Misplaced Innocence (17 page)

She let out another breathy moan, melting into his hands, pressing into his mouth. She rocked against him, cried out and tensed around him. Charisma turned her head into his chest and raked her teeth across his skin, moving restlessly into him, objecting and wanting the sweet torment.

She bucked against him hard one last time and began to quiver. A cry tore from her and echoed in the room, followed by the jagged sound of her breathing. His touch slowed, stopped. She turned her head from him and nestled into the pillows. In the dark, her breathing was loud. He listened to the ragged sound as it returned to a normal pace, placing small kisses along the slope of her shoulder and down the length of her arm.
 

When the pair slipped into the languidity of the darkness with the intensity of pleasure behind them, she rolled back into him. He could feel her eyes searching his face, but it was too dark to see their rich color.

“I’m sorry,” she said into the darkness, her hands tracing the muscles of his chest. “I don’t think we should have done that.”

He swallowed hard, not liking the sound of those words on her lips. “I know,” he said, “I know. I just couldn’t help myself.”

“I know.” She pressed into him for a long moment before rolling away. “I couldn’t help myself either.”

~*~

The night trickled by. Jared slid in and out of sleep and he and Charisma stayed squarely on their own sides of the bed. He couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or not. Sometime during the night, once Jared had fallen into a deep and empty sleep, she had slipped out of the room. Without her there the room was cold and had an emptiness he hadn’t ever noticed in the house before.
 

He pulled himself out of bed when the sun was first warming the sky. Shades of pink blurred into the blackness and lit the outside, erasing the bits and pieces of the previous night Jared would have preferred to keep.
 

Charisma’s door was shut. He thought about opening it to see if she was on the other side, to see how she slept when she was alone. His hand rested on the cool brass of the knob but he couldn’t make himself turn it. He imagined he could hear the soft sounds of her breathing through the heavy wood, but knew he could not. A dark nose snuffled at the base of the door, one paw covered in unruly hair squeezed through the open space and scratched at Jared’s bare feet. He hesitated a moment longer, his hand slipped from the doorknob, and then he moved on down the hall and toward the kitchen.
 

His mother had told him once that nothing cured a broken heart like a homemade meal. He wasn’t sure which time she had said that, or even what she’d made afterward, but the memory made him smile. Except, he reminded himself when the image of his mother’s wispy bun and dirty apron had faded from his mind, he didn’t have a broken heart that needed to be cured.
 

That little fact didn’t stop him from raiding the refrigerator. There were eggs and fresh vegetables, potatoes cut into small squares and prepped into home fries. He kept his hands busy and the kitchen filled with the savory aroma of breakfast. If he could focus on this, then he wouldn’t be focusing on anything else.
 

Scruffy skidded into the kitchen, her nails looking for purchase on the kitchen floor, her tongue lolling out and her tail wagging as though she suspected the breakfast had been created for her alone. Jared tossed her a half-done potato and leant down to scratch her behind the ears. When he stood again Charisma was in the kitchen, bare footed and sporting substantially more clothing than she had been the night before. She was back in her trademark paint-splattered shirt that hung on her frame and a frayed pair of shorts he suspected had once been a favorite pair of blue jeans. Her hair had that tousled sleep look and she raised a hand to suppress a yawn. At least he hadn’t been the only one losing sleep over last night.

“Morning,” he said, and he hated himself for sounding so gruff. He turned his attention back to the sautéing vegetables and tried not to remember the curves of her body or how they had felt beneath his hand. That task was more difficult than he wanted to admit.

“Good morning.” Her voice was rough with disuse, and he found himself thinking of the soft sounds she had made the night before. He shook his head once, hoping to dispel the memory. Charisma padded through the kitchen, and he liked the comforting and familiar sound her feet made as they hit the floor. A sound he was sure he had heard in that kitchen a hundred times before on mornings similar to this one. A sound that ached of belonging and normalcy. She flung the kitchen door open and Scruffy sped out into the front yard, her feet nearly splaying out from beneath her as she barked at something she thought she saw.
 

Jared watched her from the corner of his eye. She pressed into the door frame and watched the dog frolic in the yard and the early morning coolness. Scruffy stopped to snuffle the ground, raked one paw across the dirt and snorted at the ensuing puff of dust. She went about her business as though she had no idea there were two adults standing in the kitchen, needing to be entirely focused on her and her antics because they couldn’t talk about the night before.
 

The silence became overwhelming. The sound of the sizzling vegetables bit through the air, became impossibly loud. The hiss of the oil drowned out the awkwardness. Jared waited for Charisma to say something, but she stayed focused on her dog in the yard, pretended there was no need for her to say anything at all, that nothing out of the ordinary had happened the night before.
 

“Breakfast is almost ready,” he finally offered when Scruffy was back in the house and sitting by his side, her ears perked while she waited for a tasty morsel to find its way into her mouth.
 

She offered him the wannest of smiles, the corners of her mouth hardly lifting. “It smells delicious.” She turned away from him and moved toward the other room, the sound of her feet on the floors slipping into nothing but a reminder of what it had been. Scruffy stayed by his side, pressing her head into the side of his leg. As a reward he tossed her a chunk of broccoli, which she inhaled with proper zeal.

When the food was on the table Charisma rejoined the pair in the kitchen. There was only the sound of the silverware on the plates as Charisma pushed the perfectly browned potatoes around, watching them mix with the eggs and vegetables Jared had heaped onto her plate. He was pretty sure she would gain her missing weight if he kept feeding her. But if this was how she was going to receive the food, then chances were those t-shirts would only start to look bigger.
 

She cleared her throat once. Twice. Finally she offered him a real sentence. “Jared,” she began, pausing only to twirl her fork through her potatoes once more. He watched her mouth purse into the smallest of pouts, her eyes watching the food on her plate, her long eyelashes dark shadows against her pale face. He stopped eating and waited for her to continue. “I’m just, I’m sorry about last night.” She looked up at him for the briefest of moments, her eyes lighting on his before they returned to the soggy mess she had created. “I feel awful,” she mumbled. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

He almost laughed, because, as he recalled, she hadn’t done anything at all. She had pressed her sweet little body into his and he had all but ravished her poor damaged self without much of a thought for what he was doing or what they were or what she had just been through.
 

“I mean,” she continued, unaware that Jared was already objecting with everything she had just said. “I know better. I know we can’t. I know we shouldn’t have and I’m sure you didn’t even want to, really.”

Jared almost objected. He’d set his fork down and had opened his mouth, before he realized he wasn’t sure which part he was objecting to – the fact that he had certainly wanted her the night before or that he did think they should, that they definitely could. He closed his mouth. There was no point digging himself a hole he didn’t know how to get out of and wasn’t even sure he was ready to navigate himself. Instead he clamped his mouth shut and willed the words to stay back.

She stopped dragging her fork through her food and looked up at him for the first time, letting her eyes search his face. He could see them trace the angles of his jaw and cheeks, the sharp arch of his raised eyebrow, the new shadow he had yet to shave. “I’m just really sorry. I won’t let it happen again. I hope this won’t change things between us. I….” she let the word slip off while she focused on the line of his mouth. “I really appreciate you. You’re my first friend in a long time.”

There was a long pause between them, her eyes remained where they were and her hand clutched the edge of the scarred table. When a beat had past, her gaze darted away, focused on Scruffy lying at her feet.

He took pity on her then, the white in her knuckles, the dejected hang of her head, the rapid blink of her eyes. He picked his fork up and smiled. “It’s not a big deal, Charisma,” her name sounded heavy in his mouth, like he hadn’t had enough practice saying it, like it might always remain a foreign sound. “I promise not to hold it against you.”

A big smile split her face, and he liked the way it touched her eyes and showed her dimple. She lifted her first forkful of food.

He wanted to tell her it wouldn’t happen again, that he wouldn’t let her take advantage of him like she had the night before. He wanted to play into this imaginary scenario she had created for what had happened, but he couldn’t. Instead he watched her while she ate, still admiring the slender angles of her body, the shape of her wrist, the way her hair fell over her shoulders in a shiny dark curtain. And when she was finished, he watched her collect her plates and slip from the room to return to her place by the window, sketchbook in hand.

Things had almost returned to normal. At least, as far as Charisma was defining normal these days. There were hardly times she thought about Jared beside her, with his hands on her, bringing her incredible amounts of bliss, and she had almost gotten to the point where their hands could accidentally brush when he passed the salt and she wouldn’t feel a bolt of electricity slide through her and settle in the pit of her stomach. Yes, she reasoned, she was almost back to where she had been.

She watched Jared closely, wondering if it was as difficult for him as it was turning out to be for her. She blushed. She had been the one entirely naked, moving beneath him and against him. It had taken her more than a day before she could actually maintain eye contact with him for more than a few moments. She thought about it often. She waited for a flicker in his eyes, the smallest twitch that might suggest he was thinking about it too, but if there were any she couldn’t tell when they were happening.
 

Sleeping alone had suddenly lost its appeal. After their first awkward breakfast, followed by a hasty retreat to her artwork, there had been a comfortable understanding between them. Firstly, Jared – and Charisma for that matter – was to remain clothed at all times and Charisma would not imagine the way the planes of his body had felt beneath her hands, and he would not remember her softness and gentle slopes. Secondly, they would not, under any imaginable circumstances, discuss what had happened or think about the possibility of it happening again. Finally, and most importantly, they were to ignore whatever feelings they might have to the contrary and accept that there was no feasible way they could ever become physically or intimately involved again.
 

But when it came right down to it, she was absolutely miserable. It had been a long time since she’d shared her bed with someone. So long, she had almost forgotten what it was like to feel skin on skin and the touch of someone’s hands in her hair. And it had been even longer since someone had touched her the way Jared had, sweetly, as though he didn’t expect anything from her in return. She could almost forget the way it had been when the light of day burned brightly outside, slipped into the house and filled it with its heady warmth. But at night when she was in the empty bed with no one beside her but a scruffy dog, it was harder to overlook.

Charisma threw herself into her sketches. She told herself that the deadline was looming, and that was why she had to spend every spare moment with the pad, the weight of the pencil in her hand. She would spend hours watching each line create a little more depth, a little more life, to her characters. She would tell herself it was because of the deadline, because she needed the paycheck, but even she could tell it was because she couldn’t stand those excess moments with Jared, going out of her way not to touch him or notice the way his blue jeans melded to his body.

And from the looks of things, Jared felt the same way. Or couldn’t have cared any less. She hadn’t quite figured out which one of those options was more appropriate. He was sometimes gone when she woke and sometimes seated at the big desk in his bedroom, papers strewn in front of him. She couldn’t even bring herself to ask what it was he was working on. She could barely even bring herself to admit that she wanted to know what he was doing, or cared about where he was when she was first slipping out of bed. Sometimes, when she passed him in the hall she could smell the faintest scent of cologne. Honestly, she’d discovered, she liked it better when he smelled of horse. Even cattle was more preferable, though she couldn’t remember a time before knowing Jared that she had wished for cattle smell over a nice perfume.
 

As the days passed, Charisma became more and more comfortable in his home. The longer she went without any indication of someone watching her, waiting for her, the easier it became for her to pretend no one was looking for her at all. Even though she knew she was being lulled into a false sense of security, she let it happen. She would stand outside with Scruffy, feel the sun beat down on her back and the gentle wind tug through her hair. She let Scruffy take her time, chase the bugs she found most interesting. She stopped checking every corner for things that might or might not be. And when just over a week had gone by, Jared snatched his keys from the kitchen counter and said he was going to head out to Bill’s and do a little grocery shopping. He asked her if there was anything in particular she wanted from the store, and before she could stop herself, the words were falling out of her mouth.