Whiskey at Midnight, page 31
Emma sits on the couch and pats the spot next to her. She grabs a notepad off of the floor and sets it on her lap.
“Is this some kind of intervention?” Wren asks warily. She sits gingerly next to Emma and takes a sip of her coffee. There’s sugar in it.
Emma picks up a donut, pulls it apart into pieces and eats it slowly. Her tongue flickers out to lick at the corner of her mouth. “Not an intervention,” she says. “Another getting to know you day. Indulge me a little.”
Wren sets her coffee cup back on the table. “Don’t we know each other?”
“In some ways. There’s always more to learn. I want to make this work. Start some line of communication. I don’t want it to be like it was before.” Emma looks down, pops another piece of donut into her mouth. “Okay?”
“I’ll try,” Wren promises. She laughs when Emma’s head pops back up and she beams at Wren.
After thirty minutes, with Emma starting at the beginning, wanting to know about Wren’s childhood, Wren gives in and lights a cigarette. Wren tells Emma about Roy’s stupid cars, the stupid orange on Christmas, her mother’s stupid belief in love. How Wren holds the power to keep her family together or rip them apart. The words come out stilted and in half-sentences and fragments that make Wren roll her eyes at herself. She says it all in a monotone, leaves emotions out of it. Her life laid bare for a girl who probably still has her childhood teddy bear somewhere in her bedroom.
It gets easier as Emma becomes more shocked. Her eyes widen as Wren recalls the late nights in high school, when she would get fucked out of her head and then scurry back home until she realized that no one would ever notice her gone.
Emma misses her mouth once, lets a bit of donut fall onto her shirt and it takes her thirty seconds before she notices and plucks it up and puts it into her mouth. Another time, Emma chokes and has to have a sip of her coffee. It becomes storytelling then and not the emotional journey that Emma really wants. A compromise between the two. Emma gets what she wants, the knowledge, without Wren feeling like she’s on a daytime talk show, waiting for Roy to come out and hug her.
“I spent the summer before college in Europe,” Wren tells Emma. “I spent as little money as possible. Ate cheaply, only bought one souvenir for my mom. It was some book on forgotten English poets. I slept on people’s couches, people who wanted to be friends. As soon as I left their homes, I lost their phone numbers. Roy had given me a shit ton of money to go over there and I’d barely spent any of it. So, the last week I went around giving away the money. I gave some to beggars on the street, bought shots for people in bars. Anything to get rid of the rest of my Europe fund. The funny thing is, Roy told me to spend as much as I wanted over there. But he watched how I spent the money, how I didn’t spend much for most of the time and then went crazy to get rid of it all right at the end. Disrespectful and spoiled behavior, he called it. He didn’t speak to me for two weeks when I got home. The only thing he said was goodbye in those two weeks, right as I was leaving to come here. My mom forced him to say that much.” Wren smirks at the memory, takes a sip of her coffee.
“Spoiled rich girl,” Emma says.
Wren can only agree. She had been a spoiled rich girl, maybe still is.
Wren doesn’t ask about Emma’s childhood or any of the kinds of questions that Emma has been asking her. Those sorts of questions either don’t really matter or Wren has heard enough from Emma’s chattering to have some kind of idea of what Emma was like. A doll kind of girl, a storyteller in her room. The kind of girl who dreamt of unicorns. That’s who Wren is sitting next to, that’s who Wren has somehow fallen for. She lights another cigarette.
Emma keeps promising that it will all be worth it, like there’s something more than just a growing understanding of Wren planned for the day. She orders pizza late in the afternoon, when they can’t ignore their growling stomachs and the donuts are all gone. She blushes. “I’ve had a craving for pizza the last couple of weeks,” Emma tells Wren.
“We’re something,” Emma says while they eat the pizza. Then, “I almost forgot!” She sets her plate down onto the coffee table and runs into the kitchen, comes back with two bottles of beer. She twists the caps off and hands one to Wren.
“Something fucked up,” says Wren and clinks their bottles together.
Emma opens her mouth to argue, furrows her brows, and then lets her mouth fall into an O shape. She takes a sip of her beer, plucks a pepperoni off of her pizza. “Yeah, I guess so,” she says finally.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Wren says and smiles. They continue eating and drinking their beer.
The mood in the room changes when Emma cleans up their leftovers. The few slices left are placed in the refrigerator, the empty beer bottles are put into the recycling bin. The candle on the coffee table has gone out, though Wren can’t say when exactly.
“Be right back,” Emma says and disappears into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
That little warning bell in Wren’s head that she always ignores goes off. She smirks.
The bedroom door opens again and Emma pokes her head out. She has a sheepish grin on her face. “You can come on in now.”
The lamp on Emma’s desk is on and a candle sits on the nightstand, lit. Emma’s version of a romantic evening. Emma stands beside the bedroom door wearing a short silk robe, pink, that looks brand new.
“I told you it’d be worth it,” says Emma.
If Emma owned a decent stereo system, she’d probably play some kind of music on it. She doesn’t, so the room is silent. Without being told anything, Wren strips down and sits, nude, on the edge of the bed. She smirks as Emma unties and then re-ties the sash on her robe, all nervous fingers and jitters.
“I want to give you a massage,” Emma says.
Wren moves onto her stomach and rests her head on a pillow. “You don’t have to give me a massage in exchange for talking,” she says through the fabric of the pillow cover. It’s almost like a bribe.
“I want to though,” says Emma.
Emma crawls up onto the bed and sits on Wren’s ass, her knees on either side of Wren’s body. Her fingers tremble as she caresses the length of Wren’s spine, once, twice, then a third time. She pushes her fingers into the muscles of Wren’s back, leans forward to kiss the tender skin after.
Wren’s gone to spas before, back in high school. Roy’s assistant at the time was obsessed with them and would nag Roy to give Wren spa coupons. It had ended when Roy moved on to the next assistant, someone who didn’t tell Roy to give Wren anything. Just as well, she’d never been completely comfortable among the clientele. They were women with either too much makeup or none at all, with spray-on tans and dogs with names that made Wren roll her eyes. But this, this isn’t so bad.
The candle has made the whole room smell of lavender. Emma’s hands are too soft to get out any kinks in Wren’s back. She touches Wren like she’s scared she might hurt her. Wren doesn’t have any kinks in her back, has never carried stress there, so it’s just a pleasant sensation.
Minutes later, when Wren is thinking about getting Emma to stop because she keeps shifting around, Emma speaks up again. “I want to do something else for you. Something that you wanted to do before.”
Wren’s eyes widen immediately. The shifting around, the nervousness, the candle. The “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” feeling surrounding the entire day. She bites her lip and waits. It’s always the waiting that gets her.
Emma’s weight is just enough to hold Wren down, to feel like she has nowhere to go. Wren holds her hands underneath the pillow, waits with bated breath. She closes her eyes.
It takes Emma so long to work up the nerve to pick up the candle that Wren starts to tell her to forget it, she doesn’t have to do it, but then the first bit of wax falls onto the curve of Wren’s spine and she hisses through her teeth.
Emma gasps. It’s a short barely audible one that makes Wren smirk. A tremorous finger carefully touches the wax and spreads it around. “Oh,” says Emma.
“It feels good,” Wren says, and lets out a shaky breath. “Do you want to try it?”
Emma pours a little more wax onto Wren’s back, closer to her shoulders this time. She gasps all over again at the sound that comes from Wren. “No,” she says. And then, “Not yet, anyway.”
The tone Emma has, half-excitement and half-morbid curiosity, causes Wren to laugh. It’s cut off right in the middle by another wave of wax. The legs on either side of Wren’s body are shaking now and Emma leans over to set the candle back on the nightstand for a moment.
Emma is trying so hard, has completely left her comfort zone behind and can’t quite wrap her head around any of it. Wren takes pity on her. “We can stop for the night,” Wren says.
“I don’t mind,” says Emma. “I’ll do it some more. It’s just new.”
Wren moves underneath her, trying her best not to let anything touch the covers but failing miserably, until Emma is forced to get off of Wren.
Emma’s eyes are wide and dart around the room. She gazes at Wren for a moment. She blushes and looks away again.
“How about you join me in the shower,” Wren says.
Emma doesn’t need anymore convincing than that. Her shoulders relax and she smiles, proud and relieved. A reminder that they’ve both gone a little out of their way for the other on this Sunday.
The water isn’t so hot that Emma winces this time. Wren doesn’t bother washing her hair. She lets the stream get her hair wet as Emma washes Wren’s back for her. Emma approaches this task like some kind of duty, something that she will be graded on. Wren rolls her eyes, turns back around to face Emma when Emma pats her lower back as if to say “all done here.”
It’s a combination of the wax and that slinky little robe that now lays forgotten on the bathroom floor that puts Wren in such a good mood. She lets her hands roam across the slippery surface of Emma’s back, down to the curve of her ass. She kisses along Emma’s neck, over to her shoulder and back again. Just like in the bedroom, Emma lets out an “oh” sound, like she somehow wasn’t expecting this to happen.
Emma runs her fingers across Wren’s back like it might hurt Wren.
“You won’t hurt me,” Wren says, getting water into her mouth. She dips her head and kisses and licks at Emma’s nipples, getting even more water into her mouth.
Emma’s shower isn’t as roomy as Wren’s, but Wren manages to get down onto her knees anyway. She nips at Emma’s thighs before letting her tongue slide into Emma.
Emma doesn’t cry this time, doesn’t lift her head toward the ceiling in an attempt to mask silent tears that run down her face. She lets her hands massage at Wren’s scalp, moans into the stream of water that hits her on the chest.
It’s in that moment, weeks after their reconciliation, that Wren realizes how much she’s missed this, the fucking. The way Emma still blushes right after climax or the way Emma bites Wren’s shoulder and then kisses it like an apology, like Wren doesn’t love every minute of it. Or the way Emma fucks her with two fingers, sometimes three, until Wren can’t think about anything except for Emma. Even if it’s a little fucked up that Wren loves the fucking more than anything else, it’s what brought them together in the first place, and she does love all the rest of it, too.
Wren keeps one hand wrapped around Emma’s thigh and uses the other to tease herself. Maybe the shower has some kind of psychological effect on Wren now, but she thinks the last time she was so wet was another time in the shower. The thought flows out of her mind quickly, replaced by Emma gripping her head harder as she cums. Wren flicks her tongue out one last time, smirks at the jerking of Emma’s hips, and then licks her lips. She eases her own fingers out of her cunt and stands up again, kisses Emma hungrily.
“Bed,” Wren says.
Emma doesn’t give Wren any time to dry off. She pulls the towel out of Wren’s hands and points at the bed. It’s silly, the look of concentration on Emma’s face, that Wren laughs but then bites her lip to suppress it and walks across the bedroom to get on the bed.
Some of the rubber bracelets on Wren’s wrists stick to her arms from the moisture and Wren plucks them away from the skin so that they fall back down. So intent on this, Wren misses the movement of Emma until Emma’s face is inches from Wren’s. She kisses Wren.
They’ve barely had anything to drink, just a few beers each, but in some sort of weird delay, Wren suddenly feels a little drunk. Her face flushes and the room takes on a spinning quality. She closes her eyes.
“Do you still love her?” Wren asks. Her eyes remain closed and she feels Emma stop, her hand on Wren’s knee.
“No,” Emma says, her voice confident. “I love you.”
“Okay.”
Trudy reminds Wren the next Friday that her parents are coming up that Sunday and since Wren hasn’t made a church appearance in some time, it might be nice to come along. Trudy still talks to her parents a few times a day and Wren can hear her laughing in her bedroom when she talks to them. The blow-up seems to have helped their relationship.
Wren has dreams where Mrs. Buckton is standing over her, her face permanently stuck into a worried expression. Pots of water boil in the kitchen and Mrs. Buckton asks Wren what she wants to eat, tells her that she could afford to put on a few pounds. Then, Mr. Buckton enters the room, scratching at his belly, carrying a Bible that he gives to Wren. He tells her that she might find some answers in it. Wren holds the Bible with shaking hands. She thanks him for it and places it on the coffee table. Trudy never makes an appearance and Wren is given all of the overbearing love that has turned Trudy into the girl she is today.
“Yeah, maybe,” Wren says. She offers Trudy some tea, which Trudy accepts.
“They’re always asking about you. If you’re eating. If you’re hurt.”
Wren shoots a look at Trudy but Trudy doesn’t falter. She stares at Wren in a challenging way. “And have you told them that I’m fine?”
“Mostly,” Trudy says. “It’s not like I see you to be able to tell one way or the other. God knows what you get up to when you’re not here, which is most of the time.”
Wren rummages through a cupboard until she finds two mugs and sets them on the counter, waiting for the water to boil. She turns to look at Trudy again and leans back against the counter. “I’m usually at work or Emma’s.”
“Your girlfriend,” says Trudy.
“My girlfriend.” Wren says it like she’s tasting the word, nods a fraction of a centimeter. She approves.
“So why don’t you come over here,” Trudy says and sits in one of the kitchen chairs. She pulls a magazine that’s been sitting on the kitchen table closer and flips through the pages. The movements are casual, but the magazine pages are already bent from where Trudy has read them and her eyes scan the words a little too quickly for her to actually be reading them.
“To spare you, I guess,” Wren says and pours the steaming water into the mugs. She places both mugs on the table and sits opposite Trudy.
Trudy rolls her eyes and closes the magazine forcefully. “I already know you’re living in sin. What do I care if you do it here or somewhere else? Besides, my parents want to meet her.”
“What? You told them about her?”
“Yes, the little that I do know.” She fidgets with her mug, blows on the tea. “They might not like the whole, you know, gay thing, but they like you well enough. It’s not like you’re their daughter. They want to meet her and make sure she’s good for you.”
“Make sure she doesn’t look like the type to hit me with a belt in bed?” Wren asks. “Sorry. That’s not really fair. I’ll ask her if she wants to come this Sunday. How does that sound?”
Trudy practically beams and lets out an excited squeal. “Perfect! I already told them she was coming.”
“Jesus,” Wren says and takes a sip of her tea.
“Language,” Trudy says as she stands up and bounces off to her room, leaving the magazine and cup of tea behind.
Emma has to say she doesn’t mind five times before Wren gives up on telling her that she doesn’t have to come along, that Trudy is just being her normal crazy self. Emma kisses her, traces a finger along Wren’s jaw. “I really don’t mind. Truly.”
“Maybe you should wear one of your school outfits. You’d probably make a good first impression if you talked about becoming a teacher,” Wren says. She lights a cigarette. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s not like the Bucktons are going to be in my life forever. Who cares what they think.”
Emma gives Wren a smile like she doesn’t quite believe her and goes into her closet, comes out with an appropriate outfit that she holds up to herself.
Emma spends Saturday night at Wren’s apartment. Even though Emma doesn’t work around food or anything else that would make her smell bad, Emma showers as soon as she comes over from her shift.
Wren sits on the toilet seat while Emma washes her hair and hums to herself.
“I must have gotten into the habit of showering after work because of you,” Emma says. “Especially with all of the complaining you do if you don’t get the chance.”
Wren slides her heel across the tile floor and smiles.
Once Emma steps out and begins to dry herself off, Wren can hear whispering in the living room that can only be Trudy and Trevor. Wren smirks and gets a little tremor of excitement that races up her spine and causes her shoulders to jump up an inch.
Trudy had been in her bedroom when Emma arrived and Wren had ushered her into the bedroom to give her a kiss. The shower came after. Trudy must be beside herself, waiting for Emma to make an appearance outside the bedroom.
It’s not like Trudy hasn’t seen Emma. But even Wren knows people enough to know that seeing Emma now, as Wren’s girlfriend, will be made into a big deal.
