Page 32 of Maverick
Who knows. It’s a responsible thing to do, really. Being that I’m twenty-four, and I have aspirations of becoming sexually active. It’s responsible to grab condoms. It just is.
I put the condoms in my cart and give thanks for the fact that I’m in a place where nobody knows me.
Still, when I’m in line with all of my items, I feel heat creeping into my cheeks when the checker picks up the condom box and scans it. She doesn’t look at me. She’s got pink hair and a septum piercing, which I admit I didn’t expect to find in small-town Idaho. She doesn’t exchange pleasantries with me. She merely stares and asks me if I want a bag.
“Sure,” I say.
And just like that, all my items are placed into paper bags, and I’m charged an extra five cents for the privilege.
Then I put my items in the cart and push it out to the parking lot, where I load everything into the back seat of my pickup truck.
As I’m pushing the cart back to the front of the store, I call myself an idiot in about ten different ways.
He already rejected me once.
And he’s the only man I want. Well, I have to get over that. Because life is nothing but a series of disappointments, at least in my experience. There was one kind of glory that I wanted, and I traded it in for another. Found that it wasn’t good enough, then couldn’t even achieve that glory a second year in a row.
Maybe it’s a metaphor for how the rest of my life will be. Maverick will be the brass ring of men. The highest, most crowning achievement of desire, and I won’t be able to have him.
Then, beyond that, I will find men who disappoint me. And I’ll try for them until I eventually can’t even land the disappointment of a man.
How cheerful.
I decide to try not to dwell on that. I walk back to the truck and get into the driver’s seat, and push my thoughts away from sex. I try to bring it back to riding, because that is why I’m here. It’s not because of Maverick, at least, not who he is as a person. It’s not because of any sort of imagined connection between the two of us.
We don’t have a connection. Except… He isn’t staying away from me. So maybe we do have more of one than even he wants to admit.
I think about the way that he punched Sean. That’s definitely one of my top five memories at this point. Even if it shouldn’t be.
I bite my lip as I think of the way he hit him. The way that Sean went down, blood everywhere. That shouldn’t be hot. It is, though. The thing about Maverick, the thing that I know makes it even more problematic, is that he’s a man. I’ve been around plenty of handsome guys my age, it’s not the same. There’s something about him. About the way he carries himself. The way that he walks through the world. There’s something about his intensity. And it keeps bringing me back to him time and time again, at least as a fantasy object.
I’d love to be able to let that go. I’d love to be able to attach this need to somebody else, but… I don’t know.
I realize that I spaced out the entire drive, which is crazy, because I don’t even really know where I’m going. I obey the GPS every time it makes a command and then manage to pull up right to the front of the cottage, but the entire time my brain was on planet Maverick.
I unload everything and leave the box of condoms in the paper bag on my counter as I put everything else away. Then I pick the paper bag up, take it back to the bedroom, which I hadn’t even explored yet.
It’s cute. With a moderately sized bed in it – probably a queen – and it’s got sort of a frilly comforter and pillow set in it, that definitely doesn’t bring to mind debauchery of any sort. And yet, I am extremely capable of thinking about getting up to debauchery in it.
It seems to be a gift of mine.
I’m a little bit disappointed in myself. The one-track nature of my mind at this moment in time is causing mayhem in my system, and I could do without it.
I dump the bag out onto the bed and stare at the black box of condoms. Magnum. So masculine.
I take a deep breath, and then I laugh. At myself.
Because not a single man has shown the slightest bit of sexual interest in me, and here I am contemplating a box of condoms. I’ve never been close enough to a penis to need one.
I expel a hard breath, and stamp out of the room, slamming the door shut behind me as I go back into the kitchen, retrieve the cheese I just put away and get it back out again, laying it on the counter and plotting my charcuterie. There’s a very nice artisan cheese place near my parents’ house, and the woman who runs it is French, and every time I go in, she is informing somebody that it cannot be charcuterie if it isn’t centered aroundmeat, as charcuterie literally meanscured meat. I am still happy to call a cheese board charcuterie, even though it’s wrong, almost in defiance of her outrage. Maybe that says more about me than it does about her.
I very happily scoop some honeycomb out of the jar and put it into a little bowl, then surround it with slices of cheese. There’s something methodical and meditative about the process, and in all honesty, it’s one of the few slow activities that I enjoy. Cooking, building a nice plate, mostly, things in that vein irritate me. Because if I can’t have instant gratification, I don’t want it. But I like this. I just do.
It works for me.
I open up the bottle of wine, and let it breathe – because I’m sophisticated, damn it, and I know what to do with wine. Then I bring a glass of wine and my cheese platter to the couch and sit there in blissful silence. I’ve made a very good decision for my life by coming here, and it has nothing to do with the condoms in the other room. It has nothing to do with Maverick as a person. It has everything to do with the fact that I might be on my way into a new phase of life because of this.
It’s possible. Very possible.
