Cider House Fools, page 21
“Pfft.” I roll my eyes over my chalice of morning salvation. “Okay. I want to call bullshit but I’m willing to ride this one out. What specific action do you have in mind?” Say you want to eat my pussy until I scream. Say it, say it, say it.
“Since you asked,” he lifts his eyebrows and waggles them. I can’t stop myself from snorting. Balthasar has always been able to make me laugh with his dramatics, turning my mood one hundred and eighty degrees on a dime. It should be harder for him, after ten years, but I suspect the teetering, unbalanced state of my emotions leaves me more pliable. I turn away from him and sip my coffee. I swear I can feel the caffeine enter my vascular system and fire across my neurons like a genetically engineered drug.
Turning away is pointless because he’ll just follow me. “I want to decorate for Christmas.”
I shut him down in a heartbeat. “Absolutely not. It wouldn’t be right. We are in mourning.”
He shakes his head, a bit of real anger sparking in his eyes. How I’ve always loved Balthasar’s eyes. They are the exact same blue as a perfect summer sky, and when he’s pissed off they darken like a storm. He wants to fight? I’m almost done with my first mug of coffee. Bring it Balth.
He clears his throat like a lawyer. “Who are we mourning Bennett Beatrice?” I roll my eyes. He continues. “What would your namesake want Bennett Beatrice? What would she want for me, a poor single man living alone on that big, dreary farm? What wouldn’t she give to see Whittaker smile through the multi-colored glow of a string of lights? How easily would she charm Smith into lining her eaves with white and blue icicle lights? Are you not here to honor her? Did she not specifically ask you to stay through Christmas?” He turns on a thick Irish brogue. “Would ye have ye dear gran rollin’ over in ‘er grave when da tree ghosts of Christmas pahst show up in ‘er wee kitchen?”
I know he’s trying to joke, and normally I would cackle at his absolute butchered Irish accent. He’s right. He’s one hundred percent, absolutely right. Did I mean any of the speech I gave Smith last night? That I should be the one supporting them? They were the ones here, putting their lives on the back burner to hold her hand through her cancer.
Balthasar’s face is pleading with me to say yes. He wants to have Christmas for Gran. Christmas was her favorite holiday. She made it magical. I want to give that holiday spirit to him, but I don’t think I deserve to share it.
“She didn’t tell me, but I knew something was wrong,” I whisper, setting the mug down. I don’t think I can swallow right now. “And I did nothing. I ignored my instincts and got up every day and went to work and did nothing. I don’t deserve to have Christmas in her house.”
He drops all pretense and folds his arms around me. “I’m sorry Bennie,” he murmurs, stroking my hair. “I’m not teasing. And I don’t mean to make light of your feelings. But she didn’t feel that way. I know Gran. She would want you to celebrate. To remember her through the traditions she loved and cherished.” He presses close, squeezing me against him, dropping soft kisses down the side of my face.
I sigh, sinking into him. “No. Don’t be sorry. You’re right. This about Gran. She did love Christmas. And if I’m going to do right by her, I need to find a healthy way to deal with…everything. If I keep crying at this rate, I won’t have any skin left on my cheeks. Let’s do it up. Hell, let’s do everyone’s house. You want to do up your place? Let’s drape that orchard in lights.”
“Yes!” Balthasar pumps his fist, his face lighting up in excitement.
“And Balth?”
“Yeah?”
“Tease me all you want. But I’m going to need you to follow through eventually.” His mouth drops open, his twin summer skies deepening to rich shade of navy. The sexual tension between us sizzles.
“Uh…anyone want eggs? The stuffed and folded kind? Cherry smoked bacon?” Neither Balthasar nor I break our eye contact. I’m afraid if I move, I might rip Balthasar’s clothes off and take him right here in Gran’s living room in front of the tree. “No? Just going to stare lustily at each other and ignore me? Okay, I’ll ah, I’ll be in the kitchen adjusting my dick while I eat the pain of being left out away.”
“We should go eat.” Balthasar glances back to the now empty hall. “The breakfast food,” he clarifies.
“I want you to eat me. And I want him to do it with you,” I say dreamily, caught up in a fantasy of sharing them. Balthasar tilts his head, studying me. The sex saturated haze I’m in dissipates as he steps back. That one step creates a chasm of distance. I immediately feel rejected and full of doubt.
“I’m not hungry,” I mumble, closing my eyes and wishing I would blink out of existence. My cheeks flame with embarrassment.
“Bennett. Look at me,” he demands.
“No. Can we drop it? I’m beyond embarrassed.” I turn away from him and grab my coffee to hide behind. My eyes land on an area of the floor under the big window. There’s a tiny ding in the hardwood where Gran dropped a heavy potted plant she was trying to move from the front window to porch for more direct sun. I remember because she cried about the planter. Her sister had given it to her and it was her favorite.
“Why would you be embarrassed? Hearing you say those things…it’s a dream come true, but…” He rubs his hand over his mouth. “I feel like I took things too far too fast the other night Bennie. I don’t want to pressure you. I already pushed you this morning about Christmas. You’ve only been up for twenty minutes this morning and you’ve been cranky, nostalgic, affectionate, standoffish, and horny. You’re an emotional pendulum. And that’s normal. You’ve suffered a huge loss.” I can’t stand the look of pity of his face. “Last night you hit your limit and you said things, valid things that you probably needed to say a long time ago.” I raise an eyebrow. “Albeit not nicely,” he adds, holding up his palms in concession. “That is why I took a step back. It had nothing to do with not wanting you.”
“Grief is not an excuse for instability! Loss is not a reason to treat people like crap. Especially the people who picked up my slack and took on my responsibilities while I was off being selfish.” I press my fingers to my mouth as my eyes prick and burn. I haven’t even been awake for half an hour and here I am crying like a baby and pissed off at the world again. Of course, my tear ducts work fine when I’m not alone.
Gingerly I press the wound on my forehead. The swelling has gone down and the pain has decreased to a dull ache. Balthasar grabs my shoulders from behind to steer me. “Kitchen. Now. We are going to have breakfast, then get you bundled up, then decorate this place like it’s Santa’s private club.”
I can’t stop the laugh he draws out of me. Reluctantly I let him push me into a chair. Franklin nods to the two plates set out on the table. There’s a folded piece of paper in front of the plate setting where I always used to sit. He smiles shyly at me. Shyly. “They left you that. I’ll get the food.”
Balthasar goes for the oven while I flip open the note. There is a simple good morning from Smith and below it an invitation from Whittaker for dinner at his place. The wording is very specific that the invitation is for everyone. My gut is telling me that maybe this is his way of letting me know he’s not ready to give up. Am I reading too much into a simple invitation? I tuck the note in my pocket as Balthasar slides a bacon, tomato, and Colby Jack omelet on my plate. I know that’s what it is because it’s my favorite. “Franklin this looks amazing. Thank you.” My gratitude is heartfelt, and it feels good to say something nice.
“You’re welcome,” he replies simply. The three of us eat in companionable silence. There isn’t any talk of my unstable emotions or sexual aggression. No one brings up funeral arrangements or chores or holiday events that require my presence. By the time we finish eating I’m almost excited about an afternoon of decorating.
After breakfast, I change into jeans and a sweatshirt and head downstairs. Franklin trails after me. “What’s down here?”
“About fifty years worth of shit, but I’m looking for the Christmas decorations.” I answer, passing by Gran’s ancient washer and dryer. I let myself into the next room where I’m greeting with two walls of shelving. There are four rows of Rubbermaid tubs, all neatly labelled with black permanent marker. I start pulling the tubs down, coughing when I suck in a plume of dust.
I find six tubs total. Together we haul them upstairs. “Would you help me go through these?” I wheeze, out of breath from the trips up and down the stairs, as I set the last one down in the living room.
“Sure. Do you know what’s in them?” Franklin pops the top off of one of them.
“I think so. But I haven’t been home in ten years, so...” I shrug.
“You sure you don’t want to do this with your mom?” He takes off a lid and pulls out a dusty glass snowman.
“Yes. She’s working. I love my mom, and we have a good relationship, but after dad died she threw herself into her work. And I don’t blame her. But it was Gran who raised me. She taught me to cook, taught me to farm, and she’s who got me through losing my dad. Gran was the one who was there when I got my first period and when my pony died.” I bend over and pop off a lid. Inside is Gran’s Christmas village. I squeal and start pulling out the buildings that make up the town. “This was my favorite decoration as a kid! Some of these play music.” I wind up the crank on the bottom of the post office and close my eyes as it starts to tinkle Tannenbaum.
Franklin leaves the room and comes back with a bucket of hot water, some multi-purpose cleaning spray, and some rags. “Should we start without Balthasar?” I ask doubtfully.
“We’ll do the room but leave the tree and the outdoor lights. He said he only had a few things to take care of at home and then he’d back.”
“Maybe we ought to test the lights. Some of these look pretty old.” Franklin squats down over a tub full of neatly wrapped green strands. He pulls out a random string of lights and fishes around for the plug in. “This thing looks like it was manufactured in the seventies. It’ll melt and burn down the house.”
“Let’s toss them all out and buy new,” I decide.
He scratches his cheek. I wonder if he realizes how much his beard has grown out in the last week. I step over the tub of decorations I was digging through and grab his hand. Reaching out with the other, I stroke the thick, soft hair on his cheek. “I really like this look on you.”
He lays a hand over mine. “Yeah?”
He rises slowly, careful not to pull our hands apart. I barely notice the way my elbows bend as he comes closer. His pupils dilate, edging the golden rings that surround them out. I love Franklin’s eyes. They lighten and darken with the seasons, the lighter color inside expanding and deepening into a honeyed amber in the summer. In the winter, the amber because richer, darker, like the way E150a food coloring makes a bourbon glow behind the bar.
I let go of his hand and cup the other side of his face. His tongue darts out and wets his lower lip. His breath hitches as his head tilts ever so slightly to the left. His lids lower, his eyes hooded as he waits for me.
This isn’t like my exchange with Balthasar this morning. Although I appreciate Balthasar’s instinctual concern for my mental health and welfare, I’m not exactly sure if distance was what I needed. I’m a physical person. Touch is my love language. Maybe he was right not to rip my clothes off and ravage me, but him stepping away from me didn’t feel so great.
Franklin is waiting for me to decide what I want. His quickened breath and physical response to the intimacy lets me know he wants more, but letting me take the reins tells me he’s okay with stopping. I step closer. His arm slides around my back. I tilt my face up. He pulls me against him. My body melds against his like he was made for me. My hands pull his face closer, until he’s hovering over mine. He rubs his nose against mine with feather light strokes, his lips ghosting but not touching.
My breasts feel full, heavy as they press against him. My nipples ache, and my core clenches with need. Every cell in my body wants this kiss with Franklin. I part my lips and press them against his, sliding my hands down. I wrap one arm around his neck and let my other hand come to rest on his should as I deepen the kiss.
My arm tightens. Years of pent-up longing pour out of me. I’ve spent years working and living with this man. I’ve nursed him through illness and heart aches. My hands have covered his back with sunscreen, knotted his ties, and swatted his ass. We’ve spent endless nights cuddling in front of the TV, eating popcorn and swearing at the dumb bunny who always gets herself killed first. But those things were never enough for me. I’ve always wanted more.
I want our clothes to fall away. I want to feel his skin against mine, slick with sweat, his muscles bunched and taut as he moves over me. Breathless, moaning unintelligible things, I grind against him with a fervent need to have the one part of him that is still a mystery to me.
There is nothing on my body Franklin hasn’t seen. Every inch of me has been cleansed of sweat, excrement, and vomit by his hands. The blond hair that hangs to my chest, that once hung in silky sheets all the way to my ass, has been shaved bare by this man’s hands. The hand across my back slides under my sweatshirt and glides over my feverish skin. Palm flat against my hip, he makes his way up my rib cage, his nimble fingers slipping under the elastic band of my sports bra and settling under my breast.
Even though I know he is the one who changed the bandages that used be taped there, even though my breasts are begging to be touched and pinched and suckled by him, I stiffen. Franklin senses the change and stills. “What is it?” He asks, his mouth hovering over mine. I tug my sweatshirt down against his arm. He withdraws his arm from under my breast, his palm gliding down my skin, refusing to break contact until he hits the waist of my jeans.
“It’s nothing. I’m just not feeling it.” I close my eyes, not wanting to be immersed in the flare of hurt that spreads across those beautiful golden-brown irises. The second he touched my scar I was pulled right back to the days after my surgery. The days after the treatments. The days when I couldn’t decide if living was worth the price. The scar that reminds me not only of what I went through, but of what I left Gran to go through. Without me.
“Bullshit. Don’t lie to me. Your body is on fire for me right now. What’s going through that head of yours?”
He’s still holding me tight against him. Even though his palm is no longer spread against my bare skin, his arm is still around my back, his hand gripping my denim clad hip. He’s right. My nipples are still hard enough to cut glass and my core is drenched. I can’t make myself break his embrace, I don’t really want to leave it, so I shrink into myself, turning my face away from him.
His stunned silence fills the room. He stands straight, his arms slipping away. My hand drops from his face. My skin cools, breaking out in goose pimples. The wall I’ve thrown up between us might be invisible, but it feels impenetrable. I open my eyes a sneak a peek. He looks crestfallen, but exasperation simmers in the tight skin around his eyes. “Don’t do this Bennett. Don’t lie to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
My insides feel a back alley hosting twenty feral cats fighting for dominance. So many different emotions flaring and wrestling for control that my brains feel scrambled. According to some pharmacists, they are. “You always do this!” I explode. “’Bennett how are you feeling? Bennett what do you need? Bennett let me do that for you.’ God, you’re such a pretentious asshole, always thinking you know what is best and you can fix everything for me!” I deepen my voice, mocking him, throwing a healthy dash of ridicule on top of the scathing berating I’m serving up. “Maybe I don’t fucking want you to do anything for me! I don’t need you to take care of me! I don’t need you to wipe my shitty ass and bandage up these…these goddamn, scarred up, ugly tits I didn’t want!” I’m fuming. I can’t catch my breath. I hate my body and the universe for taking the touch I’ve been longing for and using it to throw me back to the worst days of my life. Why now? Why does he say he wants me now that my body is ruined? He’s looked at my naked, scarred skin so many times and never has he reached for me with lust in eyes. I want it so bad, but…I don’t trust it. “I don’t need a pity fuck from you Franklin. I don’t need that from any of you!”
“Is that what you think this is? Is that what you thought I was after when I was spilling my guts to you last night? Fuck you Bennett, you ungrateful little shit.” He lunges at me, bending and picking me up until my body is swung one hundred and eighty degrees and hanging sideways against him. He stalks down hall, somehow fitting both of our bodies through the bathroom door as with a twist of his frame.
“Put me down this instant! How dare you manhandle me like this!” I push against his arm, but the offending appendage doesn’t move an inch. I kick my feet, battering the door frame of the tiny bathroom. My heart is pounding, my indignant rage fueled with adrenaline and indignity. I’m so tired of fighting how I feel. Trying to stuff myself into the box the world needs to see me in is exhausting. My brain is telling me to apologize so he’ll set me down. I realize, as I struggle and screech, that what I really want is for him to understand what just happened and for me to not feel bad about it. But neither of us are going to get there with him pissed off and me hanging upside down over his shoulder like a week old towel. I kick and buck and push against his arms like a wild thing, but I get nowhere. His arms are far more solid than I remember. His bicep is rock solid, pressing into my pelvis like an iron band. Franklin hefts me higher up on his side as he leans over and rips the vinyl shower curtain back. “Frank—grunt—lin get your fucking hands off me! Put me down! I mean it!” I shriek. Freezing cold drops of water ricochet off the cast iron tub and strike my skin like sleet. I press against the arm caging me with both hands, grunting like a pig and use all of my upper body strength in an effort push his arm away.
It doesn’t move a millimeter until he swings me around and drops me on my feet under a deluge of an icy cold shower. “I don’t know how else to help you, Bennett. Maybe you need a shock to your system. I meant every word I said last night. I was telling the God damn truth! Unlike you, who doesn’t mean any of that shit you just spewed.” I’m gasping and shivering violently under the cold water, but I stand there and take it because a) there is no way for me to escape with his huge frame filling up the tiny bathroom and b) I deserve it. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. Those scars you’re so ashamed of? Those scars mark you as the warrior you are. They’re hot as fuck. What you look like is pretty far down on the list of why I love you. If you can look me in the eyes and tell me truthfully that you don’t love me, I will graceful retire back to Pennsylvania and lick my wounds. I will spend the rest of my life attending your weddings, playing uncle to your children, and running a host of successful restaurants with you. Not because I have to, but because you are the person I aspire to be. You are the best person I know Bennett Vanderberg. You are the only real friend I’ve ever had. That’s why I’m in love with you, and that’s why I’ll love you, in form or another, until we are both dust. So don’t lie to me. I haven’t earned it and it’s beneath you.”
