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It’s been so long that his old phone number doesn’t work, but if there’s one way to reach Walt Breslin, it’s to call the DEA and lie. After ten minutes, which you mostly spend being on hold, you’re connected to his office. Pretty easy. Hopefully the rest of this ends up easy too.
“Hey, Walt,” you say.
After a beat, he says, “Hey.” His voice is casual, but the pause has already given him away. How the man manages to conduct interrogations with drug lords and the like, you really don’t know. Bless his heart.
“So I’ve had a shit day, and I’m thinking why not just get to the point,” you say. “That okay?”
“Shoot.”
“I’m in town for a couple days, visiting, and I was wondering: any interest in a one-night stand?”
He laughs. There are miles and walls between you, to say nothing of time, but you know that laugh. You know that he’s scratching his jaw with his knuckles, turning away from the world and towards the sound of your voice, shoulders rising half an inch. Private, a little defensive. He never likes taking personal calls at work where he can be overheard, but it’s been a couple years since you’ve talked to each other. He must have missed you. That accounts for his reply.
“One-night stand seems kind of inaccurate, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, not to nit-pick—”
“Too late.”
“—but I think we’re disqualified a couple different ways. A one-night stand is something you have with a stranger, right? For the first and last time.”
“And I’m not a stranger.”
“Last I checked, you’re my ex-wife.”
“And it wouldn’t be for the last time.” That just slips out of you, and you know better than to say it as soon as it’s out of your mouth. You slump in your chair, smooth your yellow flip-flop over the peeling kitchen linoleum, and wait to see if the hammer drops.
“Wouldn’t be the first time, is all,” he says mildly.
Mercy hits you harder than cruelty would’ve. As always. “Sorry,” you say, abrupt.
“’s okay,” he says, and that’s not true, but it’s perfect. There’s not forgiveness between the two of you quite so much as there is a shared desire to get the hell out anytime the house starts burning. At this point, one whiff of smoke and you both sprint. Doesn’t matter if it was just a cigarette.
“Yeah, so,” you say desperately, “be seeing you.”
“At eight,” he says, and hangs up.
Oh.
You’re smoking under the carport when Walt pulls up and parks on the side of the road. It’s raining. You watch him get out of the car. He’s tense, you think. Whatever made him reserved and a little lenient earlier, all that’s gone now. Nothing easy about this version of Walt.
That’s fair. It’s been a couple years, and you gave him no explanation. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t slam the door either. Good enough.
You walk towards the front door, holding out your cigarette and letting the rain snuff it out before you throw it in the bucket by the front door. When you go inside, you leave the door ajar.
He comes in fast. You barely have time to get your flip flops off before you hear his footsteps behind you, turn, and then there he is: a stab in the gut, a scarecrow, scruff and then some. On you fast, his hands your hips his mouth your mouth and that wet sundress doing near nothing at all between the two of you. You can feel the top of his sodden jeans pressing a line into your stomach. You can feel he’s half-hard already. Without looking, he kicks the door shut.
Okay, then.
You didn’t plan on fierce and this isn’t fierce exactly, but it sure as hell isn’t peaceful. He kisses you like he’s on a mission and you return the favor, clinging to him like you might fall over otherwise. He tastes like cigarettes and he’s this close to biting. You’re fine to hurry. You grope your way along his sides till you find the hem of his shirt, wrestle that off, and drop it to the floor as you start walking backwards into the cramped living room.
You’ve got your hands on him now, fuck, exactly how you wanted, digging your nails into the back of his neck and feeling every finger a conduit to the rough, freckled, panting reality of him. His eyes are half lidded and he’s kissing you slower, deeper. It’d be drowning if you paid attention, but the whole point is your mind turning mercifully off.
Between the big green sofa and the air mattress, there isn’t much room, but you break away from him just long enough to get down there in the narrow strip of rug, get down on all fours, and look back at him. He’s on his knees behind you in a couple seconds, moving a little slower than you. Is he hurt? Before you can sit back and try to interrogate him, he’s already shoving your skirt up off your thighs and over your hips.
“Shit,” he says. Not derailed, just surprised. He smooths a callused hand up your inner thigh and trails a couple fingers through your folds, feeling how wet you are already and sending a shiver through you. Your stomach clenches as he inspects at the slick coating his fingers. His silent self-satisfaction is so fucking annoying, and unfortunately, it makes you want him all the more.
“Hey,” you say. “That’s my work, not yours.”
You were hoping he’d make some kind of move on you, but instead he sticks both fingers in his mouth and sucks till his cheeks go hollow. Maybe he thinks you deserve the delay for trying to provoke him. Or maybe the sight’s a reward—you’ve always enjoyed watching him with his mouth full, that’s for damn sure.
When he finally slides out his fingers with a sick little pop, his eyes have gone completely dark. No smirk yet, but imminent. Even before he opens his mouth, you know he’s gonna say something.
“Big fan of your work,” he says.
You hate how much you want him, how much you can feel now that you’ve missed this. “Come here,” you say roughly.
He does. As he works you open, slowly, his hunger is so subordinated by his intent that it can’t read as anything but careful, can’t read as anything but care, and sure you asked him here to be cared for, but you don’t want to fucking witness it. You drop your head between your shoulders, try to relax around the stretch of him, and let the carpet blur. It’s not enough.
“C’mon,” you say so low that you think he doesn’t hear you, but then he slides out his fingers and the raw wet weight of him is at your back, his teeth sink into your shoulder, and he pushes in. Pushes your eyes closed. Pushes the last thought out of you.
Perfect.
When he rolls off you and onto the mattress, panting, he lays there a second and you clamber on beside him. He’s sprawled out on his back with his hands behind his head, you’re sprawled out on your stomach. He’s staring at the ceiling, and you’re staring at him. After a second, he looks over at you. Get what you wanted?
Truth is: not yet, no, but what you’ve got so far is good. You tilt your head, offering him a bit of doubt, ehh, but your eyes are merry traitors.
He snorts.
“You wear me out,” he says. He’s not touching you, but he says it comfortable, like a caress.
Presently, you inch a little closer and bite the closest bit of him, which happens to be his elbow, hard and dry and unappealing. You don’t bite that hard. He stretches out his arm so you can come tuck yourself into his side, and he doesn’t watch you as you do it, which is gentlemanly of him. You’re greedy for this, this is what you wanted, but you don’t want to be witnessed at it any more than you want to witness it yourself. If neither of you can notice that this is happening, that’d be a continuation of perfect.
Course, your curiosity makes sustaining that impossible.
“How’d you know?” you say, after a while.
“Know what?” he says sleepily.
Everything. “That I’d be at my mom’s place. That she wouldn’t be here.”
He pauses, noticeably, then shrugs. You feel it more than you see it, the movement of his shoulder under your head.
“Kinda fits the pattern, doesn’t it?” he says.
Any other night, and you wouldn’t let that stand. But for a collection of grudges and bones, rough stubble and unyielding everything else, the man feels good to hold, and you’d have to let go to fight.
So you go the light angle. “Hey, man. I’m mysterious.”
“Oh, you’re mysterious, all right.” There’s a smile in his voice, and then there isn’t. “So what’s the problem?”
“Nothing really.” Beat. “Looks like we’ll be going round two with April. Chemo, the whole nine. Barely a remix, more like time travel. Whatever.”
Silence, the kind you were dreading. His hand has been clasping your hip for a while now, but it feels too heavy all of a sudden. You consider squirming away, but for once in your life, you can’t think of an excuse to pick a fight.
“She’ll be okay,” he says. And worse, he says it like he believes it. “She’s tough as nails, your mom.”
Again, it just happens: “Shame she had such a soft-ass daughter, huh.”
“Don’t do that,” he says at once.
“Sorry,” you say, and you mean it, and then—what the fuck? Why are you apologizing to Walt fucking Breslin, of all people? That’s something the divorce was supposed to end as easily as it ended dinner traditions and having a nephew and sleepless nights. What the fuck.
“Like you don’t do that,” you say.
“I don’t.”
See, this is why Walt isn’t to hold; there’s not enough barrier between you when you’re in his arms. Everything’s dead obvious. You’re both tensing up and he’s fucking terrible to hold again.
“Well, you look it and you think it, and that’s nearly as bad,” you bite out.
“Still beats fucking saying it.”
“Count on a cowboy to prescribe me repression.” And you meant it exasperated and derogatory and not funny at all, but when you say it, you hear it, and Walt snorts in lieu of a laugh that he can’t help.
“I’m not…” He looks over at you, and he’s smiling like a husband would. This shit should be bottled and mass-manufactured. Or outlawed. Either would work.
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not a cowboy,” he says.
You pinch his chin between thumb and forefinger. “But you are, though.”
“I’m not a cowboy, you’re just a Northerner.”
Oh, that old thing. You roll your eyes and don’t bother saying you’re from Kentucky. You haven’t bothered saying it since fucking 1985.
“You still gonna be pissed at me, then?” you say. “And don’t say what do you mean, I’m sleepy and I don’t want to go nine rounds. You were pissed when you came in, before you got distracted.”
“I just thought you were pulling my chain.”
“Well, that’s very fucking self-obsessed of you,” you say, before it hits. “And why would I be pulling your chain?”
He shakes his head, and you raise yourself up to look down at his face, all your weight going down into the godawful air mattress with your right hand, your left on his bare chest.
“I was seeing somebody,” he says to a patch of ceiling off past the side of your head. “Never mind.”
For all the time you’ve spent trying to fuck things up for him on purpose, the discovery that you might’ve fucked something up for him on accident really frightens you. What if it was a good thing? What if this other woman was a good woman? You’d never been one of those, never even met one of those, but you hear about them on TV sometimes and you think one of them would be a nice thing for him. Like a new car or a month without nightmares, one of those things he’s never had. A good woman. Fuck. You knew this was all a mistake.
You already know, but you can’t stop yourself from asking. “Did I—”
“Never mind.”
And he’s been nice enough to not witness you, so now you should be nice enough not to witness him, you think. You go to lay back down, but first you brush a kiss just under his collarbone. Negligible, deniable. Apologetic.
Wrong move, obviously. Nothing can be an apology if it’s deniable; it’s either one or the other, and there it is, he’s getting up and wrestling on his boxers and jeans in one go. Not angry, even, just set. This is what he’s doing. He’s going. Who could blame, et cetera.
“Look, this was…” he says.
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t bother putting on his shirt, just balls it up and stuffs it in his back pocket. Half-naked Breslin walking out the door on a Thursday night, breaking news for nobody, least of all your neighbors. You’re sitting on a deflating air mattress with your arms hugging your knees, not very hard, just waiting for it to be over. Practically rote.
He bends down and presses a kiss to your temple. You really are sorry, so you twist your neck and reach for him and kiss the full apology into him, sweet like you only ever are in some kind of aftermath.
“You know,” you say. “Next time.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah.”
It’ll be his turn. You’ll pay him back; you’re a thief and a bastard but you’re always fair when it comes to shit like this. You’d kiss him for longer, but you can feel the dull burning and pretty soon it’ll be full-on actual pain, so you just nudge at him, your forehead to his. You get the angle a bit wrong and nearly get him in the eye.
Maybe he smiles at that, maybe he doesn’t. Soft footfalls. You’ll need to wash the sheets and your dress and your memory, figure out a way to make tomorrow livable. The door closes behind him.
Next time.