5
Wesley
I felt her aura rising up from behind those eyes: one of lust, of desire. She was all but crying out for me from behind that bar. And when I suggested she sit beside me, sip a brew? She nearly danced into my lap. Her lips gleamed, and her tongue snaked over the bottom one. It was a tongue I was familiar with. I was sure that the moment mine touched hers, they’d rejoin like old, naughty pals. Picking up old tricks.
Of course, it was borderline laughable that I’d ever pick back up with Remy. Sure, she was still absolutely stunning: a full-formed woman, with a sad, sad tale of loss in Los Angeles. It wasn’t that I was attracted to it. I just felt a neediness within her. A surge of want for whatever it was we thought we were crafting back when we were eighteen. And I couldn’t give her that. I could fuck her, only.
But as she drew closer to me, telling me her story—about how broke she was, about how her only dream, now, was to make her movie. I began to cultivate a plan. With this new plot in my head, my body immediately began to act. My cock pulsed against my pant leg, all veiny and dripping, like I was some kind of uncontrollable animal. My muscles strained in my shirt, and I licked my lips, eager to kiss her and seal the deal.
This girl. This woman. She’d been mine. And now, I could bring her back to me, to restore balance in my own life. The moment I had her stretched out across a mattress somewhere, I knew my guys would get busy—taking one of her eggs for my own. It wasn’t like they were being used by anyone else. Didn’t have them reserved. And if I remembered correctly, Remy had whispered secret sweet nothings about wanting my babies someday.
“I want to have your kids, Wesley Adams,” she’d muttered, beneath the stars. I’d stirred against her, knowing my primal instincts didn’t align so well with her desires for a family. But I’d been unable to resist her, drawing my lips against hers and almost—for a second—believing it could be true.
Now at the bar, with her lips so close to mine, I eliminated the distance between us, sliding my bottom lip beneath hers. I felt a slow moan escape from her throat, proof of how much she desired me. Wrapping my firm hand atop her shoulder, I began to massage her, snaking my fingers both up toward the softness of her hair and down to the perky tits tucked beneath a bra. Our kiss grew more insistent, wild. I sensed her heart beating like a rabbit’s beneath her shirt.
“Wes, Wes, Wes,” she crie, pushing back away from me. She staggered from the bar stool, whipping at her mouth with the back of her hand. She blinked wide eyes at me: hungry ones, ready for me to rip her clothes from her thin frame and fuck her in the back. I knew that look well.
“I just, I don’t—I feel confused,” she finally said, dragging her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know. I didn’t eat… The beer is hitting my head, maybe.”
“I see,” I said. But I reached for her, wrapping my arms low around her waist. I tried to catch her eye once more, to draw her into me. After yanking at her slightly, she fell into me again. “See, there? Isn’t it good to hold one another? Isn’t it good to feel?”
“Wes, you can’t have thought… You didn’t come here for this, did you?” she asked. I felt the love emanating from her skin and glowing from behind her eyes. But still, she drew back away from me slightly, growing colder. I could sense the years of experience on her. She’d fought for her life, for her personality, in the years since I’d last seen her. She wouldn’t fall into me so easily.
I held her like that for a moment—her trying to fall back, the question burning along my tongue. Just as she began to close her eyes once more, easing her hand along the curve of my muscled chest, I murmured, “You know, I think we can help each other.”
Immediately, she drew back even more, yanking her hand from my chest. She reached for her beer and held it aloft, her eyes darting around. I was too familiar to her. She sensed I was playacting. Our lips dripped with one another, still hungry, lust-filled. But her rage—so familiar to a much younger me—was growing.
“All right. What is it?” she asked. “You want money? Because I’m pretty sure you’ve got one of the richest fathers in the entire world. You should just ask him.”
“That’s the thing, Rem,” I said, cutting directly to the point. “The thing is, he won’t let me see a lick of that money unless… Well.”
“Unless what?” Remy asked, her voice growing louder.
“Unless I give him a—a grandson,” I finally said, yanking my shoulders back and making myself much, much taller than her five-foot-three height. I felt the words land like a hammer on her skull, making her reckon with what a sonofabitch I’d become in the years since she’d last seen me. Maybe, when I’d been seventeen, I’d still been allowed a sliver of sweetness. Hell, I even remembered waking up early before school for her, tossing some bills on the counter of the flower shop, and bringing her daisies.
But now, Remy blinked up at me, her face growing a ghastly pale. She lifted her hands to my chest, shoving me toward the door. “And you think I’ll just sleep with you and shove out an heir to the Adams fortune, do you?”
I sniffed, almost finding the whole thing funny at this point. “Well, I’d of course give you the cash, the minute you got pregnant. A huge sum of money, Rem. Enough for you to make that movie of yours, I bet. And even more to live off of. You wouldn’t have to tend bar, that’s for damn sure.”
The concept ticked along Remy’s face, making that little dimple on her right cheek grow deeper. I waited, splaying my hands through the air. I felt almost certain that she was poised to say yes. That she was just too afraid of “what people would say.” Was she still holding out to have someone’s baby the proper way? At thirty, was time ticking along for her, mentally? Was she realizing that that asshole she’d left back in Los Angeles might have been her last shot?
“Come on, Rem. I’m just asking you to procreate with me,” I said, chuckling. “We talked about it so many times, before. And people have kids all the time, right? Even if they’re not, you know. Like me. Borderline incapable of love.”
This made Remy’s eyes burn with even more anger. She pointed her finger toward the door, her lips quaking. “If you don’t get the hell out of here this moment, Wesley, then I’ll call Quintin. He’ll be here in five minutes, and he’ll rip your fucking head off. You know he’d do anything for me. Even when it comes to you.”
I knew she was right. I bucked back, adjusting my leather jacket. I felt sure that Quintin hearing about this—erm—proposal would ultimately destroy our friendship. “When you were stumping my sister, I wanted to fucking kill you,” he’d told me a few years before, on one of my trips to the Bay. “I’m glad we’re past that now. I’m glad she’s over you.”
I ducked out from Station to Station Pub, tossing my leg over my motorbike. I still felt the razor-sharp eyes of Remy almost burning their way through my cheekbones. Darting from the Mission, I tore toward the coast, where I’d rented out a room along the shore with the last of my cash. I began to tally up the funds in my account, knowing I was running low. What was it? Five thousand dollars? Maybe less? Jesus.
There was something off about asking anyone but Remy for this. I didn’t want to make a baby with just any bright-eyed wonder willing to suck my dick. Remy was a good person, an artistic, fiery woman, whom I’d always felt was my equal. Frankly, I’d always known she was better than me—as good as Hank, maybe, with a more adventurous streak. It was why I hadn’t fucked around in high school. I’d really thought, back in that animal, teenage brain, that she was the one.
I strutted through my cabin room, listening to the trees creak around me. On the other side of the window, I gazed out at a black Pacific. The moon crept down over the waves. I reaching into the fridge, drew out a brew, and popped it, sipping it with heavy drags. I couldn’t imagine a more lonely feeling than the one immediately after being rejected by someone you’d once loved.
“Fuck it,” I sighed to myself, resolving that I wouldn’t do this fucking asinine “baby contract” bullshit with my father. My father’s line didn’t deserve an heir. And maybe I didn’t deserve that money. I’d done all right on the road so far. Maybe I’d burn out in a few years. Go down in some kind of wild Mexican-cartel murder or blast my motorbike over the Grand Canyon, all Thelma and Louise style. I wasn’t going to work myself to death, like the rest of them.
And, at the end of the day, all I had to live for was my freedom. No heir. No woman. No artistic pursuit. Just the open road.
Already, I was itching to flee.
Quintin rang me up the next morning. I answered it knowing he could be hankering to murder me, post-conversation with Remy. But his voice was boisterous, telling me about some girl he’d taken back to his place the night before. “These mountain tits, Wesley,” he said into the phone. “Damn, it had been too long. I can’t imagine what kind of ass you get when you’re driving across the country like that. Sometimes I think Frisco girls are too… too techie, or too crunchy, maybe. Maybe I should get the hell out of this town.”
“Want to ride your bike east with me?” I asked him, feeling my throat strain with nostalgia. How much I wanted to turn my head left and see him tearing up the road beside me. “Think I’ll skip town already, honestly. My father is a piece of shit.”
“Oh yeah,” Quintin said, sighing slightly. I could feel the hesitation, the bitterness that I was always rearing to go. “How did that go? He wanted to see you?”
“Man, fuck him,” I said. “He just wanted to nag me about getting married. Settling down. The same old bullshit.”
“Yeah. But that’s not my boy,” Quintin said, trying to sound brave, jocular. “You need more than this small city can give you.” He paused. Silence hung heavily on the phone between us, really highlighting the distance. “I guess Remy can open the pub, if you want to meet me in the Mission. I can ride along. For a few miles, maybe.”
I tore back toward the Mission, my heart feeling strange, heavy. I spotted Quintin, who lurched into the road in front of me, waving his hand. Suddenly, I felt sixteen again—ripping through the mad California night with Quintin by my side, Remy wrapped behind my back. These people: they were the only family I truly had. My father, demanding an heir from me. As if, without one, I was nothing to him.
We blasted our bikes toward Oakland, the shoddier side of the Bay Area. Homeless people crumpled down the walk, darting their eyes at us. I felt a stab of sadness, deep in my gut. Why the fuck was I already leaving?
Quintin and I paused at a corner coffee shop. He darted inside, paying with ragged one-dollar bills for two doughnuts and two black coffees. It was a tradition, a world we’d built when doughnuts had been something we, teenagers, had scarfed back, hungry for more.
“Man, we ate so fucking much as kids,” Quintin said, filling the silence. “I miss feeling like the world was ours, you know? Like no one else fucking mattered.”
“Ha.” This was the only response I could muster. I sipped the coffee, which was burnt and far too black—just the stuff swimming in the bottom of a coffee pot, I felt sure. The doughnut was stale, making sugar scatter across the table.
“I think you really stirred up something for Remy, being back,” Quintin finally said, addressing the elephant in my mind. “I know she always kind of considered you the one who got away, or some bullshit. Always wanted to have your kids. Settle down with you. ’Course, it’s funny how things turn out. It was never going to be that way.”
“Right,” I said, an arrogant smile across splitting my lips. I felt the lie roar up in my lungs. “I have too much to fucking do before I can ever settle down. And maybe I’d rather die than do it.”
Quintin clapped me on the shoulder, shaking it. His dark curls rushed over his forehead, rolling around his ears. “That’s my fucking man. Living while the rest of us squander our time. I’m proud to call you a friend.”
I roared away from him a few minutes after that, tearing across the land and toward God knew where. I cranked the engine louder, ripping past pickup trucks and minivans and feeling my muscles grow tense with the passing miles. I couldn’t shake Remy from my mind: that goodie girl, with a director’s dream. Who the hell was she kidding? She’d regret this moment in her life—sending me back on my way. I was sure of it.