Smoky Mountain Dreams (12 page)

“I see how you look,” Edoardo said to Jesse. “You see her breast.
You see her hip.”

Jesse couldn’t deny it. He’d noticed Marcy’s body. He’d
found her sexy, there had even been times he’d thought about touching her.
But…he’d always wanted men. He loved the feel of strong muscle, and hairy legs.
Women had never rocked him sexually the way the thought of a man did.

“We’re best friends,” Jesse had said, rolling his eyes. “This
is ridiculous.”

“Best friends? You are a
couple
.
And, besides, best friends survive all, yes?”

Jesse remembered how that had made so much drunken sense at
the time. Now, he touched Marcy’s faded hair and her cheek, and lowered his
head down to rest against the side of her hospital bed, breathing in the
all-too familiar antiseptic smell of her sheets, as the memory of that night
washed over him.

Edoardo’s urging had been childish but effective. “Come on.
I thought you were daring girl. Jump off a high cliff. Fuck him.” Edoardo’s
face had been a weird mix of smug knowing and lustful amusement. “Are you
afraid? Are you—how do you say—chicken?”

Marcy’s drunken eyes had hardened, and she’d stood. “Fine.”

She’d reached to untie the string around her neck that held
up her loose dress. As it dropped to the floor, Jesse’s cock had thrummed. She
kicked her underwear off and stood up straight, thrusting her breasts a little
forward, a defiant jut to her chin. Her pubic hair was darker than her hair,
and her breasts were small but perky, with nipples the same color as the petals
on Jesse’s mother’s favorite pink rose bush.

Jesse had stood and started on his belt, surprised that he
was hard.
It’s the liquor and the rush of bad decisions,
he
remembered thinking. But when he’d lain down on the bed next to Marcy, and they’d
leaned toward each other for the first time, his lips coming toward hers in
open-mouthed anticipation of a different kind of kiss than he’d ever given her
before, he’d found it difficult to hold himself still. He was shaking—trembling
all over.

Even at the time, Jesse hadn’t been able to believe it was
happening, and yet it had been like a force of nature, always coming, always on
its way, and waiting for just the right reckless moment to make itself known.

They’d kissed and he’d rolled on top of her, their tongues
touching, lips wet and sticky-soft. It’d been a shock to Jesse how he’d fallen
between her thighs, and she’d hitched her legs up, and just like that he was
sliding into her—unprotected, no condom, against all the rules—and the wet,
slick, clinging heat of her on his cock had left him shaking against her,
breathing kisses against her mouth, terrified of the feelings rocketing through
him. Something was wrong, something was right, something was
different
, and it wasn’t because she was a girl—no, it was
because it was
Marcy.

“What are we doing?” she’d whispered, and Jesse had shaken
his head in shock, staring into her brown eyes and moving slowly, slowly,
slowly, feeling like his heart was lodged inside her, and that if he pulled out
he might lose it to her entirely.

Jesse vaguely remembered Edoardo crowing that he’d known it,
that he’d seen the way they looked at each other. It still pained him to
remember that night in some ways, the beauty of it paired with the crass
circumstances. Jesse remembered thinking that her cunt hadn’t felt as tight and
alive
as an ass, but it was pretty fucking great. In
the end, they’d lost all inhibitions and Marcy had come several times,
squirming beneath Jesse, taking his slamming cock, while Edoardo jerked off
watching them.

“That night with Edoardo when we found out what we were…”
Jesse whispered next to Marcy’s ear, knowing even as he spoke that there was no
consciousness there for his words to pierce. “On the surface it seemed so
obvious—what a mistake, right? Such a stupid thing to do. But I wouldn’t change
it. Even though things were rough with us…at the end…” He rubbed a hand over
his eyes. “I wouldn’t change a thing, Marcy. It was real, and messy, but it was
ours, right? Who else could have gotten their start like that?”

He touched her lips with a fingertip and remembered when
they weren’t dry and pale, when they’d been lush and pliable, and how her mouth
had blossomed into smiles. “I wanted so much more of you as soon as I was in
you. Remember how Edoardo cleaned himself up and fell asleep, but I couldn’t
stop fucking you?”

Marcy didn’t respond—couldn’t and never would, but Jesse
still remembered how he’d stared down at her face that night, screwing her
slowly to another orgasm, and then kissing her through it.

Edoardo was dumped on his butt outside the hotel room the
next morning, and Marcy had canceled her flight home. They’d spent the next
three weeks holed up in a cottage in Sanremo exploring each other’s bodies.
Jesse had discovered that sex with someone that you love was pretty amazing,
and Marcy had discovered that Jesse was eager to please in bed. They’d both
discovered that the word “bisexual” wasn’t just something Tim rambled on
embarrassingly about, but something that applied to Jesse, too.

“And then Brigid happened. Another surprise,” Jesse said,
thinking of his daughter with her dark hair and eyes. At the time, it’d seemed
like some kind of blessing from on high, like proof that he and Marcy belonged
together forever.

The fact that their first time had been a threesome with
another guy was something that Jesse and Marcy had sometimes joked about, but
he’d always thought it bothered her. It wasn’t a romantic beginning to their
relationship, nothing she could look back on with a sense of innocent joy.

On their honeymoon, he’d made sure their first night of
wedded sex was special, intimate, and romantic. Everything a woman might want
with her lover. As he’d entered her, he’d said, “This is our true first time.
Yours and mine. We’re one flesh now.” He’d touched her where they joined, and
he’d thought of the baby in her stomach that literally knit them together. “Remember
it like this forever.”

In the nursing home room, Jesse stroked Marcy’s forehead
with his fingertips, looking down into her empty eyes. It seemed stupid now
that he’d ever thought he should replace the memories of how they’d really
gotten together with something more traditional. In the face of their brutal
ending, he preferred to remember all of it.

Most of all, he wanted to remember the tears in her eyes as
they realized they’d found something bigger than a stupid, dangerous dare.

An alarm on Marcy’s hospital bed went off. He glanced at the
oxygen levels, and heard the machine dispense a push of medicine, one of the
many that kept her alive. The beeping immediately stopped, her oxygen levels
rising with her blood pressure again.

“How did I start thinking about this? Do you remember?”
Of course she doesn’t.
“Ah— right. I told you I have a
date, and, well…he’s a guy. He’s good looking. Blond. I guess I’ve got a thing
for blonds.”

Marcy’s eyes closed. He waited to see if they’d open again,
but they didn’t. It must have been time for her to sleep according to her
still-functioning hypothalamus.

“He’s a singer. Performer, really, at Smoky Mountain Dreams.
His voice gives me shivers. It always has.”

He didn’t know why he was telling her these things. Marcy
was dead. He didn’t feel guilty, or need her permission. He’d had sex with guys
in the years since her accident and he’d never told her about them. He didn’t
know why having dinner with Christopher would be any different, even if they
ended up going home together. It wasn’t like he’d fallen in love. He’d only
done that once.

“I guess you were the girl for me,” he murmured.

Jesse remembered in a sick flash the only time he’d slept
with a woman since Marcy’s car had careened into the mountainside on I-40. At
the time, he’d wanted something tenderer than what he usually got with men.
And, if he was honest, some part of him had hoped that he might strike gold
twice.

He’d met Hope at Will’s parent-teacher conference a couple
of years after the accident, when he’d accepted that Marcy was gone and no
miracles were coming. There’d been sparks, but he hadn’t acted on them until
summer came and Will was no longer in Hope’s class. There was no doubt in his
mind that his money and the tragedy of his history had helped grease the way to
her acceptance when he asked her out.

Jesse took her on a picnic to Cades Cove, and she’d been
incredibly willing. A glass of wine and a kiss was all it took, and then he’d
pushed her skirt up and slipped her panties off. In his hurry, he’d shoved his
own pants down just far enough to get his cock free and slide on the condom.
She’d been tighter than Marcy after the kids were born, and her thighs were
strong against his sides. The fuck itself had felt sweet—until he’d burst into
tears at orgasm. It’d been similar enough and yet nothing like being with
Marcy.

“I’m so sorry,” he’d said, his throat tight and tears
running down his face as his cock thudded inside her.

“Shh, it’s okay.” She’d soothed him and rubbed his back. “I
know. It’s all right. I know.”

She’d been Will’s teacher, so of course she knew. But it
wasn’t just that—everyone knew about Marcy. Her tragedy had been big news in
Gatlinburg. He’d been unable to escape the sad eyes and mentions of being in
everyone’s prayers for so long that he couldn’t even say just when those
endless sympathies had finally faded away.

If he was going to confess anything to Marcy’s unconscious
body, he should confess about Hope. But he had a feeling Marcy wouldn’t mind.
If anything, she’d have probably been there in Cades Cove that day, stroking
his hair with a spirit-hand and shushing him while he cried and shot his load
in a kind woman’s body. She’d never been the jealous type.

He’d never gone out with Hope again. He felt a little guilty
about that. But not about this thing with Christopher. He didn’t know why he
was even telling Marcy about it.

“It’s just a date,” he said, taking her hand and moving it
away from her face. The physical therapy was supposed to help the “clawing” effect
of shortened muscles, but sometimes her hands clenched up anyway. He’d have to
ask the nurse about extra potassium. He’d read it could be beneficial in these
cases.

He got the vase from the cabinet, put the flowers in water,
and sat it where the nurses could enjoy them from the hallway. He turned the
blinds to let a little sunlight in, marveling as always at his compulsion to
perform these little rituals even though he knew Marcy couldn’t enjoy them.

Sometimes at night he thought of her in this bed, and
imagined the stars visible from her window. He thought of her distant, brown
eyes that would never see them, and he wished he could forget everything about
how she was now and only remember everything about the way she’d been—bright,
vivacious, smart, witty, bratty, funny, sometimes fragile, and always so alive.

Jesse bent and pressed his lips to her forehead. Her eyes
were still closed. “See you next week, Mar-mar.”

Unless something changes. Unless you can
finally be free.

Jesse was about to leave when he stopped. He turned back
around and looked at the woman he’d once thought he’d grow old with, and felt
that too-familiar heaviness in his chest.

“His name’s Christopher,” Jesse said from the doorway. And
he lingered, surprised when he added, “He kind of reminds me of you.”

On his way out he absently at the nurses who called out
their hellos, eager to go pick up Brigid and Will from Nova and Tim. He hoped
his in-laws wouldn’t mind if he stayed to share a meal and wash the taste of
sadness from his mouth.

C
HRISTOPHER
ARRIVED AT THE RESTAURANT
a little early, still singing something he was
working on under his breath. He hadn’t written a song of his own since he’d
left Nashville, but after he’d watched Jesse walk away in the parking lot of
Smoky Mountain Dreams, he’d gone home and picked up his guitar, intending to
noodle around until he’d calmed down enough to go to sleep.

Instead, he’d found himself plucking out a new song, humming
a tune under his breath, and trying to think of a word that rhymed with “sunrise.”
He’d never found just the right lyric, and for some reason it hadn’t occurred
to him until he was walking down to meet Jesse for dinner that he could change
the word to “dawn,” which opened up a new range of options.

Deciding that getting his favorite table on the roof would
make up for possibly appearing desperate, he ordered a margarita, and sang
under his breath.

“The sky outside my window
is blooming up with dawn
and you’re the one I’m breathing in
and God, it’s been too long.”

He paused. It wasn’t quite right.