Whiskey at Midnight, page 20
“Just have fun,” Emma says and cringes. But Cam doesn’t get the reference and Emma is safe.
Neither of them want to watch TV, citing how depressing it would be to sit in a random motel and watch crappy programming. Emma’s forgotten to pack a book and neither of them had the forethought to bring along any beer. Cam switches so that her left arm is covering her eyes and brings her right one down toward the mattress, next to Emma’s thigh. When Cam’s hand moves the few centimeters to touch Emma’s thigh, Emma mentally pats herself on the back for shaving the night before.
Cam’s not so scared to touch Emma anymore. Emma’s thought months ago that Cam was a tease turns out to be more true than she originally thought. Cam likes to run her hands up and down Emma’s body, never quite touching where Emma wants her to until Emma doesn’t think she can take it anymore. Cam’s touches are light. When she grazes Emma’s inner thigh with her teeth, Emma can’t stop her hips from bucking.
When they make love, Emma feels like she might be going crazy. Sometimes she thinks she feels lips on hers, hard and demanding, but they’re not there and Cam would never kiss her like that. Or Cam’s fingers are inside her and she can’t quite feel them because she’s used to fingers that are so rough they refuse to be ignored. She still gets wet and climaxes, but it’s different and Emma doesn’t understand it all.
“Where are you?” Cam asks, her face above Emma’s. She holds herself up with one hand and keeps the other under Emma’s shirt.
“Here,” Emma says and sits up to take her shirt off. Cam always looks at Emma’s breasts when Emma takes her shirt off. Sometimes there is wanting in the look, sometimes she blushes. Emma loves it all. Just like Emma loves watching Cam’s arms flex when she’s holding herself above Emma.
Cam pulls her own shirt off and tugs at Emma’s shorts until Emma lifts her hips up to help. Cam touches her again, her hands cup Emma’s breasts, and the phantom fingers are back. They pull on the nipple that Cam isn’t touching and teeth bite into Emma’s shoulder so hard Emma has to close her eyes. Emma moans and she can feel Cam smile against her neck. Emma’s panties are soaked and it’s like breathing for the first time when Cam finally pulls them off of her.
Cam always places a kiss on Emma’s inner thighs before she goes down on her. First the left thigh, then the right. Cam keeps her eyes closed while she does it, just like she keeps her eyes closed when Emma returns the favor. Emma’s never thought much about it, but is thankful for it now. With Cam’s eyes closed and her mouth pleasuring Emma, Emma is free to tug at her own nipples and bite her lip until she tastes blood. She imagines that it’s someone else biting her bottom lip, though she’s not sure who it is. She only knows that there is someone out there who is doing things to her that she hasn’t felt in what feels like forever. It’s the best orgasm she’s had with Cam.
The lips that kiss her after, when she has her eyes closed and her body is still recovering, are soft and dry. Cam always wipes her mouth before kissing Emma. Cam holds her until Emma’s eyes open again. She kisses Emma’s shoulder.
“I do love being with you,” Cam says. “I’m sorry it took me so long to see it.”
They are the words Emma has waited for years to hear, years of pain and being put to the side. Years of watching Cam with other people. And maybe things aren’t perfect. Maybe it’s not supposed to be. Maybe Emma’s had it wrong all along and this is as good as it gets. That’s good enough for her, if so.
Emma rolls over onto Cam and kisses her. Not the soft kind of kiss that Cam prefers, but a passionate one. Cam goes rigid for a moment, trying to comprehend the kiss, but then she kisses Emma back.
“Thank you,” Emma says against Cam’s lips.
Chapter Eight
Shots and then more shots. At some point, Steve gets Wren home. He has to carry her to her bedroom and leaves the bathroom trash can next to her bed. He forgets to set a glass of water next to the bed. When Wren wakes up in the morning, the sun is too bright and her head is pounding. Steve’s sent a few text messages to check up on her, but she ignores them.
It’s supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be like all the other times. Things get stale and Wren leaves. But even with a raging headache and a dry mouth, Wren can’t kid herself. She’s lost herself along the way, an unforgivable thing. The worst part is that it’s not over, not by a long shot. It’ll never be over.
There are two classes to get to, but Wren doesn’t go. One is a psychology class, the other a religion class that she doesn’t pay attention in. She’s been attending most of her classes for the semester. Skipping doesn’t even feel good, just inevitable. Instead she walks to the store and buys a carton of cigarettes and two bottles of liquor, one whiskey and one vodka. At the last second, she stops at the supermarket on her way home and gets two bottles of white wine.
She skips class the next day too. She drinks and smokes, showers when everything is blurry. It takes her half a minute to be able to grab the shampoo bottle without it falling to the floor.
The only time Wren leaves her apartment is to go to work or to buy more alcohol and cigarettes. Steve picks her up outside her apartment when it’s time for work. It’s not arranged, not that Wren can remember, but he waits until she tumbles out and gives her gum in the car.
Wren’s had practice with hiding her drinking. Years of high school that she got home in the early morning, sucking on breath mints and forcing herself to walk as normally as possible. No one notices anything at work. She’s always been so quiet anyway that her refusal to join in gossip is normal.
“You know you can’t do this forever,” Steve says one night when he’s driving her back home. But it’s only been a few days and he drops the subject when Wren ignores him.
He calls her cell over and over the night of karaoke, until she can’t stand the sound of her phone ringing and she answers it rather than turning the volume off. She’s had four glasses of wine and an entire pack of cigarettes. She answers, a grumpy greeting spewing from her mouth. Steve laughs.
“It’s karaoke night,” he says.
“And?”
“And you can’t hide without people thinking something is up.”
If Wren had been thinking clearly, she’d have already thought the same thing. But she’s not. Her thoughts are mostly incoherent with moments of memories intermixed. An afternoon with Emma in the shower. The time Emma looked at her like she was crazy for liking wax on her skin. The stupid sushi date that means nothing now. Every time it happens, Wren drinks more, hoping to forget.
“Okay,” Wren says. “Let me get dressed.”
Victoria isn’t with Steve when he arrives. He’s cleaned the inside of his car. Gone are all of the fast food bags and plastic cups. Wren doesn’t even have her seat belt on before Steve is asking for a cigarette. It’s a good thing she has two packs for the night.
Steve offers to sing a song as they pull into a parking spot. “Whatever song you want,” he says. Steve doesn’t have a good singing voice. He doesn’t even have a decent singing voice. He’s the guy who can clear a room, everyone with frowns on their faces and hands covering their ears.
“No,” Wren says. “I’d rather keep my ear drums intact.”
Steve laughs and tosses his cigarette butt out the window. “Good to hear you talking normally. You ready?”
For a moment, Wren lets herself feel weak, shows a fraction of what she’s feeling on the outside. She looks to the front door of the bar, anxiety written on her face. But then the barrier is up again, her jaw set and her eyes looking as bored as ever. “Ready.”
It’s not so bad, after all. The crooners are out in full force, all attempting to be the next Sinatra, and Steve is particularly amusing as he dances along to the music. Reese and Taylor keep Wren going with a full drink at all times. It’s a whiskey night, of course, with random shots that Reese makes in between. Taylor even gets in on it, setting down shots that are varying colors, asking Wren which ones are better.
Emma stands firmly next to Cam all night. Her wounded eyes meet Wren’s every so often and it takes everything in Wren not to turn away. She won’t give Emma that kind of satisfaction. Though Emma looks anything but satisfied most of the night. Cam’s eyes are full of warning when she looks at Wren. Of course. Because Wren is the cold-hearted bitch who hurt little Emma’s feelings. Wren rolls her eyes.
Steve spends most of his time texting with a stupid grin on his face. He never looks up to Wren while they smoke outside, his eyes glued to the tiny screen. He might have had good intentions when telling Victoria that it would be better if she didn’t come out, friendship emergency he probably called it, but it’s so stupid that he should have just brought her along anyway. Wren sighs and smokes another cigarette. It’s not like Steve will notice.
“You know what you need,” Steve says abruptly. “A lap dance.”
“That’s stupid,” Wren says dismissively.
Inside, Steve forces Wren to dance with him, tells her that it’ll make her feel better.
“It probably won’t,” she says.
“Well, it’ll at least make things seem normal,” he counters. Normalcy is all Steve cares about. It’d be more frustrating if his version of normal was a white picket fence and two and a half kids. Instead he wants things to seem like they’ve always been. Wren not really giving a fuck about anything and him being able to crack a joke here and there.
Wren doesn’t know when Cam and Emma leave, or if they even leave before she and Steve do. He is shielding her, mostly, when they’re inside. Talking so much that she’s forced to watch his lips to follow the one-sided conversation. Or else she’s sitting at the bar and Reese is describing her perfect home: a little cottage in the middle of some woods. Fairy tale thinking, Wren calls it.
A few weeks later, she has a few days off and sobers up enough to drive to work and request a week off. She shouldn’t get it. They hardly ever let someone have that much time off unless it’s for something big. Steve sends her a text message saying that she got it all off, which means he’s probably agreed to work a few of what should be her shifts. It’s the last sober thought she has that day before it’s all sips of wine and glass after glass of vodka. At some point she adds some beer cans to the mix. Since she doesn’t pay attention to days, she showers when she thinks of it, which turns into three showers a day.
Her bedroom becomes so littered with dirty clothes that have barely been worn that Wren moves into the living room. She sleeps for a few minutes at a time on the couch and gives up on wearing more than her underwear and a shirt. With how quickly she’s going through the alcohol, she ends up buying two hundred dollars worth of beer and wine and one more bottle of vodka, a big stockpile that she hopes will last awhile. The ashtray starts to overflow onto the coffee table. Wren doesn’t do anything about it, lets more butts fall out.
Somewhere in the mess on the floor, Wren loses her phone. It’s just as well. In a moment of weakness one night she almost sends a message to Emma. If she’d managed to send it, it would have been random letters that made no sense. It would have been embarrassing. Besides, Wren kind of likes being unavailable, completely secluded from the world. There’s no one else in Wren’s little world. No one else matters. Just Wren. Even her thoughts don’t bother her anymore. They’re like a friend whispering comforting words in her ear.
Wren sleeps most of an afternoon and wakes up hopelessly sober. She reaches for the wine bottle closest to her, picks it up and then puts it down without drinking from it. She struggles to her feet and stretches. Her stomach grumbles. Nothing sounds appetizing, but she can’t remember the last time she ate. It might have been a day ago, maybe longer. It’s one of the few problems in her life she can easily fix, so she makes a sandwich.
The shower is a mess. Body wash and shampoo bottles have fallen onto the floor, her loofah hangs from the shower head. A dirty towel is still on the floor. Just seeing it all, the way her makeup has been sitting unused on the bathroom counter, makes Wren want to prove something. She can’t go on living as a recluse. She’ll have to enter the world of the living at some point and the victory of going out to karaoke has faded from her mind.
She showers for the first time since all the badness happened without dropping anything. The water is hot enough to feel like it’s burning her skin, but she doesn’t adjust it. After, she puts on her makeup with a shaking hand. It’s enough. She’s been inside so long or out while warm from the alcohol that she doesn’t know the temperature anymore. It’s a small hurdle, easy to ignore. She slips a long black shirt on that could almost be a dress and puts on some leggings that have holes down the sides. Her bracelets go back onto her wrists and she takes her time lacing up her boots. The jacket she grabs is almost an afterthought. She looks something like herself in the mirror.
Her wallet, keys and cigarettes all fit into the pockets of her jacket. She doesn’t bother to get her phone. It’s probably dead anyway. The only thing left is to figure out where to go. The usual bar is out of the question. Even if Emma isn’t there, it’s just too soon. Karaoke has been hard enough. There are too many memories of a girl with blonde hair and innocence that you can practically smell at the bar.
That’s how Wren ends up wandering around downtown. She’s taken so long to get ready that it’s already growing dark. She smokes as she walks. The restaurants that she passes with patios look dead from the outside. Few people want to sit in the cooler temperatures. It doesn’t bother Wren. The breeze feels good on her face.
She almost turns around to go back home. The numerous college dive bars will hold nothing interesting for her, so she doesn’t think to try them. One bar that she passes advertises karaoke and she doesn’t give it a second look. Then she starts to pass a small unassuming building that has a sign out front that catches her attention. It’s called Victor’s and she’s never heard of it. The open front door only shows a set of stairs. A basement bar with a sign that has chains on it. She puts out her cigarette and begins to descend down the stairs.
It’s small, much smaller than Reese and Taylor’s place. There are a few stools scattered around, but most are seated against the walls. Five tiny circular tables are arranged near the walls, but most of the people there ignore them, spending their time standing around, sipping their drinks. The beers are all bottled and liquor drinks come in little plastic cups.
The bartender is a young man who wears a black mesh tanktop and has bleached blonde hair. The music that plays is full of synthesizers and the voice singing is deep and monotonous. The people there are all ages, from men with long white beards to people who look Wren’s age.
Wren walks through the crowd once she’s gotten a drink from the bartender. She won’t drink a lot, doesn’t need to after all she’s had lately, and mostly she wants to stay sober because she’s in a new place.
That’s when she sees a face that she recognizes. Standing against one of the walls, right next to a poster advertising a band that will play at Victor’s next week, is a girl with black hair and curves, full lips and a tattooed arm on display. The girl who danced with Emma that one night. Wren smirks and heads over.
“Hey,” Wren says when she’s reached the girl’s side. She looks a few years older than Wren, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five.
The girl looks Wren up and down before recognition sets in. “Hey yourself. I danced with your girl awhile back, didn’t I?”
Wren swears to herself that she doesn’t take a sip of her drink because the girl mentions Emma. It’s just because she’s thirsty. “She’s not my girl,” Wren says.
“Could have fooled me.”
“She’s not my girl.”
The song changes then. It’s a little faster but the voice is still the same deep, morose one. A few people nearby sway to it.
“I’m Wren,” she says and holds out her hand.
The girl moves her drink to her left hand and shakes Wren’s. Her hand is cold and damp but firm. “Kate,” she says.
Kate doesn’t smoke, but follows Wren back upstairs after a few minutes. The bar has become stuffy from so many bodies and the breeze feels amazing against Wren’s face. It’s good to have something to focus on, because neither woman is good at keeping up a conversation. They lapse into silence every few sentences, flirty little sentences that mean nothing to either of them.
Wren’s halfway through her cigarette when Kate leans in and kisses her. She barely registers the kiss before Kate is biting her lower lip, much harder than Wren expects. Kate’s hand pushes up Wren’s jacket and grabs onto Wren’s side, right by her ribs. Kate pulls away abruptly and they both smile.
“You want to come to my place?” Wren asks, tossing the half-finished cigarette onto the cracked sidewalk. For once, Wren is glad she paid when she got her drink because there’s no way she wants to go back inside.
“Okay,” Kate says.
Kate is unlike anyone Wren has ever brought home. She doesn’t accept Wren’s offer for a drink and kisses Wren before Wren can pour a drink for herself. She doesn’t blink at the mess that is Wren’s apartment, as if she’s used to trashed homes.
There’s no need for anymore hospitality, what with Kate not wanting a drink, so Wren walks backward toward her bedroom, one hand pulling Kate along. It’s a miracle that Wren doesn’t trip and fall with all of the random belongings on the floor. A tiny voice in the back of Wren’s mind tells her to be careful.
“What’s your safeword?” Kate asks.
Wren tells the voice to fuck off.
Wren’s only been with one girl seriously. An evening spent pawing a girl in the back of a car or by a pool when they were both drunk don’t really count. It can’t be that different, Wren thinks, but it is.
Kate instructs her to take her clothes off and get on the bed. “Just say pumpkin if you need me to stop.”
