I sighed and looked around our lovely house. I was done. Everything that I could do on my own was done. I just needed furniture. UGH. If Blake promised to take me one more time, I was going to scream. I sat on the bottom step and looked at my cellphone. No new messages, but I did have a Facebook notification, I smiled and opened it up. It was a selfie of Blake in front of the new stage. The floor gleamed as bright as his bright white smile. The caption said he was on his way and he loved me. I looked at the time of the message posted forty minutes ago, and pulled the tie from my hair. He should have been there by now, I thought. I shook my hair loose and leaned back on one elbow.
Sliding my fingers over the last few posts that I’d already looked at, I decided to be a little friskier than normal. I unbuttoned the top button of my shirt and smiled at the camera. That wasn’t enough cleavage. I unbuttoned a couple more and pushed my breasts up and in, trying to create an erotic selfie with sexy cleavage. Unfortunately size B boobs didn’t really get that luxury. I pushed my arms to the center of my chest and smiled seductively at the camera. ‘Hurry up’ was going to be the caption. That would get him there quicker.
“I’m glad I wasn’t driving,” Blake announced from the door. His weight was shifted to the door jam and his arms were crossed. My face instantly went to red and the smirk he wore assured me that he’d been there plenty long. Great.
“You ass!” I yelled, buttoning my shirt.
Blake laughed and walked to me. Letting him take my hand, I stood and fell into his arms. Why was it so easy to fall into his arms? I let his warm lips ease the crimson in my cheeks. “You have a notification,” I said, speaking the words to his lips. He smiled and looked at my failed attempt to be sexy for him.
“I love it. I think maybe we should initiate the steps. What do you say?”
“I say no. Let’ go. I’m mad at you, you told me eight o’clock. Pea’s going to be asleep.”
“Then there’s no hurry, right?” Blake coaxed, kissing my neck and trying to make me sit on the steps. I sat, but only to get away from him, I ducked around him first chance.
“Take me furniture shopping, I’m tired of this, I want to be in here already. Don’t you want to get settled? I’m done; I can’t do anything else without furniture.”
“We’ll go Monday.”
“Monday? What happened to tomorrow? We could be sleeping here by Monday.”
“I can’t. I have the acoustics guys working all weekend. If we stay on track like this, we’ll be open for business by the first of the year.”
“Great. Let’s go. I’m tired and hungry. Did you eat?”
“Babe, I promise we’ll go Monday. I don’t know why you need me for that anyway, I want you to make this your house. Buy what you want, fill it with what you want, I don’t care.”
Blake locked up and I crossed my arms. “It’s cool out here. Perfect night to relax in our hot tub and have a glass of wine, don’t you think?”
“Why won’t you go without me? My mom and Grace would love to do that with you. You can go with them tomorrow.” Blake took my hand and I followed him to his mom’s car. “I love you.”
I smiled when his lips met mine. “I love you too, but I might love you a little more if we had a house.” Blake slid the belt over me and snapped it into place.
“You have a house. We’ll be in it before you know it.” I sighed an exasperated breath and watched him walk around the front of the car. He didn’t understand.
“Do you promise to go with me Monday?” I asked, not letting it go. I wanted his word.
“Um. No.”
My hand left his and I crossed my arms over my chest in a pout.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Makayla; I already know the lighting crew is scheduled. I need to be there.”
“Fine, whatever.”
“Don’t be like that. Once we get all of this stuff done, we’ll be home free.”
“No we won’t. You spend all your time there working, just like you did for Zazen Resorts. You’ll never be home. This isn’t what I had in mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Forget it. Will you go find a Wendy’s?”
“I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
“Then stop being an idiot, Pea’s going to turn five and she doesn’t even have a house!”
“She has a house, and you’re being too dramatic. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
“I’m not going to argue about it. We’ll get a house whenever you find the time, I guess.”
“Makayla—”
“What? I hate the theater already, you’re never going to be home with us.”
“I will, love, I promise. I want to be home, I do, just let me get the theater done and then I am all yours. I promise.”
I shook my head in the dark, rolled my eyes, and sighed quietly. I didn’t want to pick out furniture with Sarah and Grace; I wanted to pick it out with Blake. I wasn’t going to lounge around on the sofa with Sarah and Grace. I wanted Blake and I didn’t care if I was being an immature baby, I wanted what I wanted and that was that. Plain and simple.
I didn’t care that Pea was sleeping. I went right to her room and took Zelda’s spot. Her hair was still damp from her bath and she smelled like Pea.
“I thought you was coming before I took a bath,” she complained.
“It’s your daddy’s fault, he wouldn’t leave the theater,” I added, throwing him right under the bus. It was his fault and I didn’t have a way to get there without him.
“Well howscome you don’t drive by yourself?” Pea questioned in a yawn.
“Howscome? What is that?”
“My words are too sleepy.” I lifted her frozen pajama shirt and blew a raspberry on her belly.
“You’re pretty smart. Why didn’t I think of that?” That was something I should do. Thinking about it, I made that the first step. I had to start taking action for when I left; a car that I could drive in my own name was going to be needed. “Go to sleep. I’m all finished at our house until your dad takes us shopping. We’ll do something fun tomorrow.”
“Bible?”
“Yes, five of them. I love you, little girl,” I confessed, kissing her belly, her head, and her cheeks.
“Night, I love you too, but Zelda doesn’t. You woke her up.”
Pea rolled to her side and placed her hands below her cheeks. I moved the too big for the bed lion back to its rightful place, next to her four cubs and kissed Pea one more time. Her arm went over the lion’s neck and her eyes closed.
Blake was just getting out of the shower when I joined him. He helped me out of my clothes, but that was it, I made him leave. I wanted a quick shower and an antacid, the Wendy’s chili was killing my stomach, I should have known not to eat it that late at night. I was never going to be able to lay down. However a little bit of heartburn wouldn’t keep me from getting naked with him in bed.
Letting the hot water rain down on my body, I let the stress run down the drain, or tried to anyway. What if I did get a car? Then what? What next? Where would I go? Would I leave Nashville? The thought of leaving Pea hurt my heart. Questions dove in and out of my mind and I knew I had to start figuring this out. Deciding it wasn’t going to be that night, I stopped thinking about it. I was too tired to think that deep.
Grace was eating pie and reading a book while Blake was sprawled out on the sofa watching the news, or I thought anyway. A closer look told me he was sleeping.
“Hey, want some pie?”
“No, but I would take a Tums or a Rolaids. I should have waited and ate your hotdogs, that chili is killing me,” I complained, holding my hand over my chest. “Whatcha reading?” That might be what I needed, a good book to take my mind off of everything.
“There’s some on the second shelf above the spice rack. I’m not sure what it is, I just started it,” she flipped the book over to show me the cover, “Jettie Woodruff, The Truth About Mack. It’s pretty good. This chick is crazy.”
> “What do you mean?” I questioned heading for the bottle of relief.
“You’ve got to read it. She’s just nuts.”
“I have enough crazy in my life,” I admitted, sliding to the end of the sofa. Blake lifted his feet, barely opening his eyes and rested them on my lap. “Are you watching this?” I asked Grace before changing the channel.
“No, Blake was. I hate the news, remember?”
I hated the news, and I hated when Blake watched the news. Nothing good ever came from the news, and all they did was hype it up for ratings.
“Good, the Big Bang Theory is on. I need to laugh.”
“Why, what’s up? Do you want to talk?”
“No, it’s nothing like that; I’m just getting anxious with the new house and all. I want furniture.”
“Let’s go. We’ll make a girls day out of it, I’ll call Sarah in the morning. I know this new place just outside of Madison.”
“That sounds like a lot of fun, but I really want to do it with Blake and Pea, if that’s okay.” I almost felt bad for bursting her excitement.
“Yes, I totally get it. I love it,” Grace beamed with joy and I felt bad again. She was happy for Blake. I already had this talk with her, I knew how she felt and Grace knew that her son was living again. She told me how she stopped coming to visit him and even Pea, because of what he had turned into. Blake was entirely different than he was the day I crashed into him on the street. He was no longer going through the motions, he was living again and I was going to take it away. “I’m going to bed, do yourself a favor, get this book,” Grace added leaving me to my comedy and my thoughts. I smiled over at Blake as he slept. I shouldn’t have given him such a hard time, I knew he was just excited about the theater.
I grinned when I looked up to Sheldon beating on Penny’s door. My fingers danced on the arm of the sofa, my lips twitched to the side, and my eyes shifted to Blake. Even with the laughter of the sitcom, the room felt deathly quiet. Sucking my bottom lip in, I eyed the pen next to the notebook right in front of me. My head tilted to the side and I tried to focus on what Pea had been trying to draw on the paper. I’m going with a giraffe and four babies. Wait. No. It was a lion. Zelda and her cubs, I was sure. I leaned up and grabbed the pen; turning to see if Blake had moved. He didn’t even stir. He was exhausted.
One straight line ran from down the inside of my arm. I don’t know what was different; why I did that. It was always a feather first. Always. My mind didn’t drift to my decaying, dying mother, not once. It went to my young, vibrant mother. I saw the two of us giggling in front of a piano, she turned and smiled at me and I smiled back. Only it wasn’t me, it was Janie. My mom loved her like I love Pea. Why it only dawned on me at that moment is the mystery of my pen to arm designs. Sarah told me that my mom saved her family; I was sure without one doubt that my mother caused the awakening in the Holden’s. I really believe that had she not come into their lives for a few short weeks, Janie would have continued to be raised by nannies.
“Jesus, Makayla, that’s freaking amazing,” Blake quietly spoke.
My eyes shifted to his and back to the magnificent creation on my arm; an emotional pine tree swayed to the right. The detail was ridiculous; like the tree was posing. A shaded cascade from the moon forced a majestic shadow over the right side. With black being the only color, it looked dark and mysterious.
“You fell asleep on me,” I smiled, covering my arm with my hand, embarrassed.
“I’ve been watching you for a long time. What were you thinking about?” Blake asked, reaching for my hand. I took his hand, and he pulled. I had to awkwardly move his feet to get to him, my body landed half on, half off of his. I placed my leg over his waist to keep from falling off. “Tell me.”
“I wasn’t really thinking about anything.”
“Your mom?”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t sad. I was thinking about before she got sick. When she was just plain old nurse Vikki, young and full of life Vikki, who had a lifelong love affair with a piano. I was thinking about her teaching Janie how to play. Do you think Janie would have played piano without my mom?”
Blake lifted my right arm and stared at the dramatic pine, “I don’t know. I mean, I think she would have loved it no matter who introduced her to it, that’s how passionate she was about it.”
“My mom was like that too. She was the piano whisperer. We could be walking through the mall and she would stop on a dime if she heard it. Christmas was the worst.”
“Elevators; I hated elevators. Janie would make us ride it out, they were all her favorite songs. There was a tourist trap over on Maple that we used to go to, they had the best warm brownies ever. They played music from famous pianists from all over. I went for the Brownies, Janie was only going to eat half of hers and give the rest to me. She just liked the atmosphere.”
“Do you want to have a quickie?” I blurted. Blake wasn’t very conspicuous; the growing member below my leg was very noticeable. I barely had to touch the man and he was ready, he barely had to touch me and I was just as ready. Blake’s body stiffened briefly, and then I was on my back; Blake towering over me.
“Not here.”
“Shhh, everyone’s asleep.”
“Blake, stop, I’m not doing this on your mom’s sofa.”
“Okay, just lay there so I can.”
My hips twisted unsuccessfully while he fumbled with his shorts and slid my panties to the side. I knew if I didn’t control the situation before he touched me I wasn’t—
Shit.
Aahh—
“I hate you,” I rasped, relaxing into him. My legs fell to the side and my hands went up his shirt to rest on his flexing back.
“I love you.”
“I love the way your body talks to me when you do this.”
“My body talks to you?”
“Yes, tell me any other time you’re using these muscles, with these muscles,” I seductively asked, nibbling on his ear while my hands slid up his arms, to his shoulders, “and these muscles,” I whispered the hot words to his throat, “to these?” I continued, sliding my hands down to grasp his defining ass. With each thrust, every muscle in his body was talking to me.
“Makayla?”
“Hmmm?
“You’re a body whisperer.”
I laughed, “I am. I’m right too.”
“You are right. Everything in my body is talking to you; telling you how much I love you, how unquestionably happy I am that you ran into me, and how much I love being inside of you.”
I moved my lips toward his, “I need for you to kiss me.”
“Why?” he questioned, his breath hot on my mouth.
“I don’t think I can be quiet.”
“Are you going to come?”
“Most definitely,” I confessed. My hands grasped a handful of hair on the back of his neck and I tugged his lips toward mine. The last three thrusts did me in. Blake moved in a little deeper and stayed a little longer.
“Fuck, baby,” he moaned, releasing my lips. I bit into his shoulder and tightened the grip I had in his hair. The quivering started in my stomach and made its way to my aching core, contracting and mixed with Blake’s pleasure. We both froze when we heard and saw the light from the refrigerator. Was it Pea or Grace? Please let it be Pea, she was easier to distract, Grace wouldn’t buy the lie about wrestling or playing horsey.
“What are you doing daddy?”
“Um… We were just doing our taxes. Did you get a drink?” Blake asked. He was pretty smooth about it. His shorts were back in place and he was up, guiding her back to bed. I ran to the bathroom and to our bed. I was going to kill him with torture; slow and painful.
“Phew, that was close,” Blake said, joining me in bed.
“I tried to tell you that was a bad idea, but you never listen to me. Taxes? She doesn’t even know what that means!”
“That’s the first thing that came to mind. It worked, didn’t it?”
“No. No it didn’
t work. Pea’s a smart girl, she’s going to use that against you when you least expect it. If she was even half awake she won’t forget it.”
“You worry too much. Come here.” I yawned and rolled over. I’d be mad at him when I woke up. “I’m not sleepy now. Do you want some ice-cream?”
“No, and you don’t either.”
“Can I turn the TV on?”
“No, tell me more about Janie.”
“Really? I’ve told you everything there is to tell. You know everything about her.”
“No I don’t, and I like hearing the stories, like the things you did. I feel like I know her when you talk about her like that, rather than just ‘Janie died of cancer’.” I felt Blake’s body go rigid and his moving fingers on my back stop. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that. I just meant that she was more than just the Janie I pictured before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like my mom. When I thought about Janie, I thought about her being gray, flat chested, and skin and bones. Sick; like my mom. You make me know another Janie. I like it. That’s the Janie I want Pea to know.”
“She was like your mom, she was sick.”
“But I don’t want to hear that stuff; tell me something else. Was it always you and Janie? Like you never broke up?”
“Oh we did. We broke up in high school our senior year.”
“Tell me about it,” I requested, snuggling in a little tighter. If I died tomorrow, I would have died a happy girl. I was so in love with Blake Coast that I couldn’t see anything else. I didn’t want to.
***
“What’s wrong?” I asked Janie, sliding beside her on the piano bench.
“Do you like some girl named Ashton?”
“What?”
“Farrah saw you.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I haven’t seen Farrah.”
“Exactly my point, she saw you. Why didn’t you tell me you were going out last night? I thought you were studying.”
“Janie, it wasn’t like that. I was studying. Matt and Jerome stopped by and asked me to go to Spikes. We ate a pizza and shared a pitcher of Pepsi. That’s it.”