Steve to satisfy my sexual desires. Many times I had bit my lower lip so hard while he fucked me that impressions of my teeth remained in my lip for an hour after we returned into the house. Although my mother never questioned me, I always felt she knew I loved the yard just as much as her, but for different reasons.

There were times when I would lay on the bench with my eyes closed as he knelt beside it. As I lay in wait, he would take his hands and…

His hands.

Oh dear God, his
hands
. He was a master with his hands; where to place them, and just how delicately or deliberately to use them. And there was always the issue with the use of his lips. He spent more time kissing my body than he did my mouth. He seemed to enjoy dragging his lips, teeth, and tongue along my body; teasing me until I was a frantic mess. Only when I was no longer mentally, physically, or sexually able to allow him to continue would he agree to stop. To describe Steve as sexually torturous would be an accurate understatement.

I rinsed the cup, placed it in the dishwasher, and turned off the kitchen lights. After quickly checking the house for other lights I had left on through the course of the day, I walked to the front door, reached for the door handle, and hesitated. I turned and gazed into the house which was illuminated solely by the glow of the lamp in the living room. I stood and grinned at the memories the home brought, sad I wasn’t able to bring myself to stay overnight. As I gazed down the hallway toward the door of my childhood bedroom, I felt something press against my ankle.

Somewhat confused, I glanced down at my feet.

“Meow…”

Fucking cat.

Reluctantly, I reached down and patted the cat on the head. As I turned for the door, I wiped my hand against my thigh, freeing it of the matter the cretin was certain to have left. I opened the door, stepped onto the porch and glanced inside; making certain the cat hadn’t followed me. Sitting in the entrance, the cat stared back at me with golden eyes now filled with huge black pupils, undoubtedly allowing it to sneak through the house in the dark and wreak havoc on the organized piles I had created.

I glared at her and shook my head.

“Good night Taylor. I’m going to the hotel. I’ll see your nasty little ass tomorrow.”

I closed the door, locked it, and turned toward the driveway. I glanced down at my watch as I walked to the car. As it was still quite early and not quite dark yet, I decided to stop for a much needed drink before I retired for the night. A drink would allow me to relax and get a good night’s sleep, something I felt I desperately needed.

Stopping at the shitty little bar beside the hotel would be easy, and no doubt would allow me to enjoy a drink without seeing anyone I knew. I didn’t need any sympathetic apologies for the loss of my mother.

I needed to relax alone and try to rid my mind of memories of the only man I ever loved and how my selfish wishes tore us apart.