Thunder In Her Body (27 page)

“You look like hell, but you’re still my girl aren’t you?” he asked half confidently.

“Absolutely not Roger, and how do you think most people look when they’ve been awakened before they intended to get up?  You and I’ve been over for a long time – five years at least.  In fact, I’m engaged to a really wonderful man now, so don’t take this cup of coffee as anything more than plain common courtesy for an old friend.  You know me well enough to know that I’d do this for a rank stranger.”

“But, I ain’t no stranger baby.  I’ve seen every inch of that beautiful body, and been so deep in it that I had to have a crane to pull me out,” he laughed salaciously.

Lynette’s jaws locked as she wheeled around to face him.

“Let me tell you something! We parted fairly friendly, but if you think for one damned minute that you can slither back into this house and my life, you’re out of your rabbit chasin’ mind. You’ve got your nerve just showing up here unannounced anyway.  You know the phone number.  It hasn’t changed.  Common decency should
’ve told you to call before just showing up at my door.”

“Common decency ain’t always common practice,” he retorted, holding his head down close to the table.

After she punched the switch to begin the short brewing process, she walked over near the table and looked across at him, careful to be out of arm’s reach.  She’d seen him like this too many times.

“I’ve carved out a beautiful life for myself, and you’re nowhere in this picture,” she said, anger mounting in her voice. There was a long silence after that.  The coffee draining into the glass pot sounded like someone urinating high above the toilet bowl.

Roger raised his aching head and stared at her as she lifted a coffee mug from the upper cabinet and poured him a cup.  She didn’t sit down.  As he sipped at the hot brew, she stood against the refrigerator with her arms folded across her chest, glancing occasionally at a man she once loved.  When he was sober, he was a pretty decent person.  This was the him that she despised.

“Got any eggs and sausage in that fridge,” he asked.

“Yes, but you’re not gonna have any of them,” she replied sharply.  “You’re still hung over – half drunk from whatever you did last night, so as soon as you get this coffee in you, you need to be on your way to your next stop.”

“My next stop is on that couch we used to wear out, or that big king-size bed you got back there,” he said, squinting his eyes as he looked up at her.  “You know damned well why I’m here, and you know what I can do for you, fucked up as I am.  Remember baby, it takes me a lot longer to go off when I’m half-drunk.  Remember how you’d get off more than once?” he laughed, leaning his head backward as though he was enjoying a vision.

Lynette snatched the half-consumed mug from his hand, sloshing some of the hot liquid onto hers.  Without flinching at the burn, she poured the rest of the hot coffee from the carafe into it, and walked toward the front door with it.

“Get up! Take the coffee with you” she snapped.  “You just don’t know how to be decent do you,” she said as a statement, not a question.  He rose slowly and appeared to follow behind her but stopped briefly in the living room, looking toward the bedroom hallway. “No, goddamnit, this door, the exit door” she insisted.  “You’re taking your sorry ass out of my house now, and keep the damned cup.  How dare you bring your drunken ass back in here with that same ol’ shit,” she shouted.  “You have no respect for yourself, and very little for me!”

Roger measured her attitude, but started for the hallway anyway.  “If you go down that hall, I’m calling the police.  This is my house, and I want you out of here,
now!
” her voice raised in an ominous pitch.

“All I want to do is take a piss, bitch, then I’m outta your fuckin’ face,” he spewed. “I’m so glad I don’t have to listen to your damned noise every day,” he snapped as he rounded the corner to the hall bathroom.

Lynette opened the front door wide and stood holding the hot cup until she heard the toilet flush.  She listened for Roger’s footsteps on the carpet to hear which way he walked.  Slowly he came back into the living room and walked toward her.  She knew that he would reach for her breasts – he always did whether he was drunk of sober.  It was his way of saying hello or goodbye.  Once it had been a gesture of intimacy and endearment; now the thought repulsed her.

“If you even think you’re gonna touch me, you’ll wear this goddamned hot coffee outta here,” she exclaimed.

“Yours ain’t the only pair of titties in this town,” he laughed as he shakily took the cup of coffee from her outstretched hand.  “I’ve sucked bigger ones than yours, but I bet you remember how good I was at it, don’t you?” he asked sarcastically, as he stepped out onto the porch.

Lynette slammed the front door so hard that it jarred the lid off the jade ginger jar on the entrance hall table which subsequently crashed onto the hard tile floor breaking into several pieces.

Roger stood out in her driveway for a minute or so drinking most of the coffee, then he pitched the cup onto the thick grass as Blaze’s rent car pulled up in front of the house.  Blaze exited the vehicle, grabbed his suitcase, all the while staring at this unknown figure in Lynette’s yard.

“Who are you?” he immediately asked as he approached Roger in the driveway.

“An Indian!  She’s gone an got herself a damned Indian,” he laughed out of the side of his mouth as he sidestepped Blaze and moved more quickly toward his car, without answering the question.

Blaze came through the front door with a rush, his feet grinding noisily on the broken glass.  He caught Lynette walking across the living room.

“Lynette, who the hell was that man out on the front?”

“That was Roger,” she replied dispassionately, not even looking up at her husband.

“What was he doing here, especially with you still in your night clothes?”

Lynette looked over at Blaze for a long, silent second.  She was trying to understand the accusatory tone in his voice.

“I’m still in my night clothes because he woke me out of a sound sleep.  I thought it was you coming back early, though that wasn’t in our plans.”

Blaze finally dropped his bag on the floor.

“Why was he here?” he asked again sternly.

“Because he’s an ignorant, self-centered drunk who thinks he can just come and go in and out of another person’s life on a whim.”  There was a pregnant silence.

“I smell coffee, and you don’t drink coffee, why was he here long enough to drink coffee,” Blaze asked insistently, jealousy raging all through his body.

Lynette turned to him, now even angrier than she had been at Roger and she glared at Blaze through hateful eyes.

“You haven’t asked me if I’m all right, if he hurt me in any way.  You just want to know if I fucked him, don’t you?” she growled at him.  The vehemence with which she spoke caught him off guard, and he could find no quick answer.

“Lynn, I come back here unexpectedly early, find a man casually drinking coffee in the driveway, and you in a state of undress,” what am I supposed to think?” he asked matter-of-factly.

“How about is my wife all right, has there been some trouble in the house?” she retorted.  “Instead, you come in here like gangbusters, apparently assuming that I’ve done something dishonorable.  Look at you, standing on the other side of the room like I’m dirty or something.  Ordinarily when you walk into a room, you come over to me.  So what the hell is this attitude?” she snapped.  Before he could reply, she continued, “Are you going to turn out like him after all, and think you’re going to make me walk on egg shells every time I’m around some other man, because of what some other woman did to you?  Is that it?  Cuz if that’s the case, we’d better sit down and rethink this whole situation before we take a step further.  I’m not going back to that life, Blaze.  I thought we had a committed relationship?  I thought when we bound ourselves together at the little cabin, that we were one with each other.  One in love, one in trust!  So ask me Blaze, ask me the question that’s burning in your head.”

Blaze caught his breath, but he could not remove the frown from his face.

“
Lynn, look at it from my point of view.  If you came home and found some woman leaving just as you arrived unexpectedly, especially an old flame, what would you think?” he tried to justify his jealousy.  “I’m human Lynn, and I’m so goddamned in love with you that the thought of another man’s hands on you or even near you, cuts me in my gut.”

“Unless I saw you climbing off the top of her with your penis dripping wet, I’d wait for you to explain what just happened, but you’re not giving me that same courtesy are you!” she said defiantly.   Without letting Blaze answer, she continued, “Do you really think just because my legs are open to you 24/7 that I’d let another man take your place when you weren’t with me!   Do you really think so little of me?” she yelled, tears welling up in her eyes.
  “I’ll ask the questions:  Lynette did you let Roger touch you?  Did he hurt you in any way.  Why is there glass on the floor? Are you all right?  Or did you go to bed with your old lover behind my back?  It seems that the first questions aren’t relevant, only the last one,” she sputtered through her anger.

Blaze’s jealousy subsided quickly as he realized the gravity of the situation.  By his body language and his tone, he had challenged Lynette’s integrity in a way that deeply wounded her, and he knew that he had gone to a place in her life, better left dead.  He sensed that something very precious was about to be torn, like a piece of delicately woven tapestry, and it would be disastrous to let that happen.

“Lynn, I know better.  I trust you.  I love you so much it makes me crazy, but I didn’t mean to insult you.  It was just the circumstances, everything all at once.”  Blaze crossed the room with only a few steps and he threw his arms around his wife.  “I admit that jealousy was my first reaction.  He had you long before me.  I didn’t mean to question your behavior.  It just didn’t seem right for him to be here.  Lynn, I’m sorry for that tiny instant of doubt.  I own that.  That’s my fault.  God forgive me, I’m so sorry Baby,” he said in all earnestness.

Lynette rested uneasily in the comfort of his arms, but she knew where her instant anger came from, and she too needed to apologize to him, for she too had let her past baggage interfere with her instant and angry response to his jealousy.  She was armed for a fight.  One that would have destroyed what she thought they had together.  She was close.

“We can’t let this happen again,” she finally said quietly to Blaze as she separated herself from his hold.  Looking up into his face she said seriously, “There are going to be too many times where something might not seem right, but we must look at the circumstances, not our personal fears.  We’ve both got baggage – that just comes with living.  Trust, Blaze.  Trust may be the only thing we have sometimes.  Without it, we can have no future.  I trust you with my life.  Don’t make me pay for something I never did to you.”

For the next two days they talked again – a lot – like before.  She had to make him understand that there was pain somewhere deep inside her, a pain she thought his love had squelched.  As she had told Roger when they broke up, she would not pay for the damage other women did to him, and she needed Blaze to understand that too.  Though she loved him more than life, she would walk away from him and the life he offered her if she had to put up with any mistrust.  She said these words to him, and he knew she meant it.

For his part, Blaze again bared his soul, telling her how he let his ex-wife strip him of his dignity and his sense of trust.  He vowed to trust her, to believe in her as he would himself.  She touched her fingers to his lips, silently affirming their pact.

Blaze wanted to make the giving of the engagement ring a private event – maybe up on the hill where their house was being built, especially since the past two days had been a bit uncomfortable for them both.  But, unbeknown to Lynette or Blaze, Clare had other ideas.  She asked them to take her to dinner before they flew back to Albuquerque on Sunday.  When they arrived at the restaurant, there sat Trapper and Janette with about a dozen of Lynette’s closest friends.  Merrilynn couldn’t be there because of her hospital duties, but Janette put her cell phone on speaker with pictures and let everyone say hi to her.  Blaze was embarrassed.  He didn’t know any of these people, though he’d heard some of the names from Lynette.  He was immediately inducted into her close circle of friends, guys and gals, with hugs and welcomes.  A few of the single women did feel the need to inquire if there were any more men out in New Mexico like him, and if so, when could they come to visit!!

With dimmed lights in the side dining room of the Olive Garden, and for the benefit of the gathered friends and family, he got down on one knee, pulled out the gorgeous ring, and asked Lynette if she’d marry him and grow old with him, bathed in the warmth of his love – and trust.  Well, all of a sudden there was sniveling and boohooing, before the group erupted in applause.  And, of course, she said yes.  The pain earlier in the week was not erased altogether for either of them, but it had been put in its place in their book of life as they now freely moved forward without doubts.