Prayer (24 page)

“Asshole!” John laughed and caught Katrynn’s smiling lips again.

~oOo~

Luca stared at the house and yard. “Dude, you were not kidding. Who lives here? A fairy on acid?”

“You’re not that far off. Just roll with it, guys. Please. Katrynn feels weird about this as it is.”

She really did, and so did he, but she was trying to make things better with her mom, and he was going to help her.

On the day that she’d told him she loved him, she’d also asked if the offer was still on to help with the garage. When he talked to his brothers and got their curious agreement, Katrynn had called home and apologized, offering the services of the Pagano boys as an olive branch.

Which was why John was standing again in this chaotic yard, looking up at that slapdash house, one week to the day from the last time he’d stood here.

He wanted badly to get Katrynn to talk about her family more, but the topic made her uncomfortable. There was a conflict in her, though, between the girl who said she loved her funky family no matter what and the woman who was afraid she’d been warped by them. He felt like their relationship was caught smack in the middle of that conflict.

John had questions, but he had time to get answers. He hoped he had a lifetime.

Carlo came up alongside them, carrying a toolbox he’d pulled from the back of Luca’s truck. Besides the good set of small construction tools Carlo was carrying, they’d brought all the power tools they’d need. “What did you do that was so shitty we’re being punished for it?”

“Nothing. This is me being the good guy that I am.”

“This is
us
being the good guy that you are, bro.” Luca cuffed John on the back of the head.

“And I’ll owe you. Come on. There’s beer and food. A.J. and I got the materials, and we cleared the site. None of us get our hands dirty anymore these days. This might even be fun.”

“Who’s A.J.?” Carlo asked.

“You’ll see. Just roll with it, Carlo. Trust me.”

~oOo~

With four strong men and two women, one of whom was considerably more capable of following through on a task than the other, they got the garage up just past nightfall. It still needed to be painted, and the roof needed to be shingled, but the structure was up and solid, and they had the new overhead door in, too. Somebody from the town garage had brought a flatbed wrecker in and towed the old Delta 88 away.

A.J. turned out to be a good worker and a competent carpenter, and by the end of the project, John had decided that he wasn’t as much vapid as he was shy. It was probably as weird for him as anyone else that his girlfriend’s daughter was older than he was, and that her boyfriend was close to old enough to be his father.

Dana and Katrynn kept the refreshments coming, and, at Dana’s demand, they sorted through the detritus of the old garage for any reusable bits. By the time the men were almost done with the day’s work, Dana was ready to prepare dinner, and she had a big pile of old garage sitting in the middle of the yard. She meant to take to heart John’s offhand remark that the old garage was nothing more than bonfire.

John had kept an eye on mother and daughter, worried about another blowup, or simply the awkwardness that Katrynn had most feared, but they seemed to be getting along. He had no context for what they were normally like together, but they seemed to be doing okay.

After the job was done enough for the day, John sat with his brothers and A.J. on one of the picnic tables, drinking a beer and wiping his chest with his long-since wadded-up t-shirt. The yard was illuminated by what seemed to be dozens of strands of mini-lights, strung through trees and over the fence and around the back porch. He knew where Katrynn got her taste for Christmas lights.

Dana burst through the back door and ran down the porch steps. “I just had the best idea! Let’s camp out!”

“Mom.” Katrynn had only come out as far as the porch.

Mother sent daughter a look that belied the cheerful tone of her words, then, when Katrynn said nothing more, turned back to the men. “No, really! It’ll be great! We’ve got a bunch of pup tents and sleeping bags—I keep forgetting about them and buying new ones—and I’m making a big meal. We’ve got the wood for a bonfire. We can eat and you can drink all you like without worrying about the drive, and then we can sleep out in the beautiful May night tonight. In the morning, I’ll make a big breakfast. It’ll be perfect!”

Without waiting for their answer, she turned and flitted back to the house.

“Is she serious?” Carlo muttered.

It was A.J. who answered. “She gets lonely.”

John turned and considered the kid, but he didn’t speak.

A.J. went on. “I know it’s weird, me and her. She’s married—I guess you know that. But he just runs off. All the time. And she never knows if he’s coming back, or when. This last time, she woke up and he was just gone. No warning at all. She still tries to be happy all the time. She says enough people make the world ugly, and she doesn’t want to add to it. She gets lonely, and she’s a good person.” He sighed and got up from the table. “Anyway, she’s a great cook. Makes big, fluffy pancakes.”

John and his brothers watched the kid walk to the house.

“How the fuck did that just happen?” Luca asked.

“What?” John had barely heard his brother; he was still thinking about what A.J.’s speech had told him about Katrynn.

“Some kid with a wicked big zit on the back of his neck just made me feel like an asshole.” He turned to Carlo. “What d’you say, big bro? Feelin’ like a Boy Scout tonight?”

Carlo and Luca had ridden together in Luca’s truck. Carlo’s first response was, “We’ll miss Mass.”

When John and Luca both shrugged, Carlo stared down at his beer. “Is there a lot more where this came from?”

“I saw a couple of cases in the kitchen,” John answered. “You’re seriously thinking about staying?”

“Might as well. By the look of this place, if we don’t get the roof shingled and the wood treated while we’re here, it’ll never happen.”

“I love you guys.” John jumped to the ground. “I’ll go tell the girls.”

“You owe us so big, little brother,” Luca laughed. “So big. And you’re gonna explain missing Mass to Pop.”

~oOo~

“I can’t believe you guys actually stayed. I can’t believe you actually all came here today and built the garage. I can’t believe we’re all sleeping in the yard. It’s got to be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me or my mom. You are amazing. Your whole family.”

They were lying in a pup tent, zipped together in two joined sleeping bags, in the back yard. Carlo and Luca had taken seriously Dana’s invitation to drink as much as they wanted, and they were both snoring in their tents.

John kissed Katrynn’s head. “I love you. So they do, too.”

She sighed and nuzzled her face into his bare chest. “Your family is so…right. It makes me see how wrong mine is.”

“I admire your mom.”

Katrynn lifted her head and stared at him. “What?”

“I do. It seems like she tries very hard to be glad for what she has. Like she’s made a choice about what her presence in the world should be, and she does what she has to do to live that choice. That’s hard for me. I’ve always done what people expected of me. I guess that’s my choice, too, but it never feels like that. It’s always felt like other people do the choosing.”

“What life would you be living if you’d done the choosing?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? “I have absolutely no idea.”

“That makes me sad for you.” She brushed her face over his beard, and he caught her hand and kissed her fingertips.

“Don’t be. My life is good. I have my family, and I love the Cove. I live on the beach. And I have you. You are my choice.”

“You’re my choice, too. I love you.”

He smiled and rolled over, laying her on her back. The sleeping bag tightened around them like an embrace. “Those are beautiful words in your beautiful voice.”

When he tried to kiss her, she held him off. “I’m scared. This feels so different from anything I’ve had before.”

“That’s what makes it so good. I’ve got my arms around you, baby. I’ve got you.”

She smiled and let him kiss her.

~ 16 ~

Katrynn found the sleeping bag zipper and eased it down as quietly as she could.

John’s hand slid over her hip and pulled her back. “Hey. Where’re you goin’?” His voice was husky with sleep, and she almost moaned at the sound.

“I thought you were asleep. I was going to help Mom with breakfast.”

“Don’t leave me yet.”

She relaxed into his hold and closed her eyes as he nosed her hair out of his way and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck. His tongue swirled lightly over the spot, and far away in her belly, nerves danced.

“We should go camping this summer. Real camping. I like sleeping outside with you.” He hadn’t moved his mouth from her skin, and the breath of his words made gooseflesh flow over Katrynn’s shoulder.

“I like sleeping with you anywhere.”

John chuckled and sucked at her earlobe. His hand brushed over her thigh, the fingers skimming lightly, making patterns, leaving her trembling. When he reached her knee, he grabbed gentle hold and brought her leg to rest on his hip. She could feel his erection making its demand, and she shifted her hips so that it slid between her legs, through her folds, against her mound. They both groaned at that, and Katrynn reached over her head and wove her fingers into his silky hair.

“Your skin is so soft,” he whispered. “My hands are lonely when they’re not filled with you.”

God, he was so perfect. The words he said, the things he did, the man he was—he was everything she wanted. She thought of what was happening with her, and between them, as falling, and at times like this, when she was so happy, so completely and unexpectedly happy she didn’t know how to contain it, she actually had that whoopsie feeling of falling. She shivered.

“Are you cold?”

“No. I just love you.”

“And I love you.” His hand ended its dance over her leg, and she felt him take hold of himself. When he pushed into her, the sound he made was of deep, encompassing satisfaction.

Without thinking about anything but a touch that she wanted, she brought John’s hand up and covered her breast with it. He twitched as if he were surprised, and she realized what she’d done.

“That’s my girl.” He caught her nipple between his fingers and began to tease it the way that she liked. She arched her back and, with her fingers twisted in his hair, she let go.

They picked up the rhythm that they both knew. Whatever position they were in, a comfort and familiarity was developing between them—so much that she’d just now been secure enough to make him give her a touch she wanted. Rather than dull the pleasure, it intensified; they were coming to know each other well enough to explore the experience without focusing so much on what worked and what didn’t. It was the beauty, Katrynn thought, of lovemaking. Sex was all about physical sensation. When there was love, too, the act was exponentially deeper—on every level, including physical.

John must have felt the change in her, because she felt a corresponding change in him. If anyone had asked what it was, she wouldn’t have been able to say, but suddenly everything between them was deeper. The world around them faded out, and everything that mattered was between them.

She felt each thrust, slide, press, flex, clench in every atom of her body, and she was going to come—oh God, she was going to come—

—then John pulled out, fast, and pushed her to her back. He was on top of her and inside her again before she could finish the inhale of shock at the interruption.

“I need to see you. I want to see your eyes when you come.” Staring down at her, wild-eyed, he grabbed her head in his hands and picked up their rhythm again.

He didn’t have to wait long to see her come; locked and lost in his eyes, seeing his love and need for her, while he filled her with grunting force again and again, turned her orgasm into a cataclysm, so much force that she had to slam her eyes shut and shake her head frantically, trying to contain it while they were out in her mother’s back yard, separated from that mother and John’s brothers by little more than a couple of nylon tent walls.

“Yeah,” John groaned. “Oh fuck, baby, yeah. I love to see you come. Fuck!”

John was often loud when he came, and Katrynn had the presence of mind to grit out a hiss to try to shush him—and he had the presence of mind to hear her and do something about it. On his finish, he dropped his head to the crook of her shoulder, and he bit down. He bit hard. And yelled into her skin.

At that act of pure, bestial need, Katrynn came again—or still; she wasn’t sure. She only knew that she had screamed before she could stop herself.

While they were still panting and mostly insensible, from just outside their little tent came the sound of applause. Then somebody whistled loudly.

“Assholes!” John called and dropped his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry, baby.”

She giggled. “Don’t be. Totally worth it. But watch your words. If Mom hears, she’ll call you out every time.”

“I think the beauty we just made cancels out one ugly word.”

Laughing, Katrynn wrapped her arms around John’s neck and held on. For about the hundredth time in their few months together, John had given her the best sex of her life.

He really was perfect.

~oOo~

“Those are good guys.” Katrynn’s mother paused with her hands in the soapy water and looked out the window. Katrynn stood behind her and looked, too. John and his brothers, and A.J. and a couple of his friends, had nearly finished the garage.

John was crouched on the roof, shirtless again, with some kind of pneumatic hammer, putting down the shingles, walking in that crouch as he went. Carlo was on the other side of the pitch, doing the same thing, and their graceful movements almost seemed to be choreographed. The sharp, loud beat of their tools filled the air. Katrynn thought it sounded like war drums.

A.J. and his friends were painting. Luca was building shelves inside. They’d all started after breakfast, and had taken another break for lunch. By the look of things, they’d be done before dinner.

“Yeah, they are good guys.”

“You love him.” Dana resumed washing the lasagne pan. Leave it to her mother to fix lasagne for a bunch of Italians.

She hadn’t made it sound like a question, but Katrynn answered it as if she had. “Yes, I do.”

Dana nodded. “You love his family, too.”

“I do. I love my family, too. Mom, I’m so sorry about what I said last weekend.” She’d apologized, several times, and her mother had accepted it graciously, as Katrynn had known she would, but it hadn’t yet felt sufficient.

Her mother smiled and turned to see her straight on. “I know. You don’t need to keep saying it. It’s just been…this week I’ve had to confront some truths. When Evie left and said the things he said, I suppose I held onto you, thinking that you understood, so that meant we had done okay, even if Evie didn’t understand. I didn’t know you feel like he does.”

“I don’t, Mom. I get it. I do.”

“No, darling. If you understood, those thoughts wouldn’t have been in your head to become words last Saturday. And that’s okay. I’m sorry we gave you a home you don’t understand. I wish we could have done better.”

Katrynn took the lasagne pan from her mother and began to dry it with one of the old, and apparently eternal, red and white tea towels her mother had always used. They didn’t have a dishwasher because Dana enjoyed doing dishes, and she especially loved doing dishes with someone else. She thought it was the perfect time for serious talk—the soothing and quiet of the repetitive work in warm water, the sated peace at the end of a meal. Katrynn had told her mother most of her big news, and had asked for her most crucial advice, standing right here in front of this sink.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course you can.”

“Why do you let him come home?” It was a question she’d had growing up, too, but it had never felt so pressing to know the answer as it had recently.

Dana had been adding new soap and hot water to the basin. She turned it off and stared at the fresh suds. “I love him. This is what he needs.”

“But what do
you
need?”

“Him.”

“That’s not all you need, Mom. It can’t be.”

“It’s enough. What I have of him is enough. What fills the spaces like this is just that: filler. When he’s here, I really feel alive. Katrynn, if you don’t understand simply by having grown up in this home, then I don’t think I can make you understand. I love him. I’ll take him as I can. And he tries to stay home. Every time, he tries to stay. Maybe you didn’t see that. Maybe that was just between us. He loves us and he misses us when he’s gone, but he just can’t stay. He dwindles. I think it would kill him to stay.”

“I don’t want a love like that. I want to be the place he can’t stand to leave.” Realizing too late the criticism implicit in her words, Katrynn turned to her mother, prepared to offer yet another apology.

But Dana wasn’t offended. She smiled. “I know. You don’t have a vagabond heart, and I’m glad. There’s no rest in a heart like that. Your dad, he’s always got his eye on the horizon. Wherever he is, he’s looking to the next place. But you don’t need to worry about that. Last weekend, you said you didn’t know how anybody was going to love you. Somebody already does, Katrynn. The way you want.” She tipped her head toward the window. “John’s eyes follow you. They linger on the space you leave. I think you’re the only place he wants to be.”

Katrynn set the dried pan aside and went to the back door. John and Luca were talking, John on the roof and Luca on the ground below. John laughed at something his brother said, tossing his head back with it. The sound wafted in through the open window above the sink.

When he brought his head forward, he paused, and his smile widened. He was looking at her; he’d seen her behind the glass door. He put up his gloved hand in a wave, and Katrynn set her open hand on the glass.

She had known that already, sensed it—the way he watched her. Not like he was monitoring her or studying her—well, sometimes it was like he was studying her—but as if his eyes just wanted to be on her. When she turned and found him watching, he always simply smiled.

“I want to be his home,” she whispered, too softly for anyone but herself to hear.

~oOo~

That night, John stayed at Katrynn’s place. They moved back and forth between her apartment and his house on the beach. There was no method to their choice; they just sort of decided each night where they’d crash. It had been weeks since they’d slept apart, though. They each had stuff at the other’s place.

He’d just taken a long, hot shower, and he’d opened the bathroom door to let the steam dissipate as he stood at the sink and brushed his teeth. Katrynn heard the door open and came out of the bedroom and looked down her little hall.

She had already showered, and was dressed in a pair of men’s boxers and a little white beater, her preferred warm-weather sleeping ensemble. Seeing John now, though, she felt like she had too many clothes on.

Her bathroom mirror faced the door, so she had a perfect view of his back side. He had one of her red towels wrapped around his waist, and his hair was slicked back. She watched the muscles of his back roll with the motion of his arm as he brushed.

Unable to resist, and without any reason she should, Katrynn went down the hall and into the bathroom. As he bent to rinse his mouth, she laid a hand on his beautiful back, just above the towel.

He jumped a little, surprised, and looked into the mirror. When their eyes met in that reflection, he smiled. “Hey, you.”

“Hey. Thanks for this weekend. What you did, you and your brothers—it’s special.”