A New Thing On Earth…Jeremiah 31:22
I guess I should get used to not knowing what’s coming next.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed all the new behavior Marie had been up to over the past few weeks. Hell, I was all too aware of it. The first night she stopped coming to bed dressed like a kid at a slumber party, it was damned hard not to take things to their natural conclusion right there. She probably thought I would, and I guess in a way it would have been a relief. So to speak.
But she tensed up when I kissed her, and I couldn’t do it. I knew she wanted me to take it further, push the limits. I could’ve done that, and I’m pretty sure I could’ve made sure she enjoyed it. But I didn’t. I probably should have tried to get her to talk about it, at least, instead of just letting her go to sleep and gritting my teeth for the rest of the night. Again.
What can I say? Talking still ain’t my strong suit. I figured if she wanted to talk about it, she would. She’d been talking about enough else that bothered her, and I’d already fielded enough hard questions that week.
I’d told her she could ask me stuff, right at the beginning of this trip. It was kind of a bargain, like we’d had that first night I came back. I really just wanted to make her promise to answer me honestly if I asked if she was all right, or whatever. We were getting further away from the Mansion, probably somewhere in Pennsylvania at that point. She was sitting there next to me staring out the window, not really saying anything when I talked to her, and it was worrying me. So I told her we had to make a deal: if I asked a question, she had to answer, not just pretend nothing was going on. Otherwise, I wasn’t taking her anywhere. And as soon as I said it, I hoped like hell she wasn’t going to make me follow through on that.
She didn’t say anything for a good long time, long enough that I was starting to wonder whether I was supposed to turn around and take her back. She waited till I was stopped at a red light, and then she finally looked at me.
“Does that go for you too? Or am I the only one who has to agree to spill my guts on command?”
That’s not what I meant. I bit back that thought and just nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”
A car behind me honked then to let me know the light had changed, and it was about a mile further onward that Marie took advantage of that deal for the first time.
“Logan?”
I braced myself for something. I wasn’t sure what, but I could tell she wasn’t about to ask me what time we were stopping for dinner. “Yeah?”
“Are you glad I came?”
“Hell, yes.” I’d been so keyed up for something hard to answer that that just came out, no forethought. She made a strange noise, and it took a minute for me to be able to look over at her, what with the traffic and everything. When I did she had her face covered up with her hands, and all I could think was Shit, I’m going to have to take her back.
Then I realized she was laughing so hard she almost couldn’t breathe. She tried to catch her breath and wipe up her eyes after a minute, but as soon as she looked at me again she started in again. Finally she calmed down, scooted over and kind of latched onto my arm. She didn’t say anything. Not then. She just sat there, watching the road go by. I guess.
What she came up with over the next few weeks, though, more than made up for it. I only ever asked her to tell me what was wrong when she was actually crying. She would wait till I was thinking about something else entirely and then come out with these sudden changes of subject that would catch me completely by surprise. Where did I go when I left the Mansion? Was I ever in the army? What did I think about her paintings? What was my favorite color, for chrissakes. Not that I had one. And in between the crying spells and the surprise interrogations, she was getting pissed at me for the strangest things. I left my jacket hung over a chair. I didn’t ask her where she wanted to stop for lunch. It was raining.
It was like living in a minefield.
Then we got to New Orleans, and she and Lynn started having what she called ‘girls’ nights’ together. It was a good thing, don’t get me wrong. Lynn’s great lady and yes, I’d been in Louisiana during that five years and she’d never been shy about asking after Marie. When I brought her back, it was like she was getting a second chance to do the makeover of the century. Lynn took Marie out shopping for makeup and clothes and one night the two of them even both dyed their hair. I was starting to think I wouldn’t recognize Marie the next time I saw her.
I tried asking Toby about all that stuff, if it didn’t bother him. Once. He pulled me a beer and just shook his head at me. Dumb Cajun bastard.
Marie also started picking up on other things Lynn did. Lynn tended to be, well, hands-on around Toby. And any other man that happened to come through the bar. She’d flirt and lay a hand on a guy’s arm when she brought him his drink and generally act like she was everyone’s best girl. Toby did some more head-shaking when I pointed that out. Then he laughed a lot.
And Marie? She watched Lynn like there was going to be a final exam. I started noticing she was doing the same kinds of things with me that Lynn did with the customers. A hand on my shoulder. Leaning in to whisper something she could have just said. Veiled comments in that Southern drawl of hers that had suddenly re-emerged in full force. She did it just with me, though, not with random guys in the bar.
That, let me tell you, was pure torture.
And then she started dressing differently. What she’d brought with her from Xavier’s was mostly jeans, long-sleeved shirts, sweaters. Lynn would take her out shopping and then suddenly she was wearing little skirts, tops that showed off some cleavage. Even her scarves got to be see-through.
Then this one night, like I said, she came to bed wearing that slinky green thing, with nothing underneath it. And when nothing happened, when she didn’t seem to want anything to happen, I decided that was enough of that. I was going to face this head-on, get it out in the open, let her know I knew what she was doing. I got up and went out for a while, walked around the streets. When I got home she was lying there asleep, and I stood there watching her for a while before I lay down next to her. I figured we’d talk in the morning.
Of course, we didn’t. I caught a couple of hours of sleep and then got restless again, so I wound up doing some engine work. She brought me out a cup of coffee when she finally got up, and she looked like she was waiting for the axe to fall when she handed it to me. I’d been going over it in my head all night, trying to figure out the best way to get her to talk about it without sounding like I was accusing her or something, and I couldn’t come up with anything. She sat down on the steps outside the front door of this house of Toby’s we’re using, and she drank her own coffee and chattered to me about nothing much for about an hour.
I kept thinking she’d bring it up. Hey, Logan, about last night… But she didn’t. What she did do, though, before she went inside, was to come over behind me and wrap her arms around my waist. She held on for about a minute, her whole body pressed up against mine. Then she let go and went to get ready for some other shopping trip or whatever it was she had planned.
I got it. She already knew what she was doing, and deals about answers aside, trying to make her talk about it was just going to make things worse. What was I going to do, add guilt onto everything else she was dealing with? It didn’t take an empathetic genius to read the relief in that hug she’d given me. So that was going to be my job, to let her do whatever it was she needed to do and take her time doing it. Even if it took her another five years.
Assuming I lived that long.
And that night she was back to wearing the t-shirts and pants to bed. I just kept telling myself she knew damn well she could talk to me, ask me for anything she wanted. It had to come from her. Right?
I was getting kind of resigned to it maybe being a really long five years. Plus I was going to have to take her back to Westchester eventually, and who knew how that would change the situation again?
About two weeks later she wore that green thing to bed again, and she had the nerve to ask when I was going to stop being so careful around her. And then announced she was trying to seduce me. Well, that did it. I showed her a thing or two about seduction.
Or so I thought.
****************************************************
She’d completely forgotten about being afraid of being touched. Or anything else, by the look of her.
Marie was sprawled across the bed, and I could feel her still trembling as I moved up along her body, smoothed the silky fabric back down over her stomach before settling down on my side next to her. She blinked at me for a second and then winced a little when she peeled her fingers off the framework of the bed and reached up to stroke my cheek. I leaned down to kiss her and her arms wound around my neck.
All in all, pretty ego-boosting.
Then she broke her mouth away from mine and settled back against the pillows, hair all messed up and her lips looking a little swollen. She glanced up at me, and I thought she might be feeling a little awkward. That wasn’t it, though. She was working up to say something.
“Logan…” She kind of whispered my name, but she got the next few words out at full strength. “I want to do that to you.”
It took me a second to be able to breathe after that. She didn’t mean it that way, I knew that, she just meant she wanted to make me feel good too, but in that second an image went through my mind of her…christ.
Marie, the real one, touched my arm and brought me back to the here and now. She shifted onto her side and her hand slid down my chest. She was staring intently, like she’d never seen me before, and she reached toward where my jeans were already half-open, and she pulled her hand away from mine when I went to stop her. “Why not?” She almost whined that at me.
The actual answer to ‘why not’ was that I was so painfully hard at that moment that if she’d touched me any more, I’d probably have come right there. Which, although that might have fulfilled her recently-stated goal, was not exactly how I wanted this to happen.
“Just take it slow,” I suggested, and Marie gave me the kind of look you give a backward child.
“I have been,” she pointed out. I didn’t exactly have a good argument for that. She narrowed her eyes at me and then rested her head on her hand. “Okay. But take those off.”
I didn’t have an argument one way or the other on that. She definitely had me on the ropes.
“I want to see you,” she said, and she was enjoying the power shift just a little too much, in my opinion. “Come on. I’ll be good.”
I could have thought of a good answer for that, but it seemed like the best way to get back the upper hand might just be to do what she was asking. So I stood up and got rid of the jeans. The relief of peeling off that denim was beyond belief, and I began to think I just might survive the morning with at least a vestige of dignity intact.
And it worked, as far as shutting off the smart remarks was concerned. She took a breath, and her gaze was like a physical thing raking over me. I’m not shy, but that was damned uncomfortable. When she finally looked back up at me, she was trying hard for that arch attitude again and not quite succeeding. “It’s not—I have seen naked men before, you know.”
“Yeah?” I didn’t move.
“Yeah. In figure-drawing class.” Marie moved then, getting to her knees and coming a little closer to the side of the bed. She reached out and traced one finger along my side. “They had us study anatomy,” she informed me. “So we’d know how to draw what was underneath.” My nerves were tingling everywhere her finger moved. “Pectoralis major. External oblique. Rectus abdominis…” Her finger ran down the line dividing my abs, which I guess I’d just learned the full name for. “This is called the linea alba,” she said.
“Interesting,” was all I managed, because she didn’t stop when the linea alba ended. Her finger touched me, ran down the length of my shaft very gently. Once. Twice.
“I could draw you better now,” she murmured, almost like she was talking to herself. Then she brought her hand up against my stomach again, full contact this time, splaying out her fingers. Then she looked up at me again. “Come on.”
“What?” My brain had kind of disengaged during the whole exploration process, and her being on her knees in front of me wasn’t helping any.
“God, Logan.” She let out kind of a nervous giggle. “What do you need, an engraved invitation?” She ducked her head down against my body, hiding her face, and automatically I put my arms around her. “Don’t make me keep asking.”
Well, damn. What do you say to that? I tightened my arms around her, just held her for a minute. Then I took her by the shoulders and raised her up on her knees, made her look up at me. She was a little teary-eyed, but she didn’t look scared, just emotional. “Okay,” I told her, then I kissed her, as long and hard as I’d been wanting to for weeks, and by the end of that I had her back down on the bed, laughing and wrapping her arms around my neck again.
I stroked my hand down her body again—I was never going to get tired of that—and then up over her hip, bare under that little slip. My hand moved down to her thigh, and she’d stopped laughing by then and I could feel her relax into my touch, shifting her hips a little against me. Her arms loosened and her head fell back as I slid a finger along her folds, into her.
She had her eyes closed.
I didn’t like that.
I know, it makes me a manipulative bastard. But I stopped. And I waited until she opened her eyes and looked at me questioningly, and no matter how fuckin’ insensitive that makes me I’m never going to regret it, because that’s why I could see the surprise in her expression when it wasn’t my hand anymore, when I shifted my own weight and it was my cock entering her, opening her, and she kept her eyes locked on mine because she knew I wanted her to.
Until I felt something give and she winced, and I could feel that she was fighting to keep from making any sound that would mean I’d stop.
So I didn’t.
She didn’t close her eyes again. She kind of caught her breath, and she even clamped down on that so it wasn’t quite a gasp, and then when I didn’t move again for a few seconds she relaxed a little. Then she gave me the questioning look again. And said it.
“Is that all?”
I almost collapsed on top of her, trying not to laugh at her. It did have the advantage of taking the edge off a little, because damned if any man could stay focused after that. I think Marie was worried at first and then she realized what she’d said and, well, she’s not as innocent as all that. She turned pink. I had to let myself down on the bed next to her, just so I could put my arms around her to hold onto her without crushing her to death, even while she was getting mad at me for laughing. Because I was, by then, but not so much I didn’t keep an arm around her so she couldn’t pull away from me. She covered up her face with her hands, and I let her get away with that for a few seconds before I pulled them away.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. Very seriously.
”I know.” Nothing. Nothing she did was ever going to be what I expected.
Marie shifted her hips under me and just like that, the edge was back. Her lips brushed mine again. “So what do I do now?” she asked, and this time she was using an expression that I didn’t think I’d ever seen on Lynn, kind of half a smile with more than half a promise in it. That one was all her own.
“Whatever you want,” I told her, and that was about all I could say. And this is where it gets hard to remember. I know I tried to take it easy. I remember rolling onto my back, putting her on top, thinking that way she could take it slower, figure out what she wanted to do. I wanted to make it good for her.
I remember her hands on my chest, her leaning down to kiss me and her hair falling over my face, smelling like those flowers outside the window. I didn’t want to touch her because I was afraid I’d get rough, and she took one of my hands and brought it up to her face. She just wanted to be touched so much, and she turned her head to nuzzle against my palm as I stroked her cheek.
Then she started to move her hips against mine, showing she was learning fast again, and I just let that hand slide down her neck to her shoulder so I could hold on without hurting her and then…
The next thing I really remember I was sitting up, clutching at her hips, with her legs locked around my waist and her holding my head against her chest as I gasped for breath. When I could finally raise my head and look up at her she was all teary-eyed, and then she shook her head and wrapped her arms around my neck really tight.
“Don’t. Don’t you dare say you’re sorry.” She whispered that into my ear. So I didn’t. I just held her, and it wasn’t just because I was still inside her that it was as close as I ever remember being to another person.
Finally she raised her head from my shoulder, looked up at me, all messy hair and still half sniffling back tears, but already that new smile of hers was making a comeback. She loosened her arms a little and I saw one of the straps of that green silky thing she was wearing had torn. Marie noticed it too and automatically adjusted the material where it was falling down. Then she stopped.
“I’ll get you a new one,” I told her, since that’s all I could think of without apologizing for tearing it, which she’d just told me not to do. She fidgeted with the edge of the silk for another second.
“Don’t bother.” She raised her arms over her head. So I peeled it up and off her. And took it from there.
****************************************************
The things I’ve learned, if I’ve learned anything at all in my life: you got to take what you can get and not look back. Traveling light makes the most sense if you’ve got to travel at all, and home is where you hang your hat.
Fuck if I know anything at all, because the girl I’m traveling with now has a history that would keep six psychiatrists busy for a career, adds another tote to the duffel she started this trip with every time she goes shopping, and I’m the one trying to convince her to head back to a settled address. Strange thing, life.
She’s happy. Most of the time. I think. I was worried for a while that she was too happy, that this was some other kind of act and she was just going to crash hard when she couldn’t do it any more. Be pretty arrogant to think I came back, bang, there’s the answer to all her problems. She’s still going to have to go back and finish facing up to what she did with everyone else. And yeah, I do see the fucking irony of me being the one to point that out.
She called the Mansion just before we left New Orleans. We’d been there almost six weeks, I thought maybe that was long enough. I’d promised Xavier I’d have her back in a month in the first place, for one thing. Marie got real quiet when I suggested heading back and told her that. So she called to find out what the old man thought. It wasn’t my idea.
They talked for a couple of hours. She was crying again through some of it, but I managed to stay out of it. At the end of it apparently he told her he wasn’t going to set any deadlines. She was old enough to make her own decisions, but he hoped she would call if she needed anything, even just to talk.
So after she got off the phone, she told me she wasn’t ready to go back, and she gave me a whole string of reasons. I didn’t need a whole lot of convincing, to tell you the truth, but I let her explain it all before I agreed with her. She thinks it’s all her incredible persuasive skills, and if it makes her happy to think she’s got me wrapped around her little finger, fine. I just told her it was her call.
I think that was the point where she realized she really did want to go back. She did have a life there, a good one, even if she did have herself all twisted into knots about it. But those other kids I met, they really do care about her, and she needs that.
Just not quite yet.
She wanted one more stop on this little road trip first. She told me she’d always dreamed about going to the beach when she was growing up, seeing the ocean. And she still never had; even though the School can’t be more than half an hour from the Atlantic, she’d never gone. She said it didn’t seem worth it when she couldn’t even wear a bathing suit and enjoy it.
So I took her somewhere where she can. This isn’t exactly tourist central, this part of Mexico. It’s quiet and we’re about fifty miles from nowhere, so it’s basically her own private beach. She thinks it’s pretty, too—been drawing stuff ever since we got here. She got real serious about it—says she owes it to her gallery to make this a working vacation, since she isn’t around to meet with buyers.
She’s sketching now, down on the beach, and I’ve been watching her from the house for half the morning. I crack open a cold one and head down to join her.
It hasn’t been all sunshine and roses since New Orleans. She still cries sometimes, and she still has nightmares, but they’re her own now. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. She always wakes up crying and they’re always about the same thing—she says she was lost somewhere and couldn’t find me. I never know what to say to her when it happens and I don’t even know if she realizes what it does to me, hearing that. I just hold her and wait till she goes back to sleep, and hope maybe if she wakes up enough times and I’m still there, it’ll stop. Because what can I say?
Marie looks up when I get close, and pretends to pout. “You didn’t bring one for me?”
“Here.” I hand the bottle over, and she takes a drink and hands it back. “You tryin’ to turn yourself into a lobster out here?”
She cranes her neck trying to look down her own back, and fails, predictably. “Am I pink?”
She’s not, actually. She had an umbrella up until about half an hour ago, but I have my own agenda. “Maybe a little. You got some of that stuff you put on?”
Marie gives me a look as she puts down her sketchbook and digs into the bag she’s got sitting next to her, comes up with a bottle. “It’s called suntan lotion, Logan,” she drawls as she hands it to me. “That so hard to say?”
I know what it’s called. I also know what it’s for. I stick the beer bottle into the sand and take it. Marie reaches to pull her hair over one shoulder as I get a handful of sunwarmed lotion and smooth it over her shoulders. She sighs as I knead her muscles a little, and relaxes into my touch.
I don’t really need an excuse to put my hands on her, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take advantage of an opportunity when I see one. She doesn’t object when I untie the knot of the top of her suit, behind her neck, so I can slick the lotion across her shoulders in one long sweep. She shifts a little as I work her muscles a little harder, and then she unfolds her legs and turns to lie down on her stomach.
Nice. I shift my own weight to straddle her , and there’s one more tie on that swimsuit to get rid of so I can run my hands over her whole back, long strokes that let me feel every breath she takes and the way she lets her body settle and relax. She’s created a monster, here; there’s not one inch of her I don’t want to make sure I touch every day of my life.
Marie moves a little under me and I raise up a little, afraid my weight is too much for her, but that’s not it. She just wants to roll onto her back, knowing damn well she’s leaving that bathing suit behind when she does it.
Every time I see her breasts it takes me straight back to that morning in New Orleans. I ditch the lotion and spend some time making sure she doesn’t get sunburned there. You know, by keeping them covered up. Manually and orally.
When she’s squirming under me and panting a little I raise my head. “Want to go inside?” I’m not against spontenaiety, but there’s a time and a place for sand.
Marie opens her eyes and squints against the sun. “Swim first?” She hitches up onto her elbows. “Last chance this trip.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t retrieve her top when we get up and walk down the beach towards the water, so all she’s wearing is the bottom of her bikini.
And the chain around her neck with my tag on it. When the waves start to catch at her feet and she squeals and grabs my arm like she always does, I scoop her up and wade into deeper water. “Swim” is kind of a misnomer for what Marie does in the water. She loves the ocean, but she never learned to swim, and her reaction to the waves is pretty funny. I keep telling her all she has to do is get out further and she won’t keep getting knocked down, but instead she just makes me take her in and winds up clinging to me and shrieking every time a wave breaks.
A wave splashes over us now, and the tag around her neck chinks against the other thing she’s got on that chain, which is just long enough to keep them right between her breasts. Her nipples are puckering up from the water, nice and tight, and I’m considering how good they’d taste all salty, when she decides that’s not what I’m staring at.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
I honestly don’t know what she’s talking about, and she loosens her death grip on my neck long enough to brush against the necklace.
She bought this little charm at a street fair and added it to the chain at some point—I’m not sure when I noticed it. It’s a cross, kind of fancy, made of iron or pewter or something. It’s not till right then, when she’s just asked me, that I remember yelling at her for wearing one once before.
“No,” I tell her. I guess it hadn’t really hit me like that—seemed like half the population of New Orleans was dressed up Gothic, and crosses went with the costume. But even if that wasn’t what it meant to her, I wasn’t about to tell her what she was allowed to believe in again.
Marie smiles and lets the chain fall from her fingers again, and then she lets out another predictable squeal as another wave comes in. She clutches my neck again and shifts to wrap her legs around my waist, and when the water recedes again she kisses me. Salt tastes good on her lips, too.
When she breaks away I can tell she’s got more to say. “I didn’t know if you wanted to say something about it, but it doesn’t mean…” She shakes her head as if to clear her thoughts. “It just means…did you ever just have faith in something? Like, something bigger than you? Something good?”
I never did. Until this one night in Mississippi. And as twisted and fucked up as everything got, I want to believe she’s right about this, because maybe that would mean that it might be okay, that this isn’t going to go bad, that there is such a thing as a happy ending. Guy gets the girl. I want to believe that like I want to keep breathing. No, more than that.
And while that’s all crashing over me like a tsumani, she scrunches up her nose and starts to shake her head again and I don’t want her to stop, to take it back, to think for a second she has to hide thoughts like that. “Yeah,” I say, and she looks surprised. “Everything that happened, all the stuff that went wrong, but in the end I still got you, right? Whatever made that happen. That’s something I believe in.”
And I guess that’s the right thing to say, because she kisses me again and doesn’t even notice when the next wave breaks over us, or the next. Or the next.
So now I’ll carry her back up to the house and maybe we’ll rinse the salt off before I take her to bed, and I hope she’s not hungry because I’m planning on keeping her there a while. And maybe we’ll leave tomorrow or maybe I’ll find an excuse to keep her here a couple more days so I can have her to myself while I finish finding the words that’ll tell her what she already knows, now. Or at least the guts to say them out loud.
I love you. I’m yours. Scary as shit. But I’ll do it.
Can’t fight fate.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
We've gotten beyond apologies for lateness, so I'll just leave it at this: it was blood and sweat and tears dragging this chapter out into the open air. The conclusion of Scripture, at long last.
Chapter End Notes:
Thank you all for making this journey with me. I appreciate it more than I can possibly say.