“Keep your door locked.” He hugged her, saying, “Everything’s going to be all right.” He left.
Chapter Sixteen
For all her bravado with Jason, she was actually nervous about being alone tonight. The stranger that Grandpa had duct taped had watched her run to the front door in Grandpa’s house. He’d looked like he was smiling. She shuddered. What the hell did he have to smile about?
It was much too hot not to have the window open for breezes, but she didn’t want anyone down in the parking lot to be able to see her in her apartment. She turned out the light and threw the window wide open. She sat on the floor where she had set up her computer and scanner next to a wall in her living room. With the glow from her laptop screen she oriented each photo on the scanner bed and one by one began scanning each image into her computer.
Thinking about how she would present all these photos into a montage gave her a welcome distraction. She decided she should find old music from the sixties to play as background music for the opening. Jerry had begun his career in the sixties so she would find some upbeat music to go with the earliest photos. This would be fun. She liked Jerry. He had been the best part of Ann’s visits to the house during Ann’s college years. Ann had been the worst part. Ann had criticized everything and had tried to inject her opinions into how Grandma was handling Madison in Ann’s absence, from how she dressed, what kind of toothbrush she should be using, to whom she was allowed to play with. Her mom and Grandma would argue. Then all the new instructions would fade away soon after Ann went back to college.
Looking back, Madison realized that her mom’s wishes weren’t that awful. But her mother couldn’t be gone from Madison’s day to day life during her childhood, then expect to show up and make decrees, upsetting the accepted order of things.
No wonder I resented her so much.
It’s a challenge to be good at mothering when you’re that young, much less doing it long distance.
I wish Grandma would have explained that to me. She didn’t exactly help us to get along.
This new thought shocked Madison. She had never put it together before. Grandma had always wanted every young child within a mile to be her own, especially Madison. If she were honest, Grandma and Ann had been fighting over her. And Grandma always won. Ann was a teenager looking to her mother for help. Grandma took advantage of that. Then Madison’s loyalty to Grandma hit fever pitch when Grandma was dying, and afterwards, Madison couldn’t bear to call Ann “Mom” for a long time. But after today’s visit with Ann, Madison felt hope in her heart. Maybe they could be a family after all. She couldn’t get over how pleasant their meeting had been.
I wonder if she likes rose gardens? There’s a really cool one right next door to the zoo that I could show her.
She nibbled on an ancient apple that she had found in the back of her refrigerator. Yuck. But it was better than that old container of yogurt she had tried to eat. She was so hungry, but at this rate she would be found dead from food poisoning. The delicate buzzing sound from her old scanner completed another cycle, and the image showed up on her computer screen. She set up the next photo on the bed of the scanner and pushed the button, the slow buzzing starting up again. Peering at her apple, Madison held it close to the glow of the computer screen, trying to see the next safe place to bite it.
Just then Madison heard the doorknob turn and the door swing open. She jumped up, kicking the scanner and banging her elbow into the wall.
I didn’t lock it!
She would have screamed, but she was coughing and trying not to choke on a bit of apple.
A black silhouette stood in the doorway with a large flat box balanced on one hand, the neck of a long bottle in the other.
ExBoy put on a deep announcer-like movie voice to call out, “I come seeking retribuuutionnn! I shall ravage a juicy braaain, and why are the lights ouuut?”
Madison crawled out from behind her couch, saying, “Oh, my
God
, ExBoy! You scared the shit out of me! I swear to God I’ll kill you if you ever,
ever
do that—” She stopped. She inhaled through her nose. In the dark her eyes grew wide. The scent of fresh baked crust combined with cheeses, garlic, and oregano. Spices and meats. Fresh hot pizza. The seduction was complete.
“Why are you on the floor, in the dark?” he asked. His foot reached around behind him and kicked the door closed. “On second thought, stay there.” His dark shape advanced through the short entryway into the living room where Madison clung to the carpet, her heart still pounding from her fright. With no effort, he balanced the pizza box and the long bottle as he sank down and sat into a cross legged position on the floor. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a cork screw opener and proceeded to open the bottle there in the dark on the floor. Madison, on her hands and knees, sat up into a more dignified position and felt tears trying to burn her eyes. She didn’t know if it was from her fright or from the comfort she felt knowing someone who cared about her was here.
She stared at ExBoy’s face in the dim light from the window, hearing the small pop as a cork left the bottle. A cool breeze blew in from the window. He reached over and picked up her hand, placing it on the neck of the bottle. It was chilled. From the shape of the bottle she guessed it to be a white wine. In this heat, touching something chilled felt lavish and healing. He pushed it up to her lips. She took a drink from it…
delicious
… and handed it back. Reaching to the back of her head, he lifted her hair up and placed the cold bottle on the back of her neck, the length of the bottle going down her back. The sudden chill caused her to arch her back with a shudder and a sharp intake of breath; at the same time she heard the rustle of tree leaves outside the window from the wind picking up. He then gave her the bottle and while she took another drink, he blew a light stream of air on her neck where the chilled bottle had left it wet. He opened the pizza box, the aroma flooding out now, and took out a piece, holding it up to her mouth, feeding her a bite. He sat there quiet, watching her eat in the dim light. She swallowed and leaned forward to take another bite while asking, “Aren’t you going to have any?” He took a drink from the bottle before finally taking a bite for himself. She took the bottle from him. The wine seemed to taste better with each swallow.
He said, “I couldn’t stay mad. I tried.”
“I’m sorry. I was trying to cover up a stupid lie about you. I’m tired of always being the one who never gets laid, so I let Spenser think that I was getting it from you.”
“You’re kidding. That’s what it was about?” A slow smirk grew on his face. “You’re always surprising me. Like now. I thought you’d be mad after all the secrets came out today. I wanted to be the one to tell you.”
About other women? His friends with benefits? Huh. She had never kidded herself. He was a flame, and some women were moths. It was his personal business.
This time she fed him the next bite and said, “I understand,” then took another bite for herself. Outside the window, the wind was on a busy errand as it rushed past, the rustling leaves picking up in volume and mixing with the sound of tires softly crunching gravel down in the parking lot.
“Really?” he asked, sounding unconvinced.
“Of course,” she said. “I’m not saying I like it, but it’s not like I can break up with you. We’re not even a couple.”
He said, “No, but I can never stop thinking about you. I don’t know what we are, you and me.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Neither do I. That’s why I never know how to be around you. But I’m glad you’re here.”
“Are we okay then?”
“Yeah, we’re good.”
They took a few turns drinking the wine and ExBoy said, “You realize of course that I’m afraid to put any moves on you now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Totally paralyzed. Watch.”
He leaned in and kissed her mouth, soft at first, but as the pressure of his lips increased, her breathing rate increased with it. With one hand behind her head and the other bracing himself on the floor, his kiss pushed her back and downward as he gently let go of the kiss, her chin and lips reaching upward in protest as her eyes fluttered open and saw his face in hers, keeping close eye to eye contact as he supported her slow descent, until she felt the floor on her back. Putting his other arm under her, he used his whole body to bury her in the next kiss. Her primal needs kicked into high gear as the material of the t-shirt on his back balled up into her fists. She pushed her fists upward, pulling his shirt off, as his arms came up, taking her tank top with it. Their mutual tangle of arms and clothes cut off the kiss but only for a moment.
Her mind emptied of all the worry and fear from the day. She had delayed this long enough, and it brought to mind her memory of that hot July day, two or three weeks ago, when they had almost taken this next step but were interrupted by friends who had arrived to help with the move into the apartment. Those friends weren’t going to interrupt this time, because someone else was.
The knock on the door made them both jump.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Madison said, jumping up to grope around in the dark for her tank top, plunging her head and arms back into it, tripping on his pants on the floor. Her own pants were still halfway on. She quickly straightened up her clothes to the sound of a second knock on the door. “With the luck I’ve been having,” she grumbled, “that could be my mother right now. She’s already decided she doesn’t like you.”
“She doesn’t really know me,” said ExBoy. “She just thinks she does.”
Madison looked through the peephole in her door.
There stood Jason.
Madison’s heart fell and hit the floor. There was no time to argue with the illogical feelings doing battle in her head. She wished it really were her mother instead of Jason. She turned to ExBoy, his naked silhouette near the window, and with her plaintive voice barely audible, said, “Hide.”
He expelled a breath, exasperated, saying, “Shit,” as he ducked behind the couch.
She opened the door. “Jason, what are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” said Jason, looking in her eyes from left to right. “You and those gorgeous green eyes, and they reminded me of something I saw before we got into the elevator.”
ExBoy stood up from behind the couch, his nudity visible from the hips up, saying, “I may not want your mom to know we’re together…”
Madison whipped her head around in panic, seeing ExBoy standing there, his hands on his hips, “… but I’m not hiding for any dude.” He lifted his chin at Jason, “Hey,” his eyes hard, “This is exactly what it looks like.”
Staring wide-eyed at ExBoy, she heard Jason asking, “You’re together?”
She turned back to Jason, seeing the hurt and confusion in his eyes. Her mouth hanging open, searching for words, she blurted, “He brought pizza.”
She turned back to ExBoy, furious, and said, “You’re not afraid of another guy, but you’re afraid of my mommy!?”
“She’s FBI! She could make my life hell with a phone call!
“How did you know that? I never told you that!”
ExBoy’s face lost its bravado. “You did see your mom today, right?”
Silence.
Madison heard something and looked back at the door. Jason was gone. She grabbed the sides of the doorframe and thrust her head out into the hallway in time to see him pounding down the stairwell.
*****
The whole thing came out when she held ExBoy’s clothes out of the window, threatening to drop them out into the parking lot if he didn’t tell her everything he knew. When he said she was being ridiculous, she loosened her grip to drop a few items. Both shoes went down together, and bounced off in different directions when they hit the ground.
He rolled his eyes saying, “I’ve been trying to tell you about it because I was tired of waiting for your mom to tell you. It started out as a little surprise.”
“What surprise?”
He held a hand out and gestured all around her dark living room. “This. The whole scheme to get you into this apartment.”
For the next few minutes Madison couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Ann had arranged for ExBoy to “find” this apartment for Madison. She paid hefty deposits and made a deal for the landlord to charge Madison cheap rent while Ann paid the difference. ExBoy referred to some tall old lady showing the apartment to Ann while the landlord was on vacation.
“She said she wanted to surprise you,” said ExBoy. “I thought that was pretty cool of her until days went by and she still hadn’t told you. Then days turned into weeks and I felt kind of weird, so I told her I would tell you about the apartment if she didn’t. She said you called her today and were on your way over. She promised she would tell you. Obviously, she didn’t. Satisfied?”
“Hell, no!” She dropped his shirt. She still had his pants and underwear and continued to hold them outside the window. “Tell me why she went through all this to get me in here.”
“Why do you think? She’s trying to help you. Sometimes a mom will do that kind of thing.”
“Not this mom.”
“What do you mean ‘not this mom’? She did it, didn’t she?”
Fretful, Madison said, “You don’t understand.”
“I can see that now. But I swear, I thought I was just being nice to your mom.”
He didn’t seem as upset as she wanted him to be. He stood there in the buff, acting completely natural. His eyes, still amorous, looked at her as if he were getting back to business.
In a conciliatory tone, he said, “This is what I was referring to when I said I wanted to be the one to tell you.”
“I thought you were referring to your secrets about other women,” Madison said.
He scrunched up his face, “What other women?”
“You said you had fuck buddies.”
“No, I said I have offers. You’re the one who wanted to
be my fuck buddy.”
“I didn’t want to be your fuck buddy! I wanted to let Spenser think we were having sex.”
“Why lie to her? What do you think we were about to do here?”
“Well, keep the first part and take out the buddy part.”