Trouble (10 page)

“You’re hurt,” she whispers, but she doesn’t move away from me.

“So are you,” I inform her, using my strong arm to pull her to my chest. We sit like that until the pizza delivery man rings my doorbell. Daisy pays for the pizza, one of her newfound freedoms. People take advantage of being able to pay for something on their own, when it’s really saying that they’re independent.

“We’ll eat, and then I’ll help you take a shower,” she sounds like a medical professional right now, but I can’t help grinning the entire time I eat my pizza. I’m looking forward to my shower.

Daisy swats my good hand away when I go to take off her shirt in the bathroom. I can tell by the stern look on her face she’s not going to relent. This is going to be the best and worst night of my life. She takes a step back from me and shimmies out of her jeans first, keeping her gaze on me. Check that, the best night of my life.

“That’s not fair, you got to take off my clothes, I should be able to take off yours,” I growl at her, my
good hand in a fist.

“It would take you hours to get my clothes off with one hand. Now get in the shower,” I take a step back and step into the shower without taking my eyes off her. All the times that I’ve taken her clothes off, it’s been in bed. Now I get to stand her and appreciate her in the bright light of the bathroom, and I have to admit she looks even better.

It’s not until she starts tugging at my boxers that I realize I’m still wearing them. I put my good hand on her shoulder and push her back against the shower wall, breathing rough. “If you do that, I can’t promise that I’ll behave myself.” I snarl at her, trailing kisses down her neck and back up again.

“
But it’s not a shower if you’re wearing clothes,” Daisy chuckles at me and tries to take off my boxers again. I move away from her and turn my back to her, trying to breathe normally.

“I’ll do that
myself. You can help me with my hair and my upper back. That’s all I need help with.” She looks disappointed when I turn around, and my heart bangs against my ribcage. It’s not until she turns her face away from mine that I realize she’s crying.

“Why are you crying? Does your neck hurt? Should I call a doctor?” I panic, raising both hands to cup her face and grimacing in the process. My shoulder is
killing
me, but I don’t let my hand drop. Daisy shakes her head and goes to turn on the water. I let her, but when she turns to face me again I force her out from under the stream of water and put her back to the shower wall.

“Then why are you crying, Daisy.”
It doesn’t come out as a question, more of a demand. Her chin trembles.

“
Because you don’t want me!” We’re back to that again. I thought over the past few weeks I’ve been proving to her that I
do
want her. I just don’t want to be the jerk that forces her to do something she doesn’t want to.

“I do, that’s the problem,”
I lean my nose down against where her neck meets her shoulder and inhale; some of the water droplets on her skin tickle my nose.

“Then why won’t you have sex with me?”
She sounds lost, confused. I’ve never been good at explaining my emotions, and why I do the things I do. Sometimes even I don’t understand them. But if I want Daisy to stop crying I’m going to have to explain this to her eventually. There’s never a better time than the present.

“Because I don’t want to,” I feel her stiffen under me, angry. “I want to make
love
to you, Daisy. Has anyone ever cared about what
you
want?” I ask her, feeling the water pelting down on my right side. Her hair is barely wet, but it’s wet enough to start making her cold.

Daisy doesn’t answer me. Her palms are flattened against the side of the shower stall, her chin jutting in the air, and her right foot
raised, leaning against the tub. I reach down to touch her silky leg and pull it up around my waist. I pull her towards me so that she’s flattened against me, feeling the hard length of me.

“I want you more than breathing, but I’m not going to take what isn’t mine.” I loosen my grip on her leg and let it slide down mine, stepping back. There’s a
full foot between us and I reach over to grab the shampoo out of the rack. I hold it between us and sit down on the side of the tub so that she can reach my hair.

For the rest of the shower she doesn’t say anything, just helps me wash my hair and my upper back. I watch her with a hungry heart and body as she washes all over and gets out of the shower. I peel off my wet boxers and
finish my shower.

I don’t get out until I hear the door gently shut. There’s a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt on the counter, no underwear. I towel off, pull on the jeans before Daisy can come back in, and turn around to look at the damage in the mirror. There’s a bruise running from my shoulder, down my back, about a foot long. The bastard had a
good swing.

It’s purple in the center and yellow around the edges, already beginning to fade in a little over twenty four hours.
I pull on my shirt to cover up the bruise and brush my teeth. I don’t bother combing through my hair; it’s well past time to go to bed. I have a feeling Daisy genuinely needs the rest.

When I come out of the bathroom
, it’s pitch black, no lights on. She must really be pissed off at me. So I head for the bedroom and stop just as I’m about to open the door. There’s a small light filtering out from under the door, probably that lamp I got last week. The dresser hasn’t arrived yet.

I put my hand on the doorknob and gently swing it open without stepping inside.
Daisy’s lying on what I now think of as her side of the bed, with nothing on. Her eyes are closed, but I can tell by her breathing that she’s just on the brink of falling asleep. I grab the bottle of pain pills off the dresser that the hospital issued to me, and pop one. I’m going to need it. Then I pop another one and crunch on it, swallow and peel off my shirt. I stretch out beside her on my stomach and watch the glow of her skin in the lamplight.

Then I reach over and flick it off.

As soon as the light goes out, Daisy inhales once deeply and rolls over to look at me. She smiles gently in the moonlight, letting one hand trail up and down my spine, like she did when I first broke down in front of her. I still haven’t told her about Ronnie, partly because I’m afraid she’ll leave if she knows what happened.

“Are you
mine?” She asks huskily, leaning in to kiss my good shoulder and straddling me from behind to kiss my ugly bruise. I feel the heat from between her thighs hitting the small of my back and try not to shiver under her touch.

“I’m yours,” I whisper in the dark, my voice a low growl as she leans down to kiss the back of my neck. Her breasts brush against my shoulder blades, undoing me.

“Then roll over,” she whispers in my ear, and I do as she says. Silly me, I actually think this is going to lead to me pinning her to the bed again. But tonight it’s my turn, and she does all the things I’ve been doing to her. Petting me, torturing me, without once taking off my pants, it’s like Hell and Heaven at once.

“Goodnight,” she tells me with mirth in her voice as I lay there just on the brink of coming. Daisy rolls off me and lies on her back, her one knee in the air. It doesn’t take me long.

The pain pills have kicked in, and I’m feeling nothing in my shoulder that resembles pain. I hurriedly pull off my pants and catch her just as she’s about to get out of bed. I swing her back down onto the comforter and straddle her. I know my eyes are hard in the dark, but my hands are gentle as I move the hair away from her neck and nuzzle my spot, the spot where she pants when I kiss her.

“Are you
mine?” I ask, meaning it. Daisy nods against my injured shoulder and I put my elbows on either side of her, looking down at her. “Then say it,” I growl at her, looking at her brown eyes in the dark. They’re wide, but it’s not with fear. Her pupils are dilated for an entirely different reason. I watch them dilate more with every breath.

“I’m yours,” she whispers in the dark, and I lose control. She tells me over and over again how much she’s mine throughout the night; sometimes climbing on top of me and making me say it to her.

When the first rays of sunshine peek through my curtains, I realize that all this time I’ve been having sex with women. A lot of it. But I’ve never truly been making love to them, claiming them. If someone tries to put their hands on Daisy again, I won’t hesitate to kill rather than maim.

“Daisy?”
She’s lying on me, her cheek on my chest and her ear to my heartbeat. I can feel hers quicken when I put a hand on her lower back, swirling it around and waking her up.

“What?”
She finally asks, groggy and tired.

“I think I’m going to need another pill,” I tell her reluctantly, trying to shift my shoulder out from under her weight. She quickly moves off me and slides off the bed. I’m about to get up to get the bottle myself, but she grabs it from the ruined dresser and twists off the cap. She pulls out two and
hands them to me.

“You’re going to need them,” she tells me,
patting my leg. I look at her warily and pop them into my mouth reluctantly.

“Why?” I drag out the word and sit up in bed
so I don’t look like a wimp.

“Because your father’s dropping off your car today.
They drove it home Friday night.” I lean forward with the sheet around my waist and put my hands on my face, rubbing them back and forth a few times. I want to cuss and swear, lock the door, and pretend I’m not here. But I pull the sheet off, pull on my pants, a shirt, and pad past Daisy to look at myself in the mirror of the bathroom.

My hair looks like it went through a tornado, and then a hurricane.
I’m going to have to shower again. And I’m going to have to clean up the pizza box from last night and make my bed, it’s like a military sergeant is going to come over. That’s how I view my father coming over to see my apartment. Neither one of my parents have seen it before.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Daisy calls from the kitchen. My heart climbs into my throat
, and I stumble out of the bathroom and lean around the kitchen doorframe. She’s holding a carton of eggs in one hand.

“Cold pizza!”
I tell her quickly, staring at the eggs. She frowns at me and puts the eggs back in the fridge and grudgingly gets out the leftover pizza.

“Right, you just don’t want me to use the stove again.” She
grumps as she sits down at the table with a slice in her hand. She doesn’t bother with a plate and neither do I.

“No, that’s not it at all,” I tell her breezily, but it doesn’t work. I must look guilty because she snickers at me.

“I can cook eggs; I was just upset that morning.” She tries to tell me, but I don’t believe her. It’s my turn to snicker, and she looks bristly over it. We don’t talk about eggs after we eat our pizza. Instead, both of us busy ourselves with cleaning up my eight hundred square foot apartment. There’s not much to do, Daisy keeps it pretty straightened.

We’re lounging on the couch with pillows holding up my arm, a strange
Sci-Fi series playing. Daisy giggles at all the wrong parts pointing out that blood doesn’t look like that in real life. She seems relatively back to normal. I only wish my arm would get better quicker.

“Tell me about them,” Daisy turns to me and peers at me with curious eyes.
I look at the screen and see aliens ripping off a man’s head, tell her about that?

“About who?”
I ask, twisting to face her on the couch as far as I can without moving my arm. It’s not very far.

“Your parents, silly!”
She smiles at me, and when I don’t return it I see hers falter. I stare at her and wonder if she knows she just put an invisible knife in my chest and twisted. I don’t want to talk about my parents; it leads to the answer as to why we’re not close. That answer leads me to speak about Ronnie’s death.

“What do you want to know?” I’m finally
able to ask, unlocking my jaw and working it to get rid of the tension I’m suddenly feeling.

“Why your jaw is twitching and your fingers are slicing little crescents into her palms,” she whispers, looking down at my clenched hands. I unclench them just to see if I actually cut myself, but it’s just indentations.
I knew I’d have to tell her sometime, this is developing into a full blown relationship and they can’t be based on lies or omissions.

“I need a drink for this,” I mutter, getting up and heading into the kitchen. Daisy stays on the couch, watching my every move. I reach up into the cabinet above my stove that she can’t get to without a chair. Back in the corner is a bottle
of Cognac. I pull it out and pour myself about an inch into a small glass and hold up the bottle in question to Daisy. She shakes her head and points at the stove. It’s one in the afternoon.

“It’s late enough!” I tell her, taking a sip of the burning liquid. After replacing the bottle, I settle on the couch near Daisy and let my arm rest on a pillow.

“My parents and I were never very close. I remember on my fifth birthday my father was out working, never made it home.” I sip on some more of the alcohol. It’ll take about five minutes for me to feel the effects.

“What did he do for a living?” Daisy curls her legs under her as if she’s in it for the long haul, and I feel my heartbeat drop.

“He was a pilot. Retired when I was fourteen.” She looks confused. “He retired because he injured his leg in a motorcycle accident and had to take pain pills during therapy. He couldn’t fly anymore.” I put my sneakered feet up on the table in front of me, leaning back and listening to the hum of a mower outside.

“So he was
home when you were fourteen, what happened then?” She prods me verbally, like a collie herding a sheep. Daisy’s persistent when she wants to be.

“I meant Ronald Needle when I was eight.
When he was thirteen his parents got him a dirt bike, not too long after Dad’s accident. Both of us loved that bike. We rode it everywhere and started racing about six months later. There were a few other kids with them, and we’d organized races through the state park, outmaneuvering the forest rangers through dirt roads and trails.” I smile at the memories, skidding over rocks and trying not to break Ronnie’s most treasured toy. The dirt bike had been old when his parents got it for him, but with some tweaking and parts from Craigslist we had managed to get it in good working condition again.

“My Dad hated that thing. Both my parents banned me from riding it, but that never stopped me.
At fifteen, Ronnie had his first serious accident. He tumbled over the bars of the bike headfirst into a tree. His concussion lasted two weeks, and the bike was scrapped.” The thought of that dirt bike being scrapped still breaks my heart, but it wasn’t the end for either of us. “I begged my parents for a motorcycle when I was sixteen, but neither one of them would allow it. Ronnie’s parents said no too, and we were stuck with old beaters from the junkyard.” Daisy giggles and I look over at her with a serious look. But I grin when she smiles at me.

“It was awful, you shouldn’t laugh!” I tell her, finishing off my drink. “
We borrowed our dirt bike buddy’s bikes to race instead. We started street racing when we were seventeen, and even though we had some shit bikes, we were pretty good. And then Ronnie meant Chico.” The empty glass clatters onto the table as I set it down and I stay leaning forward, this is the hard part.