Harder (Caroline and West) Read online

  He can never touch me again. That’s what I thought. That’s what I paid for when I paid for the funeral.

  But he’s in me. He looked like me, talked like me, probably fucked like me, because I can remember being five years old and hearing my parents fucking and my mom crying after.

  You don’t ever forget something like that.

  And no matter how deep I buried him, there’s no way for me to pretend not to know that my father was the kind of man who’d do what I did to Caroline after the funeral.

  I sure as fuck didn’t enjoy it, but I did it. I closed my eyes and closed a fist way down deep inside myself and bludgeoned my way through it, telling myself I had to because it was the only way. Telling myself I didn’t have a decision to make.

  Caroline was right when she read me the riot act in Silt. Everything she said, she was absolutely right. Everything she’s said to me since.

  I’m afraid.

  I’m so fucking afraid of making any kind of choice, because ever since Frankie was born I’ve told myself that thinking of me, of what I want, what I need, is a luxury I don’t get to claim. It’s all about Frankie. My life is for Frankie. If I live for her, I don’t have to think about me.

  I’ve been making excuses for inexcusable behavior, acting like the Fates snipped my threads so short that I just have to take whatever life shoves down my throat. I just have to breathe through my nose and swallow it and survive so Frankie will never know what that’s like.

  But that’s not living, is it? Survival isn’t life.

  Survival is what you do when you don’t get to choose.

  I’m not going to wake up in the morning in my bed over the garage and pretend to be some kind of a role model for Frankie, some kind of a parent to her, after I left Caroline naked and crying in her bed.

  I survived that man. I won’t turn into him.

  What I’ve got to figure out is how to defy him. How to live a life that’s rich in everything he never had, fulfilling and beautiful like he couldn’t imagine, because he drove all the beauty away from himself.

  And it could be that it’ll always be harder for me than it would for some normal guy, because I started out the way I did. I’m smart, but there’s all this stuff I don’t know.

  I don’t know how to be a father to a kid who’s safe. I don’t know how to be a student just to be a student – how to explore, how to waste paper, how to play. I don’t know how to tell Caroline I’m sorry and make her hear how much I mean it, and I don’t know how to put what I did behind me and look toward the future.

  But I told her I’d try, and I will. Maybe if I try ten times harder than anybody else, that’ll be good enough to get the job done.

  I lie down beside Caroline and put my hand on her shoulder again, stroking up and down her arm.

  I close my eyes, fit my body to hers, and keep touching her, smoothing her, soothing and waiting.

  Whatever she needs. Whatever it takes.

  I’m not walking away again.

  FORGIVEN

  Caroline

  The night of the party.

  The music. The noise.

  Half an inch of foam on top of my beer, floating in its red plastic Solo cup.

  Half of me wanting to leave, go for a drive, go for a run, get away from what was coming for me.

  What was coming for me being West, of course.

  West leaning against a wall, sipping his cup and observing.

  West bending toward some girl, his head cocked, his lips curving into a smile, listening with half his attention even as his eyes roamed the room to find me.

  His gaze like a hand, heavy, stroking.

  The intention in that look. Hot enough to brand me if I stood still and let it sink in, which I did. I wanted him to look.

  I wanted him.

  The night of the party. The night before the party. The night after the party.

  Every night, I wanted to get my hands on him, get my mouth on him, sink my teeth into him, tangle our bodies up, crush our lives together, smash into him and keep doing it. Keep doing it.

  Keep doing it because it felt amazing, because I wanted it, because I didn’t know how to stop.

  We’d found each other last year, edged closer together, closer and closer until we were so close that I couldn’t imagine my life without him in it.

  We got inside of each other, dug in deep and held on, and when we collided on my bed that night, his body hot on top of mine – when I got his skin under my hands – my fingers remembered how to grip him.

  My body remembered how to take him in, twine around him, pull at his pistoning hips.

  But I cried when it was over because it hurts to surrender to that kind of violent need.

  It hurts to see yourself, your defenses down all around you, your wits scattered.

  Everything I’d done since he came back to Putnam was in pursuit of that moment. That joy in my body, our two bodies together.

  God. That moment hurt.

  There was my truth, broken into pieces small enough to read: He’d hurt me. I hurt.

  He’d made me angry. I was angry.

  He’d driven me away, and I still felt the distance, even with his cock pushing hard inside me, his face in my neck, his tongue in my mouth.

  It wasn’t the same. We weren’t. Maybe we could never be the same.

  I’d told West there are no beginnings, middles, and ends. Think about it, I told him, because I wanted him to listen to me.

  I said to him that life is complicated, people are complicated, because that’s what I believed. That’s what I had to believe. But saying that to West – even if it’s true – didn’t change the fact that he’d written an ending over top of us. Written it with his mouth on another woman’s body.

  He pushed inside me, crashed into me, loved me and kissed me and fucked me until I came hard enough to see stars, only it turns out that seeing the stars when you’re alone in the wilderness doesn’t mean you’ll know how to follow them to safety.

  He was my north star once.

  That night of the party, I cried because the skies had changed. There were stars scattered across the black night, bright and gorgeous as jewels, but I couldn’t read them.

  What I didn’t understand right away – what I figured out that winter, trusting my instincts, trusting myself until I could believe it down deep inside – was I didn’t need to know the way.

  The wilderness is life. There’s no way out of it.

  That’s not important.

  The important thing is that from that night, West was with me.

  West was with me all the time.

  When I come back to awareness of myself, the quality of the sound from downstairs has changed. It’s not so raucous now, the music slow-moving and trippy, voices conversing, laughing rather than shouting.

  The party is winding down.

  I cried myself to sleep, or into some kind of stupor.

  West’s got one arm over me. It’s good – not too heavy, not too much. Different, though. He’s so much bigger than he was in the spring. I can feel the weight of the difference against my breasts, snugged into my ribcage.

  From where I lie, I can see out the window to the sky.

  He’s awake. I can tell by the way he feels against my back.

  I turn over, lifting the arm that’s between our bodies and letting my wrist drop against my forehead as though it might be some use in shielding me from the sight of his face so close.

  It isn’t any use.

  There’s the scar through his eyebrow, the no-color color of his eyes, his hair too short, his ears too small, his mouth so wide, and everything about him just exactly as it should be.

  I guess he could say, That was fun, but I’ve got to get going.

  I guess it’s possible he could act like a douche, like Krishna might act, smiling and chattering while he backs toward the door and makes an exit.

  But there isn’t any part of me that expects him to.

  “Can we t
alk?” he asks.

  That’s West. My West.

  I reach up on an impulse and slide my hands over his neck. Lift my shoulders off the bed, cool air leaking through the window on my naked shoulder blades as I set my mouth against his.

  I do it because he’s here. Because I can.

  His palm finds my waist under the blanket he must have put over me. It rests there on my skin as he holds still and lets me kiss him.

  When I pull away, he says, “Can I do that, too?”

  I sink down, nodding, and then it’s him kissing me, cushioned in the softness of my pillow, his hands against my head making a hushed space where I can hear my heart and feel his lips.

  I think of all the words for kisses. Hot. Possessive. Questing. Fiery. This kiss isn’t any of those. It’s not any of the other things we’ve been to each other, either – fun or funny or angry or supportive or dangerous.

  It’s a kiss that says, Here you are. Here I am.

  Here we are.

  Kissing West that way – it makes me feel so much better.

  When he stops to breathe, I let out a long breath and tell him, “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay, we can talk.”

  “I was hoping that was what you meant,” he says. “And not, you know, Okay, you can go now.”

  “That’s not really my style.”

  “You didn’t seem to want me here a little while ago.”

  “I clubbed you over the head and dragged you up here by one ear.”

  “Is that how you remember it?”

  “More or less,” I admit.

  “But there’s this.” He touches the corner of my eyelid. My lashes dried in clumps, and my cheeks still feel hot.

  “That. Yeah. I didn’t anticipate that.”

  “Me, neither.” He lowers down and kisses me again, softly. “We probably should’ve talked first, fucked each other’s brains out after.”

  “Then we might not have fucked each other’s brains out at all.”

  “Right.”

  We’re quiet for a minute, just looking at each other. Thinking about what we did, whether we should have. What it is we’re supposed to say now that we’ve come through months of separation and arrived here in my bed.

  West sits up, propping his back against my headboard.

  “I’m going to promise you something,” he says. “You don’t have to promise me back. I don’t think it has to work like that. I just want to tell you – I’m not gonna keep anything from you. I’m done pretending that my business isn’t your business. I want to be straight with you, Caro, because I’m hoping…”

  He looks down at me, caution in the lines around his mouth. But his eyes aren’t cautious or angry – not the way they’ve been so much of the time since I landed in Silt.

  They’re just West. All of him, right there in his face.

  “I’m hoping what we did tonight means something to you, the way it does to me,” he says. “Even if you think it was a mistake, which, you know, it probably was a mistake, but if it was, I made it because I want you back in my life so bad.”

  I didn’t know there was anything inside me left closed to him, but hearing West say he wants me back just throws a door open inside me, and I’m crying again.

  He scoots back down to the bed to wipe at my tears with his hand. “Caro.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m fine. Don’t baby me.”

  “I kind of want to baby you.”

  “Then baby me, but not because you think I’m pathetic.”

  “I don’t think you’re pathetic. I think you’re awesome. I’m the one who’s —”

  I cover his mouth with my hand.

  He lifts an eyebrow. I take my hand away.

  “Isn’t it time?” he says. “Don’t you think it’s time for me to tell you how sorry I am? What a sorry-ass piece of shit I am, and a coward, and stupid, and —”

  I cover his mouth again. “Don’t.”

  He goes quiet, watching me for clues. Like I have a clue. I reach out blindly for the blanket, pull it up to swipe at my tears, exposing one leg to the cold.

  Everything feels so close to the surface. Scratch us anywhere and see what comes out. West’s confession. My anger. West’s reasons. My heartache. West’s abject apology. My regrets.

  I don’t want to hear any of it.

  “Tell me if I was wrong,” I say. “What I said in the truck on the way to the airport. Which part did I get wrong?”

  He shakes his head. Says something against my hand that I can’t understand.

  I take my palm away.

  “No part,” he repeats. “You were right. You’re always right.”

  “I’m not, though. I’m guessing all the time, and I screw up. Don’t put me on a pedestal.”

  “You’re always right about the stuff that matters.”

  When he smoothes his hand over my forehead, pushing away a strand of hair that stuck to my temple, I take his wrist and pull it down until his palm is pressing flat over my heart.

  I leave it there. Let him feel it beat.

  I’m alive. I guess that’s what I’m showing him.

  I don’t want to spend my life staring backward at everything that’s gone wrong. I want to be here.

  So I pull him down by the back of his neck until his mouth is on mine and he’s kissing me again with his hand over my heart. He’s kissing me deeper, moving over me, stroking my tongue with his, letting me feel the heat and the strength in him.

  There are things I want to say, blanks in the conversation that the good girl who still lives in me insists I’ve got to fill up.

  She wants to tell him, I forgive you.

  She wants to say, I still love you.

  She wants to press her hand over his heart, too, and make him swear never to leave. Never to fuck up like that again.

  But I’m not her anymore. I’m not sure if I do forgive him.

  I know I love him, but I don’t want him to have those words. I want him to earn them back.

  Convince me, I think, as my blanket falls away. As West’s thigh moves between mine, his belt dragging over my hip, his hands so sure of themselves, so good at gliding down my back to my ass, at grabbing and lifting and positioning me just so.

  “We’re gonna go slower this time,” he says, kissing over my collarbone. “So much slower it might just kill me.”

  “Make sure it’s not so slow that I don’t notice it’s happening.”

  He grins. It’s almost right. Almost West’s smile. But he’s holding something back.

  “Tell me.” I put my fingertip at that worry line between his eyebrows that won’t quite go away.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I like this. I want this. But shouldn’t we be talking?”

  My hands are sneaking up his back, his smooth tan skin, every bit of him familiar but different, broader, stronger, harder. “We are talking,” I say.

  Because we are. What he means is that we’re not following a script.

  Only, there is no script. There are no rules for this.

  I don’t think we’re doing it wrong, because I don’t believe there’s any way to do it wrong or any way to do it right outside of how I feel, how he feels, how we feel between us.

  All the songs are love songs. That’s what I’m learning.

  All the songs are love songs, and this one is ours.

  “Are you happy?” I ask. “Right now, this instant?”

  He kisses the top of my shoulder. My biceps muscle. “You’re naked.”

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “That means fuck yes.”

  “Me, too.”

  He kisses the swell of my breast. Cups them both in his hands and drops his head to my cleavage. His back rises under my palms.

  “Are you smelling my boobs?”

  “I’m smelling you.”

  “That’s a little weird.”

  “Okay.” He roots his nose in there until it touches my breastbone. Kisses that spot. “
I can live with weird.”

  He kisses my ribs, licks down my ribcage, mouths my stomach, smells me at my navel and then between my legs. Looks up with his hands already dug under my ass, his mouth an inch from the stripe of my pubic hair, and says, “You still happy?”

  He sounds like he’s teasing, but I know what he’s asking. All the guidebooks and conventional wisdom in the world say this is where I should snap.

  This is the moment when I should be angry, disgusted, cold with him.

  I should want vengeance.

  I should rain down my vengeance upon him, and the last thing I should ever let him do is what he’s about to do right now.

  But I’m swollen and aching and I need him.

  When I squirm, he smiles and licks a hot line right through the middle of me.

  I’m not sure I believe in vengeance.

  I know I don’t believe in tit-for-tat, this-but-not-that, you-can-until-I-say-you-can’t, I-love-you-until-I-decide-I-don’t.

  With West, I picked deep and then deeper. I picked all the way, hot and cold, good and bad, dark and light.

  I picked West in my bed and West on his fire escape in the snow, chicken-soup West and bakery West, drug dealer West and brawler West, West in Silt and West in Putnam. I picked hand jobs and blow jobs and doggy style and missionary and sloppy oral and morning-breath kisses and nights when we’re too tired and we just hold hands and go to sleep.

  I picked him. Him.

  This is where we are now. Who we are right now. Us.

  I don’t know how I’ll feel in the morning. I’m not pretending it’s all going to be perfect, that it’s perfect now, or even that perfect is a real thing that exists in the world. But tonight, there’s no bullshit between the two of us. There’s just his hand sliding up my thigh. His mouth moving down, his breath on my clit.

  What he wants to do. What I want to let him give me.

  That’s all this is.

  I put my hand over the top of his head, rake my nails over his scalp and give him one hard, firm push.

  “Easy there, tiger,” he says. “We’re taking it slow, remember?”

  This time when he smiles, it’s his real smile. I know, because it hits me down low and deep, makes me shudder, makes me wetter than I already was.