eep when I woke up. His face was badly scored with long nail marks and his eye looked bruised. It was early, 5:20 am. I was tangled up with him, legs, arms, it was odd. For some reason, we were both on the opposite end of the bed, heads down at the footboard and I was on the side he usually slept on. I rolled away, went to the washroom, put his bathrobe on and went downstairs. Sarah wasn’t up yet. I looked out the stained glass window panes that flanked the front door on both sides and saw a guy out there, sitting by the gate with a tall Starbucks cup in his hand, doing something on his phone. I also saw another guy out back when I looked out the kitchen window.
I filled the single cup brewer with water, made a coffee the way I liked it, and then explored some of the rooms whose doors were open on the main floor. An office with a big cherry wood desk, bookshelves, billiards table, and a good-sized conference table with around a dozen chairs, a dining room with a table for 12, humungous family room with big couches, a fireplace, the biggest TV I’d ever seen, a laundry room with 2 stacked sets of metallic blue washing machines, big pantry that was stocked, two bathrooms, and then a long hallway with a few closed doors. I had a feeling one was Sarah’s room so I didn’t open any of them. At the end of that hallway I spotted the basement stairs. I decided to go down and see if I could find my belongings so I wouldn’t have to keep wearing Sarah’s clothes. She’d given me a new bra and washed mine and gave me new underwear with the stack of borrowed clothes but I was running low on those, too.
Tommy
When my eyes opened I could smell her. I smelled her on the pillow beside me but she wasn’t there. After I’d gotten in bed and she curled into me I further experimented. I woke up sometime in the night and got up to use the john and when I got back in I climbed in at the bottom. She rolled down and curled into me down there, too. I’d wrapped my arms around her and held her tight to me and she burrowed in, letting out a little moan that gave me goose bumps and got me hard. I didn’t act on it, though, despite wanting to.
Now I was awake, it was bright, and she wasn’t here. I frowned and got out of bed, pulled on a pair of track pants, went to the bathroom, then headed down to the kitchen. It was 7:45 and Sarah was frying something on the stove, something that didn’t smell like breakfast.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’m making some freezer meals,” she said without looking up. Then she did look up and looked at me with shock.
“What?”
“Your face! It looks worse than last night.” I felt the tenderness on my eye and lip and knew Tia’d given me a doozy of a shiner. I grabbed a silver pan off the counter and turned it over and caught my reflection on the back and sure enough, it looked worse. In addition to a black eye and a slightly fat lip I had nail marks streaked down my cheek, too. Great. We were expected at Pop’s for dinner today. Sarah’s face changed and I didn’t need to be a mind-reader to know she was thinking I deserved it.
“Where is she?” I asked, leaning out to see by the pool.
Sarah shook her head blankly, “She’s not up yet.”
“She’s what?” The look on my face made her blanch.
I practically flew to the front door and hollered for Marco and Nino and we soon figured out they hadn’t seen her. My blood was about to boil, “Where the fuck is she?”
Tia
In the basement I found a huge man-cave room with another pool table, ping pong table, two old school arcade games, foosball, a pinball game, home theatre with a sectional and those cool recliners with the cup holders and speakers in them, big poker table with the green felt, and a long fully-stocked bar, as well as a home gym with every piece of workout equipment I’d ever heard of plus a sauna and bathroom. There was also a big storage room lined with shelves. The storage room was empty except for my few boxes and garbage bags of clothes right inside the doorway. I opened the boxes and started going down memory lane.
Report cards, post cards, boxes of clothes, books, CDs. I have a photo album that belonged to my mom. I felt an overwhelming surge of emotion for my Mom. I didn’t know who some of the people in the photos were. I sat down and flipped through the book and in the back there were a few loose photos that I’d seen before. I looked through them and one was a photo of my mother when she was younger, and a young guy, both dressed up and they were holding hands. His face looked familiar. I turned it over and saw Carlita + Tom Ferrano. There was a heart drawn in red pen under the ink as well as dotting the i in Mom’s name. Tommy’s father. What on earth? Is that why he seemed familiar? Because I’ve seen this picture and his name on it over the years? It felt like something else was familiar, beyond the picture about him. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I heard someone coming down the stairs. A man, maybe in his early to mid-30’s, rushed into the room, the man from the driveway this morning. He was a giant, had to be almost 7 feet tall, had a reddish goatee, he had a shaved head, had tattooed hands, and pretty much looked like a badass biker but was dressed in a suit. His facial expression was filled with relief. He leaned on the door frame, as if catching his breath, pulled out his phone and dialed, then said, “She’s in the basement! Storage room. Yeah.”
I was sitting on the floor cross-legged in Tommy’s shirt and Tommy’s robe with papers around me and piles of folded clothing and after what felt like a too-long awkward moment with the giant biker guy, Tommy was behind him with eyes were crazy scary. Tommy was dressed in just a pair of track pants that sat low on his hips and nothing else.
“Okay,” Tommy said and the guy left.
I felt the overwhelming urge to turtle, to totally cower and that’s not me. He’s got me turned into a nervous wreck. I was sure I was staring at him like a timid rabbit. I felt my chin start quivering. The anger seemed to drain from Tommy’s beat-up looking face (Fuck, I did that! Me!) and then he fell to his knees in front of me and let out a deep breath, looking me right in the eyes with tenderness. Tenderness? Was I reading that right? I felt my face crinkle, confused. He grabbed me and pulled me against him. His heart hammered against me. I stiffened.
“I thought you were gone,” he said softly into my ear and squeezed tighter. I didn’t know how to respond.
“I’m sorry about yesterday, baby.” he said into my ear so low it was barely audible. Then he leaned back and his hand curled around the back of my neck. He looked at my face and his eyes travelled from my eyes to my mouth and then my eyes again. Then his mouth was on mine and he was kissing me like he’d kissed me at the beach. I didn’t want to respond. He didn’t deserve having me respond after all he’d done so far. But for some reason, I did.
His tongue darted deep into my mouth and his other hand was on my rear and I could feel he was hard. He was hard whenever he was against me. He gently took me down so my back was on the floor and his hand travelled underneath the bathrobe, underneath the shirt of his I was wearing, and he was rubbing a nipple with one hand, the other hand travelled up my body from my hip to my shoulder and then rested to cup my head. I looked up at him and chewed my lower lip. He didn’t have anger on his face at all. He was looking at me with some other expression; I didn’t know what it was.
Then he was grinding into me and kissing me, running his hands through my hair. I wanted to be afraid but I was so relieved that he wasn’t freaking out that I just let him. It made no sense in the world but I was letting him. He had that silver cross necklace on again and the cross was dangling over me, touching my throat.
Right now he wasn’t the criminal, he was the guy on the date, and I kissed him back. His fingers were inside of me and rubbing me and before my actions registered in my brain I rubbed both of my palms up and down his arms to his shoulders and then one of my hands reached down into his track pants and I wrapped my hand around his cock and squeezed.
He moaned into my mouth and said, “Let’s take this upstairs.” I let go of him and he helped me to my feet and walked, holding my hand, out of the storage room, up the stairs, through the hall, past the kitchen, and back up the stairs to th
e master bedroom. The whole way, I was staring at the muscular detail of his naked back, feeling so turned on. So inexplicably turned on.
Once the bedroom door was shut, he lifted me up gently under my arms and I wrapped my legs around his waist. He kissed my throat while walking the few paces to the bed and then put me down on it and climbed on top of me, kissing me so passionately I was melting. Before I knew it I was out of his robe, out of his shirt and my panties, and he was deep inside me, making love to me. Yes, making love to me.
His lips trailed up and down my neck and shoulders, his hands up and down my body, and he was pumping into me slowly, looking at me like he was savoring it, repeatedly gazing with a smoldering look into my eyes. It was beautiful. It was probably what making love was supposed to be like. I’d fucked before but this was my first time being made love to.
But when the making love thought occurred to me, suddenly I felt like something inside of me was dying. Something inside me was crumbling because he was fucking with my head and because I knew this wasn’t the only side of him. This was just one half of who he was. I think he knew I was dying inside, too, because I started to cry and his thumb stroked my lower lip, then he kissed the tear away and hugged me tight, being even slower, even gentler, and he whispered, “Tia, baby, please. Please.” I didn’t know what he was pleading with me for exactly, but it felt like he wanted me to just forget everything else except for what was happening right now. Could I? Could I let this happen, let this beautiful fucked up man have me without any tears? I guess I couldn’t.