But most of all, it’s Richard.
He is on the ground with a very angry-looking Graham hovering over him.
Graham fists Richard’s shirt and literally makes him stand up by just pulling on it and punches Richard on the face.
He does it so hard that Richard shoots back and almost hits the siding of the cabin. The new siding that Graham installed a few days back.
Graham pins him to that wall with his arm on Richard’s throat, and here I am hysterically thinking that Graham is really handy with all this construction stuff. It’s because over the years when he lived here with his dad, he got really good at repairs.
And now, Graham is pinning Richard to the wall that he repaired. “What the fuck are you saying to her?”
Where did he even come from?
Like one second I was on the verge of losing it and the next, he swooped in to save me.
Richard grabs his elbow, trying to get free. “What the hell… are you doing?”
Graham doesn’t budge, however. In fact, he shoves his elbow harder into Richard’s throat so that he goes up on his tiptoes.
“What did you say to her, huh?”
“I didn’t… say anything.”
“Yeah? Why the fuck were you looking at her? Why the fuck…” He shoves that arm into Richard’s throat again. “Why the fuck does she look so scared?”
“I wasn’t…”
Richard’s voice is getting fainter and fainter and I think his feet have started to flail a bit. I think he’s going to die.
Oh God, Richard is going to die.
Graham is gonna kill him. Graham is gonna kill Richard because I look scared.
Because I’m standing here, clutching my dress, tears streaming down my face, hyperventilating.
Because someone just talked to me.
Someone just tried to have a conversation with me and I freaked out and Graham saw that and now our lives as we know them will be over.
Unfisting my dress, I rush over to Graham. He looks like a breathing mountain from behind, his back so broad that it blocks Richard completely. If not for Richard’s flapping legs, I wouldn’t be able to see him.
I grab Graham’s shirt as soon as I reach the pair. “Graham, stop. Please stop. Let him go.”
It’s like he isn’t even listening to me.
I clutch his arm, the one he’s using to keep Richard pinned, and try to shake it loose. “Graham, please. He didn’t say anything, I swear. Please let him go. Please. Please, honey.”
I don’t know how it slipped out.
Honey.
Like I’m his… what, girlfriend now? His wife or something like that?
I mean, yes, we’ve been living together for weeks. We sleep together, eat together, watch TV together, cook together too – well, he cooks and I bake. He wakes me up in the middle of the night because he wants me, he needs to be inside of me. And sometimes I wake him up because I want his cock in my mouth. I need to taste him and feel the largeness of him on my tongue.
But that doesn’t give me the right to call him honey like it’s the most natural thing for me to say. Most natural and sitting at the tip of my tongue, ready to burst out of me.
Although, it might be.
It might be the most natural thing in the world for us because as soon as I say it, Graham whips his gaze over to me, all wild and bright, so loud with emotions.
Emotions that wrap me up, cover me, blanket me in them.
I become invisible, I think.
Invisible to the world and visible only to him.
“Let him go,” I whisper to him, my honey. “He didn’t do anything.”
He doesn’t.
He still has his arm shoved into Richard’s throat and Richard is still flailing.
“Please.” I fist the sleeve of his shirt and try to dislodge his arm nonetheless, as he sweeps his gaze over me, over my tear-stained face, my disheveled, wrinkled dress and my messy hair.
Probably to check if I am okay.
When he sees that I am, he does. He lets Richard go and steps away from him.
I never thought I’d smile in front of a stranger again but I am. Smiling, I mean. It’s shaky and broken but it’s there, and even though I feel Richard’s eyes on me, the prickling isn’t driving me crazy right now.
Not when I’m looking at Graham and not when he’s looking back at me and we’re connected like this.
It’s not enough of a connection for Graham though because he turns away from Richard – who’s currently coughing and straightening his suit jacket from what I can glean from the corners of my eyes – and stalks toward me.
I start moving back.
What is he doing? Shouldn’t he try to fix this with Richard? Shouldn’t he try to make amends of some kind?
But it looks like Graham doesn’t care.
My sneakers roll and crunch on the gravel, squelch the grass as Graham advances on me with flushed cheekbones and needy eyes.