Ally…

I spent the weekend going back and forth between hurt and angry tears. When I had keyed my way into my apartment, I had been angry. When I had gone to bed, staring at his mask, lying forlornly on my small sewing table next to my machine, I had hurt. The empty eye holes and furrowed brow in the leather seemingly mocking me.

I hadn’t done what he’d told me. I hadn’t taken anything before bed and the next morning I certainly had regretted it. I’d woken up stiff, my shoulders and back killing me. I’d grudgingly taken some of the anti-inflammatories that morning and schlepped myself into the bathroom and put myself under a hot shower’s spray. I didn’t have a bathtub.

The rest of my Saturday had been spent alone, doing my laundry, begging off from seeing Dawnie with a lame excuse of not feeling well, even though the pills and hot water had done some magic. I’d then tried to find my happy place by throwing myself into my favorite hobby. My grandmother had been a seamstress and she had taught me a love of all things sewing. Most of my clothing was actually repurposed thrift store finds.

In fact, I made most of mine and Dawnie’s clothes. Right now, I was working on a broomstick style skirt for Dawnie using strips of different textured material in complementary colors. I had been hoarding for a while to make it happen. This one was in different greens and golds to complement her long auburn hair. I used pieces of corduroy from jackets and pants, bits of velvet from evening dresses and scarfs, even some burned-velvet patterns from a scarf or two. Some heavy Asian silk and jersey knit material also went into the making of it, and I was determined to have it done before fall.

She couldn’t see, so I did my best to make things to excite her other senses, like this. It was the least that I could do for her. Well, that, and choose and sort yarn with her. She had taught herself to crochet to pass the time and she made some of the most beautiful things by touch. It was a secret dream of ours that one day we would win the lottery or that we would be discovered through our little online shop and we’d be able to open a boutique someday.

Sunday, I had made dessert and gone to see my grandmother. She had, once again, noticed my lackluster appetite and my strained smile. I had lied to her again, not wishing to worry her. Told her that I was just tired and that everything was fine while I wrestled with my feelings over what I had done with Damien Parnell.

I don’t know what had made me do it, other than it felt right for me to get it out somehow, some way, but I had written another letter, fulfilling his wish that I write about our sexual escapades afterward.

I was less than kind when it came to my feelings this time. Harsh. Angry. My bitterness at how the night had ended bleeding onto the page. I’d shredded it. I wouldn’t dare dream of giving it to him. He didn’t deserve to know anything more about me. Not unless he gave me something of him. I couldn’t anymore. I just couldn’t… but neither could I afford to stop working for him. At least not until I found another job.

I had been squirreling any extra away, and it was enough to cover the missing money from the last week, but now as I ground the beans and packed the portafilter and made overpriced coffee for under appreciative people, I was just tired. Emotionally drained. My anger fled with time and left me facing a chasm of deep and awful aching hurt.

“Allison Blaylock?” someone asked and I looked up and over to the register. Millie was staring wide-eyed at the delivery person, and the huge bouquet of bright red roses he clutched in a heavy glass vase, her finger pointed in my direction. I blinked and said, “I’m Ally.”

“These are for you,” the young man said, holding them out to me. I went around the counter and took them from him. He smiled, flashing a dimple in the side of his cheek and it was a nice smile, but it didn’t affect me the same way as when Mr. Parnell smiled at me.

I gave him a weak smile back, and he tipped his ball cap at me and rushed out the door. He didn’t even wait for a tip. I took the roses to the back counter, their heavenly scent perfuming the air even over and above the permanent rich smell of coffee. Millie didn’t even ask. She simply took up my place behind the espresso machine and pulled double duty so that I could read the card.

I plucked the familiar white envelope from the plastic fork thingy holding it in among the roses and turned it over to the familiar sticker seal holding the triangular flap closed. I sighed and with some trepidation, worked a nail under it and freed it so I could liberate the card inside.

Ally-

You’re my lover, not my whore. I simply want to take care of you…

Please, arrive on time today. We need to talk.

-Damien

The word ‘not’ was underlined twice, savagely, and I swallowed hard. He was angry, and I was pretty sure I was fired, but… I looked up at the tight roses that had yet to fully bloom and frowned slightly, counting. There were twenty-four. Two dozen roses, for me? Two dozen red roses. I read and reread the note wishing there was more, wishing there was some sort of indication as to what to expect when I arrived at Damien’s for work.

I sighed and rubbed my eyes; the hand with the note dropped to my side helplessly. He was magnetic. I couldn’t believe I had already decided I would be meeting him, but I couldn’t help it. All of these mixed signals were driving me a little crazy. I swallowed hard and slipped the card into my apron, having a hard time dragging my eyes away from the riot of color on the counter.

No one had ever bought me flowers before. A boy had brought me a handful of marigolds that he had ripped out of my grandmother’s garden once, but he was seven and I’d been more than a little dismayed, so I hardly thought that counted.

I went back to work, ducking and avoiding Millie’s looks of curiosity and teasing smile for the rest of the afternoon. When it was finally time for me to go I stared at the flowers, my bottom lip between my teeth. I didn’t know whether to take them with me or if it was all right to leave them here.

“You work for Mr. Parnell today, right?” Millie asked and I nodded faintly.

“Yes. I’m not sure I want to take these on three buses and then on three more to get them home,” I said honestly.

“Say no more. Leave them there, you can take them home tomorrow and I sure don’t mind! They brighten up the place.”

I smiled weakly, and said, “Thanks, Millie.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said, and then her curiosity won out. “Who is he?”

“I’d rather not say,” I told her. “I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”

She laughed, clear and bright like it was the funniest thing I had ever said. When she got herself together, she said to me, wiping a tear from her eye, “Two dozen red roses says that it is definitely going somewhere, Ally Cat. Whoever he is, I think it’s safe to say he loves you.” She winked at me and I quickly plastered a smile onto my face over my blush and ducked out the front door.

I was glad, at least, that there had been a pocket inside the cape he’d had me wear and that I was able to keep my wallet and keys in it. I could only imagine the questions I would have had to answer if I had had to knock on Mr. Comey’s door in the middle of the night to have him let me into my apartment. Frustratingly, the rest of my things, my tote bag and purse, were still at Damien Parnell’s.

I hopped the buses that would take me to his apartment and got off at the last stop with a heavy heart. I didn’t know what waited for me inside his apartment. If he would be there, or if he expected me to wait until he came home. I walked up the block and crossed the street, turning down in front of the Calvert building and making my way to the familiar green canopy and carpet trimmed in gold. I smiled for Mr. Clive’s benefit.

“Hey, Ms. Ally!” he greeted me brightly and swung open the door for me.

“Hi, Mr. Clive,” I greeted him back, and slipped through into the dim-but-opulent lobby of the building. It never failed to take my breath away, not even today, when I felt a heavy leaden weight of dread in the pit of my stomach as I took the healthier option and ascended the stairs.

I paused outside his door, key in hand, and let out a breath before shoving it into the lock. I knew as soon as the door swung inward he was home; the alarm failed to keen at me, wanting me to feed its code to it to shut it off. I stepped inside and turned, shutting the door behind me and when I turned back to the wide open living space, he was there, standing just a few paces away.

He had no tie, his top two buttons at his collar undone, his sleeves rolled back over his muscular forearms, his jaw clenched, his dark eyes raking over me, his expression unreadable. God, he did that so well, too well, the neutrality thing and I hated it. I hated that I was never immediately able to see what he was thinking or feeling unless he wanted me to.

“Hi,” he said simply, extracting his hands from his expensive slacks’ pockets.

“Hey,” I murmured and sighed.

He smiled faintly, and it reached his dark eyes, and I realized what I was seeing in them was a careful caution. One that I think I echoed in my own frozen stance.

He took a breath, braver than I, and started speaking, “One of the things about me, about what I do with you…” he swallowed hard, gathering his thoughts, but quickly frowned as he tried to choose his words carefully. I just wanted him to speak. I wanted to listen to his warm, soft, yet strong and intense voice because I think I parsed out one more thing in his eyes when he looked at me… hurt.

“I didn’t mean for it to come out that way,” he said finally. “Giving you the money wasn’t for anything we did Friday night. It wasn’t even about you cleaning or working for me, or any of that.”

“Then what was it?” I asked, frowning in confusion.

“Taking care of you,” he said simply. “It’s about taking care of you. I want to.” He stuffed his hands back into his pockets and tipped his head back with a giant heaving sigh to stare at the ceiling. He stared at it for a handful of seconds and I realized this, what he was doing, was opening up to me and it was hard for him. Very hard.

I licked my lips and clutched the strap of the little bohemian bag I had stitched together to make myself a new purse, a project I had completed along with half of Dawnie’s new skirt on Saturday.

“So what happens now?” I asked, carefully.

“I don’t know, Bright Eyes. That’s up to you. All I know is that I don’t want to lose you over some dumb misunderstanding, and I think it’s time we renegotiate the terms of this relationship.”

I huffed an incredulous laugh and rolled my eyes a bit and said, “Okay, I get that, but did you really have to sound like such a damn lawyer right then?”

He chuckled lightly and pulled his hands from his pockets again, holding his arms out in an invitation for me to fill them with my body. I hesitated, but only for a half a second while it hit me just how much I wanted that. How much I ached to curl up against his chest and just live there. I so fiercely wanted him to love me because I was certain that, if I hadn’t already, that I was well into falling in love with him, myself.

Still, the relief that flooded me after living with the hurt of his action, trying to hand me that envelope after our dalliance at the club, it was still fresh and still there. When his arms closed around me, though; when his hand pressed into the back of my head, stroking my hair and his lips met the top of my head, I let it go. I had to but not without doing what I promised first.

“It hurt so much when you tried to pay me after…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it, because the whole experience had been so incredibly and exquisitely beautiful for me, and then for him to cheapen it that way…

“I imagine that it hurt as much as your accusation did me.” He rushed out the rest before I could finish drawing breath to protest, his arms tightening around me. “Even if it wasn’t unwarranted. I understand how it looked, how it felt, even though I swear to you, that’s not how I meant it. I screwed up. I didn’t communicate, and that’s on me, and for that, I apologize.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I whimpered and the first few tears choked me up as they squeezed their way out despite my best efforts. He leaned back and fixed his eyes on mine, wiping away my tears with a gentle hand, his other on my waist, holding me near him so I wouldn’t try to get away, not that I even wanted to. I loved it when he held me like this.

“I want to protect you from everything,” he whispered and smoothed the moisture off my other cheek. “I just don’t know how to protect you from myself.”

His confession broke my heart and I didn’t know what to say, I shook my head and whispered, “You don’t have to. I don’t want you to. I…” I almost let it slip out. I almost told him the truth, but I was afraid. I rolled my lips together and said the only thing I could think to say that would put his mind at ease. The only language he’d given me that was just us; just between us two.

“Green.”

His mouth engulfed mine in a kiss so fiery, so passionate; it welded my cracked heart back together so seamlessly and so flawlessly, I don’t think that even I would ever be able to tell that he’d nearly broken it.