The Lateral

Chapter 15

A udrey Boone smiled at me. “I don’t know why not,” she said. “Of course you could.”

“I’m just not sure…” I hesitated. Audrey was obviously smart and you could tell by listening to her. It wasn’t like she talked big or braggy, but it just emerged. She might have sensed my level of intelligence, too, but maybe not, so I spelled it out for her: “I’m not sure I’m capable.”

“Oh, I definitely think you are,” she said, and glanced inside the stroller. Her daughter was stirring and making little noises, so she pushed the handle back and forth to gently jiggle her. “I know you could get your GED, and why not try college?”

“I dropped out before,” I explained. “I left after eighth grade.”

“I dropped out, too,” she told me. “I didn’t finish what I’d planned to achieve. I fell apart and had to quit, but it seems like you were in a terrible situation. Araceli said that you—” She stopped, and looked at me guiltily before she removed her daughter from the stroller.

“I said some things in front of Jake’s girlfriend,” I admitted. “I shouldn’t have told her all that. I was upset to see them together and I overreacted.”

“You definitely don’t need to worry about them being together,” she told me. “I’m one of her best friends, and I can assure you that they were never, ever going to work out.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting her.”

Audrey stared across the table and forgot to bounce the baby on her shoulder. Alice responded by crying and Audrey glanced around the restaurant at the other patrons. “She’s not hungry,” she said. “She’s just fractious.”

That sounded like something to do with math, but it seemed to me as if Alice needed more movement. “I can take her,” I offered. “I’m done with my sandwich.” I was seated in the corner of the room, too, so when I held the baby and stood to rock my hips, I didn’t bother anybody. “You’re not fractious,” I told her. “You’re so sweet.” Her unhappy sounds quieted.

“You’re a baby whisperer,” Audrey said. She was whispering, too.

“No, I just have a lot of practice. I took care of plenty of them, starting when I was really young myself. Um, what were you saying about your friend?”

“Araceli and Jake were never going to work out,” she repeated, but went further. “She liked him but things didn’t progress. After a while, she decided that what she wanted for the long-term, a commitment, wasn’t going to happen with him, and she wasn’t interested in working at it.”

The woman was crazy, then. I thought that losing him would kill me.

“She’s much happier with her current boyfriend and I think they may get engaged soon, like you and Jake.” I watched her eyes go to the bare ring finger on my left hand. “What I’m saying is that she wasn’t too stuck on him, and I’m also positive that he wasn’t in love with her.” She paused. “Why are you shaking your head?”

I hadn’t realized that I was. “I just can’t imagine that,” I answered. “Jake has such a big, soft heart.”

“Jake?Jake Koval?”

“Yes, Jake!” I would have demonstrated his height with my arm above my head to confirm who I meant, but I had the baby. “And why wouldn’t she have been in love with Jake? He’s so…he’s just…”

“Not everybody clicks,” she said, smiling broadly. “I’m really happy that you feel that way, though.”

“What way?”

“You love Jake so much,” she explained, as if it were obvious. She rose and held out her hands. “Thank you, Ember. I can take her back.”

I stood there for a moment before I kind of came to, and then I nodded and handed over Alice.

“I’m fine,” I told Jake when I met him at my former rental. We were going over the furniture there and deciding what to keep and what to donate.

“This is the worst couch I ever sat on. It’s like the metal sideline benches we had in high school.” He stood, frowning. “You sure you’re all right? I was asking if you’re upset because you keep staring at me.”

Yeah, I had been and it was because of what Audrey had said. I’d been surprised by her opinion about Jake’s feelings, but I’d been even more shocked by what she’d said about mine…

“There you go again, staring,” he mentioned, and then looked at his pants. “Damn, do I have more glitter on myself?”

He did, and we decided to try to clean the couch again before the truck from the charity picked it up. “It’s funny to be the one on the donation side,” I commented as I wound up the cord of the vacuum when we were done. “I’ve mostly been on the receiving end of other people’s generosity. I’m glad I can give something, too.”

“I had an idea that I’ve been turning over for a few days,” Jake said. “Ray Bishop, a guy who used to play on our defense, started an organization to help people with vision problems. Why couldn’t we do something like that to help foster kids? I keep thinking about Meadow showing up at some stranger’s house with a bag of whatever she grabbed, not knowing who was going to take care of her. They…oh, shit. Baby, don’t cry about it. She’s ok now.”

“I know, but I’ve been that kid, too,” I said, “and you’re right about how scary it is. No matter how much things sucked where you were, at least you were used to them.”

“You got removed from your mom’s house?” he asked, and I nodded. “Why?”

“Probably a lot of reasons. I was pretty little the first time so I don’t remember exactly. I know I was hungry, and I think it was around when my mom had let her boyfriend and his family move in with us, like his whole, huge, extended family. There were people everywhere, sleeping in every room, and I know there wasn’t enough to eat.” I felt ok talking about it when he was hugging me like this. “I never knew who they all were. I never bothered to learn the names of the people who were in our house since they came and went so quickly. Meadow says I still have a problem with calling people the wrong stuff.”

“Do you? I haven’t noticed that.” He looked down at me. “You feeling better? We can talk about my idea another time.” And then, he turned toward the door. “What was that?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” I said, but the man had ears like a bat. He walked to the front door and opened it, and there on the front porch was my niece.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Christal. “What in the hell do you want?”

“I came to say goodbye to Meadow!” she told me. “I’m leaving.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“I’m leaving,” she repeated. “Haynes and I are leaving.”

That was her boyfriend, the one who had paid her bond and sprung her from jail. “You have court dates,” I said angrily, and shook my head. “You can’t just go.”

“We can start over,” she explained. Her eyes flicked back and forth between me and Jake. “He has this friend in Missouri who’s going to let us stay with him. I’ve never been there but he says it’s nice.”

“How will you live? Does he have a job set up? Do you?”

She rolled her eyes skyward, looking like a tired, used-up version of her daughter. “You know I’m not good at that.”

Yeah, I knew she’d never liked to work. “Then how do you plan to support yourself?” I asked, before I remembered that I shouldn’t have cared about that. I did, anyway. Jake shook his head at me slightly, as if he was also reminding me that I couldn’t fix her—but I wanted to. He took my hand.

“We’ll be fine. Haynes has so many friends there.” She looked up at the clear sky and then down at the area around my chin instead of meeting my eyes. “I didn’t come to fight,” she said, and she really didn’t seem agitated or even very high. “I just want to say goodbye to Meadow.”

“She’s not home from school yet.” Of course, her mother wouldn’t know her schedule.

“Is she doing good there?”

“She’s doing better,” I answered.

“She’s the smartest of all of us,” Christal commented, and I nodded. “Hard to believe she’s mine, right?”

“She looks just like you. I think she got the best of our gene pool.”

“I really fucking hope so.” She scratched her stomach and her eyes shifted. Then she twitched her head to the side and I recognized the signs. She needed to use. “Tell her bye for me.”

“You’re really leaving? You want more warrants?”

“They’re not going to bother with me. I’m starting fresh,” she told me, as if the justice system gave one single crap about her desire to “start fresh” and leave her charges behind her.

“I’m going to adopt Meadow,” I said.

“ We are,” Jake amended, and I nodded.

“You have to do her the favor of letting go,” I told my niece. “Can you?”

She looked up at the sky again, and I saw more in her face than just that urge to get high. She did love her daughter—beneath everything else, it was there. “I want good stuff for her,” she said. “I’m sorry for all this shit.”

“I’ll give her a good life, Chris. I’ll do whatever it takes. She’ll have me and she’ll have Jake to be like a dad, too.” He put his arm around me now, as if we were already united. “Can you imagine?”

“No,” she said. She rubbed tears away from her eyes. “No, but it sounds nice.”

“Yeah, it does.” I wiped my eyes, too. “Good luck to you. I hope you’ll be ok.” I had hope, but I wouldn’t let that feeling keep me from acting in the ways I needed to for Meadow. Hope wouldn’t hold me back.

“Yeah,” she echoed. She started to walk away but then she stopped. “I’m sorry for all that other stuff, ok? I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know he was doing that to you.”

I knew what she meant; my mind flew back to more than a decade before. I heard my mom yelling as she’d opened the door to the basement, screaming at Christal’s then-boyfriend to get off me, asking what the fuck he was doing. There had been a lot more screaming fights afterwards and Christal and that guy had driven off and disappeared up north, and we hadn’t seen her again for years. “You thought I was luring him,” I remembered, although this was an old argument that wasn’t worth having. “You thought I was trying to steal him away from you, but I was nine. I didn’t want what he was doing to me.” My mom had made him leave and she’d fought with Christal, but she hadn’t called the police to have him arrested.

“You don’t do that to family,” she’d explained, and took a long drag off her cigarette.

“Yeah, I was just pissed off,” Christal explained now. “I didn’t let that stuff happen to Meadow.”

No, I was pretty sure that her daughter had been safe from all the men surrounding them. I had paid my sister Alina, Christal’s mom, to watch and report to me. It wasn’t a foolproof system, but I had listened to what Alina had said and figured out what she had omitted, and I’d called the police, social services, and whoever else would listen if I suspected that Meadow was in danger. I hadn’t been physically close, but I’d tried to keep her safe.

“Tell her goodbye, ok?” Christal reminded me. “I’ll text and stuff.”

“I’ll tell her,” I said. I would, but it was going to be hard. “We’ll take care of her, always.” That part would be hard sometimes, too, but it was worth it. Always.

Christal nodded and turned away. We watched her get into a car that looked like it would never make it to Missouri. But it started and she drove down the road until she disappeared over the little hill, and she was really gone.

“What happened with her boyfriend when you were nine?” Jake asked.

I shrugged. “You can guess.”

“Mother of all fucks. Yeah, I can.”

Probably not, but I didn’t want to talk about it. “I’m ok,” I said. It had taken a long time, but I thought that I was.

He sighed and hugged me. “If you’re not, you can tell me. I’ll try to help you,” he said, and I knew that he would. He was like that. “You think she’s really going?”

“For the time being. I think she’ll be back, eventually.”

I lifted my head from his chest and saw him peering down the road, as if he was already looking for her old car. “We’ll deal with her when it happens,” he told me. “Are you all right now?”

I nodded. It felt better to know that he would be around if she returned, because we’d be married and legally bound together. It was better to know that he would be around for everything. And maybe, possibly, Audrey Boone had been right about him: maybe he wasn’t still so stuck on his ex. Maybe he, like me, was moving on from the past, and maybe that could mean something about our future.

Jake was back to driving and after a while longer in my formal rental, I followed his truck to our house. We unloaded some groceries he had bought, another activity that was more difficult for him after the surgery.

“Are you thinking about Christal again?” he asked me. He frowned at the immobilizer on his body. “I’m going to take this off for a while.”

“No, you can’t. You can’t use that arm yet.” I batted his hand away from the clip. “If you want to go without, you have to sit.”

He decided to keep working with half of himself, which was still stronger than six halves of me. “We can tell Meadow together, if you want.”

“That would be good,” I agreed. “She’ll see that she has both of us.”

“I don’t want you to be upset.”

I wasn’t upset, not really. This was another event in the long line of dumb things that Christal had done and would do again in the future. I had been surprised to hear that she’d changed her mind about what had happened with me and her former boyfriend, but she might change it back again and decide that yeah, I’d been the seducer. I’d been Ember Easy. I had made some peace with that years before and her feelings about it didn’t matter very much, although…ok, I was glad if she didn’t blame me. I knew I wasn’t really to blame, but it was still hard to hear when she’d said that it was all my fault.

Then there was the stuff that Audrey had told me. It was very difficult to believe that Jake’s ex wasn’t totally in love with him, it was eye-opening to think that he didn’t feel the same way about her, and then what she’d said about my own feelings...well, that had been downright shocking.

“At lunch, Audrey and I were talking about Araceli,” I said, and he stopped with several cans cradled in his huge hand.

“What the hell did Audrey say about her?” he demanded.

“Well, I had been thinking that you really loved your ex and that you really missed her a lot. I thought that you must have been totally destroyed by your break-up, and Audrey said none of that was right.”

“Why the hell did you think all that?” he asked, his voice louder.

“For one thing, because you were ready to jump into this with me,” I said. “I thought you were rebounding because your heart had been broken.”

“I’m not rebounding.” He shook his head. “She’s great, but she’s not for me and I’m not for her.”

“So, this…” I pointed at him, and then at myself. “This, between us, it wasn’t because you were looking for an easy replacement for the woman who broke your heart.”

“We were upset, but no hearts were broken when we split up. I don’t think our hearts were very involved when we were together.” He paused, frowning. “I sound like I’m writing a fucking poem. I’m saying that we liked each other fine, but that was it. There wasn’t love involved. I didn’t feel the same way about her that I feel about you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What did you mean by that?”

“I love you,” Jake said. “I want to marry you because I love you.”

No, that wasn’t right. “We got engaged because it made sense for Meadow,” I corrected. “It was for practical reasons.”

“There was that, but…” He looked down at his hand, where he still held some groceries. “I’ll put down the baked beans,” he suggested, and did. Then he sat and offered his lap to me, and I took it. “It makes sense for us to be married. For Meadow, for me, and for you. It’s good for all of us.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. That was what we’d said. “It makes sense.”

“I thought it would help you and I wanted that. But I also thought, ‘I’m never, ever going to meet another woman like Ember.’” His arm pulled me tightly to his chest. “The first time I saw you, you’d just woken up and you were so beautiful, and you didn’t back down even though I was pissed. I’m sorry about that.”

“No, you were right to feel that way. And you thought I was…”

“Beautiful, yeah. And tough, too, and funny. I kept thinking about you and I made up some excuses to go back over to see you. I wanted to be around you more,” he told me. “I think I knew that I loved you when you showed up in Ann Arbor. I was worried the whole time you were driving and then Meadow said you had pneumonia? Mother of all fucks. I’m not going to let you get sick again.” He hugged me even closer and I put my arms around his neck. “I was hoping that maybe, after a while, you might start to love me back, but if not? It’s ok. I’ll be happy to be with you even if it’s only practical on your side.”

“It’s more than practical,” I said.

“Are you having trouble breathing or are you crying?”

I picked up my face from where it had been buried against his neck so he could see that it wasn’t a pneumonia thing. “I’m crying,” I answered. “I love you, too.”

“You don’t have to say that. We’ll still get married even if—”

“Jake, I never felt like this about anybody, ever. I was hoping, maybe someday, that I’d find someone who was nice to me. You are but you’re more than that. You’re just…”

“You say very complimentary stuff. Keep going,” he encouraged.

“You’re everything,” I told him. “I was so worried that I was going to ruin your life, but if you really feel that way about me? I just can’t believe how lucky I am. Things like this aren’t normal.”

“What you think is ‘normal’ is wrong,” he said. “Getting mistreated and hurt isn’t normal at all and I don’t want you to accept those things and shrug them off. Not anymore.”

“I just try to deal with what comes.”

“Yeah, well, now you have me,” he said, and kissed me. “This is the new normal, you and me together.” He paused. “Did you mean what you said?”

I knew what he was referring to. “I love you,” I assured him. “I love you a lot. I love you.” I had to stop saying it because he kissed me again, for longer and deeper this time, and I got caught up in the pleasure of that rather than remembering to talk. Then he stood up so I was hanging in the air and I pulled back.

“Let me walk. No, put me down,” I ordered. “If you hurt your shoulder because you’re carrying me to the bedroom to have sex, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Walk then, but go fast.”

I went very fast, and Jake was right behind me. We stopped on the stairs because he was trying to tug my shirt over my head and that was hard with only one arm, but with three between us, we managed fine. Then I still stood there, because he’d pulled me against him and dipped his hand inside my bra.

“Mm,” he said, a noise of satisfaction from deep in his chest. “That’s very nice.” He cupped and massaged, and then rubbed my nipple. When he moved his fingers to unbutton the top of my jeans, I started walking again, because I didn’t want us to fall backwards down the stairs and hurt him. He followed, his hand on my butt as we went.

Sex had never been my thing. I’d done it, of course, but I hadn’t seen much of a point beyond monetary concerns, and that had been fine with me—no, not fine, but something I’d accepted. Now I had a funny, squiggly feeling down low, my heart was pounding, and I was also breathless. None of that was due to illness or injury, either.

“All right, help me with this,” he directed once we were in his bedroom, and he returned to unbuttoning my jeans and removing them. “And this,” he said, starting on himself, but I told him no.

“You can’t keep taking off that sling! We’ll do it my way.”

“As long as we’re going to do it,” he said, and I pushed his chest as I nodded. I helped him shuck his own shirt and his pants, and he really enjoyed that process because I skimmed up his legs with my body as I stood.

“Oh, damn,” he groaned. “I knew you’d feel good.” He was adept with only five fingers, and he easily unfastened my bra and winged it across the room. Then he slid his palm down the back of my underwear to squeeze. “That feels better than good.”

“It does,” I told him, and I pushed my breasts forward to rub against his bare chest.

“Just wait until I can grab you with both hands,” he promised, but this was really, really great right now. Jake sat on the bed and pushed down my underwear, and then he pulled me to straddle him, my knees on either side of his hips—and that meant that all of me was on display. Yeah, it had been viewed before, but no one had looked quite as appreciatively as he was right now. Then he looked into my eyes, which no one ever bothered with.

“I’m so glad you’re going to be my wife,” he told me.

“Damn,” I sighed. “Me, too.” I moaned as he cupped my breast, kissed it, and then tongued my nipple, and while his mouth was busy, he slid his fingers between my legs.

I almost jolted off his lap. He was very gentle with that big hand—you’d never have thought that he could be so delicate, and it felt so good that I started to rock, jerking my hips back and forth without any conscious thought about the movement. But then I wanted more and pushed myself down, seeking it.

“You’re not ready,” he said. I reached to stroke him, and I’d had enough experience with penises to know that his was…his was a lot.

“Mother of all—Ember,” he groaned. Our hands kept moving and so did my hips, and it was getting frenzied. I was getting desperate—for what, I wasn’t quite sure, but it had a lot to do with the erection I was massaging and that seemed to be growing even larger. I wanted it. I wanted him, and I rubbed against him, moving faster and faster, breathing harder like I was on that dumb rowing machine, except this was so much more enjoyable. All my rational thoughts fled as I pursued the pleasure.

“Now,” he ordered, and I went up higher and came down, easing his entrance…

I gasped, so full that I froze for a moment at the feeling of it, and Jake crushed me against him. “Are you good? Is it good?”

“It’s good,” I moaned. “It’s good.” It was overwhelming, too. I shifted slightly and that feeling was even more amazing. He was touching deep, deep inside me, a place I’d never had reached and I wanted to experience it more. I moved up and down and my clit stroked against him, and then I couldn’t stop.

“That’s it,” he growled into my neck. “Go after it. Damn, this is—are you close?”

I was, and I kept moving, chasing it, faster and harder. It was right there, and I wanted this moment together to keep going forever, but I had to reach it.

“Ember!” His arm tightened around me until I almost couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t tell what was happening except that satisfaction slammed through me. My body jerked and shook, I may have screamed, and I heard Jake swearing a lot more. A lot more.

“Ember.”

I was never going to move again. Never. It felt like I’d completed a heptathlon—not that I ever had or would, but I could imagine. Except I also felt so deeply gratified that I understood what the word “bliss” felt like…anyway, I was never moving.

After a while, Jake nuzzled against my hair. “Ember. Baby.”

“Mmm.”

“We’re going to get up,” he told me. “Are you conscious? Hold on.”

We went to the bathroom where the shower walls were very strong, very sturdy and I thought possibly steel-reinforced. That was fortunate because we did it again with my back against that tile and the force of his hips driving into my body could easily have broken through normal construction. In fact, the power of all of that action had been so great that a few hours later, I only had the strength to sit in a kitchen chair. A mug of tea with the delicious Michigan honey sat in front of me, and I watched the steam rise from it and felt dazed. Every time I thought about him inside me…damn, I got breathless again.

“Hey.” Jake came into the room, smiling. That big grin hadn’t left his face since I’d lifted my head and looked at him in wonder after the first time we’d done it on the bed. He’d kept smiling after the second time, then more while he’d washed both of us very thoroughly and decided he’d need a closer look at my clitoris. He’d placed me on a towel on the top of the dresser in his closet, where he didn’t have to bend too far, and he’d parted my legs. Then he’d used his eyes, hands, and mouth to check me over and I was still in a state of pleased shock. Very, very pleased.

“You all right?” he asked, and I managed a nod. He lifted the mug of tea and brought it to my lips. “Do you need electrolytes or something?”

“I don’t think I can go to the school for pick-up. I don’t think I can walk to my car,” I confessed. He’d carried me down here because we’d still been kissing, and I thought I would have to stay where I was for a while.

He looked extremely proud and I started to laugh, which he joined me in. “Good. Stay right there,” he said, and I heard him still chuckling to himself as he went up the stairs. I drank the tea, thinking that it was pretty nice how someone had made it for me. Life was such a win, wasn’t it? I waited for him to come back, because I wanted to see him again.

“You’re still smiling,” he said as he rejoined me. “Is that because of what happened in the bedroom? And the bathroom, and the closet?”

“And the hallway,” I reminded him. “No, not only because of that. Just because of you, I guess.”

“Damn, Ember.” He stood in front of me. “The shit you say to me…”

“It’s not lies,” I said. “I mean it.”

“I know. That’s what makes it so good.” Slowly, he started to lower down.

I sat up straight, alarmed. “What are you doing? Don’t hurt yourself! You’re all off-balance—Jake, be careful.”

He went farther, then farther, until he was on one knee in front of me. “I think the last time, I didn’t do this right,” he said. He felt in his pocket and drew out a velvet box that was familiar now, and he flicked it open with his thumb. “I love you, and I hope you’ll wear this. Will you really marry me?”

I told him yes, just like I’d said it before, except now I had more to add. “Yes, because I love you, too.” And then we had to hug and kiss for a while, before he slid that gorgeous ring onto my finger. I stared at it, kissed him again, and I revived a whole lot. I revived enough that we had to add “the kitchen” to the places where we had done it.

“You’re on the pill,” Jake noted a while later. I lay on my back on the island and his gaze was right between my legs, where he fit so perfectly.

“Uh…yeah,” I murmured, trying to focus. Maybe I did need electrolytes, or maybe all that pleasure flooding my brain had temporarily put it out of service.

“You could stop taking it whenever you want.” He put his hand on my stomach. “Think of a baby in there. Our baby.”

I was still smiling about that idea as he rushed out the door to pick up Meadow at school. A family of four? That would be something, I thought. I lifted my head enough to watch him leave and I waved when he honked the horn. He’d gotten me another of his shirts to wear before he left, since the one I’d had on had become a little torn. “You look cute in that,” he’d said about the new one and then checked underneath it, which had led to a delayed departure. But now he was gone, and hot damn. I sat in that pleasure afterglow, both from everything physical and everything emotional, too. Jake loved me. He’d gotten down on one knee and put the ring on my finger as a symbol of it…I stared at it, smiling again. This was a promise of things to come.

He and Meadow came home not too much later, after I’d cleaned up myself and the kitchen and had added underwear and pants to my ensemble. I watched them walk in, talking together. “Hey,” she said as she threw her backpack into the corner. “Hi, Belle!” She hugged and kissed the dog, and then stopped and looked up at me. “Ember, why are you staring at me like that?” she asked suspiciously. “It’s so—”

“No, it’s not creepy,” I answered. “I look at you a lot because I love you so much. I’m so happy that we’re together, finally.”

She stared back at me.

“I’ve loved you for your whole life,” I told her. “I’ve always thought about you and I’ve always missed you. I was always there, and I always will be.”

“Yeah, ok,” she said, and then mumbled something.

“What?” Jake asked her. “Say it again so Ember can hear.”

“I love you, too,” she said louder. “Damn.” She looked at me, but I didn’t correct that. She hugged the quiet dog again, and then she hugged me. “Yeah, I love you,” she repeated. “Can I have a snack?”

We both had one. “Damn,” I also said when she had run upstairs. “I’m going to have to start swearing again. It really works best for me.”

“I don’t mind you swearing. I think it’s cute, but I think that about most everything you do.”

His blue-eyed gaze was so intense. “Don’t stare at me like that,” I said, smiling. “It’s creepy.”

“I’m looking at you because I love you,” he told me.

“I love you, too,” I answered, and snuggled against him. This was how it was going to be, and this was exactly what I wanted. It was Jake, Meadow, and me, our future children, our friends, a dog, a cat, three horses, two cows,a pig, sheep and goats, and a flock of chickens.

Oh, yeah. And a goose, too.