“But no kissing,” he repeated. “No intimacy. But sex is okay.” I felt like I was going through rehab again and my face was heating up. I tried to tamp it down.
My thumbs got serious. They seemed big on those tiny little buttons, and I resented my dexterity from playing the violin didn’t come in more handy. It’s like a camera in my head or some eye watching, I tried to explain. Someone judging me, finding every flaw. Someone critical. I hear every noise. Everything goes in slow motion. I used to just fuck. Anyone. Like a machine. I’m not proud of it. I survived. I’m negative. Some people I knew aren’t.
He squeezed my hand, and smiled faintly.
I started another te
I
xt. am used goods. I have no clue how to do this. I shook my head.
“What?” asked Shawn.
I shrugged. It’s easy when someone uses me. Hard and fast. Hit and run. That’s me now. I never slow down. I admitted this into that impersonal machine, eyes down.
“Santo Ignacio slowing you down? I’ve heard it can be like that,” he said. His mouth quirked into a shy smile.
Something’s slowing me down, I typed. I looked up and got caught in his eyes.
Shawn wrapped those big hands around my face, and I could feel the many rings he wore against my warming skin. “You’ve gotta know you are one sexy bastard, right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t get complaints much,” I said, hoping he could read my lips because he wasn’t letting me put my head down to type. I hated this. I could feel myself tensing up all over. “I don’t usually wait for reviews.” He reached over and pushed my chest hard enough that I had to lean back on my elbows to keep my balance. I straightened my legs out front and he threw one of his over.
“Biker boy wows the hearing impaired,” he said, leaning in to kiss me. “Biker boy rocks the St. Nacho’s
33
house.” He touched his lips to mine. “Shawn Fielding rates biker cock number one with a bullet.” He kissed me hard, and I kind of liked it.
Hey, I typed when he let me go. That’s your last name?
He slipped his arms around me. “What’s yours?”
Wyatt, I texted. I heard sand crunch and shift behind me, and I turned to see Jim backlit by the sun as it tried to come through the clouds.
“Hey, if you guys are through getting sand in your unmentionables, I could use some help back at the bar,” he said. I got up and helped Shawn to his feet. We dusted ourselves off.
I’m sure I looked like a guilty kid.
“Coming,” I said. Shawn and I walked back with him to Nacho’s, holding hands.
34 Z. A. Maxfield
Chapter Six
Santo Ignacio was changing me. I could feel it in the way I held my body more relaxed and my jaw less rigid. Often, my hands were loose at my sides. I smiled a number of times each day, and at first when this happened, people asked me about it. It felt like using unfamiliar muscles for a few times until my face could get it right. Coworkers and regular customers who had seen me off and on for a week remarked that I seemed to be getting into the spirit of the place. At first I fought it, afraid of losing my edge. I didn’t want to get lulled into a false complacency and have to move on, merging back onto the endless interstate where places like Santo Ignacio were a dim and civilized memory.
I felt particularly overwhelmed one night when Shawn came by Nacho’s after I finished playing and was helping to push the tables out of the way.
“Hey.” He caught my eye and winked, holding up a pint of Chubby Hubby ice cream and a couple of spoons. We walked to the beach together and ate out of the carton on the sand.
I smiled when he tried to feed me off his spoon, but at the same time a part of me wanted to fight. “Don’t feed me,” I said, jerking my head back. He didn’t hear me because something had caught his attention farther down the beach, so he continued to hold the spoon near my face. I shoved his hand away, less than pleased.
“What?” he asked, a little shocked.
“You don’t have to feed me,” I said, holding up my spoon.
“Okay,” he said warily.
I stabbed the spoon into the softening ice cream and flopped onto my back. The sky was inky but there were no stars. The moon was half full and trying to find a way to shine through fast-moving clouds. After finishing the ice cream, Shawn lay down beside me and watched the clouds too.
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He interlaced his fingers with mine, and we lay there for quite some time. “Is this what it’s supposed to be like?” I asked, forgetting that if he wasn’t watching my mouth he couldn’t hear me. The silence bore down on me, comfortable, familiar. The solid connection of our hands began to mean something to me, the ice cream forgotten. I turned to him and put my head on his chest so I could feel his heart beat. His hand came over to stroke my hair, and I felt contentment in his touch.
“I have always lived in silence, but I’ve never felt alone,” he remarked.
* * * * *
I wanted to stay there forever, but Shawn was restless and wanted to walk. We held hands and ambled along the beach, getting our feet wet and holding our shoes. I don’t think I’d ever done such a thing. Everything I did felt entirely unfamiliar, and it was so sharp with new emotions and sensations it was painful. I swallowed hard and followed along.
Sometimes something simple and relatively harmless would break over me like a wave.
It was like that the night we ate the ice cream. We returned to my room and he got to his knees and took me into his mouth, so determined to give me pleasure that I started to cry. I was grateful that he had no idea. By the time he looked at me again I was over it. This could not last. Sooner or later even this respite, this brief time in Santo Ignacio would end, and with it, whatever it was I had with Shawn. I didn’t want to get too used to it. I couldn’t.
* * * * *
Friday came, and I got the evening off to go to the play with Shawn. I can honestly say that I don’t actually remember ever going out on a date. Not like a real date, where a guy asked me out. I’d probably forgotten more of my life than I remembered, anyway.
I was completely floored when Shawn showed up in a car to take me out. I stared unmoving from the window of the studio, looking down from the bathroom onto the street below, and I felt frozen in place. Rigid. I couldn’t move. In that moment I realized I’d never told him I didn’t ride in cars. It had never come up. Everything in town was within walking distance, and I had my bike. I’d even gotten an extra helmet from Oscar for the evening assuming we’d take that.
He appeared to be waiting for me to come down. I took the stairs slowly, trying to think.
“Hey there,” said Jim. “Shawn’s outside.” I headed past him without saying anything.
Shawn was waving. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. He bussed me on the cheek and held the door open. I wasn’t really dressed like he was, but he said nothing. I looked at the car. This would be the first time in three and a half years. I took a deep breath. He took my elbow impatiently, and I yanked it away. I didn’t need help to get into a car. I swallowed and sat on the seat, sliding in. It was a Toyota Camry, a white nineties model, but well cared for. I 36 Z. A. Maxfield
buckled the lap belt, knowing the shoulder restraint would travel along a mechanism and pull tight around my chest as soon as Shawn keyed the ignition. I tried as hard as I could to breathe deeply and evenly. I told myself I could do it. I told myself it was a car, not a truck. I told myself it was Shawn driving, not…
“What’s with your face?” Shawn asked. I turned to him, pasting a smile on that I didn’t feel. “You want music?”
“Yeah,” I said stiffly.
“You pick,” he said, handing me a leather CD case.
It took a minute. I knew he could feel the thumping of the bass and the changes in tone and rhythm, but all those CDs seemed like a lot of expense to go through for that. I shook the case to get his attention. “Why?”
“They’re my sister’s. This is her car.” He looked at me as though he thought I should know that, and put his arm on the back of my seat, turning his whole body around to look behind as he began to back out of the parking space.
I exploded into action. I didn’t even know it was going to happen, but when it did, nothing could stop it. As soon as the car began to creep backward I was fighting my seatbelt, the shoulder strap, the car door. I felt like I was fighting for my life. My heart banged against my ribs in my chest and my blood thundered away from my brain to my muscles. I managed to escape the car and run about twenty feet to the bushes outside of Nacho’s where I vomited. I was bent over and hurling when Shawn parked the car again and got out.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked, coming after me. “What were you thinking, jumping from a moving car?” In his agitation, he was using both his voice and his hands. When I could finally look it was like watching a traffic cop.
“Sorry,” I said. I was starting to shake all over and my legs got weak. I motioned him back to the car. “Sorry. You go on ahead.” I started back into the bar.
“Wait,” said Shawn, reaching out for me. “Are you really sick?” He turned me to face him.
One of the things about being with Shawn that had required adjustment was the fact that he often pulled me around to face him. Normally, that kind of handling wasn’t a problem for me. It was an established fact that I was submissive. Not a full-on, put me in a cage, I’ll eat off the floor sub, but a garden variety, doesn’t mind being manhandled a little, and finds it kind of hot sub.
In the olden days I’d done more game playing. It was a bad mix with booze, and had rarely ended well. Everyone in the real scene knew that, so mostly, I would wind up with wannabes or amateurs, and it was one of the things I’d found I didn’t have a taste for without the lubrication of alcohol. But Shawn was forceful, and hot. It was a combination that, ordinarily, I welcomed. But maybe I was the kind of guy who avoided stuff by walking away, and he never let me.
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I pushed his hands away. “Get your damn hands off me!” I shouted, feeling physically ill. “The hell? You think you can push me around like a damn doll?” Shawn threw both hands in the air, as though he were being robbed. “Whoa!” he said.
I sank against the wall of the bar. Sweat trickled down my face, but I was cold and started to shiver.
“You are sick.” Shawn put a hand out, indicating that I should go first into the bar.
“I can’t go in there just yet.” I shook my head emphatically. I was near tears or going to kill something.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Go to your play; I’ll be fine. Call me at the bar tomorrow.” I made that shooing motion, which was like waving a red flag at a bull.
“I’m not leaving.” He was angry. “How could you think I would leave you like this?”
“I’m fine,” I repeated, still shooing. I was stunned by the force of my reaction. I hadn’t even tried to get into a car before because I’d ridden to rehab on my bike and never looked back.
“Look. We can go to my house and get tea.”
“No,” I said. I was looking at the car.
He rubbed his face with both hands, but stayed there, grim determination written in the planes of his body. My breathing was returning to a more normal, steady pace. He took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders. I had my own jacket on, but his, warm with his body heat, felt good. I was thawing. I was coming down.
“It’s the car.” I pointed to the parking lot. I got out my little phone and signaled that I would try to text him.
He looked back at the white Camry, then at me, got his cell phone out, and waited.
I don’t ride in cars. It’s a phobia, I sent. I never tested it out. It’s stronger than I thought.
“How did you think we’d get to the play?” he asked.
My bike. I pointed to my motorcycle. His face softened a little, and he relaxed somewhat.
“You’re an asshole.” He let out a deep breath. “And you’re going to be a lot of work, aren’t you?”
Since he held on to his phone I figured he was still giving me a shot. I painstakingly typed, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I did a lot of spilling my guts in rehab. Exorcised a lot of demons. It wasn’t a habit I wanted to cultivate or keep when I left.
“Some things are important, if we’re going out.” He indicated the car.
I know. I nodded.
“Well, shit,” he said, then stood for a while. “I don’t feel like going to a play anymore.” 38 Z. A. Maxfield
I could do tea, I typed. Or coffee.
“Still cold?” he asked. It made me feel a funny something in my chest when he said it. I realized I was warming up from the inside.
Or hot chocolate, I typed. But I’m getting warmer.
It probably wasn’t until that moment that I realized my development had been arrested at about fifteen, when I’d started drinking and partying with my friends, and that everything that was happening to me now was, essentially, happening to that kid. No wonder I didn’t know how to do this stuff. I hadn’t been in the game. I’d been lying on the sidelines, in a stupor composed of alcohol and vanity. Stupidity and ignorance and false bravado.
I am probably A LOT more work than I’m worth, I sent to his phone, by way of truth in advertising.
“I know,” he said, and put his arm around me to lead me to the entrance of Nacho’s.
“Alfred is here.” He nodded toward the bar. “I’ll ask him how he makes his spicy hot chocolate. Why don’t you go clean up?” He took his jacket from around my shoulders and spoke directly into my ear. “You don’t smell so good.” He followed this up with a gentle kiss on my forehead and a pat on my ass. I saw him walk away, and I went to my room.
Since my shirt was wet through, I took a quick shower and changed clothes. I brushed my teeth. I was as fresh as I was going to be. When I got back downstairs, Shawn met me with a blanket, a bag, and a thermal carafe. He indicated I should follow him, and I did as he walked down the boardwalk all the way to the pier. In the darkness, the pier looked like the skeleton of some giant serpent, the hulking wooden structure slithering onto land from the sea. Its old timbers looked decrepit and splintery in this light.