Tempted (9 page)

I didn’t want to be here, however, when my dad got home. There would be much joviality on his part and much tension on mine as I counted the number of times he refilled his glass of “iced tea,” each time adding more whiskey and less tea. Once, as children, Patricia and I had hidden the tea bags. We thought if there was no tea, there’d be no special ingredient, either. It hadn’t worked.

“Oh, James’s friend’s still there? How long is he planning on staying?”

“I’m not sure.”

I followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen, where the ceiling fan stirred the air into a semblance of cool. It hadn’t changed much, that kitchen. The same daisies nodded on the wallpaper and the same yellow curtains hung at the windows. My mother had talked a lot about redecorating, but I suspected the enormity of choosing a new paint color, new fabric for window treatments, new potholders, had proven too much for her. We tried, sometimes, the four of us, to encourage her. But what did I care if my mother never changed the pattern on her walls? I hadn’t lived in that house since I was eighteen; if God was good I’d never have to live there again.

“Is he nice? Do you like him?” She pulled out plates, bread, lunchmeat, mustard. A jar of pickles.

I grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry. “He’s nice. Sure. But he’s not my friend, he’s James’s.”

“That doesn’t mean he can’t be yours.”

My mother had befriended my father’s buddies, opening the house to poker games and football-watching parties. Backyard picnics. She claimed as friends the wives of these men my dad brought home, but they only seemed to get together with their husbands in tow. No luncheons or shopping trips, no ladies’ night at the movies. Those things she did with her sister, my aunt Kate, if she did them at all. The rest of it was an attempt at keeping him home. If he was home, he wasn’t out driving over someone’s dog. Or their child.

“He’s only staying for a little while,” I told her. “Until he gets his new business started.”

“What does he do?” My mom looked up from the mustard she was slathering on her bread.

“I…he had some sort of transportation business in Singapore.” That was all I knew.

My mom finished making the sandwiches and reached for her leatherette cigarette case. Most smokers had brand loyalty, but my mom usually bought whatever was cheapest. Today they came in a plain white pack that looked sort of like a deck of playing cards. I didn’t bother asking her not to light up, though I did reach to pull my plate far out of the way.

“Singapore, oh, that’s very far away.” She nodded and lit her cigarette, drew in smoke, let it out. “How long did you say James knew him?”

“Since eighth grade.” Suddenly ravenous, I fell to the sandwich with gusto, adding a handful of crispy chips to my plate. They were kettle-cooked, the sort I never bought at home because I tended to finish the entire bag in front of an especially good movie marathon.

There’s no place like home. Ain’t that the truth? Home for me would always be the smells of cigarettes and cheap hairspray, and the taste of greasy, kettle-cooked chips. I suddenly felt weepy, all at once, my emotions as much of an up-and-down roller coaster as the ride I’d taken with Alex the day before.

My mother, bless her, didn’t seem to notice. We had a lot of practice avoiding the discussion of sadness. I think maybe it had become habit for her to talk over the sound of surreptitious sniffles. She chattered on about some movie she’d watched and a cross-stitch pattern she was intending to try. I got myself under control by concentrating on finishing my sandwich, but it was time for me to go.

I wasn’t fast enough. The back door slammed, the way it had done a hundred thousand times when I was a kid. I heard the clump of heavy boots.

“I’m hooooooome,” boomed the voice of my father.

“Dad’s here,” my mother said, unnecessarily.

I stood. He came into the kitchen. His eyes were already red, his smile broad, his forehead sweating. He held out his arms to me and I went obediently, no choice but to suffer the embrace. He smelled like sweat and liquor, like maybe he sweated booze now. I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“How’s my girl?” My dad, Bill Byrne, stopped himself from knuckling my head…but only barely.

“Fine, Dad.”

“Staying out of trouble?”

“Yes, Dad” was my dutiful answer.

“Good, good. What’s for dinner?” He looked at my mother, who looked almost guiltily at our plates.

“Oh…are you hungry?” She began cleaning the mess like she was destroying evidence. She’d cook him a full dinner even if she wasn’t hungry herself.

“What do you think?” He grabbed for her, and she giggled, flapping her hands at him. “Annie, you staying for dinner?”

“No, Dad. I’ve got to get home.”

“Bill, she’s got to get home, of course.” My mother shook her head. “She’s got James waiting for her. And a guest. Alex…what did you say his name was?”

“Kennedy.”

My dad looked up. “Not John Kennedy’s boy.”

I laughed. “No, Dad. I don’t think so.”

“Not John Kennedy the president,” my father said. “John Kennedy who’s married to Linda.”

“I don’t really know.” Leave it to my dad to think he knew Alex’s parents.

“Ah, well. Doesn’t matter. What’s he doing in your house?”

“He’s James’s friend,” my mother put in quickly as she pulled the makings of dinner from the freezer. “He’s come for a visit. He’s been in Singapore.”

“Yeah, that’s John’s boy, then.” My dad looked satisfied with himself, like he’d sleuthed the answer to some great mystery. “Alex.”

It was useless to point out I’d already told him his name. “Yes. You know his dad, huh?”

My father shrugged. “I see him around sometimes.”

Around. I knew what that meant. At the bars.

“He’s James’s friend,” I repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. “He’s just staying for a little while.”

“But you got to get back to him, I get it. Go on. Go.” My dad waved a hand. “Get out of here.”

My dad opened the cupboard and pulled out a glass. Another cupboard gave up the bottle. I loved my parents, both of them, but I couldn’t stay to watch. I made my goodbyes and stole away the photos of them in their youth, leaving them to what they’d made of their lives.

“Hey, you—” He whirled, his grin faltering for a moment before he grabbed me around the waist. “What are you doing?”

“I should ask that of you. What are you doing home so early?” I slipped my arms around his neck and tipped my face for a kiss.

“I was waiting on a couple of the subcontractors to bring some stuff and they cancelled, so I came home.” He brushed his lips to mine. “Hello.”

I laughed. “Hello.”

His hands crept from my waist to my ass. “I’m hungry.”

“I thought we were going to go out for dinner tonight….” The nip of his teeth on my jaw stopped me, and I wriggled. “Have a snack!”

“I know what I want for a snack.” His hand slid between my thighs and pressed upward. “Some of this, and a little of that…”

Any other time I would have opened my legs and my mouth for him. Today I pushed him away. I laughed as I did it, but it was still a refusal.

“If you want a snack get one from the fridge,” I said. “If you want something else—”

“I do.” He reached out, pulled me close again. Inside the worn denim of his jeans, his cock was stiff.

I didn’t yield. “James, cut it out.”

He got the picture. He didn’t let me go, but he did stop trying to feel me up. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. But we can’t get busy in the kitchen, okay? In case you forgot, we have a houseguest who could come home at any moment.”

I pushed past him to open the fridge myself. The chips had made me thirsty. I pulled out a can of diet cola. As I was popping the tab, James grabbed me again around the waist, snugging me in close to him. He tucked his chin against my shoulder, his cock hard on my ass and his hands flat on my stomach.

“That will make it more exciting,” he whispered. “We’ll hear his car in the driveway, anyway. C’mon, baby. I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

“No!” I tried to sound stern, but his hands had begun roaming again. He cupped one of my breasts while the other hand rubbed my side. “James, no. Forget it. We wouldn’t hear him, he’d walk right in on us. It would be awful.”

“Why would it be awful?” His voice had taken on a familiar, seductive cadence, the one he used to get me to do pretty much anything.

“It would be…rude, at the very least.” I wasn’t winning this argument. His hands were too skilled. I wanted to please him too much.

“Alex wouldn’t care. Trust me.”

I turned to face him, my can of cola held out to the side to prevent spilling. “He might not. But I would!”

He stopped. Looked at me. I’ve always been able to read James’s face, and he’s never had any reason to hide anything from me. Today, though, his expression was familiar and still indecipherable.

“Think about it,” he murmured. He turned me as he spoke. Put my hands on the center island. His hands went to my hips, anchoring me as he pushed my feet apart with one of his. “Think about me fucking you, right here like this.”

The marble was cool under my fingertips. I pushed the soda can aside to spread my hands flat. James pressed against me from behind.

“All I have to do is take down your pants and your panties,” he continued. His hand moved between my legs again, stroking me through my jeans. “I’ll rub you. Think how good it will feel.”

It did feel good. Pleasure coursed through me. I looked to the back door, to the small square of driveway I could see. I pushed back against him.

“It will feel good in the bedroom, too,” I said. “And we don’t have to worry about Alex coming home.”

“C’mon, doesn’t it get you hot, just a little? Thinking about him finding us?” He rubbed a little harder. Under his fingers my body responded. I got wet for him. “Think about me fucking you, just like this, Anne. And he comes in…”

“And what?” I turned to face him, effectively saving myself from further seduction by fingertip. “What happens then in your little fantasy, James? Is he wearing a pizza delivery costume and I suck him off while you finish fucking me?”

I spoke louder than I’d meant to, and James stepped back. I felt on edge, tingly, aroused and disgruntled, too. Random fantasies were one thing, and we’d never been shy about sharing even the most ridiculous. But they’d never been about anyone real.

James said nothing. I stared. I heard the faint fizz of my soda’s carbonation evaporating.

“James?”

He smiled. Smirked, actually. “Well?”

He glanced over my shoulder, and I actually whirled, expecting to see Alex in a pizza delivery costume. The doorway remained empty. I refused to be disappointed. Instead, I smacked James on the upper arm and pushed past him to stalk down the hall.

“Anne, c’mon….”

I wasn’t sure what I meant to do in our bedroom, just that I wanted to get away from him. I’m sure he thought I was angry. I was acting that way. It wasn’t, however, anger that urged me into pacing. It was a jumble of confusing emotions, coupled with the day on the lake and my visit with my parents. It was everything in my life. It was PMS. It was many things, but not anger.

“Anne, don’t be like that.” He leaned in the doorway for a moment, watching me. “I didn’t think you’d react that way.”

I focused on the basket of laundry waiting to be folded. “How did you think I’d react?”

He came into the room and stripped off his shirt, tossing it toward but not quite into the dirty laundry. He undid his belt and slid it from the loops, then eased open the button. My fingers smoothed T-shirts into neat squares, but my eyes followed his movements.

“I thought you might, you know, get excited.”

“By exhibitionism?” I tried sounding shocked, but didn’t do a very good job of it.

James stepped out of his jeans and stood in front of me in boxer briefs. “Haven’t you ever thought about it?”

I straightened. “About having sex in front of someone else? No!”

“We did it with your roommate in the room,” he reminded me.

“That was different. We didn’t have anyplace else to go. And it was only once.”

Once, making love under covers. Making sure not to moan too loudly, or rustle too fiercely. Listening to be certain the bed wasn’t squeaking in a telltale way. James’s mouth between my legs, licking me as I arched and tensed and came in agonized silence.

“We’re too old for that now,” I said.

He put his hands on his hips. God, I loved him, every piece of him. Loved the way his skin dipped so slightly between his ribs. The tufts of dark hair under his arms and around his prick. Loved the smoothness of his skin, the dark thickness of his eyebrows, the startling blue of his eyes. He could be an infuriating pain in the ass, but I loved him anyway.

“You can’t tell me it doesn’t get you hot, thinking about it.” He was always so sure of himself. So confident he was right. “Like that time at the movies. When we sat in the back and you wore that skirt.”

I turned back to the laundry. I snapped a pair of wrinkled shorts to smooth them before folding. Heat crept up my throat to my cheeks.

“You liked that,” James said.

His slow stroke on the outside of my panties had made me writhe. He’d kept up the pace for an hour and a half, the entire length of the movie. He’d never even slipped his fingers inside my panties, just circled my fabric-covered clit with small, tight strokes until I’d been ready to climb the walls. He made me come as the ending credits began, just before the houselights came up. I’d come so hard I couldn’t breathe. I still couldn’t remember what the movie was about.

“Just because I liked that doesn’t mean I want to have your friend walk in on us,” I said begrudgingly. “Think how embarrassed he’d be.”

James put his arms around me. He should’ve smelled like sweat and dirt, but he didn’t. “He’s a guy, Anne. He wouldn’t be embarrassed. He’d be horny.”

I tried not to smile at the truth of that. “He’s your friend!”

James was quiet for a few seconds. “Yeah.”

I looked at him. “You like that idea, don’t you? Of him watching.”

Not just anyone. Not a stranger. Not a delivery boy. Of Alex, watching us.

James traced a finger along each of my eyebrows. “Forget it. You’re right, it’s stupid.”

“I didn’t say it was stupid.” I put my hands on his chest. “I just want to know if it’s true.”

He shrugged, a nonanswer that said more than words. My guts did a slow, rolling tumble.

“What is it about him?” I whispered the question so he could pretend not to hear it.

He heard me. He didn’t answer, but he heard. We looked at each other. I didn’t like the sudden distance between us, in a moment when we should have felt closer than ever.

We both heard the door open at the same time. We both turned our heads toward the sound. We both heard Alex coming home, but it was James who went to greet him.

Patricia’s house is always clean. I’ve seen her vacuum her carpet to leave marks in a herringbone pattern. I’ve known her to scrub her kitchen floor on hands and knees with a toothbrush, just to get the grime from the grout. We might make fun of each other for various things, but none of us ever mocked Patricia about the cleanliness of her house.

Despite her compulsion to clean, she’s always made it comfortable. Her kids have the run of the place. They’re good kids, too, messy like kids can be but not destructive. The house is clean, but you can tell people live in it. It’s not a showroom. It’s a home.

So when I walked inside my sister’s house and saw the pillows scattered off the sofa and puzzle pieces littering the floor, I wasn’t at first surprised. When we went to the kitchen and dirty dishes were piled in the sink and crumbs scattered the counter, I stopped to take a second look.

“I hope you brought the pictures,” Patricia said from behind me. She grabbed a full mug of coffee from next to the pot and sat at the kitchen table. More crumbs there, and she barely paid them a glance. From upstairs I heard the sound of pounding feet and some shouts as the kids played.

“I did.” I held up the envelope and took the seat across from her. “I brought some really good ones.”

Patricia took the envelope and shook out the photos. She sifted through them, sorting them by size. I watched her efficiency and wondered if her natural sense of organization had made her a good mother, or if having children had fostered her managerial skills. I tried to remember if she’d always been so naturally precise, but I couldn’t.

“Pats,” I said. “Do you ever try to think about stuff from when we were kids and can’t?”

“Like what?” She picked up a picture of the two of us as toddlers, dressed in identical yellow sunsuits. “I remember those outfits.”

“Do you remember them because of seeing this picture, or do you really remember?”

She looked at me. “Both? I don’t know. Why?”

I reached for some of the pictures. One of my parents at a party, both with cigarettes, my dad with a tall glass of amber liquid. One of Claire as a baby, the three of us clustered around her bassinet staring at her like she was a prize. I was eight in the picture. I remembered things from when I was eight, but I didn’t remember this moment that had been captured forever by a camera.

“I don’t know. Just thinking.”

“Well,” my sister said tersely, “I don’t know why you’d want to.”

She snapped a couple of photos down in a row, like she was laying out cards.

“Pats,” I said gently, waiting until she looked at me before I continued. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Why?”

I looked around the kitchen. “You seem a little tense, that’s all.”

Her gaze followed mine. “Yeah. Well. Sorry about the mess. I fired the maid.”

I waited for her to laugh, but she didn’t. “It’s not a mess.”

Not compared to my house, anyway, which didn’t even have the excuse of children. Certainly not compared to the house in which we’d grown up, where chaos had reigned on a daily basis. Faced with too many choices, my mother often chose none. The result had been a lot of half-finished chores. I was in college before I figured out that if you fold your laundry right out of the dryer instead of leaving it in the basket for a week, you don’t have to wear wrinkled shirts.

“Let’s take these upstairs to the spare room. I’ve got all the stickers and stuff up there.”

Upstairs, I heard the mutter of cartoons and peeked my head into the bonus room above the garage. Tristan and Callie sprawled in beanbag chairs, their eyes glued to the television. I heard a familiar theme song.

“Hey, Scooby Doo,” I said from the doorway.

Two small faces turned to me. “Aunt Anne!”

Tristan, six, leaped to his feet and ran to hug me. His sister, older by two years, was slower about her affection. She was growing up, getting too cool for hugs.

“What are you doing here?” Tristan clung to me like a barnacle and lifted his legs so I was forced to pick him up or fall over.

“I came to work on some things with your mom. Why aren’t you guys outside?” I said, before releasing Tristan.