Rolling in the Deep (8 page)

I nod, breathing hard, and he edges up between my legs. I want to be on him.

I turn him over and take the condom from his hands. Roll it on. His face is flushed a deep crimson. There’s sweat on his neck. I lean down and lick it off him, and he makes a strangled sound.

“Holly.”

I guide him between my legs. And then lower myself onto him, inch by inch. My body clenches around him, trying to adjust to his thickness, his heat. It’s overwhelming in a way I didn’t prepare myself for, the way he fills me. How deep he goes. I feel his hips between my thighs, the strength of his chest against the palm of my hand. And I begin to move, rising up and then slowly, slowly sliding down.

I want to look into his eyes, but it’s too much, the way he’s looking at me. Like he’s afraid almost. As afraid as I am.

He closes his eyes, and grips my hips, and I realize that until now he’s been still. Letting me take control. Letting me lead. But he wants to move now, I can feel it. I feel his control slipping, and scared as I am, I want it to fall away entirely. I want to feel what he’s like when he’s not holding anything back. My body takes over; it takes what it wants. I pull him out slowly, holding his cock in my hand with just the tip of him still inside me, and wait.

He opens his eyes and looks at me. Into me. I feel like I’m being torn open.

And then he flips me onto my back and lifts my knees higher. And drives his cock deep. He holds it there, pressing hard into the core of my body, and I can’t stand it.

“Ray!”

“Fuck, Holly. Take it.”

Jesus Christ.

“Take it.”

He won’t move. He just pushes into me, fills me. He takes my breast in his hand and sucks in a nipple, and I’m coming again. Shattering, splitting apart, and it doesn’t end when he starts moving again. When he fucks me for real, hard and deep and without stopping. The orgasm goes on and on, splintering, fractal. I dig my nails into his back and he makes a harsh sound and moves harder. His fingers grip my thighs.

I don’t know how to survive this. I want it to last forever and I will die if it does. I want to feel Ray breaking like he’s broken me. I tighten around him and he loses momentum for a second and falls into me. “Jesus.”

“I want you to come, Ray.” I don’t recognize the animal sound of my voice. I didn’t know it could be like this. That I could be like this. “Come in me,” I tell him. “Come with me.”

“Jesus, Holly.” He grips a fistful of my hair and pulls, and I’m coming again, gripping and gripping him with my pussy, my legs wrapped tight around him, and he slams into me hard and cries out. I feel the pulsing of his cock inside me, and it’s beautiful. God, it’s so beautiful.

He collapses onto me—falls into me, and I hold him. I hold him so tight.

He kisses my mouth. My eyes. His hands run over my face and hair. My sides. My hips. He presses his forehead to my shoulder, his mouth against my neck.

“Holly,” he says. “Holly.”

I don’t know what to say. I have no idea what just happened to me. To us.

I start to cry. And he just holds me. He covers us with the blanket, takes me in his arms, and holds me.

She falls asleep in my arms. I breathe in the honey smell of her hair and try to be awake to the intimacy of this moment—of holding her naked body against mine under the blanket. It’s more honest than sex even, in its way. Asleep, Holly is not self-conscious. Her face rests on my heart.

I thought I was in trouble before, when all I wanted was to know her better. But part of me understood how much can be projected on another person from a distance. I was lonely and she was the first person upstate to show me any kindness.

It was possible, then, to think that maybe it was more the idea of Holly than the actual person, that once I got to know her better and reality set in, I’d realize she was only being nice. There wasn’t actually any substance there between us.

I can’t pretend that now, even if I wanted to.

If anything, there’s more to her than I thought I knew. A depth I’ve just fallen straight into, headfirst.

My mother used to say that when I fell in love, it would be hard like this, that it would knock the floor right out from under me.

“You’re too sensitive, Ramón. You’re gonna let some girl rip your heart out.”

She wasn’t quite right, although I did get kicked in the gut a few times. I lived with a woman for a few years in Queens, which presented a serious moral dilemma for Mom. As a Catholic, I wasn’t supposed to be living in sin, but at the same time, she was relieved I wasn’t marrying Theresa.

“She’s not the one.”

“How do you know that, Mom?”

She shook her head. “Because I have eyes,
mijo.
You’ll know your wife when you meet her. It’s…it’s bigger than this. It shakes you, and you’re not shaken by this young woman, nice as she is. You haven’t met your wife yet, trust me.”

I put it down to magical thinking on her part. Life is more complicated than that, and just because it went like that for her and Dad didn’t mean it was going to work that way for me.

When things got rough with Theresa, though, maybe two years in, I couldn’t find the fight in me that was necessary to fix it. Neither could she. We both stayed on for quite a while—we were friends after all, and wanted to make it work—but in the end, without that passion I hadn’t even realized wasn’t there, it just sort of…fizzled. And we went our separate ways.

I’ve been attracted to other women, before and since. It’s not like I’ve been a monk. But it was different when I met Holly. I hadn’t wanted to think about that too hard before today. But it’s kind of difficult to avoid when she’s pressed against me like this, hot and vulnerable. When her soft breath is knifing through me like hard sleet.

I didn’t realize that sex could
hurt
. But kissing her, tasting her, being inside her, it felt like being torn open. Sweetly, yes. But torn all the same.

I am in danger here with her, and it’s already too late.

I bend my head to press my lips against the top of her hair, and she stirs. For a moment, her limbs tighten around me, and then she wakes fully and draws back.

Her face is flushed with sleep, her eyes still half-closed.

God have mercy
.

When she smiles at me, I gather her in my arms and kiss her.

I never want to leave this hotel. I want to be with her, naked under this blanket, wrapped around her, pressed against her soft, warm skin, until at least a year from now. Making love. Listening to her talk. Sleeping in her arms.

We could buy that kind of life now, if we wanted to. We could spend a year in a hotel room, and a nicer one than this, if that’s what we choose.

I almost forgot, for a minute, what brought us here. What brought us together.

Holly draws away, squinting at the clock on the bedside table. “What time is it?”

I don’t think Holly’s forgotten. But how could she? With a son to take care of, she can’t afford to lose track of practical things.

“It’s almost four, I think. Are you picking up Drew tonight?”

“No.” She falls back on the bed. “Not till tomorrow after school.”

I smile into her bare shoulder. “Lots of time between now and then.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long while. The silence in the room changes tone. A few moments ago Holly was sleeping against me like a child. Now her face is full of worry. I don’t need to be a mind reader to see that she’s half gone already. Her thoughts are somewhere else, somewhere far away from me.

Which they have to be,
I remind myself. She has responsibilities that I don’t have. “Are you okay?” I ask.

She lies still on her back, but turns her head slightly to look at me. Her eyes soften briefly. “Yeah.”

“You sure? Because, I mean, I hope you don’t…”

I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I hope you don’t regret this? I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that question.

She looks away, at the ceiling, but she takes my hand. We lie side by side for a while before she speaks.

“I’m just…I guess I feel a little stupid.”

I fight the urge to turn toward her since it seems pretty clear that she needs some space.

“Stupid? Why?”

“Because I don’t know you very well. I mean…” She shakes her head. “I haven’t known you for very long. And this whole thing, it’s just…it’s so overwhelming. And confusing. And I shouldn’t have acted on impulse like I did. I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s good to act on impulse sometimes.”

“No. Not for me. Not anymore.”

“Holly.”

She starts to sit up. “I’m sorry, Ray. I—”

“Holly, wait.” I sit up, too, and dislodge the blanket, which falls from her shoulders, exposing her breast. She makes a little sound of exasperation and pulls the twisted sheet up to cover herself, but accidentally yanks it away from her other breast.

I bite the inside of my cheek.

“Don’t laugh at me, you jerk.” She swats at my shoulder, which makes the sheet fall down entirely, and that’s honestly more than I can take. I let out what might technically be classified as a guffaw and she retaliates by pulling the blanket off me, too.

Now we’re both exposed. And laughing. And she’s back.

She’s back in the room with me, thank God. She’s kneeling on the bed, poised with a pillow above her head, ready to smack me with it.

“You want to order room service?” I ask.

“What?” She lowers the pillow.

“You hungry? Want to get some food delivered to the room? That’s what rich people do, I hear.”

The pillow covers her. I’m the only one who’s naked now. I lie on my side with my head propped up on one arm, and watch her eyes as she tries not to look at my body.

It’s a serviceable body. I can’t afford a gym membership but I do push-ups and sit-ups in the morning, go for a jog occasionally. It’s much nicer up here in the fresh air than it was in Queens, where the best place to run was the local cemetery.

Holly reaches forward and lays her palm on my chest. Then she drops the pillow and lies down alongside me.

“You’re making it really hard to leave,” she says.

“Do you have to?” I move my arm to cradle her head.

She presses her face to my chest and breathes in. “Maybe not yet.”

I lie there with her for a while before I try again. “What did you mean about being impulsive?”

“Oh, you know.” She shivers a little and I pull the covers over us. “It’s just…it’s gotten me into trouble before.”

“When?”

She pauses—considering, I imagine, whether to confide in me. Strange how two people can spend an hour having sex but struggle with actually talking to each other. I don’t know how to reassure her that she’s safe with me. In her shoes, I’d be wary, too.

“With Drew’s dad, mainly. I kind of jumped in before I knew what I was getting myself into.”

“I get the feeling he’s not that great a guy.”

She sighs. “No, I don’t want to talk bad about him. He’s a good father. It’s just that…he wasn’t that nice to me. Isn’t, I mean. Still isn’t.”

“Isn’t that part of being a good dad, though? Treating your kid’s mother right?”

Holly considers that for a moment, silently. “Did your dad do that? Treat your mom well?”

“Yes.” I say it without hesitation, even though I don’t remember him at all. “He died when I was three years old. But I could tell from the way my mom talked about him.”

“Oh wow.” Holly looks up at me. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard, losing him so young.”

“I didn’t know any different. It was hard on my mom, mostly. And my brother, Tony; he was older, so he remembered him.”

“You have a brother?”

“Yeah.” I smile. “He’s in Queens. He runs a store down there, has two little girls—Ana and Sofia.”

Holly’s hand brushes along my arm. “You must miss them.”

“Yeah.” I blow out a breath. “I do.”

“Do you think you’ll move back to Queens, now that you—”

“No. I have to see this through. The whole cooking school thing.”

“Right.” Holly nods against my chest. “Maybe that’ll be easier, now that you don’t have to do shifts at Cogmans, too?”

“Maybe.”

She looks up at me. “You don’t sound that excited about it.”

“No?” I tilt my chin down, considering. “A promise is a promise, though.”

“You mean to your mom? Is that the only reason why you’re doing it?” She pulls herself up to lean on her elbow and look at me more closely.

“No…I mean, she was right, you know? I should do something bigger. Cooking is a skill and I should develop it. I shouldn’t just, you know, let it slip.”

“Is that what you were doing at the diner, letting it slip?”

I think about that. “Not exactly. I liked trying new dishes, switching up the menu. I don’t know. It was fun there. Not just the cooking, but the whole community aspect.”

Holly presses her foot against my calf, unconsciously, and I try not to smile. “What do you mean?”

“You know, lots of regulars. Old guys coming in ordering the same thing for breakfast every day for years and years. Kids we watched grow up. It was a neighborhood place, you know what I mean? I loved that.”

“Like church in a way.”

I laugh. “Yeah.”

“In the sense that you meet up there, and it feels like a second home almost.”

“Exactly.”

“The garden where I volunteer?” she says. “It’s like that, kind of. Not just for me, but for the kids who do their school trips there, in the spring when everyone’s teaching about plants and whatnot. Some of those kids end up being volunteers, or taking after-school classes there. And for some of them, it’s the only place they ever see flowers.”

I prop up some pillows behind us and sit up. “You ever teach any of those after-school classes?”

“On Sundays sometimes.” Holly pulls the blanket up and leans against the headboard, too. “It’s not technically after school, but that’s one of my days off. Or it was. There are some girls who’ve taken a few classes, who come in for extra projects on the weekends. One or two boys, too.”

“Teenagers?” I ask.

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t know. It’s cool, is all. I used to teach some classes back in the city. Cooking classes. Like how to do it healthy on a budget, that kind of thing. But for middle-schoolers, mostly.”

“That’s a nice thing to do.” Holly smiles at me.

I shrug. “It was fun.”

“It’d be cool if it was combined, you know? Like kids could plant and harvest food and then it went directly into a restaurant. Someplace casual, like a diner, but with healthy food.”

I nod, watching her carefully. “Yeah, it would.”

“I guess there’s not really much space for a big garden in Queens.”

“No, I guess not.” I pause for a moment. “There is in Poughkeepsie, though.”

I watch the idea move across her face. “There’s an empty lot by the garden. We’ve been wanting to expand, but we just haven’t had the—”

“Money?” I say, and smile.

She grins in return. “Yeah.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem now.”

“No, it isn’t, is it?”

I sit up straighter, and half turn toward her. “You ever read about that diner Jon Bon Jovi opened in Jersey? It’s like a pay-what-you-can thing? Full menu and all, but anyone can eat there and then just leave whatever they can afford.”

“Wow.” Holly nods thoughtfully. “I like that idea.”

“We’re gonna need something to do with the money, Holly. I mean, I don’t know if you feel like this, but me…I’ve got family I want to take care of, maybe a few charities I’d want to give to. And I wanted to…I don’t know, maybe write a check for the other people at Cogmans.”

“Really?” Her eyes warm. “I was thinking that, too.”

“Especially after today.”

She nods. “Definitely.”

“But even so,” I say. “There’ll be a lot left over.”

“It’s more money than we ever could spend,” she says.

“Right. I mean, I’m not saying I’m not gonna go buy a new truck first, but—”

“Or a house.”

“A house! Yeah. With a hot tub.”

She smiles. “Definitely a hot tub. An outdoor one.”

I slide my arm behind her back and scoot her closer. “I like the way you think.”

“I wouldn’t mind a backyard,” she says, quietly.

“For a garden?”

“Yeah, and for Drew to play in.” She leans her head on my shoulder.

“With a couple of trees so you can string up a hammock.”

She sighs. “A hammock. To read a book in.”

“You can have all of that now, Holly. And we could…we could also…”

I think about the garden, about the restaurant we could open—some kind of farm-to-table thing, but for regular people. Affordable. And a spark of excitement spins through me.

Tony built his own business from the ground up—I know he could help us. Hell, we could pay people to help us. We could figure it out, together.

I came up here to the country for Mom’s sake, because I knew she wanted more for me. But maybe she wasn’t exactly right about what that more should be. I could build something of my own, something that mattered to me. And I could do it with Holly.

I want to share all of this with her, to start brainstorming. But even in my half-manic state, I recognize it’s way too much for her to be thinking about right now. It’s too much for me, if I’m honest. I’ve barely even adjusted to the idea of the lottery win. I shouldn’t be anywhere near making major decisions yet. I need time to figure out what all the money means before I start trying to spend it.