9. Abbie
Abbie
Abbie
After we haul ourselves out of bed, I spend most of the morning lazing in front of the fire while Reed works at the table. When I finally spur myself into starting our Christmas dinner, he’s right there helping. Then he helps with the cleanup after.
Now, with dishes done and my belly full, I’m lazing in front of the fire again, reading on my phone but thinking about taking a nap. Reed’s in the other armchair, eyes closed—a napping overachiever.
At least, that’s what I assume he’s doing, until he suddenly says, “I’m begging for mercy, Abbie. I’ve wracked my brains but I’ve come up with nothing. Where the hell did you get a name like Hot Biscuit Slim?”
Oh. I didn’t tell him before, simply because I didn’t want to expose any part of myself that could be vulnerable. Yet now I don’t hesitate before telling him, “It’s kind of a two part answer, but with the same overall source. When I was little, we had a fluffy white cat that Lauryn and I named Cream Puff Fatty. After my dad…well, Mom never let us get another. So I swore that when I got my own house, I’d get a cat and name him Hot Biscuit Slim.”
“Then you got your house and your cat.”
“Yes.”
He gives me one of his searching looks. “When you escaped from home the first time, why didn’t you end up on the other side of the country? As desperate as you were to go, it doesn’t seem like you went far.”
“The first reason is that in-state tuition was cheaper. Plus I like this area—not far from the mountains, not far from the beach. And I did get over to the other side of the city. The cheaper side,” I say, laughing. “That was far enough until they moved in. But you didn’t go far, either?”
“Yeah, that was some good old nepotism at work—though at the beginning I told myself it wasn’t. But the Knowles name sure didn’t hurt when I was fresh out of college and hired on with the county inspecting new construction. Then when I struck out on my own, it was smarter not to start over somewhere else. I had contacts already through the county job—and from growing up as Knowles’s kid.”
I can’t mistake the faint note of self-derision in his voice. “Do you feel like you haven’t earned what you’ve gotten because of that?”
“Don’t know. I’ve earned some of it. Though the name sure made it easier.”
“I know how that goes. I used my father’s money to buy my house. Harris pays well but I couldn’t have afforded one without it. Not yet.”
Somehow Reed hears what I didn’t say, not even yesterday. “And that makes it even harder—with your mom and sister?”
Silently I nod.
I feel his gaze on me for a long moment. Then he says, “So you got your house and Hot Biscuit Slim. But where did you get that name?”
“My dad used to read real stories from American history to Lauryn and me before bed. Paul Bunyan was our favorite. Cream Puff Fatty and Hot Biscuit Slim were the cooks at his logging camp.”
“Paul Bunyan, the lumberjack? With the blue ox?”
“Babe. Yes.”
His brows arch. “These were real stories from American history?”
“Mmm-hmm. So we learned how he created the Mississippi by dragging his axe behind him when he got tired.”
“Because that’s always how rivers are made.”
“Then there was the great popcorn blizzard. Because his men were starving, so he walked down to Kansas and bought a giant sack of corn, but on his way back the sun was so hot it all started to pop. I think of that every time it snows—or make a popcorn string.” I gesture to the garland over the fireplace.
“Your poker face is fucking incredible. Though now I’m wondering if your ‘I only read non-fiction’ is another tall tale.”
“It’s true, though. Maybe because it’s often wilder than a lot of fiction. And there’s plenty of romance, tragedy—and horror.”
“Real life offers plenty of inspiration, for sure.”
I eye him curiously. “Why horror, though?”
He shrugs and stretches his legs out, settling deeper into his chair. “It’s just one of the things I’ve always enjoyed reading. Not the gore, but the monsters and the weird shit. And the way people are so resilient despite their fear and pain. Despite everything they go through, they fight and persevere.”
“So you don’t write the ones where everyone ends up dying?”
“No. Not everyone lives, though, and I can’t say mine always end happily.”
“Because they’re traumatized by what they’ve gone through?”
“Yeah.” His gaze holds mine. “But they get through. And that’s the point.”
I like that a lot. “How did you get started?”
“By being lazy. Word around campus was that one of the tenured English professors gave As to anyone who showed up and put in the work. His creative writing class fulfilled a requirement, so Harris and I both took it…and it turned out I liked doing it. I was working on my stories even when I’d already completed the assignments. And I just kept on. Even after I was done with school, I’d write when I wasn’t working. I had five novels finished when I finally decided to try sending one in.”
“And now you have deadlines. Is that why you became an independent contractor, so you can make your own schedule?”
“Yeah. And these weeks—end of December, first of January—are always slow in real estate anyway, so I keep them free to get a good head start on a draft. The rest of the year, I try to schedule my inspections from Monday through Thursday, and spend the weekends writing.”
“You must be pretty good if you got published.”
His grin flashes. “I suppose that’s a matter of taste. But I think they’re enjoyable—and I think I get better the more I write.”
“Do you ever think of writing full time?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “I’m financially comfortable but I wouldn’t be if I only depended on royalties. There’s not a lot of money in pulp horror.”
“It seems like there could be?”
“Maybe, if one of the books was made into a movie or something. But that’s out of my hands.”
“The marketing is in your hands.”
He shrugs. “My publisher doesn’t spend much promoting them and I don’t care to spend the time.”
“Maybe I can help with that,” I tell him, and the surprised glance Reed gives me probably mirrors my own surprise at having made the offer. Because if I help him, that means continuing…this. Whatever it is we have. And I haven’t let myself ponder anything beyond this cabin—mostly because that’ll force me to make decisions regarding my mom. Yet my chest aches when I think this upcoming week is all the time I’ll have with him.
Slowly he nods. “Maybe you can.”
Not holding me to anything. Probably realizing that I truly meant the offer, but that I don’t know what the future has in store yet. Or whether he’ll have any part in it. Maybe he won’t want any part of it. Or maybe I won’t want him.
My heart pounds. “Can I trust you?”
“You can,” he replies. Dead serious.
Oh god. Why am I about to share this with him? But I don’t stop myself. Instead I get up and gesture for him to follow. Not far. Just a few steps, babbling the entire way.
“You’re going to look at this and think, ‘She didn’t even do most of that.’ It started with this silly challenge that I saw online. You take thrift store art and add something to the canvas, but the whole point was to match the style and colors. So I picked up an Impressionist seascape and decided to add a kraken attacking a ship—which ended up being a lot harder than I thought, because with the fantasy element, you need detail so your brain can interpret what it is. So I ended up with a blob—but I really liked the whole exercise of it, and began picking canvases with a more realistic style. Anyway. This is the one I’m working on now.”
Reed steps closer to the easel. “So this was a finished painting, and you’re altering it—but in a way that looks as if it was always meant to be part of the original artwork?”
“Yeah.”
He begins examining it, and I cross my arms over my chest to stop the nervous shaking of my hands. Praying he won’t think it’s stupid. Or that he’ll at least understand why I find it so fun.
My mom and Lauryn never did. And honestly, that might be yet another reason I’m out here this Christmas. Because it’s impossible to buy them anything as a gift. My mom hates the commercialism and Lauryn hates everything else. But to make something? Even Lauryn can’t nitpick recycled thrift store art. So, two years ago, I gave them each a painting.
My mom’s was a pretty still life with florals and fruit. Not a particularly exciting subject, but incredibly detailed, almost photorealistic. So I added tiny, photorealistic ants swarming all over the still life with their own paintbrushes and palettes, making it appear that they were the ones creating the scene they were in—as if only something so tiny could render those tiny details. And there was so much detail, and all of it so small—overall, it took more time than I’d ever spent on any one painting.
Mom never looked close enough to see the ants. She just thanked me, told me it was lovely—I don’t think she paid attention or understood when I said the still life wasn’t actually my work—then reminded me that I didn’t have to give her anything for Christmas, and I really shouldn’t.
For Lauryn’s, I’d chosen a mountain landscape with a lake and added a camping scene. But the tent was wrecked, and Bigfoot reclined on a bearskin rug in front of the campfire, Burt Reynolds style, with a human femur between his teeth instead of a cigar—because when I was eight or nine, Lauryn and I ran across that old centerfold, and we decided men were gross, hairy men were even more gross (obviously I’ve reconsidered), and then laughed ourselves silly. But either she didn’t recognize the similarity to that old photo, or she didn’t remember how we laughed—or if she did remember, it wasn’t the bright spot in her memory that it was for me.
Lauryn thanked me but added she wasn’t sure where put it, because it didn’t match the colors in her room.
Neither of the paintings is at my house now. They might be packed away in storage, but I doubt it. Before moving, they sold everything they didn’t want. So I assume the paintings were sold, too.
Reed steps back, tilting his head, narrowing his eyes—which makes me realize that he still might not be focusing at one hundred percent.
“Do you need me to tell you what to look for?” Unlike the Bigfoot painting, where the change is unmistakeable, this one is more on scale with the ants. The original was of a farmhouse and field in autumn golds. A peaceful, bucolic scene. But now the back corner of the porch is smashed and someone is peeking out from the cellar.
“I think I’ve got it.” He gestures to the porch, the cellar, then the fields. “Are these giant footprints?”
Biting my lip, I nod. “It was originally called ‘After the Harvest.’ Now it’s ‘After the Kaiju.’ I’ll be adding the tip of a giant tail here, going off the canvas. Because it’s gone, it’s passed through. The damage is done.”
“And that farmer in the cellar got lucky.”
“Very lucky.”
He spends another quiet minute looking, then abruptly straightens. “Wait a second. I have two of these. Or like these.”
“Of mine?” I sell them, but the orders are made online and I package them up myself. I’d have noticed if I shipped out a canvas to a Reed Knowles.
“I suppose they must be yours. They’re not the same style but— They’re from the house. Before it was razed.”
“What? How?”
“I was there.” He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, as if examining the painting so closely made his head ache. “I wasn’t going to be. Not after the gloating. But the day of, he called me up, said he was running the bulldozer himself, and asked if I wanted to take down half of the house. And he sounded drunk, so I was just, ‘fuck.’”
“You had to go save him from himself?”
“Or save everyone else. Usually in a demolition, all the utilities are disconnected and inspected before the go-ahead. But he got the permit so fast—and if he was drunk off his ass, who knows how much shit he could damage. So I told him to wait for me. I got there and made sure the electricity was cut, that the sewage and water and gas lines were all capped—thankfully it had all been done. Then I asked if he’d finished the walk-through, because even after a house is abandoned, you still end up with people in there. Sometimes the owners refusing to leave, more often a squatter. But he said if a Walker was still in there, all the better. So I did the walk-through, saw those paintings in the garage, and thought the Walkers had no taste at all.” At my sucked-in breath, his head whips around. “Shit, no! Abbie. Zero taste for leaving them behind! Because they were clever and funny and right up my alley. But I had no idea there was an original painting that was altered. I just put that together now after seeing this one. Anyway, I took them home. Bigfoot is over my fireplace, and the ants are in my kitchen.”
My heart leaping, I grab hold of his shirt and pull him in close for a hard, quick kiss. “I am going to fuck you silly, Reed Knowles.”
I drag Reed to the bed (though it doesn’t require much dragging). Though my intention is to fuck him , about ten minutes later, I’ve somehow ended up with his face between my legs and his fingers pumping deep, and I’m about one lick away from coming.
“Grab that condom for me, Abbie girl.” His voice is rough, his thumb taking over for his tongue and rubbing, rubbing. “As soon as you come, I’m gonna be inside you again.”
I fumble for the packet beside my head. Rubber number three. I tear it open and sing, “ On the third fuck of Christmas, my enemy gave to me: Three fingers in, two loads of cum, and a cock in a latex sheath! ”
Reed sputters with laughter against my pussy. Just like I hoped. I take advantage of his distraction to push and pull and twist us around until he’s on his back, where I roll the condom down his thick length and swing my leg over his hips.
“Abbie,” he groans as I take him in. “It gets better every damn time.”
Every time. I sink down, feeling that luscious stretch, the almost-too-deep feeling of his cock as I seat him fully inside. His jaw clenches, air hissing through his teeth, then he grips my thighs and bucks beneath me.
Lights burst behind my eyes. I fall forward, bracing my hands on his chest, shaking my head.
“Stay still, Reed. Stay still. Be good for me, and let me fuck you slow and deep.” Because I remember that first time. How he asked if I needed to come again, though he was on the edge of coming himself. That memory has occupied my brain ever since. Wondering what would’ve happened if I’d told him to hold off until I came again. If he would have. If he could have. “But don’t come until I’m done.”
“Anything,” he promises gruffly, fisting his hands in the blankets. “Anything you need.”
I begin riding him slowly, my fingers stroking my clit. By the first time I come, my cunt’s so slippery and swollen that each up and down slide must feel like an endless wet sucking the length of his cock. As I come the second time, Reed’s heaving beneath me, his voice hoarse and begging—until I tell him it’s finally his turn, and he flips me around, but doesn’t stop fucking me until somehow I come again.
A while later, I’m lying bonelessly atop him and wallowing in the feel of his skin, his heat, his strength. My nap’s long overdue, but I’m not sure now that I want to miss a single second of this day.
Because this truly ended up being the best Christmas ever.