Reckless Point
Authors: Cora Brent
RECKLESS POINT
By Cora Brent
Copyright 2014
All Rights Reserved
This
book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to living people or actual events is purely coincidental.
***
Reckless Point
Angela Durant always chafed under the limitations of Cross Point Village, her fading New England hometown. After getting out and finding success in the Boston business world, she had become used to taking the
safe roads in life.
Until now.
Jolted when her boyfriend betrays her for something skinner in humiliating fashion, Angela retreats to Cross Point for a long summer weekend.
That's where she connects with Marco, the biker bad boy from high school yesteryear.
Sexy, volatile and utterly uninterested in playing anything 'safe', Marco is intent on getting curvy Angela to loosen her inhibitions.
But reckless desire has consequences.
And what began as casual lust can turn deep and complicated.
There, in the heart of everything she always wanted to escape, Angela might find the life she never knew she'd always been searching for...
More than one great writer was made famous by spitting out wordy reflections on the elusive concept of ‘home’. There was no end of clichés attached to the idea; the place where you hung your hat, where your heart was, and perhaps, if the cobwebs of the past were too suffocating, where you couldn’t go again.
You might make endless wis
hes upon the clear country constellations that you’ll be the one who makes it out, thumbing your nose at all the sorry souls squatting in the same place they were born. But then when the wider world offers fewer comforts than you supposed, you’ll long for the daily certainty of that life you shunned. The secret envy you nurse won’t be spoken about or even consciously recognized. You miss it all; the serene street of your childhood, the echo of familiar voices and all the known places of memory as in the moment before you sink into an unremembered dream you wonder why it was you left. And, ever so briefly, your heart aches.
It might be a problem when your boyfriend enjoys looking at himself naked more than he likes looking at you.
Privately I only tossed the word
‘boyfriend’ around lightly when thinking about Brian. He was smart, he was good looking, and he was about as interesting as my parents’ colonial replica end tables. Plus I could tell from all the slack-jawed drool which rolled off his finely crafted chin that my figure wasn’t really doing it for him. I knew I wasn’t disfigured or even unattractive, but Brian Hannity evidently craved a sort of supermodel tightness that no amount of living room squats was going to produce in my back end.
“You know,” he would say, “that new gym just opened up by the office.”
“Really?” I would answer, playing dumb and resenting his insinuation that if I only had a tightly aerobicized ass he would be deeply in love with me. “Perhaps I’ll take up handball.”
The
thing with Brian started six months earlier, the night of the company Christmas party. I’d been at Cranston’s for nearly the entire three years which had passed since I threw my Amherst cap in the air on an oppressively hot day in 1986. I considered myself lucky that the Boston brokerage had been willing to hire a history major and life had been good to me since then. After a series of hard earned promotions I was making decent money. My apartment was small but squarely in Beacon Hill which appealed to my appreciation of days gone by. I kept clay pots full of petunias on my back patio, never letting the fact that they kept dying dissuade me from stubbornly buying more. My father was a whiz in the garden and I figured one of these days my genetic green thumb would kick in and quit accidentally killing pretty things.
T
he Christmas party was a grand annual obligation overseen by the CEO of Cranston Securities, Michael Cranston. He had invested heavily in a dingy theater establishment down by the ball park. Michael fancied himself Hollywood’s lost opportunity and now that he was fifty and rich he was going to realize his dreams of Shakespearean dinner theater. Even if it gave everyone else indigestion.
Anyway, Harvard man
Brian Hannity was always polite and professional but it wasn’t until we were stuck at the same table during Michael Cranston’s holiday production of
Othello
that we connected. If you’ve ever heard of Shakespeare you can imagine how ill-suited grand Elizabethan speeches are to such a mismatched enterprise as dinner theater. I mean, who can really enjoy an unevenly reheated Salisbury steak while chewing through Desdemona’s death throws?
After a lot of mutual eyebrow raising and quiet smirking, I imagine
d Brian Hannity glanced at me some time during the second act and figured ‘Yeah, you’ll do.’ So, I accepted his hand on my knee with a serene smile and two hours later showed him my bedroom.
The sex was truthfully not fantastic.
While I wasn’t terribly experienced, I did recognize that Brian had certain phobias which were difficult to reconcile with passion. Like how he would slide the damn condom off not six seconds after he was done grimacing through his orgasm. Then, before I even had time to close my legs, he was taking a flying leap into the bathroom to hold the rubber up to the vanity light as he squeezed the length of it, breathing a sigh of relief that there were no punctures or holes or anything else which might result in something unexpected. And so I would pull the covers up to my neck, watching Brian admire his lean muscles in the mirror for a few moments while I tried not to feel left behind. Like a used tissue. Or a footprint.
Once he’d had his fill of self-admiration, Brian
would strut naked over to the small television set in my dark bedroom and say something oddly casual, like, “What channel is
Falcon Crest
on?”
My office best friend,
Lanie, had warned me it was poor judgment to screw where you earned. That was a sentiment I really should have taken to heart.
“Covers on? Lights out?”
Lanie would snort. “Shit, how do you stand it?”
It’s not so bad,” I would tell her brightly. “Brian needs to…concentrate.”
And then Lanie would look at me pityingly and sip her tea.
Sometimes I thought maybe
Lanie was right and that I should join her on one of her Saturday night prowls. I’d never had the kind of soul-rending orgasmic experience that a girl could lose herself in and forget everything but that desperate want vividly portrayed in books and movies. But I’d built a nice life in the years since leaving home. Risking it was unwise.
Whenever I was feeling sorry for myself I would rememb
er high school. I would remember growing up in Cross Point Village. Years had passed but everyone who stayed there seemed suspended in sort of a paisley fugue, scraping by with narrow prospects, decrepit vehicles and a lot of alcohol. My visits were infrequent because I felt tossed back into the body of the uncertain girl I had been. Isn’t it funny how long after you’ve passed them, those times of pain and tumult, they still form the nucleus of your experience? And it was with no small amount of triumph that whenever I returned to Cross Point Village, or ‘CPV’ to the knowing locals, I wore my city status like a badge of honor. Growing up in a small town, the ability to make good on the echo that “Someday I’m getting out here,” was the true mark of achievement. It made up for years of quiet insecurity.
“
Our daughter,” my father liked to tell people, “is tremendously successful. Her mother and I could not be prouder.” And my mother would smile agreeably even though she was forever tactfully inquiring about my love life.
My good girl
rank wasn’t entirely self-inflicted. With an older brother awash in eternal fuck ups I was the saving grace for my weary parents. Even my name demanded an invisible halo.
Angela.
When I was in high school Juice Newton released a new version of
‘Angel of the Morning’
. Certain boys would sing it when they spotted me, their mocking voices thick with innuendo. I blushed like a fury and pretended I didn’t hear. Instead I spent my adolescence with my nose in every musty page in the CPV library. Even after I departed to claim a full scholarship at Amherst it took me awhile to realize there was anything else to do in college besides read. I managed to cling to my virginity until the semester I graduated and since then I’d had the pleasure of exactly two other lovers. Including Brian.
But still
, I figured Brian was all right. He wasn’t a Prince Charming or his cousin thrice removed but he was an upright sort of guy who I didn’t mind looking at. Brian wasn’t the type you’d think would be caught fucking the receptionist in the copy room one unsuspecting Friday.
Fourth of July was a big deal
in CPV and Brian had reluctantly agreed to accompany me on a visit around the hem of the Berkshires to the place I still referred to as ‘Home’, no matter how feverishly I tried to adopt Boston. My mother was absurdly pleased by the idea that I was bringing a man to the Durant homestead for the first time. I knew sleek, well-heeled Brian from Brookline would be distinctly conspicuous in my hometown. But, and shit, this will sound awful, my biggest reason for cajoling him along was that he was evidence. Proof that I’d made good. That chubby, bespectacled Angie Durant was prosperous and thriving.
So eat your freaking hearts out Cross Point Village
and have another beer on me.
I was also hopeful that
perhaps the change of scenery would ignite a spark with Brian. I’d always nursed this ribald fantasy of boning underneath the football bleachers at Cross Point Village High. Immature? Yes. Erotic as all get out? YES!
Then the shriek from Carol in Acco
unting changed everything. As her howl continued to reverberate throughout the building I was among those who rushed from behind portable gray walls to find out if one of my colleagues had expired on his desk.
I was a little slow
in my heels so by the time I reached the scene there were a good two dozen people staring into the open copy room. I craned my neck over some suited shoulders and was jarred to see Brian Hannity busily putting his pants to rights while Tami from the reception desk tried desperately to pull her band aid of a skirt over her skinny thighs.
“OHMYGOD in the COPY room!” Carol was
wailing like a demented hyena. “Where am I going to collate these spreadsheets now? WHAT am I supposed to DO?”
“You dipshit.”
Lanie crossed her arms and glared at Brian as he straightened his striped tie.
“People, people,” said Michael Cranston, waddling up with his most convincing
executive I’ll-fix-it voice. But he stopped short, gaping at the sight of Tami’s nipple poking out of her blouse like a rouged button.
A few of the men snickered appreciatively while the handful of women looked at me with something like sympathy because of course everyone kne
w I was the semi-girlfriend of half the guilty party. I was finally beginning to appreciate Lanie’s warning.
Carol had grown positively apoplectic over
the interruption in her spreadsheet production. She simmered under her huge shoulder pads like a rabid rhino. And Lanie looked like she just might fly into hair-flying
Dynasty
mode and kick Brian Hannity through the drywall.
Brian looked up and for an uncomfortable second our eyes met.
I saw his defiance and didn’t blink, feeling almost preternaturally calm as I turned my back on the sordid tableau. I paused at my desk only long enough to retrieve my purse. My car keys were already in my hand when I heard Brian calling my name. I ignored him. He gave up easily.
I puzzled over my clear head
as I turned the ignition on the white BMW. Vaguely I wondered if I was just in shock, if later I would be a mess of snot and sticky hair carving into a gallon of Rocky Road with a plastic spoon. But I didn’t feel sad. Only loosely humiliated and possessed by a sharp desire to leave Brian Hannity in the rearview mirror.
So that I could
back right the fuck over him.
Perhaps I would be
better served by adopting Lanie’s ‘Bare your tits’ advice. A nameless screw sounded just heavenly.
I hea
ved a sigh and stuck Madonna’s
Like a Prayer
into the cassette player, cranking it up. Though it was only mid-afternoon, people were already beginning to sift out of the office park in anticipation of the weekend.
Goddamn
. I’d forgotten about the weekend.