I held onto the hook, head down, gasping for breath. Below me, Julian grinned as he wiped my juices from his chin and face. Behind me, Alan leaned against my back, his hands rubbing my stomach and hips in soothing, familiar patterns like he did every time we had sex. All this for thirty bucks? I thought with a breathless laugh. What a bargain.
The door of the stall rattled and I looked up to find a scruffy, bearded face peering down at us. “What’s a guy gotta do around here to get invited to the party?” he wanted to know.
Laughter filled the restroom, and I grinned as Julian stood up to face the man.
“I’m running a special tonight,” he said. “Thirty bucks for two. You got a friend?”
“Hell,” the stranger said with a grin, “I got a whole room full of them right here.”
HE STARTED IT!
Kurt’s skinny hips were writhing inside his tight jeans, his bare chest shining with sweat as he walked toward me through a cloud of smoke. He reached out a hand and I took it, just as a thumping noise tore the dream from my head. I woke quickly, a little surprised to find my hand inside my underwear, even more surprised at how wet my fingers were. Even after three years Kurt still wouldn’t let me be.
I curled into a ball and summoned up the awesome power of my slightly hung-over mind to drive away whoever was at my door. Then the knock sounded again, louder and quicker, so I groaned, blew my mussed up hair out of my eyes and slid my fingers out from whence they came.
I stomped to the front door, utterly pissed. If I had to dream about sex with my ex, I could at least have gotten to the sex! Especially when it was the one thing Kurt always did well.
“Someone better be in big trouble, or…someone’s…gonna be in big trouble!”
Hey, it was 7 o’clock BC-before coffee-and there was no obligation on me to make sense.
I felt my jaw drop as I swung the door open. “Kurt?”
“Hey, Aunt Nicole.”
“Shit! Ben!” God, he looked like his uncle, only younger…and prettier. I almost leapt up into his arms as I hugged him, realizing too late that my wet fingers were all over his neck. “Oh. Who’s your friend?”
“This is Harley Briggs, Aunt Nicole. He’s in the reserves with me.”
“Hi, Harley.”
“Hello, Ms. Michaud.”
Harley was a little shorter than Ben, probably about six foot even, with dark hair, a slight caramel tinge to his skin, maybe some Oriental blood back a generation or two.
He had a real military bearing about him, but that didn’t stop me from scooping him into a hug. “Any friend of Ben’s is an ex-nephew of mine.”
I felt him stiffen in my arms for a second, then relax. His hands pressed against my back lightly, like he’d just finished reading ‘Hugging…for Dummies.’
“Well come in, come in. You’re making the place look tidy.”
Ben cast an appraising eye over the paisley carpet and the peeling paint of the hallway. “No chance of that.”
I blew him a raspberry. “Can’t help it. This is all I can afford, now.”
Ben’s jaw hardened as he walked in. “I’m real sorry about that.”
“Your uncle didn’t trust banks.” I shrugged with far more indifference than I felt.
Kurt and I had run a successful catering business, we’d just disagreed on where the profits should be invested. My plan involved spreading the money between a joint account, a managed fund and a stock portfolio. Kurt felt it would be better deposited in the panties of barely legal pole dancers.
“Yeah, well I‘m still sorry, Aunt Nicole.”
“Please, Ben. It’s just Nicole now. You’re all grown up, and I divorced him three years ago.”
He looked me up and down, his eyes rolling over my body like hands. I dabbed at my copper hair, but it was too late to fix the mess I’d become. I can’t imagine how I must have looked, a skinny thirty-six-year-old woman roused from bed, wearing her ex-husband’s old t-shirt as jammies.
Ben smiled and shook his head. “Always said Uncle Kurt was fuckin‘ crazy.” He flopped heavily into the couch and pointed to a photograph on the wall. “I miss that place.”
It was the big old house Kurt and I bought all those years ago when we’d first married. Ben was nearly eleven then, and he used to come over just to hang out with us. We were way cooler than his parents, simply for not being his parents. Plus Kurt was real good with kids, with making up wild stories and stupid games. Yeah, my ex could’ve charmed a homeless man out of his shoes.
Still pointing at the photo, Ben looked at me. “Remember that cool rug you had in the sun room?”
“The one I used to lie on to read?”
“Yeah.”
“Until you’d creep up and jump on me.”
He chuckled, a throaty rumble in his chest. “Yeah. You were a pretty good fighter, Aunt- sorry, Nicole.”
“That’s ’cause I knew your weakness.” I waggled my fingers. “Tickles.”
Harley was sitting across from Ben, his head swiveling to follow our conversation. I turned to him. “Sorry, Harley. We‘re being rude.”
“No, it’s all right. ‘s kinda nice to see you guys gettin’ on so good.”
I scanned him for a second. He was hunkered into the chair like it was a foxhole, his shoes suddenly fascinating, as if in compensation for having to speak. I turned to Ben, a silent question on my face.
“Harley’s down from the country, doesn’t really have a lot of family. Those he has, he’s not on real good terms with.”
“I’m sorry to hear that Harley.”
He shrugged. “No great loss.”
Ben kicked his friend’s foot. “Cheer up, Softly. You have us, at least.”
That actually seemed to make a difference to the young man. He smiled, still without looking at us, and I wondered just how old he was.
“Well, boys, I was about to…” I remembered the dream, and my hand, and wasn’t sure how to finish. “…to, uh, have some breakfast. Can I rustle you up some pancakes?”
“Why do you think we came here?”
“Well I thought it might be for the stimulating company.”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you had visitors.”
As a kid, Ben’s smile had always been sweet. Now, as a man, there was a real dash of spice in it, the way one side crept higher than the other, like he knew something none of us did.
“You’re not too big for me to put over my knee, baby boy.” I gawped as he stood slowly, moving like a buttered snake. “Okay, maybe you are too big.”
“That’s what she said.”
Harley seemed to have relaxed a little, seemed to enjoy it when Ben took over the conversation. He watched the bigger boy’s every move as if taking cues on how to behave in my company.
I headed to the kitchen to whip up some breakfast. The boys stayed in the lounge room and I could hear Ben’s voice rumbling as he gave Harley some choice details from our shared past, no doubt mostly the ones that were embarrassing to me.
Before long I had a huge plate full of hot and fluffy pancakes and I took it out to feed my hungry two-man army. Harley’s eyes widened as he surveyed them.
Ben looked cutely smug as he tore the first three off the top of the pile. “Man, I told you. You wanted to hit a diner.”
I swore Harley almost had tears in his eyes. As if no-one had ever made him breakfast, let alone a pile of sinful food like this.
“Go ahead, Harley. They’re hot and fresh and they’ve got your name on them.
Maple syrup’s there, butter‘s there. You boys want bacon?”
Ben moaned through his mouthful, which I took to be a ‘yes’.
“Good. ‘Cause I already made some.”
I brought out the warm plate and whipped my hands out of harm’s way as two forks descended like vultures tired of waiting. Ben flexed his right hand a little, battling with stiffness.