Thou Shalt Not (26 page)

“That is not true!” I said. “I use them all the time.”

“See! Right there! You said ‘That is not true’. Why couldn’t you just have said ‘That’s not true’? Because you don’t use them!”

She laughed again, and grimaced again, clearly amused by her observation.

I needed to check my phone to see if Holly responded.

“Let me get your water. I left it in the kitchen.”

She started to protest, but I was already walking away. I stood behind the counter and slid my phone down onto it. There was no reply.

Fuck. What would I do if she showed up?

I took the water back over to April, who had resumed sitting on my couch. It was ten after one.

I sat to her left, wanting to once again put my arm around her, but feeling like the appropriate time to do that had probably passed.

“This is a comfortable couch,” she said, patting the cushions next to her as if needing to emphasize her point.

“I’ve had these for...gosh, maybe eight years?”

“So you were, what, early twenties when you got them? There must have been a girl involved in picking them out. If it was just you picking them, you would have gone with black leather.”

“How do you know this?” I asked, knowing full well that she was probably right.

“All college-aged guys are the same,” she said, patting my leg. “And very few have good taste in anything.”

I laughed and nodded my head in agreement.

“So, was there?” she asked.

“Was there what?”

“A girl involved.”

I wasn’t entirely sure why I had no desire to bring up Carrie, or talk about the past. It’s not like April would be offended that I had previously been married to a woman who died from cancer. Most people hear that and they automatically feel for you. But I hated being the
widower
. I hated the sad looks people gave, the way they treated you as if your life was over before it even began. I was not even fucking thirty years old. No one should have lost a spouse at this age.

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“What was her name?”

“Carrie.”

I thought her name a lot, but I don’t think I had spoken it aloud in years. I half expected her to come walking out of the bedroom, as if beckoned.

“She was your wife?”

I sat back and looked at her. I didn’t know whether she knew or whether this was just a guess.

I nodded.

“Carrie. That’s a pretty name,” she said after a moment.

“Her parents were Stephen King fans.”

“Are you joking?” she laughed.

I shook my head.

“Oh my god.”

“Different mental picture now, huh?” I said.

“No, I was picturing the pig’s blood the whole time.”

This time I laughed.

She turned toward me on the couch and placed her hands on my knees. The right side of her face was still red and slightly swollen, but she still managed to look lovely.

“I know what happened,” she said. “With Carrie.”

I had assumed she probably had heard something, but having her say it out loud kind of hit me like a punch to the gut. And, I knew she would probably want to talk about it. Women always wanted to talk about things that guys had no desire to speak of.

She took my silence as permission to continue speaking.

“When everything happened with Robin, and you were gone, Principal West mentioned in the staff meeting for everyone to keep you in their thoughts and prayers. He said it was probably going to bring up a lot of emotions for you. He didn’t tell anyone what had happened, but I knew there was more to it than just what he said.”

“So he told you?”

“Sort of,” she nodded. “I mean, I asked him. You seemed to take it so hard, I knew there had to be more to it, to your relationship with Robin. So, I asked him and he told me.”

I nodded absently, processing it all.

“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing my legs with her hands. “I wanted to know how to best handle it for me, for us in a working environment. I guess I wanted to know what made you and Robin so close. I didn’t have any idea it would be that.”

“It’s okay,” I said, liking her touch, her warmth. “It’s not some big secret.”

“How old were you when you got married?”

“I was nineteen. She was eighteen. Just out of high school.”

“We were the same age!” she said.

“Well, technically when I was nineteen you were still knee-deep in high school.”

She smiled.

“You make yourself sound so old.”

“I am a widower,” I said. “The word alone makes me feel ancient.”

We sat in silence for a minute. She took her hands off my legs and leaned back into the couch, nudging herself into my body. I lifted my right arm up so she could wedge in further, and then lowered it onto her shoulders.

It felt right, holding her like this.

“Do you regret it?” I asked. “Getting married so young?”

“Do you?” she responded.

“Sometimes.”

“Why?”

I had thought about it a lot, the whole idea and concept of getting married at an early age. But I had never had someone to share my thoughts with that would understand them quite like I did. April was different, and I knew she would get it. So I spilled.

“I think when you are young, you think mostly good and happy thoughts. You don’t see very much bad in the world, in anything. Or at least you refuse to see it. You think all your plans will work out and that you’ll live happily ever after. Then you reach a certain point in your twenties and you see the bad that you never thought was there. You see it in the people you’ve loved your whole life; you see it in the world around you. And I think you really start to see it in yourself. And that changes you. That changes what you want. It changes who you want. What you thought was good, what you thought was good for you really wasn’t. And then you start looking for the good, and if you find it, you fall for it. And you fight for it until it’s yours.”

My arm was around her, and her head was nestled into my body so I couldn’t see her face. She sat in silence, not moving. I actually wondered if she had fallen asleep.

“I don’t know if that even makes sense,” I said. “I tend to ramble.”

She separated herself from me and twisted her body toward me. Her eyes were watering.

“God, Luke,” she said. She was shaking her head, and somehow looking like she was nodding simultaneously. A tear broke free and descended down her red, wounded cheek. My finger instinctively rose up to meet it and brushed it away. She closed her eyes.

“What is it?” I said.

She just kept shaking her head.

I lifted my left hand back up, and this time ran it through her hair, holding, steadying the right side of her head. Her chin nestled into my palm.

“You just,” she started. “You just put into words what I’ve felt for the last year or two. God, I had thought about it so much, but I couldn’t make it make sense in my head and you just did. It’s like you were reading…”

I pulled her toward me, cutting her off. And I kissed her.

I got chills all over my body as our lips met. She leaned her body into mine and let out a soft moan that I actually felt as we kissed.

Her lips were warm, and full, and her bottom lip was even more wonderful to feel with my lips than it had been to look at.

My right hand took the other side of her face, and my fingers slid through her hair, pulling her even closer.

I took her top lip between mine and kissed it slowly, repeatedly, before taking her luscious bottom lip and doing the same. I kissed down to her chin, then further down her neck. I was actually kissing her neck! I had promised myself I would and damn if it wasn’t better than I had dreamed.

I kissed my way back up her neck, underneath her chin, then over it and back to her lips.

When our lips met this time, they met with full force. There was a yearning in our kiss that I hadn’t felt in any kiss before. I parted her lips with my tongue, and the second it touched hers I felt a jolt of electricity surge through my body. I knew she felt it too. There were goose bumps on her arms, and her body tightened up like she was holding onto something and didn’t want to let it go.

I pushed her back onto the couch and my body was on top of hers, but our lips never separated. The kiss continued. My elbows were resting on the couch above her shoulders, my hands still holding the sides of her face.

I pulled back slightly, and my tongue left hers. She whimpered.

We continued to kiss and this time my tongue went up underneath her lip, where her top lip met her gums.

I had read once before about that particular spot being a great one in a woman’s mouth to explore with your tongue, but for some reason I had never tried it up until now. I was glad I waited.

Her body arched up into mine when I did it, her breasts pressing into my chest. Her hands had been around my waist, but now they grabbed my hips and pulled them toward her body.

I was as hard as I had ever been, and when our lower bodies touched, I knew there was no way she was going to miss it. She moaned once more. Her right hand slid from my hip down to the front of my shorts, brushing over me.

“God,” she said, as my lips left hers and returned to her neck.

She was now gripping me tightly, through my shorts.

“These need to come off,” she whispered.

I leaned back so that I could lose the shorts as she arched up and leaned forward to do it herself.

The top of my head hit her right cheek on the same spot Marco had earlier hit, and she let out a loud gasp, her hands reaching up immediately to grab the side of her face.

“Shit,” I said, reaching up toward her face as well.

“It’s okay,” she said, the pain bringing tears to her eyes. “Just hit me on the right spot.”

I got up to get her another ice pack from the freezer, not wanting this new bump to make things worse.

She sat up on the couch and sighed, brushing herself off.

It was a quarter till two and I nearly gasped myself, remembering Holly.

I grabbed my phone from the counter and saw that I had three texts from her.

Oh god, I’m sorry. That sucks :-/
the first text read.

The second said:
I can stop by and check on you on my way home if you’d like...

Guess you already fell asleep. I’ll just come by in the morning to see how you are.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, God.

I took the ice pack back to April, and she placed it on her cheek. I sat down next to her, relieved that Holly had been taken care of, and frustrated that the energy in the room had completely disappeared.

“Well, this turned into quite the night,” she said.

“Yeahhhh,” I replied.

“I didn’t exactly picture myself getting hit by my husband and then going and making out with my co-worker.”

“Just your typical Friday night here,” I said.

She smiled.

“Can you get me my phone?” she asked.

I found it on the floor next to the pillows and handed it to her.

“He’s called and texted like twenty times,” she said.

I felt tense even talking about him. I wanted him to go away. She didn’t need him in her life.

“What do the texts say?”

“There are nine of them. Hold on.”

She scrolled through them herself before reading them out loud.

“Well, they range from ‘Where the fuck are you, bitch?’ at the beginning, to ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been an asshole. Please come home’ at the end.”

Typical abusive drunk.

“When did he send the ‘Please come home’ text?”

She handed me the phone so I could see for myself. You really could watch his mood go from angry drunk to remorseful husband over the course of the texts.

“Five minutes ago,” I said to no one in particular.

She nodded.

Five minutes ago, her hand was holding onto my cock. I felt like responding to his text and telling him that. Something told me that would only send him back to angry and abusive.

“I should probably go,” she said, standing up abruptly.

“You don’t have to,” I said. “You don’t have to leave until you’re ready.”

“I know. Thank you. But, the longer I stay out, the more upset he will probably get.”

I had half a mind to tell her that if he had a problem with her being out, he could come settle it with me.

“Okay,” I said. “I just want you to be safe.”

“Thank you,” she said again.

We stood in the middle of the living room, hugging for at least twenty or thirty seconds. I knew I didn’t want this to end, didn’t want her to leave, and I was sure she mostly felt the same way.

I walked her out the door and to her car.

“Goodnight, Luke,” she said.

“April,” I said, and she turned back toward me.

I kissed her once more on the lips, softly. There was nothing aggressive about it, and it didn’t last for even ten seconds, but I felt the surge of electricity once again. This woman made me feel things I hadn’t felt before.

“Goodnight,” I said as I stepped back.

She smiled, and then turned, got into her car, and drove away.

I went back inside and got myself ready for bed.

The phone beeped as I connected it to the charger. I turned the lights off and laid down, knowing my heart wouldn’t stop pounding for a while. I was perfectly okay with it, even if it was going to keep me from falling asleep.

“Well, there you go,” I said aloud to myself, “you’ve done it.”

My morning had started with the direct intent of ending things with April, not letting them get out of hand. And here I was less than twenty-four hours later having made out with her on my couch.

Don’t forget the dick grabbing
, I reminded myself.
That certainly didn’t qualify as ‘ending things’ either.

God, there was probably no backing out of it now. That opportunity had come today and I let it slip away. I wasn’t upset by it though. Maybe what had happened was meant to be. I mean, what were the chances of her husband having the worst professional outing of his career and then going home and hitting her on the day I had planned to end things with her but didn’t get the chance? What would have happened if he had hit her while they were still in Colorado? Would she have left him and never moved with him to Florida? Did she have some other guy there that she could have gone to in her time of need? Or had all of this happened now for a reason?