Page 756 of Hell Hath No Fury
From the corner of her eye, she saw him raise the envelope. He turned it this way and that, as if he’d never seen such a thing.
“This isn’t why you came here.”
Her breath caught. “Isn’t it?”
The envelope wafted to the floor at her feet. “No.”
She couldn’t find the words to disagree. The place where the truth resided was a blind spot, and no matter how she turned or twisted, she couldn’t see what was there. Instead she stared at the ground. The eggshell-colored envelop rested, so clean and so crisp atop the dusty concrete floor. Like the two of them, she realized. Her, flimsy and lacking in depth. And him, coarseand carrying the weight of the world on his solid, rock-hard shoulders.
If the thank-you note wasn’t why she’d come here, then why?
But she knew exactly why she had come here and so did he. Humiliating? Yes, and the ashes of that knowledge floated on the air around them. Too much paper—she was surrounded by scraps of life. Everything was flat and false, like she was living in a diorama, but she wanted the real thing.
She turned on him. “Do you want to have sex with me?”
His lips parted. His bushy eyebrows shot up. “What?”
Oh man, he wassurprised. This was not what he had meant. “Uh, nothing. Forget I said anything.”
“You just asked me to have sex.” He glared at her. “When we’ve talked for all of three minutes.”
She was offended. “I met youyesterday.”
He rolled his eyes. “While hacking up a lung.”
“Okay. I’m going to go now.”
“No, wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it? Because it kinda sounded like you were disgusted by me.”
“No, I—” He scrubbed a hand over his face and then gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “Wow, I botched that up but good. I thought you were gonna ask me out. On a date.”
She closed her eyes. A date. Yeah, that made sense when he said it out loud. It probably wouldn’t help to explain that the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. It seemed too tame, like the kind of thing she might do any old time, not the day after her life had gone up in flames and her lungs had burned and her heart had inexplicably melted on the tiny lawn of her duplex.
This thing between them; it wasn’t love. It wasn’t even lust in the usual sense. It was gravity. She had been knocked out of orbit, and now she was falling out of the sky, hurtling toward the ground—almost home.
Deep breath. “Do you want to go on a date with me?”
The words ran together in a blur, only remotely intelligible because he’d already said the words.
He looked away, the blunt tips of his lashes dipping slow and then rising. “I liked your idea,” he finally said, and she had to laugh a little. A chuff, really. Because even though he loomed large and impenetrable in her mind—he was really still a man. A man with ordinary physical desires that made the heavy canvas-like fabric of his pants lift at the crotch.
Had it been here since she arrived? Lord knew she would have been too shy, too afraid to look directly at his groin until the subject of sex had been raised and reciprocated. Or had it been that carnal suggestion that had stirred his cock?Here is a woman of adequate appearance who is willing to spread her legs; prepare yourself.
Either seemed possible, and yet, the most remarkable part about all this was that she didn’t mind either one. This anonymous proposition—the wordcasualjust wouldn’t be accurate at all—put them both on equal footing.
He didn’t know her, and she didn’t know him, but they were about to rut, to fuck, like crashing into a complete stranger on the sidewalk, except naked.Oh I’m sorry, excuse me, I’ve dropped my hat, here let me help you.
“Grab hold of the bars,” he said, pointing at a metal bar that held a line of yellow and black firefighter coats.
His directness startled her. He didn’t sound apologetic about their impending collide. He didn’t sound too happy about it either. She flipped through everything that he wasn’t: not angry, not joyful, not impatient. What was it? Relaxed. The stress rose from his skin like steam on a hot summer sidewalk only to be replaced with a new, much more pleasurable form of tension.
She could only imagine the stress of this job. Hurtling himself into danger. Setting out to save the world and failing—quitenaturally, failing to do the impossible. Had it even felt like happiness when he’d pulled her to safety? Or had it been relief, a moment’s reprieve against the inevitable?
She dealt in fancy and bartered with caprice. He was the solidity she craved, the something to care about. And as she remembered him holding her, rocking her, saving her life—she thought he might need her too.
There was a hollow between two heavy jackets and underneath the bar and shelf, like a Kennedy-shaped space for her to fill. She grasped the cool bar in her hands, clenching and clenching. Not trying to let go but to hold on tighter, to meld her flesh to the metal. Her limbs lengthened, loosened, like touching all the walls of her cage: this is how far I can go.
