Chapter 16
One thing Ava has learned about Dean over the last three days is that he doesn’t follow common dating practices. At least not the ones that she’s pretty sure have become normal since the last time she dated anyone. Which was forever ago, when she was fresh out of nursing school and dating John. She knows that when it comes to ‘courting’ or whatever they call it now, men have a way of blowing hot and cold.
Showing interest one second and falling off the face of the earth the next.
Even in the beginning, when she first met John, he did it too. Her mother, her friends, they all said that she needed to be patient, that men didn’t like a clingy woman, and she was expecting too much to assume he’d respond to her phone calls or not be late for half their dates.
They told her to stick it out because he was busy and none of that meant he didn’t like her. He was always easy to be around when they were together, so clearly they had to be right. She accepted that all men must be this way. Low attention spans, hard to get a hold of, missing you one moment, and too busy to call the next.
She adjusted her expectations and became the woman she thought he wanted. Someone easygoing and forgiving of what she previously thought of as his faults.
And look how well that worked out.
She has no doubt where she stands with Dean because he makes no attempt to hide it.
He sends her text flowers every morning that she finds waiting on her phone. It’s the first thing she sees when she wakes up, the first thing to make her smile. What you see is what you get with Dean. There are no games, no attempts to blow cold after being hot for this long and she’s so damn grateful for that because she couldn’t handle someone that didn’t play by such open rules. She’s already done an excellent job of confusing herself without any help from him, after all.
He’ll be at her house today to work on the car. She’s changed underwear twice already and he won’t even be here for another hour. Thoughts of him turn x-rated, no matter how uncertain she is about her ability to follow through on them. They’ve known each other for months, been on two actual dates, if the same day he got out of prison counts, and they’ll have easy access to her bedroom. She assumes expectations come with this visit, not that he’s said anything to make her feel that way. He hasn’t.
The only man she’s been with fucked her for the first time in the kitchen of his apartment on their third date and she didn’t have much choice in the matter.
‘Needed you so damn bad. Couldn’t wait any longer. You’re gonna be my wife one day anyway, right?’He said into her ear while she was bent over the counter, a fresh bite mark at the juncture of her neck and pain flaring between her legs.
Then he slapped her on the ass and told her to clean herself up.
She wishes she left then when it wasn’t too late, but she was young and naive and he convinced her that passion drove him to it. Convinced her it was normal, expected, that she must have enjoyed it too. This must be what love is, she thought, and really, she didn’t have anyone else to compare him to.
It didn’t take long to figure out that John never loved her, but by then she was trapped in an abusive marriage with a child on the way.
Guilt for entertaining the idea that Dean could have anything in common with her dead ex-husband floods her nerves. He is different, she reminds herself. She feels safe with him. She wants him. He would be gentle with her, she’s certain of that, and there is a reason she’s wet every time she imagines seeing him again. Delaying this isn’t doing her any favors.
If he tries, she’ll let him. She won’t flinch or pull away, she won’t see another man’s face above her and freeze.
Some wine might help, she thinks. Maybe she could get out of her head for long enough to enjoy it if she’s half wasted.
If you need to get drunk to have sex with him, that’s a you problem, something whispers in a self-deprecating voice in the back of her mind.
“Shut the fuck up,” she says into her empty bedroom, staring down at her outfit choices.
Getting past the first time is all she needs to function like a normal human who doesn’t require any liquid courage to sleep with the man she has such strong feelings for.
* * *
Dean is stuffed under her car, grunting here and there while she hands him relevant tools.
He didn’t waste much time getting under there once he arrived, eager to get to work and prove that he could fix what everyone else only made worse. Without him, she’s not sure it’ll ever run again, though that might not be a bad thing either. It’s cursed anyway. Maybe it’s better off stuck in her driveway for good.
“Can ya hand me that smaller one?” he says, his voice muffled beneath the car. She grabs a small wrench and places it into his waiting hand. “Thanks. I’d swear they drove a screwdriver right through this thing. Lotta shady places out there but this is bold.”
“They have a good Google rating, but they’re about to get a one-star review soon. This isn’t the first time I’ve taken it in only to think it was fixed and then find out later it’s worse.”
“You ain’t gotta worry ‘bout that no more. I’ll look after it for you,” he says, matter-of-factly like it’s the most natural response until he seems to realize the implication. “I mean, if you want me to. If you’re happy with it when I’m done. Or I can give you some referrals.”
Ava smiles at his rushed explanation. He can’t see her, and she’s free to let that giddiness flush over her. “I’m quite sure I’ll be happy with your work. It can only get better from here.”
She shouldn’t have said that because the moment she stops talking, there’s a rustling below followed by screeching, like metal dragging against metal, and then a loud curse.
“Fuckin’….what the….goddammit.” Dean drags his body out from under her car, cursing like a sailor and covered in oil.
It’s stuck in his hair, penetrating those soft-looking strands to seep in deep against his scalp and drip down his neck and under his shirt.
“Oh…” Her hand covers her mouth, eyes wide as saucers. “What happened?”
He sighs, having come to terms with his current state, leaning casually up against her car, arms crossed and covered in oil. “So the hole was up pretty high. Plenty of oil left. Went to remove the whole thing and the screws just sorta failed all at once. They didn’t even secure the pan properly. I saw ‘em jiggle before it fell but it was too late.”
“I’m so sorry, I—”
“I can still fix it,” he adds, not wanting her to think this whole thing was a failure. “Just need a new oil pan.”
He looks defeated and embarrassed like he expected to be her knight in shining armor and fix this stupid thing, only to end up looking like one of those oil-soaked baby ducks in a dish soap commercial.
She contains her laughter, just barely, but she manages.
“Go on and laugh,” he deadpans.
She bites her lip. “I would never.”
Mischief lights up his face as he opens his arms in an attempt to hug her.
“No. Do not!” She laughs, backing away to avoid a slippery embrace.
“You sure?” He beams.
“Never been more sure of anything.”
He backs off with a chuckle, trying to wipe his hands on his pants in a pointless move.
“How about we get you cleaned up first and then worry about this later? Looks like a job for another day.”
Dean frowns, shifting on the balls of his feet. All that rare, playful teasing she was so happy to see a moment ago slipping away. “Didn’t bring nothing else to change into. I should go home and shower.”
He doesn’t want to leave yet, and she makes a split-second decision that she hopes she won’t regret later. “I have an old shirt that might fit you and my hot water works. You can use my shower.”
He looks like he might protest, maybe say something about how he doesn’t want to track gunk into her house, but she waves him off and starts toward the door. “Come on, the longer you leave it in your hair, the harder it’ll be to get out.”
She hands him a towel and an entire bottle of dish soap once they reach the bathroom.
“You want me to wash my hair with this?” He pouts with an oil-covered frown.
“Yes. Twice. If it’s good enough for baby birds, then I think you’ll survive. I’ll find you a shirt and leave it on the doorknob before you come out.”
When she gently shoves him inside the bathroom and shuts the door, she tries not to think about how he’ll be naked in her house only a few minutes from now.
* * *
Her cat sits next to the coffee maker, watching her put a pod inside and hit the button like it’s the most fascinating thing, little ears swiveling and head tilting.
“What do you think about all this?” she asks the cat, who gives no response other than a bored expression. “I should go for the wine instead, right?”
When the water in the bathroom shuts off and Dean appears a few moments later, she nearly drops her cup and barely saves the spoon in her other hand from clattering to the counter.
He is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, still glistening from the shower, biceps flexing as he towels off damp hair. Even the fact that he’s wearing one of John’s t-shirts that she’d forgotten to donate to Goodwill doesn’t take away from how handsome he is.
“Looks like it worked.” Her voice catches in her throat. “The dish soap.”
He nods, one corner of his mouth lifting in a shy smile, but then his attention drifts to the cat on her counter. “Hey, Buddy. Heard a lot about you.”
“All terrible things,” she teases, watching the animal nuzzle against his hand and knead tiny biscuits onto the hard kitchen countertop. “He likes you.”
“Me and him, we go way back. You name him yet?”
Ava hands him a steaming hot coffee cup with a frown. “Not yet. Looks like a Spot, or a Moo. Something cow-related? I don’t know. I’ll call him Cat forever.”
It’s been nicer to have this little black and white kitten here than she thought it would be. He is always a willing ear and an eager audience, happy to curl up against her side every night like a warm, comforting little weight.
She’s not delusional enough to ignore the real reason why she hasn’t named him. It has nothing to do with not knowing each other well enough and everything to do with how afraid she is of getting too attached. With her luck, she’ll name this cat, let him into her heart and he’ll die the next day from some obscure cat flu.
“We need to get her on board with a real name.” He whispers to the cat, giving it one last pat before shifting the conversation. “Anyway, I gotta ask. Where’d you get that thing? It’s a damn nice car. Not that you wouldn’t have a nice car, that’s not what I meant, just that ya don’t see a lot of those. Pretty rare. You said it was a story before and now I got some time.”
Little does he know, he stepped on a landmine.
She knows how to explain why she has it, but why she keeps it…well, she can hardly explain that to herself. The reality of this story will make her sound like a crazy person, but he asked, and he’ll find out anyway if he sticks around, so she takes a breath and rips off the band-aid.
“It belonged to John. He came home with it one day out of the blue. Used his Christmas bonus from work and our entire life savings to buy it. I think it was some sort of mid-life crisis, I don’t know.” She pauses, rolling her eyes. “He never let me drive it, not that I wanted to because I hated it. Hated that he bought it at all.”
Dean’s watching with a furrow in his brow, like he regrets asking. This story is not a happy one, but now that she’s started, she can’t stop.
“She loved it, though. Charlotte. Love isn’t even a strong enough word. She was completely obsessed with it. She would beg him to pick her up from school in it. It was the only time…the only time…that she was happy with her father. When he’d take her for a drive in that stupid car, and he did that a lot. Not because he wanted to spend time with her, but because he wanted to show it off to anyone who’d look.”
“Shit,” he mumbles, having connected the dots to how this tragic story ends before she’s gotten there.
“It wasn’t the car’s fault, what happened that day. It was the truck driver that hit them. Wasn’t even John’s fault, much as I want to blame him.”
He looks like he wants to reach out and pull her into a hug and that’s when she realizes there are fat tears making their way down her cheeks, even though her tone remains level and detached.
“Why don’t ya sell it?”
There is no judgment in his tone, only the desire to understand.
“Hell if I know,” she says with a flippant shrug, and an out-of-place snort of laughter. “Maybe because he’d hate knowing I’m driving it. Oh, he’d hate that. It would light him right up. Would have gotten me a broken nose if I tried it when he was alive…” She trails off, realizing she’s getting too specific, telling him too much all at once. She’ll be lucky if she ever sees him again, she thinks to herself.
“Mostly, I think I keep it because it was the last thing she touched,” Ava continues. “Something she loved. I’m sorry. I know it’s fucked up and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It doesn’t even to me. I’m telling you way more than you wanted to know, and we were supposed to be having a good time here.”
“Hey, I asked, right? Wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t wanna know the answer.” He touches her upper arm like she might bolt, fluttering a soft thumb over her skin.
“I’m not crazy enough to think it’s not crazy.”
“Ain’t crazy. I dunno what to say, to be honest, but don’t think there’s any wrong way to deal with something like this.”
“It’s refreshing to hear someone admit that they don’t know what to say. Usually, it’s ‘Oh hang in there. It’ll get better.’ Or ‘you need to sell it, it’s haunted now.’ Or maybe ‘so sorry for your loss, everything happens for a reason’.”
“Pffft. Fuck that useless crap,” he says with a huff. “Especially the everything happens for a reason line. People said that to me after my momma died and I always wanted to punch ‘em.”
She wants to walk into his arms more than she ever thought possible, but she’s raw and ragged, a lanced open wound, and crying on his shoulder isn’t how she wants to spend this evening.
“Do you like Thai food?” She’s searching for anything that’ll get them out of this depressing hole and give him a reason to stay longer.
“Never had it.”
She gasps. “Never? Well, we have to fix that. If you’re hungry we can order in? There’s a place that delivers here.”
Insecurity in the wake of spilling such a large burden has her worried he won’t accept. What happens next could decide the fate of their entire relationship, as dramatic as that sounds even in her own head.
“I could eat,” he agrees with a nod, his hand dropping away from her arm, his eyes soft.
* * *
An hour later, they’re eating pad Thai on her living room floor, an open bottle of wine on the coffee table, and her inhibitions fading fast. She was nervous to suggest they have a drink…or three, but he’s been on board from the moment she mentioned it, saying he hadn’t had a drink in forever.
She also has not had a drink in forever. She’s one glass in, starting on her second and she must be such a lightweight, already feeling the heavy fuzz of alcohol.
“Do you think there are aliens out there in space?” She asks, shoving her empty plate onto the coffee table beside his and leaning back against her sofa, legs bent, head lulling to the side to face him.
“Wasn’t expecting that question.” He snorts.
“You’ve never thought about it?”
“I mean, yeah, I’ve thought about it.”
She raises a brow. “And?”
He mirrors her pose, wine glass in one hand hanging off a bent knee, his back shoved to the sofa and his eyes on her. “You’ll think it’s dumb.”
“Try me.”
“I think there probably are aliens, but Earth is in the broom closet. Everyone else out there knows about each other, but they haven’t found us yet because we’re shoved so far out, stuck in the corner of the universe or something, trapped in the broom closet.”
She squints with a satisfied nod and takes another gulp of her wine, almost reaching the bottom. “That actually makes sense.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it’s as plausible as any other theory and I think it’s presumptuous to assume it’s only us, that we are the only ones to have sprung up on one of a bazillion planets.” Her knee bumps into his, and she erupts into a fit of laughter. “You think anyone might need a broom soon and come find us?”
“Maybe. Kinda hope so. What’s on this planet ain’t so great half the time. Might be nice to get beamed up. So long as there’s no probing involved.”
The wine has her lips loose and her nerves calmed and she speaks without thinking, hooded eyes offering him a slow, pointed blink. “I can think of one thing on this planet that’s pretty great.”
He blushes, or maybe it’s the drink flushing his cheeks, she can’t tell. “When you put it like that, so can I.”
His hand finds the inside of her knee and her breath hitches, empty wine glass forgotten on the floor, and a flush of arousal soaking between her legs.
She isn’t sure who leans in first, but one moment they’re staring at each other and the next his lips push greedily into hers, strong hands fluttering across her ribs and her fingers weaving up through his hair. He tastes warm and sweet from the drink, his kiss supple on her mouth before moving to graze the pulse point on her neck.
One thing she is not is bold in these situations. Not ever. Her mind and body aren’t exactly working together at the moment though, and instead of all those insecurities and fears keeping her in her own space, the lack of inhibitions allows her to move into his lap, straddling him.
This is what she wanted, isn’t it? Why she brought out that bottle in the first place? She tells herself it doesn’t matter if she hardly remembers this in the morning, if it means she can get through this first time without flashbacks of the past haunting their bed.
He is hard between the press of their clothes and she grinds down on the length of him, a pang of worry flashing in her mind at how big he feels already, how long and thick even though she can’t be certain yet. He growls into her mouth, sweeping his tongue inside while she begins to work his belt free, her hands shaking despite her willingness to do this.
“Hey, hey, wait.” He pulls back, breathing heavily between them. “We’re both drunk. Well, I’m not exactly drunk, drunk, but I’m feeling it, and you are absolutely wasted.”
“I’m not wasted,” she lies.
He brushes a strand of hair off her face, cupping her cheek. “Sweetheart, your pupils are so dilated there’s no white left at all.”
She goes for his belt again, undeterred. “Doesn’t matter, I want this.”
He grabs her wrists in a soft hold. “It matters.”
She sits back on his thighs, confused. “You don’t want me?”
“Shit, of course, I do. All I want is you. Think about you every day, every second, spend more time jerking off with a picture of you in my head than I’ll ever admit. All I want is you, but not like this. You gotta be all here, okay?”
Her face creases and breaks, nose wrinkling with a sniffle as she tries and fails at holding back her emotions. “I dunno if I can when I’m all here, Dean. I’m too afraid to do it sober.”
“Afraid of me?”
“No, of him.” She half sobs, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. “I’m afraid I’ll see him instead of you. I’m afraid I’ll freeze. You don’t understand, I’ve never…not because I wanted to, and I want to with you but when I think of anyone touching me all I feel is him and if I’m not halfway into a bottle of wine, then maybe I can’t go through with it at all. I don’t want to make you wait. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so messed up, but I want this. We can, I promise we can.”
She’s swaying a little in his lap, her balance precarious as her decision-making process. Two full glasses of the strongest wine she could find at the store, after never being much of a drinker, has her floating.
Now he knows if he doesn’t take this opportunity, he may never get the chance. She is offering him permission to do what he pleases and has no doubt that he will agree. He is a man, after all. A sweet one, and so much better than any she’s met before, but she felt the hard outline of his cock and can see it tenting his pants. He won’t turn her away.
She readies herself to be flipped onto her back and stripped naked. She asked for this and all she has to do is get to the other side and then they can be a normal couple who sleep together like normal people, without needing any liquid courage.
John would have her muffling her cries into the carpet before she even finished speaking. Would have taken what he needed and told her she was a good girl, then left her there on the floor while he fetched a beer.
“Only been with two women and I’ve only ever had sex drunk,” Dean says quietly. “Had to, or I’d get in my head about it. They weren’t drunk, but I needed something, so I get it. I do. Don’t want it to be like that with you, though. Need to know there ain’t wine telling you to do this, need to know you’re really with me, and if that means we wait, then we wait. Don’t matter how long.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice trembles. “I don’t wanna lose you because I’m—”
“You ain’t losing me.” He gives her a lazy smile. “Stuck with me now.”
“I don’t feel stuck.”
There is an odd sense of relief that flows through her unbidden. A moment ago she was ready to accept whatever he wanted and now the fact that they aren’t doing anything else tonight has her exhaling heavily, her limbs tingling with adrenaline and a sudden exhaustion overtaking her. Maybe she wasn’t as ready as she thought she was.
“Been a long day,” he says softly, “Lemme get you in bed.”
He scoops her up off the floor and she curls into his chest while he carries her to the bedroom. He deposits her on the mattress, pulls the covers up to her shoulders, and drops a kiss on her temple as she begins to drift.
“Dream of aliens in the broom closet,” he whispers.
“Stay with me? Just to sleep.”
“Alright.”
He slips into bed with her, over the top of the blankets. It takes them a moment to get comfortable. This is new and even with the buzz in her brain, she isn’t sure how to nestle with anyone. How to be held. Eventually, he wraps around her from behind, letting her hug his forearm to her chest, his body warm at her back.