He scoops me off my feet in one graceful movement and I feel the cool grass prickle beneath my back. I can smell orange blossoms on the air. I curl around him, waiting.
He takes his time easing into me. Our eyes are locked; mine grow wider with every inch. I didn’t know it would feel like this. I want to moan. I want to dig my nails in his back and wrap my legs around him, but I am too proud to do any of these things. He watches my face in fascination. He’s looking for a reaction, but my reaction is all on the inside where he can’t see it…where I am hiding it.
He moves out, then in. He sucks on my lower lip. He laughs into my mouth. I pull my head back to look at him.
“You’re that kind of girl.”
I don’t know what he means. I’m not sure if I care—it feels so good.
He grabs my wrists, pins them above my head.
“Relax your legs.”
For the first time in my life I do what I’m told. All of a sudden it feels even better. I press my lips together and roll my head to the side to hide my face from him. He runs his teeth along my earlobe and goose bumps skitter across my body. “Look at me.” His voice is raspy. I look at him. He moves harder. My breath hitches. Harder… and I’m breathing like I’ve just run a marathon.
“You feel so good.”
That does me in. Something like a moan gets lost on his collarbone as I press my face against his chest. When I look up he has a Eureka look on his face. “That’s how I make you moan?”
After that he says really dirty things in my ear. He’s found my weakness. I make noises I will regret until the day I die.
I feel myself climbing, but I don’t want it to be the end. He is in complete and utter control of my mind and body. I don’t like the feeling of not being in control. When he bends his head to my shoulder, I take the opportunity to flip myself on top of him. He lets me steer our movements for a few minutes before taking control of my hips. Two can play at this game. I lean down to say something into his ear.
“Harder Caleb… and don’t pull out…” His eyes close and his fingers dig into my thighs. I feel a slight victory until he flips me onto my back.
“I wasn’t planning on it.” My orgasm punctuates his sentence.
I do not make a sound.
We don’t speak on the drive home. Caleb helps me clean the mess in my apartment. We fill ten giant trash bags with the leftovers of what used to be my life, scooping broken plates, and glasses into one and the shreds of my clothes into another.
We work in silence with the radio playing softly in the background. I keep pausing in the middle of what I am doing to think about what happened in the orange grove.
I taste salty tears on my lips when I lift my Thomas Barbey print from its cracked frame. It is just a print but still it is mine and I loved it. Before I can crumple it up, Caleb rescues it from my hands, and s it to the side.
“We can fix that one,” he says running a finger along my jaw.
When I find my grandmother’s antique porcelain figurine lying in shards on the floor, I lock myself in the bathroom to cry. Caleb sensing the importance of the hand painted shepardess leaves me be, and discreetly disposes of everything aside from her face, which miraculously stayed intact. I find it later, wrapped in tissue paper and tucked in a box of barely salvaged items he thinks I would want to keep. When everything that used to be mine sits in ten garbage bags by the front door, Caleb hugs me and leaves. I lean against the window overlooking the parking lot and watch him walk to his car. I feel a loneliness so violent my lungs feel like they are closing. I place both of my palms on my temples and squeeze. I can’t do this. I can’t lie anymore. He is too good. He doesn’t deserve the wickedness I deliver and he deserves to hear the truth from me, not Leah. I run for the door and rip it open. “Caleb wait!”
He is almost to his car when he stops and turns around.
I run to him, not caring that all I am wearing is an old football jersey and fling myself around him.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a horrible person,” I say pressing my face against his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
“What are you talking about?” he grabs my chin lifting my face to look at him. “You’re a good person.”
“No, no I’m not,” I shake my head violently from side to side. “I’m desperately wicked.” He smiles at me rubbing my back like I am a child. Then he bends down and I felt his lips on my neck. He kisses me lightly, intimately.
“Why do you keep saying that about yourself,” he laughs softly. “I like you a lot, Desperately Wicked.” His feet start moving in tune to some silent song and I fall into step with him. I am conscious of the air on my bare legs, on the warmth of his hands on my back and laced through my fingers.
“That is all I care about Olivia.”
“You’ll change your mind,” I tell him. “When you…realize who I am.”
“I already know who you are.”
I shake my head the inevitable tears brimming beneath my lids.
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know everything I need to know. Be quiet.”
So I shut my mouth-shut it tight and bit back my confession….again. I can feel the truth pressing hard against time. But, right now he is humming Yellow and we are dancing under the sky, tangled together for the last time. Let Leah tell him. I will remain the coward.
Later that night I am in my robe, towel drying my hair when I hear a sharp rapping on my door.
I toss my towel aside, and fling the door wide, expecting to see Caleb.
“Hello Olivia.”
Leah.
She is smiling casually at me like we are old friends.
“What the hell?” I say this more to myself than her, but she looks amused anyway. I stand aside to let her in.
She fidgets with her hair, winding a strand of it around one of her milky, white fingers. She strolls in casually and surveys the room.
“You cleaned up.”
I raise my eyebrows, bored. If she was coming for a fight—I wasn’t interested.
“Well?” I say, “What do you want?”
“Oh, I’m here to make a deal with you,” she looks at me expectantly, narrowing her nut shaped eyes.
She stinks of expensive perfume and new clothes. I watch as she perches lightly on the arm of my sofa as if she’s too good to actually sit on it.
She looks like a china figurine in a thrift shop. I walk to where she is and face her.
“Say what you came to say and get out,” I demand.
She clears her throat, a delicate chirping noise, and folds her hands in her lap.
“I’m sure you are aware by now that certain incriminating things have come into my possession.”
“I am aware that you stole my pictures and letters, yes,” I manage.
“It was clever—what you pulled on Caleb,” she pulls a monogrammed cigarette box out of her purse and flips open the lid. “He told me you were manipulative when we first started dating. But wow!”