For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2) (10 page)

Walsh

I’
VE JUST
come in from a morning in the holding pens branding calves. Poor little things—it hurts them, and they make those moaning cow noises when the brand hits their skin. I make the other guys do that part. I can’t bring myself to press that hot metal into their soft skin. Instead, I help hold them still, soothing them however I can, and herd them back out to the bigger pen once the deed is done.

The good thing is that the job requires your complete attention, and you’re out there with a bunch of other guys, so you can’t get all reflective or caught up in your own shit. I’ve managed to avoid thinking about one of my two vices, because today is all Tammy. I don’t know if she’s still in town, and I’m trying really damn hard not to care. I’ve told myself over and over since last night that I did what I needed to, and it was for her sake as much as mine. She needs to let go of this—of us—and start a new life for herself. Just like I’m doing.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to convince myself of all that when she’s standing right fucking in front of me holding a big tray of food. Wait—Tammy is standing in front of me holding a tray of food? I freeze as I’m hanging my baseball cap on the hooks Leanne provided in the dining room.

"Excuse me," she says sweetly. "I need to set this down so you all can start lunch."

I realize that I’m standing there staring at her. She’s so matter-of-fact in her request that, before I can even process it, I’ve stepped out of the way and she’s sashayed on by, placing the food on the sideboard while the rest of the guys in the room all follow her with their eyes, clearing their throats and falling silent as she moves around.

After she sets the tray down, she turns to find everyone looking expectantly at her. Mike has his eyes on the floor, shaking his head and chuckling quietly. I step closer to him and jab him in the side with my elbow. He yelps and then breaks down into peals of laughter. All the guys look at the two of us like we’re insane, and Tammy scowls. Then, with timing to rival the best performers, Leanne comes bustling in with another big platter of food. She talks as she sets it down and fusses over the placement of all the items on the sideboard.

"So you boys met our new kitchen help, Tammy. Tammy, these are the guys." She proceeds to point to each guy individually and tell Tammy his name. When she gets to me and Mike, she just skates over us with, "And Mike and Walsh of course."

Then she adds, "Now, Tammy’s going to be working every lunch and dinner Mondays through Saturdays. I expect y’all to treat her with every bit of respect you do me, and if you don’t, you’ll be answering to me." She stares down every guy in the room, including me.

What the fuck? I’m Tammy’s damn boyfriend. I don’t need Leanne to tell me how to treat her.

The falseness of the thought hits me hard almost before it’s complete. I’m neither Tammy’s boyfriend nor someone who’s treated her right. I need to get that through my thick skull.

Everyone mutters things like, "Welcome aboard," and Tammy gives them all a bright smile, purposely not looking at me or Mike, who’s still clearing his throat a lot and rubbing his hand over his face in an effort to conceal his barely contained mirth.

"All right then," Leanne continues. "Y’all give thanks and get started. Ronny said he’s catching lunch in town while he picks up some new supplies that came in, but he’ll be back in time to help y’all out with the branding this afternoon."

With that, she heads back to the kitchen and Tammy starts plating food while the guys line up to get their servings. I wait to be last in line, and when I get up to her, I give her a hard look that she works to ignore.

"Corn or green beans?" she asks as if she hasn’t just blown my fucking world up.

"What the hell are you doing?" I demand under my breath as she heaps food onto my plate.

"Just my job," she replies cheerfully in a blatant effort to ignore the subtext of my question.

"You cannot
work
here, Tammy," I growl in frustration.

"Well, Leanne doesn’t seem to see it that way." She hands me my plate and smiles tightly.

"This is not over," I warn her as I take the plate. "I’ll get Ronny and Leanne to make other arrangements. You’re going back to Portland on the next damn plane out of Dallas if I have to haul your ass to the airport myself."

She stares at me, and I see the defiance. I’ve never really been an alpha kind of guy, and she’s not used to me telling her what to do, but dammit, she can’t continue this crap. We’re done, and she’s only making it harder on us both by refusing to accept it.

"You do what you think you have to, Walsh, but I can live and work wherever I want. We’re over, remember? You have no right to try to tell me what to do."

I feel the frustration rise up inside me, and I reach out and grab her wrist a little harder than I should. I hear her suck in a quick breath, but I pull her closer to me. "If you care about me at all, you’ll stop this. I can’t have you here. I can’t have you at all. I can only fight one vice at a time, Tammy. I won’t let you ruin both of our lives. I might have never done it in the past, but I’m putting my foot down on this one. Go. Home."

I feel a hand on my arm. "Dude," Mike whispers next to my ear. "Everyone’s staring. Just let her do her job and you’ll work this out later, okay?"

I take a deep breath, willing myself to calm down, and slowly release Tammy’s wrist. I see her rub it with her opposite hand, and now I’m so ashamed I can hardly look at her.

"Sorry," I mutter to Mike. "I’m sorry, Tammy. Just… Just please don’t do this. Please." I look at her and see so many things flying through her eyes—anger, shock, pity, hesitation.

"Come on," Mike urges.

I finally look away from the woman who’s going to put me six feet under and see a whole tableful of cowboys watching me suspiciously. Mike and I go over to our seats, and someone starts off the grace we say before meals. I follow along, and when it’s done and we sit to eat, Tammy is gone.

W
HEN LUNCH
ends, I’m still so agitated I could fucking hit someone. I storm out of the house, breaking all the rules and exiting through the front door so I don’t have to see Tammy in the kitchen. Mike doesn’t even try to follow me. I think for the first time in our lives he’s scared that I’ll take a swing at him. Even though he’s kind of a beast in the muscle department, I feel certain I’d take him right now. I’m so pissed that the adrenaline alone would carry me through. Two years ago, if I even got close to feeling like this, I would have had a drink—or five—and it would have gone away, muted and fogged over by alcohol. I don’t know how to cope with these kinds of feelings. I never have.

I know Ronny’s not around, but I head to the barn anyway, taking a page from his book. I pace for a while then sit down on a stool and pull J.B. onto my lap, stroking her soft fur as I struggle with the flames that are burning through my chest. Does Tammy think I’m fucking made of steel? I’m hanging on by a thread here in the war with booze. There isn’t anything else to pull from. No reserves left to resist the draw of her. It’s like a tornado looming on the horizon and she refuses to see it. Goddamn stubborn-as-shit woman.

I lean my head back against the wood wall of the barn. I can hear the cows lowing in the load-out pens across the compound and the guys whooping at the calves as they herd them into the branding line. J.B. has lain down on my lap and she’s purring. It’s soothing. It’s about the only thing that’s soothing in my world right now.

I close my eyes and let my thoughts go. I think about the t-shirt Tammy was wearing today. It’s from this restaurant we always went to back in Portland. Just a pizza place, but with real Sicilian-style thick-crust pizza. I took her there the night we lost our virginity.

My mind wanders back, remembering the first time I ever had sex. It was Tammy’s sixteenth birthday, and we had been skirting around the whole sex deal for months. She’d given me blowjobs because she was scared to do the deed, and I’d been pretty damn happy with that. It was the furthest I’d ever gotten with a girl, so I figured I was lucky. But then all of our friends started to give us shit.

Mike had been banging a different girl every week since we’d started high school. Joss had dated Lucy Madison just long enough to get laid. Then she’d dumped him. All of Tammy’s friends said that they’d done it too. Here Tammy and I were, the ones who’d been dating for a year and a half, and we hadn’t popped our respective cherries yet.

I’m sitting across from Tammy at Mario’s on a Friday night. She’s wearing this top that has little buttons up the front and a pair of jeans she’s worn a hundred times before, but for some reason, they look so much hotter tonight. My palms are sweating and I keep clearing my throat because I’m so nervous. Mike got his uncle Max to reserve me a room at the Holiday Inn on Spinden Road, and I’m going to ask Tammy to sleep with me tonight after dinner.

We’ve talked about it lots of times, and she’s been scared, so I haven’t pushed. Really, I’m pretty fucking scared too. I mean, I’m afraid of hurting her. If she cries afterwards like Anita Gray did with my friend Mark, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m also worried I’ll pop off in about five seconds and make a fucking fool out of myself. Sometimes when she’s giving me a blowjob, I swear I don’t think I’ll make it past the first second her lips touch me. It feels so amazing that it’s all I can do to keep myself under control.

I’ve never made her come though. I don’t know how to ask her what she wants or likes, so I finger her and I’ve even gone down on her, but it always ends up just being foreplay for the blowjobs she gives me. I want to make her happy, but I don’t know how. I really hope sex takes care of that and isn’t just another way for me to get my rocks off. It seems to me that, if she’s the one it’s going to hurt, she ought to get something good out of it too.

Tammy finally finishes her enormous slice of sausage-and-mushroom pizza and looks up at me with those big brown eyes. God, I love her so much that sometimes it makes my chest ache. I wonder if that’s normal? I mean, I know a lot of people think we’re too young to know what love is, but there’s no way I could feel like this about her and call it anything but love. From the first time I ever laid eyes on her, I knew I loved her. There wasn’t any question. It was like my whole life had been just leading to that moment. I’d spent fourteen years waiting for that first day of freshman algebra so that I could meet Tammy DiLorenzo.

"You okay?" she asks me because I’ve been sitting here staring at her for five minutes without talking.

"Yeah, sweetheart. Just thinking about the rest of your birthday present."

She smiles at me, but it’s not a shy smile like some girls might give you. It’s a smile like the cat ate the canary. She knows I’m fucking whipped, and she can’t wait to see what else I’ve planned for her. Shit, I really hope she goes for it.

"When do I get to have it?" she asks as I reach over and grab her hand across the table.

"Let’s, uh… Let’s go out to the car and then I’ll tell you."

Her brow furrows but quickly smooths out as she looks toward the door. "Oh! I want to get a jawbreaker on the way out too," she says excitedly.

Yeah, the girl loves candy. It’s fine by me, because I get to kiss her and then she tastes sugary sweet all the time.

I laugh and dig a quarter out of my pocket as we stand and head toward the door. "Here you go, birthday girl," I say as I lean down to her ear.

She gives a little shiver and a giggle. I stand behind her and put my hands on her waist when she stops in front of the candy dispenser and concentrates on getting the quarter in the slot. I put my chin on her shoulder and watch her long, pretty fingers as they work the mechanism to dispense the golf-ball-sized chunk of sugar.

"You have beautiful hands," I whisper into her ear as she reaches into the machine and extracts the jawbreaker.

She leans her head back against me and looks at me out of the side of her eye. "How can someone have beautiful hands?" she asks, laughing.

I kiss the side of her neck, relishing the scent of her shampoo—it’s apple, I think. "Some people—you for instance—just do," I answer before I reach down for her hand and lead her to the door.

We drive to the Holiday Inn, and I don’t tell Tammy what we’re doing. I try to play it off like I’ve got some big surprise for her, but really, I’m terrified that she’ll shoot me down.

When we finally pull up in the parking lot, she says, "Walsh, what are we doing here?" I can hear the tremor in her voice. She knows what’s up.

I turn to face her and take her soft hand in mine. "Look, I know we’ve talked about it before, and I don’t want you to feel like I’m putting pressure on you. I swear, if you don’t ever want to do it, I’m okay with that. I just, um…" I take a deep breath. "I love you, Tammy, and I want to show you."

Tammy’s eyes are shining with tears now, and I just know I’ve fucked it all up. "I love you too, Walsh. I’m scared, but I know I want my first time to be with you. I want to feel that way together."

"Okay. Well, Mike’s uncle got us a room. I’ve already got the key, so all we have to do is go on in."

She nods. "But do you promise we aren’t just doing this because Mike and Joss make fun of you?"

I think for a minute. Yeah, that’s a lot of what got us here, but I mean it when I say I love Tammy, and we’ve come damn close several times already.