Stronger

STRONGER

MISTY PROVENCHER

Copyright © 2014 MISTY PROVENCHER

All rights reserved.

Cover & Interior Design by Misty Provencher and Starla Huchton

Publication Date:  April 27
, 2014

This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coi
ncidental.  The Author holds exclusive rights to this work.  Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

EMAIL the author at:
[email protected]
  or connect online:

Blog:  http://mistypro.blogspot.com

Facebook and Twitter: @mistyprovencher.

ISBN:
 
9781310956690

DEDICATION

For Chris & Sue

Your calling has been a glorious thing to witness.

CHAPTER ONE

MAY 2013 - A NIGHT IN LYDIA STRONG'S LIFE, A YEAR AGO

"The thing is," I shout at Fizzy Punch, after he tells me that my hair is sticking to the counter of the bar, "I just don't care."

The music is pounding, and his mouth tastes like the booze he just sucked out of my belly button.  I kiss him again, even though there is a blond chick, a natural one, angling to take my reclined position atop of the bar.  She tries to shove my drunk ass out of the way, but I back her off with a sharp flick from the toe of my shoe. 

My bleach-blond dreads drape off the edge of the bar, but some are lightly Velcro'ed to the sticky counter, because people keep leaning on them.  Like now.  A creepy guy has his big ol' hammy palm right on top of one dread, as he suckles his beer and watches me kiss the guy that tastes like fizzy, tropical punch.

"I'm Shane.  What's your name?" Fizzy Punch shouts over the music as he gazes down at me.  The creepy guy leans in to hear, inadvertently pulling the hair that he has trapped under his bear-paw.  I roll my eyes up toward Creepy Guy.

"Can you get off my hair?" I ask him.  He frowns, but removes his beefy hand.  Fizzy Punch helps me sit up, and the moment I do, the other blond chick scrambles onto the counter.  Fizzy Punch lifts me off, and the blond throws herself down in my place, yanking her shirt up over her belly button.  Creepy Guy moves in for a navel dive.

I turn back so Fizzy Punch and I are eye-to-bloodshot-eye.

"What is your name?" he asks again.  I just smile at his lips.  He probably won't remember my name if I tell him anyway.  It makes sense, since I can't remember his name now either.  All I remember is that his lips are soft and wet and candy-coated with tropical fruit liquor.  I have a dozen ideas of how he'll be in bed, and all good, so what else matters? 

I move in close, so that my front and his are as plastered as our minds are.  I reach up and pull his face to me, trapping his kiss.  Someone knocks into my back, and when I fall against Fizzy Punch, I feel the whole terrain of his muscles flex.  He catches me and manages to keep us both upright.  I am shocked he can do that, since I thought we were both kind of relying on one another to remain vertical as it is.

"We could go to my place--" he breathes hot, tropical fruit over my cheek.  His invitation is more of a question mark that I'm happy to answer.

"Yup," I answer.

"Okay," he says, but then we just stand there, kissing, in the middle of the bar, with the music pumping and the crowd crushing in all around us.  My fingers run over his ribbed, white wife beater, my eye scouting over the scenic terrain of his chest. 

Pecs.  Check.

Biceps.  Yes ma'am, check and check.

Hmmm
...a collarbone tattoo. Checkity, check check.  I squint at it.  Words.  Damn.  I wish I could read them, but my eyes just aren't into it.  All my brain wants to do is calculate the correct angle and distance I need to excite for my mouth to make a bulls eye landing on his lips.

We finally pour ourselves out onto the sidewalk, but then he can't remember which direction his place is from the bar.  The way we get lost and turned around, it's almost like he doesn't really have a destination in mind, but is still fun trying to find his place, even though it's early spring and the mist in the air makes my jacket cold and soggy.  The alcohol keeps us defrosted.  Well, that, and every time he wrongly guesses his street, we make out under a light post for ten minutes like it's some new drinking game.  It takes us hours, but we finally make it back to my apartment building.

I always remember where I live.  Even at my drunkest, I can always find my way home, so we cut our loses on finding his place and stumble back to mine.  In the short elevator ride up to my floor, Fizzy Punch pins me to the wall and slides his mouth down my neck.  My head is in a delicious spin.  The heat of his mouth is my sole focus and when the elevator does its little hop before opening the doors on my floor, I swear I almost come.

We work our way down the hall to my apartment door, groping and kissing and pinning each other to the walls at intervals.  His laugh is a basket of fruit, my lips curling like their own happy peelings in response.  His skin tastes lightly of the rim of a margarita glass. 

Finally, we're standing in front of my door.  Now, while I can always remember where I live, getting
into
the place is a whole different skill set.  I drive the key toward the keyhole and miss.  The bulge in his pants presses hard against me as he leans over my back, kissing my neck each time I fail.

"Are you sure you live here?" he laughs, when I can't get the key into the lock on the 60-billionth try. 

"Pretty sure," I laugh too, squinting at the door.  2B.  Yes, that's mine.  I am positive.  2B is a great apartment number, because even when you're loaded, 2B or not 2B--it still sticks in your head.  I push the key toward the lock again, miss, and groan.  2B has a ridiculously tiny key hole.  Fizzy Punch grabs me then, flipping me around to face him before he shoves me up against the wall.  He kisses me so deeply that I drop my keys.

"We could just do it in the elevator," he whispers.

"Nope," I tell him. "I've got a whole apartment in there.  We just need to get this door open."

That's when Mrs. Lowt, from 2C, pops out of her apartment across the hall.  With her midnight curlers and fat-rimmed glasses, she looks even more alien than usual.  It's something with her eyes.  And her face.

"Another one?  Another?" My neighbor shakes her head and tsk-tsks, but she staggers sleepily across the hall toward us, as if she is the one that is drunk.

"Another," I agree with a smile, as she snatches my
key link off the floor.  She eyes Fizzy Punch up and down and he winks, long and hard, at her.  I think his eyelid is stuck, until he turns to me and pops it back open with a roaring laugh.

"You're gonna get the AIDS, Lydia," Mrs. Lowt grumbles.

"So, it's Lydia!" Fizzy Punch says.  I ignore him.

"You always say my name when you're mad at me." I frown at Mrs. Lowt.  She should be painted green with antennas poking out of her head.  I swear, her glasses are even more enormous than usual.

"I was sleeping, is all," she says with a sigh.  "I know how it is, being young.  I know." She pops the lock and throws open the door.

"Huzzah!" I shout, my arms in the air.  Mrs. Lowt shushes me.

"It's four in the morning, Lydia!  Do you want to be kicked out?" she asks.  Then, she pushes the door key into my palm.  "You've got to change your ways, Lydia.  Too much fun is too much.  You have to be in control of how you live."

I wave a dismissive thanks to her over my shoulder, as I stroll into the apartment.  Fizzy Punch follows me in, and I hear what I always think of as the complimentary yelp. 

"That old lady grabbed my ass!" Fizzy Punch announces, as he closes the door on my horny old neighbor lady.

"She always does that," I say.  I toss my keys on the table near the door.  They slide clean across the wood top and fall off, somewhere on the other side.  "That's her payment, for opening the door.  I couldn't afford her services otherwise."

"You pimp out your friends to your old lady neighbor?"

"Yeah, my
friends
."  I laugh.  I don't usually bang my friends.  "I'm a great neighbor to have."

"I believe it," he says, pulling me to him.  I kiss him and break free long enough to drag him to my bedroom, because I feel a burst of lucidity.  I want my brain to absorb as much of this guy's body as it can, before my memory cells crap out.  This is one man I don't want to just see naked, but I want to remember him that way.  But, by the time we hit the bedroom, I know it is useless.  I can't even remember his name.  Or mine. 

But his tongue is like sucking on a slippery lollipop.  He fumbles with my shirt, tries to pull it off, but my arms get all twisted up in the sleeves.  I don't struggle a whole lot.  It seems like it could be more fun this way, being handcuffed by my fabric appendages.  It looks like I might not be the only one with restraints, either. I enjoy the show as this handsome, nameless man tries desperately to shuck off his pants. 

"Hurry," I beg.  He's stuck, his pants trapped over the top of his shoes.  Those shoes are gumming up the whole operation.  After a few yanks, it's obvious the shoes are glued on and he gives up.  I can't help, with my hands still tied up in my sleeves.

Instead, he grabs me and kisses me so hard that my uvula loses its virginity.  He stumbles against me, trying one last time to kick his pants free.  It doesn't work.  Instead, we both fall in a cackling heap on the floor at the foot of my bed. 

I roll my hips against him.  With his tongue down my throat, he groans, "Pants."

"Who cares?" I mumble back between kisses.  "Let's just do it."

He finally gives in to his wardrobe malfunction, just like I have.  Both of us, mostly naked, but shackled in different ways by our designer brands, get down to getting busy.  I get my hands over his head, the torso of my shirt hanging over his face.  We kiss through the material and roll across the floor together--in each other, on top of each other. 

It is the best sex of my life.  I'm sure of it, even when I nearly suffocate him with my shirt.  He moves his hips in a way that lights me up like a flatbed full of fireworks. 

But then it's over and four minutes later, the incredible nuances begin to fade into the drunken fuzz of my memory.  We climb up into bed and I fall off once, before successfully sliding under the covers.  He lands beside me eventually, wrapping his arms around my waist, and I think,
okay,
he's one of those. 
By that, I mean, he's one of those that wants to stay the night.

All men have categories and Fizzy Punch's urge to snuggle definitely falls in one of the two after-sex-snuggler groups.  He could be in the clingy group--those are the guys who usually want breakfast and another date--or he will be in the I-have-to-prove-I'm-a-sensitive-guy-that-snuggles-after-he-comes group, which means he will either sneak away the second after I drift off, or at the first trace of morning light.  It isn't obvious now though.  That's the way these games are played. 

So, I fade off to sleep, thinking of how the clingy ones always want coffee in the morning and that I only have enough left for one cup. The others, though, just grab their clothes and sneak out.  I'm hoping this one will be gone before I have the chance to hit the snooze on my alarm clock.

The next morning, Fizzy Punch does not disappoint.

That's what I decide that I love about him most, while hunched over my stiff, morning cup of cream-and-sober.  Fizzy is gone early, and doesn't leave his name, phone number, or his underwear behind.  The last one is probably because he couldn't manage to get his ankles out of his pants.  I almost wish I could remember his face, just so I could find him and do it all again. Gotta love a man like that.

CHAPTER TWO

November 2014 - DAMN FINE NEIGHBORS

It's only eleven in the morning, and I wake up thinking this:
gotta love apprentice moving men
. 

Whoever is in my hallway obviously hasn't learned the skilled trade of silent-as-mice moving.  At first, I assume, from the thunking and bumping that woke me up, that whoever is moving in next door has cheaped-out, and recruited friends to help them schlep all their crap into their new apartment.  Friends always run shit into the walls and drop your boxes and laugh too loud and shout,
Where do you want this?
while the neighbors are trying to sleep.

But, by the time I drag myself out of bed, heat a cup of straight-black-and-sober, and get a look out the window, I realize I'm wrong.  My new neighbor is using movers who identify themselves with blue and white shirts, printed with HUSTLE AND BUSTLE MOVERS across the broad shoulders.  The two movers are chucking boxes out of the back of their truck and arguing as they do it.  I can't hear the exact words from behind my closed window, two stories up, but the mover's mouths open and close so violently, I figure they aren't the best of friends.  Within ten minutes, the two of them have brought their argument up to the hall, right outside my door.

"Then don't be a lazy son of a bitch," one complains.

The other answers, "Takes a douche to know a douche."

And a third voice, thick as homemade cake, says, "Those boxes go in the kitchen.  No, the kitchen!  Dude, does that look like a kitchen?"

So, I decide that since these morons have gotten me up at this ungodly hour, I might as well watch the parade.  I slip on my robe, swing open my door and lean on the jamb with my coffee mug nestled in both palms.  My robe sleeves fall into the crooks of my elbows. 

One of the movers stands with his back to me, in the neighbor's open doorway.  He turns at the sound of my first slurp.  His eyes light up and run the usual track, slipping down my body, taking inventory of my robe, my boobs, my legs, and the swirl of tattoos down my arm that the loose sleeves no longer cover. 

A smile spreads over his face like spilled corn syrup.  That's the typical reaction I get.  Tattoos=wild girl=horny girl=real live girl that might be willing to be brutalized as much as the blow-up doll he's got hidden in a closet at home.  There are only two categories of new men with me:  first are the ones who are terrified of my tattoos/dreads/piercings and second are those that consider my total package as an invitation to a challenge.

"Good morning," the mover says the moment he's done scanning me.  He's got a scalp of spiked, blond hair, a head shaped like a bucket, and a cocky smile that just comes across making him look like a cock.  No question--he's definitely Category #2.

I sip my coffee.  "Are you always this loud in the morning?"

"It's almost noon, sweetheart," Buckethead says.  His co-worker shoves his way out into the hall.

"Heeeyyy," the second mover drawls, his eyes blinking rapid-fire, as if his retinas are snapping photos of me.  Cocky smiles and block heads must be prerequisites for the job.  But the second buckethead, when I boldly meet his gaze, darts away his eyes.  Oh, he's one of
those
.  The shy type that tries to be cocky, and fails.  Sweet.  I sip my coffee instead of answering and, a third man emerges from the apartment, into the hall.

The third man is what I call an actual
man
.  And by that, I mean, man.  Man times man, plus man, squared and multiplied, into infinity...man.  If I wasn't so hung over, and if he wasn't part of this problem that has gotten me out of bed so early, I would stand a little straighter and make a date with him for tonight.

"Hi," the Infinite Man says, stopping in his tracks when he spots me.  He lowers the clipboard in his hand, taking in my robed attire.  He spots the tattoos, but doesn't linger on them.  Interesting.  He is refreshingly harder to categorize.  "Did we wake you?"

"I don't mind a parade," I say.  It's hard to be angry at a man that looks like this, even though my hangover is clutching my brain and squeezing like a blood pressure bulb.  He's tall.  He's broad.  Jet black hair.  A body that could stop eight lanes of traffic.  Absorbing, dark eyes that deserve to see everything behind the closed door of my bedroom.  Lips that belong between my thighs.  I sip my coffee.

"I apologize," he says. "I'm your new neighbor, Aidan."

I lower my cup.  He looks like an Aidan.  He puts out his hand to shake mine. 

"Aidan Badeau," he says, "and your name is?"

I don't take my hands from my coffee cup to shake.  I just smile behind the rim.  Oh no, I'm not going to make it easy for this uncategorized man.  I don't know how to play him, so he's going to have to work for it.

"It's Lydia."

"Lydia," he repeats my name slowly, holding it in his mouth.  He drops his hand with a smile.  The look, along with the way he said my name, sends sparks blazing straight down the ramp of my belly and crashing between my legs.  "It's a beautiful name."

"Thanks," I tell him.  I don't mention that I would love to change it.  Too much explaining why, why, why.  The cocky buckethead picks at the side of his uniform slacks with two fingers.

"Do you like Chinese?" the mover asks.  I reluctantly turn my gaze away from my new neighbor and look back at his mover.

"Men or food?" I ask and the buckethead is momentarily confused.  Aidan grins and I sip my coffee, stealing another glance.  Aidan's got his own colorful ink snaking up his arms, but I don't stare.  I'd be willing to show him mine, if he showed me his.  I wonder how many places he has them hidden.  I suck in the edge of my lip as I think of that Easter egg hunt, the tang of my lip ring on my tongue.

"Chinese
food
," Buckethead finally answers.

The shy buckethead just rolls his eyes, but whenever he looks at me, he blushes. I smile beneath the lip of my cup and watch his eyes dart away again.  Shy can be fun sometimes.

"I adore it," I say and the cocky buckethead lights up like I plugged him in, until I add,  "But I'm horribly allergic."

Buckethead's light goes dim then and he says, "It wouldn't have to be Chinese."

Aidan steps in. 

"How about you guys finish hauling in my boxes before making dates with my neighbor?" he says.  Buckethead ignores him.

"I can give you my number.  Or get yours," Buckethead grumbles to me.  "Do you have a pen?"

"I'm sorry, I don't." I smile dryly.  "I'm not much of a writer."

Aidan slides the pen from his clipboard into his pocket.  The mover shrugs.

"I've got one in the van," he grumbles.

I just smile and sip the last of my coffee, as the second, blushing buckethead follows the first one back to the elevator.  Aidan slips the pen from his pocket and taps it on the clipboard.

"So, it's Lydia," he says.

"Always."

"Does your belly button still taste like a mojito?" he asks.  It's not like I am surprised by his question.  This kind of thing has happened before.  I've run into ex-lovers and rarely remember them.  I'm a girl who has no problem enjoying my body, enjoying those of various men, and I have a diverse, sexual appetite.  Sue me.  It's one of the reasons why I don't tie myself down to any of them.  The prissy girls would love to categorize me as a whore, but the women who love men's bodies understand me completely.  They wouldn't judge me when I can't remember a name or face of a lover.  They would just call me forgetful. 

I squint at Aidan and kick myself for not remembering his particularly remarkable body.  I can't imagine how I'd let him get away from me before I had maxed out my three-date rule.  The rule is that I will date a man no more than three times, since after three it becomes a pattern and that means it's headed toward
relationship. 
I don't need any more of that drama in my life.

I try again to retrieve a memory of him, but nothing comes.  What a crying shame.  He's obviously been acquainted with my belly button and knows one of my favorite drinks.  He looks like he would've been a great time.  I'd love a repeat performance, but it's a lot trickier to pull that off if he's moving in next door.  I have enough sense to know that neighbors would make terrible lovers.

As I'm still contemplating, Aidan rubs his neck warily and confesses.

"Not that I've tasted it myself," he says.  "But we did meet a little over a year ago.  A year and a half, actually."

I wait for him to continue, because a year ago or a year and a half, it all means zero to me.  It's not like I sit at home pining for a weekend.  I make weekends happen every single day, so the enormous time frame he's giving me doesn't narrow it down in the slightest.  He smiles.  "It was at Modo's Bar?"

All I can think is
shit...I've met half the damn world at Modo's.

"You left with a friend of mine? Uhm...Shane?"  He looks so hopeful.  As if I'll remember a name.  I go out of my way to avoid names.  It'd be easier if he gave me some identifying details of the guy's body instead, like tats or earrings.  Maybe a severely broken nose or obvious scars.  Any details that would be useful in a line-up would work for me too.

I already know that this little discussion is going to go sideways on me.  I either hooked up with my new, hottie-neighbor's friend, or I turned him down.  That can only mean that my hottie neighbor is about to classify me as either a slut or a bitch. 

I'm disappointed already.  With a body like Aidan's, I was hoping he was going to say I'd hooked up with
him
a year ago, and that he wanted to help me remember.  I can think of at least five different positions that might jar my memory.  And then, five more, if those didn't work. 

"Sorry," I say.  So sorry...and in more ways than one.  "I don't remember him."

"No big deal," Aidan shrugs with a grin.  The moment is broken with a ring from my cell, located somewhere inside my apartment...wherever I dropped it last night.  I'd ignore it, except that this particular ringtone sounds like glass shattering and the sound is reflected in my spine every time I hear it.  I wince.

"Well, nice talking with you," I say and I duck back into my apartment. 

Before I close the door, I catch his smile.  Warm, genuine, incredibly sexy.

"You too," he says as I shut him out.

The glass shatters again.  I scout the room in a frenzy, overturning couch cushions and looking under the coffee table, before I trace the sound back to the kitchen sink.  I pick up the phone as it shatters a third ring inside the basin.

"You there, Lyddle?" A deep voice asks.  The name makes me quiver against my will.  It radiates out of my spine and it's hard to tell, even for me, if I hate it or if it totally turns me on.  He started calling me Lydie first, and then he switched to Lyddle.  It's exactly how he's always made me feel.

"I'm here," I say.  I step over to the coffee pot and refill my cup.  "What do you want?"

"I was wondering if I could see you."  His voice is as professional and detached as a physician calling with bad news.

I swing open my kitchen cupboard and take down the bottle of Jack.  Only about an inch of liquor left in this bottle, I slosh it into my cup.  Swirl it.  Take a burning gulp. 

"I thought we agreed that wasn't a good idea," I say.  He chuckles, as if I have no idea about what is good or bad.

"I never agreed and I think it's a fabulous idea.  We just need to talk."

"We never
just talk. 
And it hasn't even been a week, Desmond."

"But I miss you," he says, a soft hook on the end of his words.  He knows I'll come.  I hate that.  "Don't forget to bring your portfolio."

I only forgot once, but he's reminded me every single time ever since, like a newspaper on the nose.  I take another good slug of my begin-the-buzz breakfast, swallow it down and say, "Alright. Where?"

"My place."

"
Your
place..."

"Don't be like that," he says, but he drops his voice to a thick and sexy timbre that disguises the reprimand.  He really wants me to come.  That alone tingles.  "We need to
talk
.  Do you need me to insist, Lyddle?  Is that what you want?"

"
Alright
--I said alright."  Tiny grains of hope spin inside me, they always do, no matter how absurd they are.  I still frown the response and hang up.  If he catches a whiff of my hopes, he'll only smash them.  He does it every time.

I take the last gulp of my straight-black-and-hammered and straighten my shoulders.

"Alright," I tell myself.

<<<<>>>>

There is a knock on my door at the worst possible moment.  I can't find my rings. 

I pull on my suit coat and check my pockets, but those damn rings are still missing.  I ignore the knock and keep searching, feeling along the shelves, pulling lingerie from my drawers, but there are still no rings. 

There is another knock.  Another.