Learning to Blush (7 page)

“What?” Penny gasped. “Did she tell you this?”

“No, but she didn’t need to!” he said. “And she wouldn’t tell her
brother
, anyway. But it’s obvious that she just wanted to live an alternate lifestyle with a boyfriend somewhere. Probably planned it before she disappeared. He would just provide her with everything she needed, which is why she didn’t pack any clothes to take with her. If she WORE clothes at all, that is….”

“Huh—that might explain why she got all her body hair professionally removed. That ain’t cheap,” Penny added. “It would make sense if she was some millionaire’s toy or something… Still…
Ellie
?” It didn’t make sense, really, despite the evidence, and even Mike knew this. Ellie just wasn’t sexual at all before she’d disappeared. She sat up straight and shook her head. “Timmy doesn’t think that,” Penny reminded in a chiding voice.

“No. Tim’s favorite two conclusions thus far deal with aliens and werewolves. He can’t DECIDE on a favorite yet,” Mike said sardonically, rolling his eyes. “That boy’s B-movie fetish cannot be healthy….”

Suddenly, Ellie came downstairs, showered in Jonas-family-record time and dressed in a dress Penny recognized as hers. Ellie's hair was wet and her skin was pink, as if she had scrubbed the hell out of it. “Pen, I’m borrowing your clothes,” she announced, rushing to grab Mike’s keys from a hook by the desk. “Mike, I’m borrowing your SUV.” She practically tripped as she tried to tug ballerina-like shoes onto her feet as she jogged out the door.

They just watched her as she got into the SUV. “I don’t know if they told you this,” Mike said, his voice hushed. “But when she came back and went into the hospital for the broken arm, they found her ass was beaten. I mean, welted from mid-thigh to her back. I think things got too rough and she bailed on the guy. Everybody thinks so….” When Penny gave her trademark 'judgmental look', he added, “
Except Tim
.”

“Well, she’s rushing out to meet him. She wasn’t too serious about the bailing on the guy if that’s the case.” They watched Ellie burn rubber as she skidded the SUV quickly onto the main road. “I didn’t know she knew how to
wear
a dress!”

“I don’t know. Maybe she’s in a trance and we said some magic words or something…”

“Mike?” Penny said, pursing her lips.

“Huh?”

“You are so full of shit.”

Mike put up his hands. “We’ll see, we’ll see.”

* * *

“Whoa! Watch out! Crazy woman driver!” Tim said, watching a black SUV swerve around them to get off the express ramp to the hospital. “Holy shit-sauce!”

“Hey,” Tommy said, wanting to get annoyed but too distracted to do so. “Was that
Mike’s
…? Shit!” He turned a corner only to see the SUV stopped and swerving into the parking lot in front of them, missing the front of their car by a foot. They heard a ‘thump’ and an annoyed groan from the two giant guys trying to hold onto dear life in the back. “Sorry!” Tommy tried to tell them, shutting off the truck and jogging out of it.

“What the fuck, Lady?” he demanded, shouting. He watched a girl in a blue sundress climb out of the front seat. It took him a good long few seconds to realize it was Ellie. “Whoa! El—What—?” he began, but Ellie suddenly ran past him and up to his car.

“Graham!” she screamed.

Graham stood up from his seated position and looked over the hood of the truck like he had been sitting on a spring. His body was completely rigid. “Eleanor?” He couldn’t believe it. He was SO certain she was dead—and there she was; as beautiful as ever, though her eyes were as wide as saucers and her lip was quivering…

He jumped off the car quickly and ran up to her and picked her up, swinging her around as if she didn’t weigh anything—her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, her legs scandalously around his waist. He breathed her in. He had forgotten how damn good she smelt. “Eleanor!” He kissed her neck and then pulled back to gaze at her face. She was crying. “I was so worried…” he said, his throat tight. He didn’t know if he was going to start crying too, or laughing, or singing—he had never felt so full of emotion before…

“I thought you weren’t gonna come for me!” she cried, sobbing into his shoulder. “I didn’t know if you knew where I was, or if it was too dangerous, or if I made you too angry with me for what I did… I’m so sorry!”

“I’ll
always
come for you,” he promised her, rubbing her back consolingly.

Tommy and Timmy looked up at Thorton, who was leaning against the hood of the truck, resting his head into his hand and smiling happily. He gave a happy sigh before he looked at their completely puzzled expressions, smiled more broadly and shrugged, saying, “You gotta love happy endings.”

Suddenly there was a loud honking noise as another car actually tried to get into the parking lot. Tim groaned and got back in the truck to park it out of the main lane and Thorton jumped off the back and stood patiently by the couple.

“I’ve gotta tell ya, Kitten,” Thorton finally said, looking how Ellie parked the car, which was obviously supposed to be within the lane, and not across three slots. “You don’t build a very good case for yourself if you want to get the Boss to let you apply for your cruiser license…”

She put an arm out and grabbed Thorton by his coat, dragging him over into a group hug.

Timmy was already texting someone about this—probably Penny. Tom got out of the newly-parked truck and watched. “Um,” he finally said, loud enough that he hoped to get even Ellie’s attention. It didn’t seem to work, and he frowned. “Um? Ellie?”

Ellie let Thorton go and went back to snuggling into Graham’s chest, looking helplessly content, even as she cried.

Thorton walked up to Tom, saying, “So… You know her?”

“Hell, yeah. We work and live together—we’re cousins…” Tom said, curling his lip with confusion and shaking his head.

“Wow… This is a really small planet,” Thorton said, looking both disturbed and amazed.

“Who… How…” Tommy grinned and shook his head. “I didn’t know she even had a boyfriend.”

Thorton snorted. “They’re not friends. They’re
married
.”

Tommy and Timmy both slowly turned and looked at each other, shocked. Eventually, Timmy looked back down at his cell phone and continued to text as fast as he could. “Man, my thumbs are on fiyah!”

* * *

“Roomy,” Thorton observed, sitting behind Ellie’s seat in the SUV as she started the car.

“Just so you know, what you did was inexcusable,” Graham said in a dark tone as he watched his wife pull out of the lot. She was trying not to drive like a maniac this time. “On so many levels, what you did was unjustifiable. I literally thought you were dead for two months, Eleanor. Two months.”

“It’s true,” piped up Thorton from the back seat, where he was beginning to feel forgotten about. “The only reason Jack got me on the ship was to keep Graham from swallowing his own blaster. Didn’t want him to come out here alone.”

“I’m sorry. I promise you, it wasn’t my plan to break my wrist comm,” Ellie assured them. She was feeling herself again since she and Graham had reconnected. He had even let her cry on him for about a half an hour. “Or the ship, for that matter! It was a cluster-screw of epic proportions.”

“You’re damn well right it was,” Graham seethed.

Ellie drove in silence for a while, contemplating how Graham’s happiness over seeing her alive had so rapidly dissolved into a sickening shock as he realized that it could have very easily not been the case. Ellie did feel guilty about that, but she wasn’t quite Mary. The only human girlfriend she had in space, Mary was the epitome of penitent after she had disobeyed her husband, Peyton. Mary would look for and welcome her husband’s firm hand.

Which made Ellie think that it was possible Graham had a firmer hand than Peyton had ever used on Mary. Looking for and welcoming a punishment, even when she undoubtedly deserved it, wasn’t
ever
going to happen in Ellie’s foreseeable future. Her bottom was already tingling uncomfortably just thinking about its impending doom.

She lifted her finger in the air and finally said, “
But
… Aren’t you gonna ask me how I got here in so little time?”

“I don’t think you appreciate how little I’ve slept since your apparent demise,” Graham lectured. “So no, I wasn’t going to rush to ask. I’m more interested in what were you were thinking! What if it didn’t work? Nobody knew where you were—a thousand things could have gone wrong!”

“Nothing would have been wrong if you'd let me train for a
pilot’s license
,” she mumbled. She heard Thorton chuckle wryly, shaking his head as he looked out the window. “What?” she demanded, annoyed.

“You are dumb as a rock sometimes,” he said, shaking his head, “that’s all. Boss couldn’t care less what you’ve invented, Kitten. And let me tell you why—Graham can’t live without you, and he certainly can’t enjoy the doodads you created snuffing yourself out of existence if he’s
also
dead. You follow?” He suddenly straightened himself and curled his lip upwards in a sneer. “I feel like I’m having déjà vu…”

“That’s because this has happened before. Hasn’t it, Eleanor? When you created the Fledge and got yourself stuck outside in freezing temperatures for God knows how long?” Graham fumed. “Only this time it’s worse. And you’d better
believe
your punishment is going to be worse!”

Her throat tightened, mostly from the humiliation. She hated being threatened in front of anyone, even if that someone also believed she deserved a punishment.

“I should have brought the damn
kit
,” Graham stated with exasperation. “We need to stop by somewhere and pick one up.”

Suddenly, she was blushing so much she was afraid her face was going to fall off. “Graham…” she whined quietly, pained by the knowledge that Thorton was listening in on their conversation. “Relax. You know I’m sorry I scared you…”

“Not nearly sorry enough,” he told her with a cynical smile. “Where do they sell their kits?”

“They don’t have
kits
,” she assured firmly, nearly sick with humiliation. “Can’t you just punish me when we get back to the mothership?”

“Oh, I plan to punish you there, too,” he assured. “You’re gonna be one very sorry little girl when I’m through with you.”

She wrung the steering wheel with her hands. “Thorton—can you
please
talk to him?” she begged, biting her lower lip.

“Ha!” Thorton coughed callously, reading his electronic tablet that he had produced from his coat’s inner-pocket. “No. I hope he gets
creative
about punishing you,” he told her firmly. “If you’re looking for sympathy, Kitten, look elsewhere. Possibly to someone whose leave wasn't spoiled because of you. I should be surfing the shores of Beh’leer right about now.” He looked up from his tablet to get eye contact with Graham in the rearview mirror, “So, she’s lying. They have kits.”

“I am not, and no we don’t!” she argued, a look of betrayal obvious on her face.

“I’m on your interplanetary information platform,” Thorton informed her. “And yeah, you do.”

“The internet? That’s not a physical place. You can get anything on the internet, but it would take days before they could deliver it,” she assured bitingly.

“They’ll sell them in mostly any sexual equipment store,” he informed Graham, shrugging dismissively. “And there’s a LOT of them. They’re everywhere—like, every ten miles.”

“Thorton… I swear to God, I will cut you down,” she promised scathingly.

“
Eleanor
,” Graham drawled in a warning. “Stop stalling. If you didn’t want to be punished, then you shouldn’t have made it your goal to be the most disobedient wife
imaginable
. Stop at one of those stores.”

She waved her hand in the air dramatically. “Look, I just can’t walk into a local place with two huge guys and buy a bunch of anal punishment gear. People will talk. People are
already
talking about me—they think I disappeared to do a bunch of weird sex-slave stuff somewhere.”

Thorton and Graham both snorted in disbelief, as if they thought she was telling tales. “Why? Is that what you told them?” Thorton finally asked with curiosity.

“No, but I couldn’t tell them I was abducted by
aliens
. I’d end up on the funny farm! But nobody believes my story about the witness protection program, either. They’ll make up what they want to hear, and I’m not going into a place that will only confirm their suspicions!”

“The only thing we’ll be
confirming
is that you’re a disobedient wife who has a husband who loves you and wants you to not kill yourself with unauthorized escapades,” Graham assured firmly. “Make a stop.”

She rolled her eyes and bit her bottom lip. There was nothing for it. She heard her phone vibrate from the dashboard and grabbed it. She glanced down at the message, then started to thumb-in a response.

“You’re making me nervous,” Graham told her, his teeth gritted and reaching up to grab the handle that was very usefully placed above-head.

“I’m just texting my cousin,” she snapped.

He grabbed her phone out of her hand and threw it into the backseat. “Just drive,” he said with a lecturing gaze, as if he didn’t need to explain himself.

Thorton picked up the phone and read the message. “Ruok?” he asked, confused. “What’s
that
mean?”

“Are you okay,” she translated crisply. “That’s what it says. Can you tell her I’m fine?”

“How do you say
that
?” he asked, wondering if there was some special code that she knew.

“You know English, just type it normally and hit ‘send’,” groaned Ellie, making a turn to go down towards the sex toy shop.

Thorton typed it in carefully with his large fingers and then hit ‘send’. Within seconds, another message popped up:
R U married? 4 RLs? “
Huh,” Thorton chirped. “This is pretty cool. I didn’t know your language could be broken down like this.” He was already typing out a response.