Bang (18 page)

“You are?” Jack looks up at him, momentarily distracted. He thinks of his brother's girlfriend's pretty, easygoing face. “No shit. Congratulations, man.”

“Well, she hasn't said yes yet.” Terry crinkles up the wrapper in his fist, smiling a little. Jack feels a weird, twisting pang of loneliness deep inside his chest. “But you gotta get your shit together, if you're gonna be my best man.”

“I gotta do something,” Jack says, an almost joking tone in his voice—it feels like Terry's lightening the mood for him, letting him off the hook somehow, like a gift—but when he looks up again, his brother isn't smiling.

“Yeah, bud,” he says, looking Jack straight in the eyes. “You do.”

Mari spends Saturday cleaning out her closet and the baby's, tossing everything that's stretched out or stained or doesn't fit into giant lawn and leaf bags on the floor. It's the first time she's had the house to herself since she doesn't even remember when—Sonya's with Andre for the weekend, and Patty's on an overnight retreat with her church group—and she knows she probably ought to be doing something involving bubble baths or bonbons or at the very least alcohol, but the closets are what presented themselves this morning, and the closets are where she's at.

For the most part it's mindless, soothing work. She throws out a mateless men's sock that belonged to Andre. She dusts the upper shelves. She looks through Sonya's baby box, spending a moment fingering the tiny christening cap and the birth announcement. She tries on some old jeans.

After a lunch of cold cuts eaten over the sink, she finishes the closets and starts in on the bureaus. Both her and Sonya's underwear drawers could use some updating, but Mari doesn't know if she has the energy for shopping. Pawing through her few pieces of lingerie makes her sad in an empty sort of way, like her sheer lace bras and the garters she wore under her wedding dress have no purpose now. Which is strange. Andre's the only one who's ever seen half the stuff, and even after the divorce she didn't have this reaction. She guesses because she was banking on moving on to Jackson, hopping to the next lily pad in the pond, etcetera.

God, she's gross. She thinks about what he said on Halloween,
Are we too late?
She wonders what she'd have done if Jackson had broken his decade-long dating streak even for a second, if he had asked her out in those first five years, those first five months, those first five minutes when she was twenty-two years old and over the moon for him. She thinks things probably would have turned out very different.

Or maybe not. Maybe they would have broken up a year later and never spoken to each other again.

She does Sonya's drawers next, fishing out all of last year's stuff that's too short or too tight in the belly. Sone needs a bigger bureau, something with more than three drawers that isn't covered in sponge-stamped ladybugs, but Mari hasn't gotten around to it yet. The closet in here still has builder-grade doors too, these flimsy aluminum-vinyl things that slide on a track and wobble strangely if you knock them with an elbow. Mari always meant to replace them. Like she meant to replace the stove, and the fridge, and maybe the countertops, like she meant to finish the basement and put in a playroom. She scrubs a tired hand through her hair. It's getting longer now, almost long enough for a real braid.

The landline rings when she's sorting the lawn and leaf bags into
TRASH
or
DONATE
piles. “Hello?” Mari says, imagining either a telemarketer or her mother. Everyone else would call her cell.

“Hi, uh. Is Marisol there?”

“Speaking,” she answers, even as she realizes who's calling. It takes a second for her mouth to catch up with her brain, which is pushing out bright, flashing emergency signals like a pinball machine on
TILT
. She sets down the lawn and leaf bag slowly.

“Sorry, you just, you sounded like Patty and I didn't want to— Hi.” There's a pause at the other end of the line. “It's Jack.”

“Hi,” Mari says. Her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“You weren't answering your phone,” he explains. “I didn't want to just show up.”

“Show up?” They haven't spoken since that day outside the range, a week and a half ago now. Mari has been trying to get used to riding with Mike Zales, who is nice enough but too polite, like being partnered with a woman requires a special breed of chivalry. He always lets her drive. She was hoping for Piper, but she's on desk duty until they sort out the thing with Fitzgerald.

“Yeah.” Jackson sounds nervous. “I think I need to do this in person.”

Jesus, does he want to break up with her officially? Finally report her for fucking up in the parking garage? Spring some other horrible unknown on her? “Okay,” she says slowly, this low roll of dread in her stomach. She guesses she shouldn't be surprised by their capacity to hurt one another by now. “I'm home, so.”

“Okay,” Jack echoes. “I can be there in twenty minutes?”

Mari jumps in the shower while she waits for him, pulls on a clean pair of jeans and, at the very last second, a satiny purple bra she'd forgotten she had until this morning. It's just, if he's going to tell her to get lost once and for all, Mari doesn't want to be wearing sad granny underwear when it happens. She's combing her fingers through her still-damp hair when he rings the bell.

“I want to marry you,” he says, when she opens it.

“You—” Mari blinks at him, standing there on her doorstep. She just imagined that, she must have. “What?”

“Like, not right this minute,” Jackson says, shaking his head. “Not even this year. But, like, eventually. I want to. I've always wanted to, you know that. I want to be the kind of person you'd marry.”

“I.” Mari takes a step back, so he'll come into the foyer. He's letting cold air in the house. He's wearing his corduroy jacket with the soft sheepskin lining, his face sharp and red from the November wind. “Jackson.”

“I'm not that person yet, though,” Jack tells her, eyes on hers as she shuts the storm door. “I'm fucked-up.”

He doesn't look like he's lost it, Mari notes, staring up at him in confusion. He actually looks more lucid—more like the Jackson she thinks of him as being—than she's seen him in weeks. “You are?”

“You know I am,” Jack says, shrugging a little. “You said it yourself.”

Mari crosses her arms. “Well this is one messed-up marriage proposal, I'll tell you that much.” It comes out rougher than she means it to, this fake Latina tough-girl bullshit she has no claim to, as a human raised in Western fucking Massachusetts. Her entire graduating class was white. “I'm sorry,” she says, running a hand through her hair. “Look, take off your jacket, okay? Let's sit down for this.”

Jackson does, hanging it up in her front closet. Mari makes a mental note to sort through their old winter coats too. “Do you want a coffee?” she asks him, feeling the need to occupy her hands. When he shakes his head she goes ahead and puts a pot on for herself, operating on dazed autopilot. Jackson follows, folding his tall, rangy body into one of her kitchen chairs. He still hasn't gained back any of the weight.

“I mean it,” he tells her. His face is serious, the beginnings of a pumpkin-y beard growing in over his cheeks. He'll have to shave it off tomorrow morning for roll. “I want to be good enough.”

“You are good—” Mari corrects automatically.

But Jackson cuts her off and says, “Would you let me be around Sonya right now?”

Yes
, Mari thinks. Then, immediately after it,
without your service weapon
.

“I'm gonna take some time off,” he announces into the telling silence. “Get my head on straight. I talked it over with Leo.”

“What?” Well, that explains the beard, then. Mari sets down a coffee in front of him before abruptly remembering he didn't want one. “Sorry,” she stutters. Jack picks it up and takes a sip anyway. “I just, I don't understand—how much time?” The idea of him not being at work anymore makes her strangely panicky. Even this past week, his silent, angry presence in the parking lot and across the room during roll has felt better than the long stretch of summer when she was completely by herself. And there's another, more important question pressing at her tongue too.
Will you partner with me when you come back?
She remembers the application for the sergeant test still sitting in her glove box. They can't work together if she gets a promotion.

They can't work together if they're married, either, obviously.

God, she's not making any sense.

Mari sits down in a chair and pulls one leg up, balancing her mug of coffee on her denim-covered knee. “Would you see somebody?” she asks him carefully, remembering how he flew off the handle the last time she suggested it. “Like, a therapist?”

But Jack nods evenly. “I start Tuesday. My brother sat there while I made the appointment.” He looks at her from underneath his gingery eyelashes, a little wry. “He told me you called him.”

“I'm sorry,” Mari says automatically. Then, raising her chin a little, “I mean, I'm not. I'm sorry for a lot of things, Jackson, but I'm not sorry I did that. You scared the shit out of me, you know that?” Her voice breaks a little on the epithet. Mari shakes her head, eyes filling with tears she had no idea were this close to the surface.

“I know.” Jackson reaches a hand out, hooks his fingers around her ankle on the chair. “Hey, I know. I'm sorry for that.”

“I love you,” she says, and oh, now she's really crying, these sloppy crocodile tears like Sonya when she doesn't get her way, embarrassing on a grown woman. Mari can't make herself stop. “Sorry,” she says again, but Jack's already reaching for her, taking her coffee cup and putting it down on the table, pulling her into his lap.

“It's okay,” he's saying, quiet and soothing. “Hey hey hey, it's me, it's okay. I love you too.”

“I'm going to crush you,” she wails, and Jackson has the nerve to laugh.

“Oh shut up, you are not. You're not,” he says again, resting his forehead against her temple. Mari turns her face toward his, hesitates.
A blowjob isn't going to solve this, Mari
. Up close, his mouth is red and chapped.

Jackson turns too. His breath fans over her, warm and clean-smelling, like he's been drinking a lot of water or chewing snow. “Hey,” he murmurs, jiggling her a little. “I'm going to miss seeing you every day.”

“You've seen me every day for ten years,” Mari says, tears streaming down her chin. She's pretty sure her breath smells like coffee and stale sandwich. “Aren't I boring to you now?”

“No,” Jackson says, and kisses her.

Chapter Twelve

Mari won't let him take her upstairs right away.

He's got one hand down the front of her jeans when she pulls away and starts telling him that Sonya has asked for him twice since Halloween, and Andre has called demanding an explanation, and she's not comfortable having him around her daughter again until there's a ring involved. That they aren't moving in together for at least a year, probably two, to get Sonya used to the arrangement. That she wants a promotion, that she's taking the sergeant's exam. That Patty is never moving out, non-negotiable, “and she's not leaving to go to one of those old-people homes either, Jackson, got it? She's leaving this house in a box or nothing.” That's about the point where Jack removes his hand.

“Can we maybe not talk about your mom's coffin right now?” he says, laughing. His dick is twitching underneath her thigh already, a thick, heavy pressure starting up behind his balls. In total, they've had sex less than ten times.

“I'm serious,” Mari says. Her face is splotchy and hot, runny nose and a shiny upper lip. “I want some ground rules.”

“No, I know, of course.” Jackson nods. “We're gonna take our time, okay? We'll think it all through.”

“And I need you to forgive me,” Mari tells him, voice steady. “Please. I can't do this unless you forgive me.”

“I do,” Jack says. “I forgive you.” It sounds automatic, how fast it comes out, but the truth is he's been thinking about it for days—Terry made him go home to their parents' house for the weekend, spend a couple of days rolling around with Rocko and eating his mom's food. He missed Mari like all hell the entire time. “Of course I do.” He looks at her even more closely, pushes a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “Is that a yes, then?”

Mari nods. “Of course it's a yes,” she tells him, smiling through her tears for the first time since she started crying. “We'll fix everything, okay? You and me. We'll do it together.”

“I wanna fix things with you.” Jack kisses her again then, and this time she lets him, wrapping her arms around his neck and sinking in. She covers his ears with her hands again, just like that night at his parents' place. Even though it reminds Jackson like all hell of the shooting, he doesn't move her. He breathes.

When he went in to tell Leo he was going on leave, he saw Carlson's parents waiting in the hallway. Punch pointed them out to him, an older couple in their sixties, graying and tired. They must have recognized him from the news coverage—the local stations keep flashing his academy picture up beside Carlson's school photo, two young faces side by side—but they didn't approach. They just watched him. As he was walking by on his way to Sarge's office, the father nodded.

Jackson nodded back.

“I want to fix everything,” he tells Mari now, pulling her closer. He likes feeling her weight. “It's all I want.” Mari hums and shifts a bit, swings a leg over so she's straddling him properly. “Well,” Jack amends, gripping her generous hips and pulling her forward. “Not all.”

He's never been upstairs in her house and at first he's worried it might be weird, how she slept here with Andre, that it's literally her marriage bed. He forgets all that as soon as she pushes the door open, though. It's so obviously Mari's room and only Mari's, from the floral-patterned quilt to the overstuffed bookcases lining one wall.

“I've wanted to get you up here forever,” Mari tells him, lacing her fingers through his and tugging him across the carpet.

Jack laughs. “Oh yeah?” He can count on one hand the number of times he's been on the second floor of Mari's house. The door to the master bedroom was always firmly closed. “Since how long?”

Mari looks at him. “Since before I should have,” she says simply, and then there is no more talking.

Jackson lets her undress him first, unbuckle his belt and pull his T-shirt free of his waistband, unbutton his flannel with careful, cold fingers. He didn't bring any extra clothes along when he went home so he's wearing a combination of his father's and Terry's cast-offs, anonymous jeans found in the laundry hamper, and a pair of old boxers from high school.

Mari laughs when she uncovers them, one hand already sneaking through the fly. “Should I ask?”

Jackson grunts as she cups his balls. “I'm a man of mystery,” he says. The shorts in question are Christmas-red and covered in a tiny green pot leaves. He can still remember Christina Blackmun rolling them down to give him his very first blowjob. “Come up here,” he tells Mari, curling his hands around her soft upper arms. Her entire body turns him on.

Mari obeys, crawling. Her breasts hang down inside her purple bra, heavy and pendulous. Somewhere along the way she lost her top. “Hi,” she says. When she tries to drop down on top of him, Jack stops her, holding her by her shoulders.

“Wait,” he murmurs, craning up to kiss her neck. She has a sweet crease under her ear when she turns her head, pudgy and plump like a baby's. Her pillows smell like hair spray. “Let me look.”

Mari squirms. “At what, my rolls?” She curves an arm around her belly, laughing when Jackson tugs it away. There's a faint, dark line running from her navel down into her pants. “Jackson, stop.”

Jackson stops, boosting her up to suck at her nipples through the bra instead. “I love your body, though,” he says into the fabric, pausing to use his teeth so she gasps. “It's important to me that you know that, okay? You're sexy as all hell.”

“Okay,” Mari says, screwing up her face a little like,
quit being gross
, but Jackson shakes his head.

“I mean it,” he tells her. “Like. The sexiest woman I've ever, ever—”

“Okay!” Mari says, laughing and flipping them all at once so that he's up on top of her, looking down into those dark dark eyes. She is, Jackson thinks, she's sexiest. He never wants anyone but her. It's the first time they've done this where they haven't been up against a clock of some kind and Jackson wants to make it last as long as humanly possible, to please her every which way he can think of. He wants to crawl inside her and stay. He can't believe he almost lost her, can't believe he'd let anything get between them. The thought has his heart kicking up inside his chest.

“Hey you,” Mari says, like she can read his mind and wants to call him back to her, to tie him to this moment as firmly as she can. “We're gonna make it work, okay? It's us. We'll make it work.”

Jackson nods and leans down to kiss her, fisting his hands in her hair on the pillows and working one thigh between hers until she arches and grinds. She's woodstove warm right through her jeans. He gives her a little more pressure, pushing himself against the curve of her hip at the same time until they're grinding like a couple of teenagers, Jack working one hand underneath her to pop the hook on that pretty purple bra. “Take this off,” he mutters into her mouth, wanting to get as close to her as humanly possible. “Want you naked, I want—”

“Yeah.” Mari tears her face away to scramble out of it while Jackson shucks his ancient boxers, the front gone damp from where he was rubbing against her hip. He reaches for her jeans and underwear too, greedy to see everything at once. There's a momentary tussle as they work together to unhook the denim from around her heels, and then she's bare and brown under him, her hands fussing with the quilt stitching.

“Was that really a proposal?” she asks quietly while Jackson's busy looking his fill. She's neater between her legs than the last time they did this, a trimmed triangle that loses some of its symmetry on the left side. Jackson rubs her there with one careful thumb, testing out the bristly leading edge. “Or was it just like—” She lets go of the quilt to wave one hand.

Jack thinks about that. It was a promise to propose, a declaration of intentions. He doesn't know if those things are included in the hand wave. “It can be real,” he tells her. “I can go get a ring right now.”

“I just got a divorce,” Mari murmurs. Then, “I don't need a ring right now. Maybe for Christmas you could buy me a thing that's shaped like a ring and we'll talk about it, okay?”

Fuck, Jack will do anything. He's opened her up with a thumb and she's a deep, purpley wet. “Something ring-shaped, huh? I can work with that.”

“Maybe more handcuffs,” Mari adds, looking up from under her eyelashes. Then she laughs, a good deep laugh that bounces everything, and Jackson's lost, crawling down her body to get to that cunt, to bury his face in her wet, dark heat.

“Oh God, Jack,” Mari breathes, spreading her knees wide wide wide to give him access, heel sliding off his shoulder and her hand scrabbling through his hair. She pushes at his scalp so he'll give her more pressure; Jack's happy to oblige, long hard licks with the flat of his tongue and two fingers crooked up inside her, this easy slide right past the second knuckle. Mari whines. Jack reaches up with his other hand and rubs his thumb in circles over her nipple, gives her the edge of his nail. Fuck, he loves doing this to her, loves her smell and her taste and the sounds she makes, her warm thigh pushing at the side of his face. He'd do it all day if he could.

Mari's already close, though. Jack can feel it, that clutch and release of her body around his fingers, the long column of her throat visible as she tilts her chin up toward the ceiling. She's pushing herself hard and rhythmic against his face.
That's it, baby
, Jack thinks, trying to send her the message telepathically. His tongue is otherwise engaged, and he doesn't want to waste the time it would take him to say the words.

“Jack,” Mari's saying now, over and over like a litany, arching her back like a cat. Jack can feel the exact moment she starts to come. It's a noisy orgasm, going on for maybe thirty seconds. Jack keeps his mouth on her clit until she's through.

“God,” she murmurs finally, coming down from it. Her hands go from clutching at his head to petting solicitously, stroking at his buzzed hair and feeling the shape of the scalp underneath. Jackson mouths at the bend of her thigh until she starts tugging. “Get up here.”

Jack does, kissing his way up her belly and sternum and neck before hovering over her with planted arms to suck at her lush bottom lip, his own mouth wet and sharp-smelling. Mari hums.

“This is new,” she says, pulling back and rubbing at the stubble on his chin. Another thing Jack didn't have up at his parents' place was his own razor.

“Oh.” He glances down between her legs. Her thighs are pink and raw-looking. “Crap, sorry. Did it—”

“No, I like it,” Mari decides after a second of consideration, and Jack feels a deep, hard throb right behind his balls.

“I'll never shave again,” he promises as she's retrieving the condoms from her dresser. Mari starts to lie back as he rips open the packet, but Jackson stops her. “No,” he says, rolling on the condom, slippery-cool latex enveloping his junk. Mari's brand is the extra-sensitive kind, thin. “Want you on top.”

Considering all the other stuff they've done so far, to and on and around each other, Mari swings a leg over almost shyly. “Like this?”

Jackson squeezes her thighs. “Like that.”

He lets her handle fitting them together, even though she's looking at him expectantly, nudging at his hands. When he crosses them behind his head she pouts. “Gonna let me do all the work here, huh, Officer?” she asks, guiding him inside her. It's a tight fit, how it's been a while since the last time they did this. Mari rocks experimentally until they get the angle right, breathes in. “That how it is?”

Jack manages a nod. “Just here for the floor show,” he says, but the catch in his voice gives him away. Underneath the pillow, his hands itch to reach for her. “Show me how you like it,” he says quietly and though Mari makes a face, a moment later she does it, leaning forward to brace her hands on his shoulders so she can rock.

“Shit, Jack,” she murmurs softly, dark head tipped down so she can see them, eyes locked on the place where they're joined. When she lifts her face again she looks dazed. “Like that,” she tells him, getting braver, this pornographic roll of her hips and her feet tucked up underneath his calves for leverage. “Shit, Jack, just like that, oh fuck I missed you, do you know that? I missed you so much.”

And—yeah. There's pretty much no hope of Jack keeping his hands to himself after that.

Instead he grips her hips and sucks her nipples, pulling her down on his cock hard enough that she gasps and cries out. “Missed you back,” he promises, glancing a kiss off her sweaty cheekbone. Her fingers dig into his shoulders hard enough to bruise. “Love you so much.”

He feels himself start to skirt the edge a moment later, the build of it low in his belly. “Mari,” he warns her, and she nods frantically at him, tucking her face close. Jack has never loved anything like he's loved her, like an extension of himself, like a limb. “Look at me,” he says to Mari as he's losing it, “look at me,” and she does.

“Jack,” she murmurs afterwards, cupping his face with both hands. “Hi.”

“Hi.” There's a shuffle to tie off the condom and wrap it in Kleenex from the box on Mari's side table, and then they're both lying on the coverlet, sleepy and peaceful. Mari snags Jackson's T-shirt off the floor and pulls it on.

“That's Terry's,” he tells her, so she pulls it off with a grumble and grabs for his boxers instead.

“I just want one half covered,” she explains sheepishly, rolling the waistband. Jackson watches, fascinated. He's never seen her naked and upright at the same time.

“Good strategy,” he says, holding out his arms so she'll crawl back into them. The lower curve of her breasts is shockingly erotic, heavy and full against her ribcage. “I might get overwhelmed if you're firing with both barrels at once.”