Читать книгу Broken - Меган Харт - Страница 5

Chapter 01

January

This month my name is Mary and, apparently, I’m as contrary as the nursery rhyme. First I said I wanted to fuck, but now I’m refusing to come out of the bathroom. What I don’t know is that Joe doesn’t like cock teases, nor does he suffer wasting time. He’s already done the wooing, bought the drinks, made the compliments. If I don’t put out in the next five minutes, he’ll put his coat on and go.

I don’t know this because I only met him three hours ago in a bar downtown. His name seemed as if it were a cosmic joke, but out of all the men I met tonight, Joe’s the only one who bothered trying to have a conversation with me. That’s why I picked him. That, and the fact that’s he’s hot and well-dressed, with a charming quirk of a smile that tries to look sincere but mostly doesn’t.

“Mary, Mary quite contrary. How does your garden grow?”

His voice presses against me through the bathroom door. I’ve heard that rhyme a thousand times. Been called Proud Mary. Bloody Mary. Mary Poppins. My parents gave me the name thinking it had no diminutive, but people will always find a way to tease, if they want.

The doorknob is cool under my fingers and turns easily. I open the door to show Joe I’m ready for him. That the wait was worth it. I’ve stripped down to a set of lacy white panties and a matching bra, and I fight to keep from crossing my arms to shield myself from his scrutiny.

His eyes widen a bit. His tongue snakes out to slide along a mouth I haven’t even kissed yet. I want to kiss it. He looks as if he’ll taste good.

“Damn.” The word’s a compliment, not a curse, and I manage a slightly more confident smile.

I turn, slowly, so he can see me from all sides. When I come around again to face him, Joe reaches for my hand and tugs me one step, two, until, like magnets, our bodies attach to one another.

He’s unbuttoned his shirt and the hair on his chest scratches my soft flesh. I shiver. My nipples peak against the lace and heat coils in my belly. Joe’s fingers splay on my hips. I’m all of a sudden too shy to look into his eyes.

He pulls me to the bed—the nice, big king-size he requested from the clerk at the front desk with that same quirky smile that first attracted me. “I’m a bad boy,” that smile says. “But I’m so good you won’t care.” It had worked on me and the clerk, too, who’d taken the extra time to find us a room with a bed big enough for an orgy.

There’s no orgy, though, just me and Joe and the sound of the heating unit blowing the curtains. The hot air coming out of it smells stale, but what did I expect? Frankincense and myrrh?

“C’mon.” Joe’s getting impatient, tugging me onto the bed.

He kisses me, finally, my throat and the curves of my breasts. A shoulder. I arch a little under the feeling of his mouth on my skin, and though my lips part, he doesn’t kiss them.

His hands smooth up my sides and over my belly. When one goes between my legs, I’m startled. He doesn’t notice, or maybe he doesn’t care. He strokes me a few times and I melt into his experienced touch like sugar in a hot pan, all crumbling, scattered grains melting and smoothing into one liquid ooze.

This is all happening faster than I’d imagined it would, but I can’t seem to find the words to tell him to slow down. His fingers find the small, lace-covered bump at the front of my panties and begin a pattern of slow circles. I decide fast isn’t such a bad thing.

“You like that?”

I nod. He smiles and reaches to flick open the front clasp of my bra. My breasts surge out and I moan in the back of my throat. I want his mouth on me, his tongue swiping across my tight pink nipples. I want him to suck on them, one and then the other, while his hand moves between my legs. I’m already wet from his caress. I can feel it when I shift.

He pauses to shrug out of his shirt and I admire his chest. He has a body clothes are made to hang on, but naked, his shoulders are broader than they seemed before, his belly flat and tight with muscles but not rippled with them. His arms look strong, the cords in his forearms standing out as he tugs his belt buckle, unbuttons and unzips his pants. The hair on his chest, arms and belly is a little darker than that on his head, where his hair is the color of a lion’s mane. I wonder if he colors himself blond or if all men’s bodies show such disparity.

He pushes his trousers over his thighs and takes off his boxer briefs. I can’t look. I turn my head away, my breath lodging in my throat and my heart beating pitter-pat under my left breast. The bed dips as he kneels beside me. His hand returns to its shelter between my thighs and strokes me again. I lift my hips, an uncertain cry leaking from my unkissed lips.

“Take these off,” he whispers, giving me no time to comply before he hooks his fingers into the strings at the side and pulls them off himself.

I’m bared to him. My carefully waxed and trimmed bush of candy floss pubic hair. The hard button of my clitoris. My tender flesh, soft with arousal, wet from his touch.

He parts my thighs, spreading me, and I moan. Joe seems to like this, because his breathing gets heavier, faster, the way mine is. He runs an inquisitive finger along my folds and then up to my clit again and, oh, the sensation is indescribable. He rolls my own moisture over the tight bump and my hips jerk.

I feel an unaccustomed weight in my pussy, an emptiness, an ache. More heat blooms in my belly and breasts, that secret cavern between my legs. He rubs my clit and liquid trickles down the curve of my ass, tickling.

He takes one of my nipples in his mouth and it feels so good I whimper. I put a hand to the back of his head, feeling his soft blond locks on the backs of my fingers. He suckles, and my fingers tighten. He mutters something but doesn’t stop sucking my nipple or rubbing my clit, and my breath comes faster and faster until I’m light-headed.

I’ve been with boys before. Making out. Petting. I’ve given furtive hand-jobs in the back seat of a car, stroking and jerking and wondering what all the fuss is about. I’ve been with boys before, but not yet a man, someone who doesn’t plead or fumble. Joe doesn’t even ask, he just does. There’s something so perfect about that, just what I was looking for, and I have no more time to be shy.

Not even when his mouth slides down my body and centers between my legs. I go stiff at once in my surprise, but my small protest becomes a moan when Joe’s tongue flicks along my clitoris.

Oh, holy mother of God.

I’ve imagined this, using my hands or the pulsing jet of a hand-held shower to make myself come. Nothing has prepared me for the reality. His tongue is soft and warm, gentler than his fingers. It’s like water against me, softly lapping like waves against the shore. I arch into the sensation. He licks me. I shudder. He licks me again, and I’m helpless to do anything but spread my legs for him and give him my body.

Tension coils in my belly, and my nipples have grown as hard and tight as pebbles. Tiny moans leak from my throat. Joe pauses to blow against me, his hot breath making me writhe.

I’ve never had an orgasm with another person. I’m not sure I can. I’ve been close a couple times and it always slipped away from me at the last minute.

He stops again, and I’m sure I’m going to lose it. My thighs vibrate. The muscles in my belly tense and release. It will take only the barest pressure to make me go over, just the right touch, but he’s not giving it to me.

He’s doing something I can’t see. Something crumples. The bed moves as he shifts. His body covers me, chest hairs tantalizing my nipples wet from his saliva. His thighs and belly press against mine.

I have time to think of one more name I’ve been called, one that is appropriate but nevertheless tiresome, before Joe grunts and moves.

“Holy hell!” he cries, astonished when I shriek.

“You’re a virgin?”

I’m embarrassed by the entirely involuntary scream, and I stutter, “Y-yes.”

“Well…shit.”

He’s not climbing off me, though I wouldn’t blame him if he did. The pain has faded, replaced by a sensation of fullness, of being stretched. It’s not unpleasant. It’s not exactly comparable to the stories of bliss my girlfriends have been telling, but it’s not as awful as the tales the nuns told of unbearable agony, either. I’ve always wondered how a nun would know.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

A smile tilts one corner of his mouth as he pushes up on his hands to look into my face. “The scream gave it away.”

“I was surprised.”

Something tender creeps into his eyes and he leans in to kiss my cheek. “You should’ve told me. I’d have been gentler.”

Now comes the truth of why I’m here. “I really just wanted to get it over with.”

He looks perplexed. “Why?”

“I’m twenty-three. It’s time. All my friends have done it. I’m tired of being a virgin. I just wanted to…do it.”

He’s still inside of me and it doesn’t hurt, but I’m becoming uncomfortable. This isn’t going the way I’d planned. None of it has except for the part where I find a guy in a bar to take me someplace and get him to divest me of my maidenhood.

He gives a gentle, exploratory thrust. I tense, waiting for pain that doesn’t come. Joe bends to trace the curve of my ear with his tongue.

“You shouldn’t have to just get it over with,” he whispers, voice deep. “Not the first time.”

He slides a hand under my hair, which has spread out on the pillow. He kisses my earlobe, then my neck. His teeth press into the sensitive skin of my shoulder.

He pushes inside me and slides out, inch by inch. He does it again. The next time he moves inside me, I gasp and curve to meet him.

He smiles. “Good?”

It is good, but he doesn’t seem to care when I don’t say so. He moves a little faster and pushes himself back up on his hands. The tendons in his arms stand out. I can look down between us, to the point where our bodies have joined. His dark curls tangle with my lighter hair. He pulls out and I see the base of his erection, the ring of latex sheathing him, glistening. He pushes in and I watch, fascinated, as he disappears inside my body.

Sex isn’t like I’d imagined, but I can’t say whether it’s better or worse. It brings a flush of red out on my chest, and it must spread to my throat because I feel the same heat there. I watch him move in and out of me, and I think, connected. We are connected.

His face has gone solemn in concentration, eyes squinting, mouth creased. Sweat forms along his hairline. I smell him, a crisp bite of soap mixed with something musky and rich, like earth turned over in the garden after a heavy rain. Something like blood. I think it’s lust. I slide my hands up along his chest, feeling his muscles bunch and move, touching the twin tight nipples so different than mine. I pinch one, experimentally, and he groans, so I do it again.

His thrusts are a little less smooth and a tremor runs through his body. He stops and looks down at me. I look back.

Without a word, he rolls us both until I end up on top, legs straddling his waist. I’ve put a hand on his chest for balance, and his fingers grip my hips. He shifts us both with practiced ease, and a moment later I gasp aloud as this new position allows him to sink deeper inside me.

“Lean forward and put your hands on my shoulders.”

I do what he says. When he begins to move again, I’m glad I did. Oh, shit, this is good. Oh, fuck. He fills me all the way, in and out. My clit bumps his stomach with every thrust, and the weight, the heat, the ache is back, though the emptiness has been replaced by the delicious fullness of him stretching me.

He slides a hand between us, his thumb cocked to press against me, and this extra pressure sends exquisite bolts of pleasure shooting through me like lightning.

“Come on,” he whispers. “I want you to come.”

This time, I really think I might.

He fucks me faster. Every thrust rocks my clit against his thumb. I’m being stroked inside and out. My thighs shake. My breath comes in hitches and gasps. I’m burning and frozen at the same time.

He grunts and thrusts harder. Our bodies smack together, my ass against his thighs, belly to belly. My fingers have dug into his shoulders, the palms of my hands pressed hard to his collarbone. The pulse in his neck beats fast and hard.

I can’t stop myself from crying out. It feels too good. I no longer feel my arms, legs, back. I’ve become coiled in tension, everything growing tighter, like a key winding a spring, and I know it won’t be long before it happens, before I spring free.

But not yet. Right now he pushes me to sit up straight. My breasts bounce as his thrusts lift me up and down. There’s no more push-push pressure on my clit, but he replaces it with direct stimulation with his finger, which circles in time to his thrusts. This is even better, almost unbearably better, so good I don’t think I can stand it, so good it almost hurts.

I cry out, “Joe! Oh, God, Joe!” And understand now that the dialogue in romance novels isn’t so unrealistic, after all. I want to shout out more, words of love and gratitude. It would be easy enough to fall in love right now, with pleasure coursing through my veins headier than any wine has ever made me. I shout his name again, then I stop trying to speak and end up making sounds.

My clit is wet from my juices and his finger slips and slides against me. He’s thrusting, I’m rocking, we’re jerking and pumping but somehow managing to keep the pace together.

I’m not quite sure how, but I feel him getting thicker inside me. He closes his eyes, his brow furrows in concentration, and I wish he’d open them to look at me when I come. I want that sense of connection again, but he doesn’t give it to me. I have to be satisfied with looking down between us, to the place his body joins with mine.

Electric sparks tingle in my thighs and down to my curling toes. I quiver. My center burns with spreading outward warmth while the pleasure goes up, up, up, and I’m stretched thin with it. So thin, until at last, I break.

I can’t make a sound this time, knocked so breathless with ecstasy I can’t even cry out. My head tips back so far my hair tickles my back. I explode outward and become scattered pieces connected by nothing more than breath. When I inhale, I merge back together. A second time I burst apart and reform, more quickly and without as much drama.

I breathe in, slow and deep. I look down at Joe, who’s opened his eyes finally, but if I hoped to see something in his gaze I’m disappointed. He’s gone far away inside his own climax. He gasps, thrusting once more so hard he pushes my whole body upward. His cock pulses and he makes a series of small, stuttering groans that trail away as he falls back onto the pillow, spent.

When I can breathe normally again, I get off him. He slides out of me, and I feel an unaccustomed sense of loss. The emptiness has returned, but different than before. The place between my legs aches, too, but the way my body feels after I’ve given it a good workout, used muscles hard they way they’re meant to be used. It’s not a bad feeling at all.

I give myself a mental going over, testing limbs and organs, testing for disruption in the way my body functions. I thought having sex would somehow make me feel as if I sat differently inside myself, but right now all I feel is flushed and drowsy.

I lie down beside him, my head pillowed on his shoulder, and allow myself the familiarity of a hand on his chest. He might be asleep, I can’t be sure. His chest rises and falls steadily. I peek downward, emboldened by my new status as a well-fucked woman, and look over his penis. It rests, still wrapped in the condom, against his thigh. It looks as spent as I feel, and I want to giggle but I hold it in.

“That was better than just getting it over with,” I say.

I tip my head up to see his reaction. Though his eyes are still shut, he smiles.

“I’m glad.”

I wish he’d say more. With passion fading, I feel the need for some reassurance. That I did all right, for my first time. I wish he’d at least look at me.

I don’t expect a declaration of love, or anything, but…something…more. I just gave him my virginity, after all. Even if I’d intended just to get rid of it, it was still a gift. Wasn’t it?

Maybe Joe doesn’t think so. Maybe he’s counting the minutes until he can get dressed and head out. Maybe I should leave before he can.

I get up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The carpet feels matted under my feet. Dirty. I don’t want to think of who else has walked on it, or for that matter, how many couples have fucked on the bed I’m sitting on. My skin crawls suddenly and I shudder. I pick up my bra, then look for my panties. The white lace has vanished against the white tangle of the sheets, and I paw through the hills and mountains of fabric we made with our fucking.

Joe opens a sleepy eye and rolls on his side to watch me. I find my panties and snatch them up triumphantly. I want to wash, rid myself of the stickiness. There’s no blood, at least, and I send up a prayer to the real Virgin Mary, though, of course, she’d hardly have approved of this night’s adventure.

I go to the bathroom, grab a washcloth, and run it under hot water. Joe enters behind me, and I keep my gaze focused on the water running in the sink. He strips off the condom and tosses it in the trash, then lifts the lid on the toilet and urinates, a long, hard stream. I’m mortified. He reaches into the shower and turns it on. Steam wreathes the air.

“Want to join me?”

“No!” My answer blurts out louder than I’d meant it to.

I step into my panties and hook my bra, then grab my blouse and skirt from the hook on the back of the door. I put my clothes on faster than I’d taken them off, even though my fingers are shaking and I have to redo the buttons.

He’s staring. He’s naked. I smooth my hair and catch sight of my face in the mirror, blurred by steam. Eyes a dark smear, mouth a red slash. I’ve become faceless, which is good because I don’t need to see myself right now.

I can’t read his expression. I’m not sure I want to. A few minutes ago I was desperate for connection. Now I can’t wait to get away.

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

“Nothing. I have to go.”

“Are you sure?”

I’m torn between gratitude that he’s being so calm, and despair he’s not more solicitous. “I’m sure.”

“All right,” he says and turns to step into the shower. “Drive carefully.”

My breath squeaks out of me and I snatch up my purse from the bathroom counter. He looks at me over a shoulder marked by my fingers. His brow raises.

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Yes!” I shout, though I’m not. My voice has gone high and wavery, as if I’m holding back tears. I clutch my purse to my chest. “Thanks for the favor!”

He turns all the way around, hands on his hips, and I wish he’d at least wrap a towel around his waist.

“Look, I’m not sure what the problem is—”

“Of course you don’t!” I won’t insult myself by explaining, either.

“Mary.” Joe’s voice is calm. “Did I misunderstand you back at the Slaughtered Lamb when you put your hand on my ass and whispered, ‘I’ve got at condom with your name on it?’”

That had been my friend Bett’s idea. Not mine. It had worked, yes, but—

“Hey.” He pulls a towel from the rack and covers himself before stepping toward me. He reaches to push my hair over my shoulder. “I thought it was what you wanted. It’s what you said you wanted.”

I can’t argue with that. I’d like to put the blame on him, make it his fault, but the truth is clear. The burden of my virginity had been lifted from me in a pretty spectacular fashion. I was only being a fool if I expected more.

“I did.” My voice still sounds thick, as if I might cry. But I know I won’t.

“You knew what you wanted and you went out and got it,” Joe said. “What’s so wrong about that?”

“Nothing!”

“Sure I can’t convince you to join me?” Joe backs toward the shower as he drops the towel. His grin is quite tempting, but I shake my head. “Okay. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.” I think it’s only half a lie. “I have to go.”

“Drive carefully,” he says again.

When the shower curtain rattles closed, I almost change my mind. Instead, I finish dressing and flee the hotel room, leaving behind the stranger who made me into a woman.

“That’s a nice story,” I said. “I like the part about how you made her a woman.”

Joe reached for his paper cup of soda and took a long drink, as though talking had made him thirsty. “Didn’t I?”

“What I find interesting is the idea that a woman has to have sex to become a woman.”

He shrugged and tore open the paper wrapped around his sandwich. He always waits until after he’s told me the month’s tale before he eats, then falls to with gusto as though the telling has given him an appetite. He has turkey on wheat, the usual, but this time with tomatoes. I watch him pick them off, one by one. Joe hates tomatoes.

“Doesn’t it?”

I say nothing, content to sit and watch him eat. I needed time for my body to ease back to the real world, for my heartbeat to slow and my breath to follow. I pulled my sweater around me, feigning a chill, to hide the fact my nipples had gone stiff. Later, at home, I would recall his story, the small details of it, and I’d touch myself until I came. For now, I played the cool observer, the same as I did every month when we met on this bench in the atrium or the one outside in the garden.

“I don’t know what her problem was.” Joe chewed and swallowed. A pearl of mayonnaise clung to the corner of his mouth, and I pushed a napkin toward him.

“She’d just lost her virginity to a stranger. Maybe she felt awkward.”

Of course, I had no idea what Mary felt, any more than I knew what any of Joe’s women thought or felt. My imagination filled in the details of their coupling, taking what he told me and painting a picture from the feminine point of view.

“She was on me like butter on a biscuit. How was I supposed to know she was a virgin? She didn’t act like one.”

“How’s a virgin supposed to act?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t know. But she acted like she knew exactly what she wanted. So why was she so upset when she got it?”

I didn’t answer for a moment, thinking. “Maybe she was disappointed.”

He gave me the grin, the bad boy smile. “Sadie, I did not disappoint her.”

“Oh, that’s right. You made her a woman.”

Joe frowned. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“No. Losing my virginity didn’t make me a woman. Did it make you a man?”

His one-eyed squint shouldn’t have been as enchanting as it was. “I lost my virginity to Marcia Adams, my mother’s best friend. It made me a man pretty fast. I wouldn’t have survived it, otherwise.”

This is a story I’d never heard and my face must have shown it. Joe laughed, one eye still squinted, face tipped up toward the atrium’s glass ceiling.

“Are you going to tell me about it?”

He looked, for one strange moment, shy. I hadn’t thought him capable of it. He shifted on the bench, and I was sure he was for once not going to tell me.

“I was seventeen. She asked me to take care of her garden. Money for college. She told me I could use her pool every day, when I was done mowing the lawn.”

“Sounds like you did more than mow her lawn.”

He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah.”

“And you really think that’s what made you a man?”

I watched him curiously. He turned to look at me, his face solemn and nodded slowly.

“Yeah. I think it showed me what to expect, anyway.”

“I’m not sure that’s the same thing.”

“Well, if losing your virginity didn’t make you a woman,” he said, “what did?”

I said nothing to that, a topic into which I didn’t wish to delve. After a moment, he shrugged. “Mary acted like I was handing her a twenty and kicking her out.”

“Maybe she assumed you were the sort of guy who picks up women in bars and sleeps with them, then expects them to leave.”

“I’d have let her shower first!” He cried, indignant. “Jeez, I’m not a total asshole.”

Yet he didn’t deny he was, indeed, the sort of man who picks up women in bars and sleeps with them, perfectly satisfied with one night.

I didn’t respond, just sipped my drink. Joe set his sandwich down. The sun shining through the glass overhead cut through the giant Boston ferns hanging above us and striped shadows in his dark blond hair. His frown pulled his full mouth into thinness.

“Say it.”

I pretended not to know what he meant.

“Say it,” he repeated. “You want to. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Say what?” I relented. “That you are the sort of man who does that?”

“Keep going.” He sat back against the bench, his arms crossed.

I smiled. “That you’re a cheater? A rogue? That you don’t know the meaning of fidelity? That you go through women like wind through lace?”

“Don’t forget that I’m a silver-tongued devil who’ll say anything necessary to get into a woman’s pants. That my Holy Grail is pussy. That I’ve split more peaches than a porn star.”

I laughed. “Split more peaches? That’s a new one.”

Joe wasn’t laughing. “Go on and say it, Sadie. I’m a manwhore. You think I’m a slut.”

I studied him before I answered. “Joe…”

He wrapped up his food and stood, then tossed it in the pail next to me. He moved like a marionette dancing under the hand of an uncertain puppeteer, all jerks and twitches. He was angry. Really angry, and I stood, too.

“Joe, stop.”

He turned to me. His suit today was black, his shirt bright blue, his tie black with tiny blue dots scattered on the fabric. He put his hands on his hips, ruining the cut of his suit, which probably cost as much as my car payment.

More shadows speckled his blue-green eyes, his high cheekbones, the slope of his nose. No sign of a smile. His glare wrinkled the corners of his eyes, and it wasn’t fair they only made him better looking instead of haggard.

“I know you think it, so you might as well say it.”

“But, Joe,” I said gently. “It’s true.”

“It won’t always be true!” His words rang out, echoing.

The plants seemed to recoil, startled at this shout interrupting their usual peace.

I shouldn’t have scoffed, but his anger had made me angry, too. “Oh, please.”

Joe stalked toward me. I didn’t move away. He stood only a few inches taller but he seemed bigger in his anger. I refused to flinch even when he leaned in so close he could have kissed me, if he’d wanted. This was my role, disinterested observer, as his was playful rogue. I acted as though I wasn’t intimidated, though the truth was, being so close I could count his eyelashes, smell him, feel the heat of his breath on my face, I was. Underneath, I always was. Intimidated and turned on.

“It’s true,” he insisted through gritted teeth.

“I’ve heard that before. But every month you come back here and tell me a new story about some new woman. Or more than one. So you’ll have to forgive me if the idea of you suddenly becoming Mr. Faithful sounds a little funny.”

He jerked away from me, his finger pointing. “And every month, you listen.”

I lifted my chin. “Is it my fault you have stories to tell?”

He made a disgusted noise and gestured with his hands as if he was throwing something away. Maybe me. I wasn’t sure.

“I don’t have to prove myself to you.”

“No,” I agreed. “So why are you trying so hard?”

We’d never argued. Arguments were for people more intimate than I’d ever have admitted we were. Now my heart thumped and heat rose in my cheeks. My stomach churned and a sharp sting in my palms made me realize I’d clenched my fists. So much for the cool demeanor. I relaxed them with conscious effort, and the motion drew Joe’s gaze. He looked at my hands, then back at my face.

“What about you? What are you trying to prove?”

“Me?” The question surprised me. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Why do you listen?”

Now it was my turn to gather up my garbage and toss it in the trash. I gave him my back, intensely aware I didn’t have to see him to know he was looking at me.

“Not so nice when it’s turned around on you, is it?” I could hear his smirk.

I looked at him again. “I’ve been listening to your stories for more than a year now, Joe. I guess it’s just become a bad habit.”

His body didn’t flinch, but his eyes did. “Bad habits should be broken, though, right?”

He turned on his heel and stalked away. Panic flared in me. He was messing up the parts we’d been playing for the past two years. What did that mean? That he wouldn’t be back? Or just that he wouldn’t have another story?

“Joe!”

He didn’t turn, and I had too much pride to call after him again. I waited until he’d disappeared beneath the hanging greens and I was alone in the quiet before I sat on the bench again, my mutilated fists in my lap.

The flowers reproached me, but since they had no voice, I didn’t have to listen.