Stage Dive 02 Play(79)

David scratched his head. “Think it’ll be a learning curve for all of us, yeah?”

“Yeah.” The future was a big, ripe ball of I had no damn clue what would happen. And for once, that was okay.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


There was groaning, loud, long, and explicitly painful. Most closely it resembled a wounded animal. Though with an animal, there would have been less swearing. These noises coming from behind me didn’t speak of fun times. No, what these noises referred to was a special particular level of hell called The Morning After a mother truckload of booze.

“Pumpkin.” Mal buried his face in the back of my neck, pressing his hot skin against me. “Fuck.”

“Hmm?”

“Hurts.”

“Mm.”

The hand stuffed down the front of my pants flexed and curled. It pressed down on all sorts of interesting places, making me squirm.

“Why’d you put my hand down your panties while I was asleep? What’s that about?” he mumbled. “Christ, woman. You’re out of control. I feel violated. ”

“I didn’t do that, sweetheart. That was all you.”

He groaned again.

“You were most insistent about having your hand there. I figured after you fell asleep I’d be able to move you. But it didn’t happen.” I rubbed my cheek into my pillow, his bicep.

“This pussy is mine.” His fingers stretched, pushing against the material of my underwear, stroking accidentally over the insides of my thighs. So not the time to get turned on. We had talking to do.

“Yes, that’s what you said. Repeatedly.”

He grunted and yawned, then rubbed his hips against me. Morning wood pressed into my butt cheek. “You shouldn’t have made me drink so much. That was very irresponsible of you.”

“I’m afraid that was all you too.” I tried to sit up but his arm held me down.

“Don’t move yet.”

“You need water and Advil, Mal.”

“’Kay.”

His hand withdrew from my crotch and he rolled onto his back with much huffing and puffing. I hadn’t managed to get him into the shower last night. Accordingly, this morning, we both stank of sweat and scotch.

I got him a bottle of water and a couple of pills and sat back on the side of the bed. “Up. Swallow.”

He opened one bleary eye. “I’ll swallow if you will.”

“You got it.”

“You better mean that. A man doesn’t like to be lied to about that sort of thing.” Ever so slowly he sat up, his lank, blond hair hanging in his face. He stuck out his tongue and I dropped the pills on it, then handed him the water. For a while he just there, sipping the water and watching me. I had no idea what came next, what I should say. It was so much easier to just crack stupid jokes than to actually attempt to be deep and meaningful. To help him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, just to break the silence.

“Why? What’d you do?” he asked softly.

“I mean about Lori.”

He drew up his legs, braced his elbows on his knees, and hung his head. There was nothing but the noise of the air conditioner clicking on, the clink of silverware or something from the room next door. When he finally looked up at me, his eyes were red rimmed and liquid. Mine immediately did the same in empathy. There wasn’t a part of me that didn’t hurt for him.

“I don’t know what it feels like so I’m not going to pretend I do,” I said.

His lips stayed shut.

“But I’m so sorry, Mal. And I know that doesn’t help, not really. It doesn’t change anything.”

Still nothing.

“I can’t help you and I hate that.”

Fact was, a part of wanting to soothe another person was making yourself feel useful. But nothing I could say would take away his pain. I could turn myself inside out, give him everything, and it still wouldn’t stop whatever was wrong with Lori.

“I don’t even have a functioning relationship with my mother, so I have no idea. Truth is, I used to wish her dead all the time. Now I just wish she’d leave me alone,” I blurted out, then stopped, reeling at my own stupidity. “Shit. That’s the worst thing to be telling you.”

“Keep going.”

Crap, he was serious.

I opened my mouth and my throat closed up. The words were dragged out kicking and screaming. “She, um … she checked out on us, Lizzy and me. Dad left and she went to bed. That was her great solution to the problem of our family falling apart. No trying to get help, no doctors, just lying in the dark doing nothing. She pretty much stayed in her room for three years. Apart from the time child protection services came by. We managed to persuade them she wasn’t a complete waste of space. What a joke.”