Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica (22 page)

lot and, wrapping his coat around his body, heads inside. The

place is populated with a few bored-looking truckers and other

commuters who, like Gideon, had actually believed the weather

reports. He finds a local newspaper, orders a pot of coffee, and takes a seat in an empty booth, hoping to get back on the road

soon. The waitress, Nicole, her name tag reads, comes to take

his order. She is short, pleasantly curvy, with fiery red hair and dark eyeliner around her eyes.

“You get caught in the storm?” she asks with a wide smile.

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He nods, rubbing his arms instinctively. “It’s pretty bad out

there.”

She gestures around her. “It’s pretty bad in here, too, but

you’re definitely different from the guys I normally meet.”

Gideon sips his coffee, gagging quietly. “And what kind of

guys do you normally meet?”

Nicole leans back on her heels. “You know. Truckers, loggers,

miners. Guys with dirty hands who like to stare at my ass. But

you,” Nicole says, grabbing hold of his hand and inspecting his fingernails. “You have clean hands. I like that.”

“I did, however, stare at your ass.”

Nicole laughs, a loud, vulgar laugh that thrills him. “You’re

married, I see.”

Gideon cocks his head to the side. “Technically. It’s compli-

cated.”

Nicole slides onto the bench across from him, continues

holding his hand. “I also like complicated.”

Gideon smiles, enjoying the fluttering in his stomach and the

attention of a woman he knows nothing about and will never

see again. He glances at his watch and remembers that Alana is

probably wondering where he is. “I have to make a phone call,”

he says politely.

Nicole grins. “You do that. The phones are over there,” she

says, pointing to a dark corner.

Gideon slides out of the booth slowly, his knees aching. Along

a narrow, dimly lit hallway, there are three pay phones between two bathroom doors. The air is dank and sour. He stares at the

phones, fingers his pockets for change, leans against the wall

with a heavy sigh.

“Are you going to make that call?”

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From the corner of his eye, Gideon can see Nicole standing,

one hand against her hip. “I’m not sure.”

Nicole takes hold of his collar and pulls him into the men’s

restroom, where the dank smell is stronger, and one of the fluo-rescent lights overhead flickers. The sink is dirty, covered with matted paper towels and cigarette ashes. “You should never do

things you don’t want to do,” she says.

“Why is that?”

“Life is too short.”

Gideon laughs. “This from a woman working in a truck

stop?”

Nicole slaps his chest. “I do what I have to so that other

times, I can do what I want.”

Gideon draws a finger down Nicole’s neck and between her

breasts. “And what is it that you want?”

Nicole sinks to her knees, lowers the zipper of Gideon’s kha-

kis and pulls his cock out. “Not bad,” she says.

“I do what I can.”

“I bet you do.”

Without ceremony, Nicole pulls his entire cock into her

mouth. Gideon grits his teeth and tries to relax but when he

looks down, all he can see is his wife on the floor of her fifth-floor walk-up, and the way her eyes flash when she has him in

her mouth. He pushes Nicole away.

“I can’t do this.”

Nicole arches an eyebrow, wiping the corners of her mouth

with her middle finger. “I have a room in the motel out back if you’d be more comfortable there.”

“That might be good,” he says.

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Gideon puts himself back into his pants and helps Nicole

to her feet. She slips a key dangling from a large plastic key

chain etched with the number
three
into his pocket and tweaks his chin. “I’ll meet you in a little while. My shift’s almost

over.”

As he returns to his booth for his coat, Gideon looks around

the truck stop, imagines that Alana is at the far end of the room, eyeing him with disappointment. He rubs his eyes, gathers his

things, and heads out the back door, trying to maintain his

balance as he wades through the snowdrifts covering the small

parking lot. Nicole’s motel room is clean but sparsely deco-

rated—a sagging but neatly made queen bed, an old television,

two night tables, one with a lamp and alarm clock, the other

holding a vase of plastic flowers and several picture frames. In the bathroom, a spare uniform and panty hose are hanging from

the shower curtain. Gideon sits on the edge of the bed and turns on the television. The last thing he remembers is chuckling as

he listens to the newscasters discussing the unexpected nature of the blizzard raging outside.

He wakes, groggily, to a firm hand on his shoulder, shaking

him. He opens one eye and looks up. Nicole is sitting next to

him, wearing a knee-length purple negligee, one leg crossed over the other. “Aren’t you supposed to fall asleep afterward?”

Gideon blushes, sits up so fast he becomes dizzy. “I must have

been more tired than I realized.”

“I’m just teasing you,” Nicole says. “And the good news is

that I’m off work now.”

“What time is it?”

“A little past three in the morning.” Nicole swings her legs

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onto the bed, leans back on her elbows. “I think we should con-

tinue where we left off.”

Gideon stretches alongside her, resting one hand across her

belly. Nicole raises her lips to his, kisses him shyly, lips slightly parted. Gideon’s hand slides to her breast, which he cups lightly, as he slides his knee across her thigh. He tries to clear his mind, give himself permission to make love to another woman, but

this is too much for him. Alana is the only woman he has ever

been with.

“I really can’t do this,” he says.

“Is it me?”

“Not at all. You’re sweet and beautiful. My life. My wife. It’s complicated.”

The waitress smiles a sad little smile. She pats Gideon on the

chest, just over his heart. “Isn’t it always?”

When Gideon finally makes it home several hours later, Alana

is pacing the hallway by the front door. “Where the hell have

you been?” she shouts as he closes the door behind him. “You

were supposed to be here last night.”

“Can I at least take off my boots?”

Alana glares. “I was worried. You weren’t answering your

phone and the weather . . .”

“I didn’t realize we were still worrying about each other.”

She nods, just once, crossing her arms across her chest and

pursing her lips. “Sometimes,” she says. “You can be a real

asshole.”

Gideon stomps the snow from his boots and starts peeling

off the winter layers—scarf, hat, gloves, coat, sweater, and boots.

“That makes two of us.”

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Before her hand can connect with his face, Gideon leans to

the right and grabs Alana’s wrist.

“I almost slept with another woman.”

Alana wrests free and stares at him with a blank expression.

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“I wanted you to know.”

Alana starts pulling on her coat and boots from the closet. “I

can’t even look at you right now,” she says.

Gideon stands in front of the door, his hand on the knob.

“You’re leaving me, or have you forgotten? And I stopped before I did anything that couldn’t be undone.”

“I’m leaving here,” Alana shouts, her forehead pulsing. “I’m

not leaving you for anyone. If you can’t see the difference, I don’t know you at all.”

She slips behind Gideon and yanks the front door open, a

blast of cold air making her cough. “And I’ll have you know that I haven’t even considered being with another man. I can see now what a waste that’s been.”

Gideon tries to close the door, but she ducks under his arm

and heads for the main house.

“Alana,” Gideon calls after her. “Let me explain.”

“Go to hell,” she shouts back.

In North Country, April snow is what truly breaks your spirit.

The mild days give you hope, but then, one morning, a morn-

ing after a beautiful forty-degree day, you wake up to eighteen inches of fresh powder and the painful realization that winter

will never end. Gideon’s father passes away on one such morning in mid-April. One moment he’s sitting up in bed, smiling at a

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black-and-white picture of his wife. The next, his eyes are closed and his brittle chest is no longer rising and falling. For hours, Gideon holds his father’s hand, the skin dry like paper. He cries with loud, ugly sobs not because his father is dead, but because he is relieved. This is how Alana finds her husband, alone with his father in a dark room, his shoulders heaving. Holding back

her own tears, she sits on Gideon’s lap, and lets him cry against her shoulder, his tears quickly spreading across her thin blouse.

“It’s okay,” she says over and over.

When he has no more tears left to cry, Gideon looks up. “I

don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll take care of things. Go home and wait for me.”

Two hours later, Alana returns to their cabin. Gideon sits at

the cluttered kitchen table, staring into the distance. She draws him a bath in the old claw-foot tub and sits on the edge, keeping quiet company as he lays in the hot water until his skin is bright red.

“Join me?” he asks.

Alana undresses, then sinks into the water across from him

until she is almost entirely immersed. She rests her feet against his thighs, wiggling her toes playfully.

“How are you feeling?”

Gideon idly runs a washcloth across his chest. “I don’t know,

yet. So much has happened.”

“You were a good son to a good father. That much
I
know.”

“This doesn’t change anything, does it?”

Sadly, Alana shakes her head. “No, my love. It doesn’t.”

Gideon nods curtly, and they stare at each other until Alana

is forced to look away.

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*

*

*

It is a warm May afternoon. Alana and Gideon stand on the

tarmac as she readies to board a puddle jumper to Detroit and

then on to New York. The ground is wet with melting snow, but

the sun shines brightly overhead. She squints, holding one hand above her eyes as she looks up at him. Gideon stares at his feet and shrugs as she brushes her fingers across his hand.

“I should be going now,” she says.

He nods. “Do you have everything you need?” It’s a rhetori-

cal question, really. She boxed up most of her things and had

them shipped back to their loft several weeks ago. She already

has several auditions scheduled and will waste no time picking

up her career where she left it. Alana and Gideon said their

good-byes at the cabin to avoid a
scene
—to end things as neatly as possible. In a few weeks, when he has finished handling his

father’s affairs and the sale of the hardware store, he too will return to the city, sleeping on a friend’s couch until he can

find a new apartment. He’ll find a job at a new firm and try to start over.

Alana stands on the tips of her toes and draws her lips from

his ear to the corner of his lips. They hold each other’s hands tightly but avoid making eye contact. They still wear their wedding rings.

“Non posso vivere senza te,”
Gideon whispers into her hair.

She starts to murmur a reply but changes her mind, angrily

brushing away stray tears.

“I can’t do this,” she says.

She spins on her heels and heads up the stairs. Halfway up,

she stops, tensing her shoulders. Without turning back, she

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asks, just loud enough for Gideon to hear, “Ask of me what you

will.”

Gideon inhales sharply, lowers his head, a loud ringing in his

ears.

Alana turns around, balancing between two stairs. “Ask of

me what you will,” she repeats, saying each word carefully.

Gideon turns the palms of his hands upward and looks up.

“Stay,” is all he says.

About Isabelle Gray

ISABELLE GRAY
is the pseudonym of a writer braving

North Country winters. Her writing can be found

in
First Timers; Best Date Ever; Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of
Erotica;
and many others. She can be found online at

www.pettyfictions.com.

Hidden Treasure

by Sophie Mouette

When Brenda was a girl, her widowed mother had worked at

Frogmorton House, and, promising always to be good, Brenda

had been given the run of the estate. She never touched any of the antiques as she wandered through the folly of a Germanic castle, pretending she was a princess in the turreted tower and believing that the narrow servants’ staircase was a secret passageway.

When she was older, she fell in love with the romance be-

tween railroad magnate Winthrop Frogmorton and Austrian

Henrietta Ströbel. Henrietta had claimed the Adirondacks re-

minded her of her beloved Alps, so Winthrop commissioned

her a castle of their very own.