Chapter Five - Maddie & Tyler
MADDIE
“Thanks,” I tell the delivery girl as I take the food from her. Tyler’s over by the open accordion doors that turn Evan and Robert’s place into an indoor/outdoor space, trying to fan the smoke out of the house. I walked away for five minutes while we were making dinner so that I could take a call from Mom and Dad, and when I walked back into the kitchen, the whole range top was on fire.
I don’t know how he does it.
So we ordered some Chinese food, using an app on Tyler’s phone. The delivery girl is extra-sweet, so I give her five stars and a big tip. Then as I’m closing the app, I glance and see why she was extra-sweet. “Dude, do you have any idea how much money you’ve spent on delivery from this place in the last year?”
“No. Why?” he says, waving what looks like a very expensive, crystal serving tray around to fan the smoke.
“Because,” I say, jogging to him and taking from him the priceless glass smoke-blower he’s about to break, and handing him a brown paper bag filled with a container of sesame noodles. “It’s more than most people pay in rent.”
“Really?” he asks, looking at the floor.
I put the tray down on the dining room table, then take the bag and put it down as well. Stroking his arm, I say, “Hey. Hey, I’m just fucking with you. What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just bobs his head. Then, “Saw my dad today.”
That’s an attention-grabber. “What? You did? Where?” I pull him to the outside part of the indoor/outdoor space and sit him in a lounge chair. I sit across from him, but I don’t let go of his hands.
“At his work. Went to see him.”
“Wha—? Why? I didn’t know you were going to do that.”
“I didn’t either. I mean, I did. I just didn’t necessarily plan on doing it today. I was going to talk with you about it. Like, get your thoughts and figure out exactly what I was going to say, but then Evan told me that he came looking for me while you and I were...on vacation...” He moves his shoulders around like he knows this should be funny but can’t bring himself to laugh, so I laugh for him. It makes him smile. “And I just, I dunno. Decided to go see him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
He shrugs. “Dunno. Figured we’d make dinner, sit, eat, talk about our days like normal-ass people.” Then he mumbles something that sounds like ‘new-look Tyler,’ and sighs out a huge breath.
“Hey,” I say, bending my head down to make him look me in the eyes. “Hey, look at me.” He does. “We will never. Ever. In a million years. Be normal-ass people. Not as long as you’re involved in the conversation. And I’m so fucking glad about that.” I smile, and it makes him smile again. “OK?” He nods. Then, “So now what?”
“I dunno.” He cuts me off. “He and I are sitting down in a couple of days though.”
In the little bit of time we’ve been back in each other’s lives (although it seems MUCH longer), I have seen Tyler in a lot of different states. I’ve seen him sad, angry, despondent, intense, romantic, sexy, and (my favorite, especially when we’re naked together) happy. Right now, he is something I’ve not even glimpsed before: scared.
It’s not a shuddering, simmering kind of fear. It’s tinged with nervousness. Anxiety. But it’s a brand of fear, nonetheless. I hold his hands tighter.
“Do you... want me to go with you?” I ask.
He shakes his head, but says, “Maybe.”
“OK. OK. You’ll let me know, yeah?”
He nods.
It’s quiet now. He’s lost in his thoughts, and I don’t feel like I want to pry too much more. The one thing I know about Tyler Morgan is that when he wants to talk he will talk and when he doesn’t, he won’t. So I do what a good partner does. I change the subject.
“How are your ribs there, killer?”
He looks at me with surprise.
“Oh, come on. You’re worse at hiding things than I am. And I’m terrible.” More smiling. We’re both giving a stab at happiness all we’ve got.
“I’m fine,” he mumbles out.
“Yeah? Well, you know what I think we should do?” I ask, getting up out of my chair to kneel between his legs and putting my hand on his crotch.
“I think I have some idea,” he says, an evil smirk dancing on his lips.
“I think we should get in the hot tub and give that aching body some love.”
He looks half disappointed and says, “But we’ll still fuck, right?”
“Yes, Tyler. We will still fuck.” I sigh. I fuckin’ love this guy.
Completely.
TYLER
She stretches up and kisses me. Or I lean down and kiss her. Whatever. We kiss. I fuckin’ love this girl. Completely.
She takes me by the hand and leads me over to the hot tub, which is lit up and steaming, mist floating up into the night sky. She unzips her jeans and shimmies them down her legs, pulls her t-shirt up over her head and stands there in a dark green bra and thong.
“Holy shit,” I say. “Christmas never ends.” She closes her eyes and grins. I continue, by doing what everyone knows is the worst thing you can do to a joke. Explaining. “I’m saying, because your hair is red and your underwear—”
“Yeah, I got it, babe.”
She nods towards me, which is my cue to disrobe as well. I also unzip my jeans and let them fall to the ground. I’m now standing there in just a t-shirt, my cock already at full mast.
“Let me help you. Don’t want you to stretch too much.” She glides over. I wonder if she knows that her regular walk looks like she’s gliding down a runway at all times. Runways of Paris, runway of Pete’s. Doesn’t matter. She has this beautiful, effortless stride that makes her impossible not to notice.
She grabs the hem of my t-shirt and pulls me toward her. One hand on my dick, one hand on my chest, she draws me in for another kiss.
“Babe,” she says, her voice a whisper, her lips barely touching mine.
“Hmm?” I hum back.
“When are you gonna shave?”
I wouldn’t call that a buzzkill, but it’s definitely a buzz-assault.
“Why? You’re really done with it?”
“I dunno,” she says, all coy and shit, her fingers on my lips. “You’re just talking about making a fresh start and... You know. It’d be nice. To feel skin”—she takes my hand and plunges it down the front of her panties, so that I can feel her dampening flesh—“on skin,” she whispers in my ear.
“Yeah, OK, you got it, I’ll shave. Should we see if Rodney’s in now?”
She laughs. At my sudden agreeability, I guess. But she also tips her chin back and asks, “Who’s Rodney?”
“You remember Mustache? From Thanksgiving? The salon guy?”
“Oh, yeah. The one who clearly wanted some of this.” She squeezes my cock harder and I moan.
“Mmmm, yup. That’s him.”
She starts stroking me back and forth with one hand and forcing my hand to stroke her clit with the other. “Yeah, I think maybe we’ll just call Rodney in the morning. Let’s give the beard a proper send-off tonight.”
I pull us close together with my free hand and execute the patented Tyler Morgan one-hand bra release. She gasps, then giggles, then steps back, bending me forward and pulling my t-shirt off so that I don’t have to lift my arms over my head.
Once the shirt is off, she stays back a step and works her panties down her legs. We stand, naked, facing each other, as the steam from the hot tub floats in the air around us.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell her.
“Ditto, mister,” she says. “C’mere.” We join hands and descend into the warm, bubbling water. I sit and go to bring her down into my lap, but she stops me, says, “Unh-unh-unh, Adam,” and turns to face me.
Screwing up my face, I ask, “Fuck’s Adam? Did you just call me Adam? Do I have to kill somebody else?” (That’s a risky punchline, but I think she’ll appreciate it.)
She rolls her eyes. “Like Adam and Eve? With the rib? And, like, your ribs are...? And I’m naked and you’re naked and this is amazing and shit, like Eden?” She gestures around us. I’m tempted to tell her not to explain a joke, but in this case it actually helped.
“Oh, yes, right. My ribs. Got it. Ha, ha. You’re a regular Elayne Boosler.”
She splashes water in my face. “Just shut up, sit on the edge, and behave.” I do. I prop myself on the edge of the tub so that just my calves are in the water. The chilly desert air against the warm beads of moisture on my now wet body feels amazing.
But not as amazing as her lips on my cock as she plops her knees on the seat inside the hot tub and goes down on me.
MADDIE
The warm water undulating around my body, splashing my tits, as I work his dick with my lips feels like I’m on a drug. And when he reaches out and pinches my nipples, it feels like an overdose. As I pump the base of his shaft with my hand, my head bobs and twists and licks his thick cock as, under the water, I finger myself desperately.
I keep pumping on him with my hand and let my mouth now find his balls. They’re swollen and full, and I put both of them in my mouth at once (which is no small task) and build the pressure, allowing the suction of my tongue to tug his sack away from his body. Like I’m trying to devour him.
The splashing of the water from the hand that I’m fingering myself with becomes more violent and the jerking and sucking intensifies in kind. “Oh, God. Oh, my fuck,” he lets out as his hands tangle themselves in my hair and he yanks my head back, my mouth wrenching from his body with a gasp.
Panting, I say, “What?”
He says nothing, just pushes me back, stands up, turns me around, and thrusts himself inside me. “Oh, shit!” It’s the only appropriate thing to exclaim.
We’re both standing in the water to our thighs and each thrust he makes sounds like the lapping of waves on a shore. It reminds me of the other night (was it only just the other night?) when we were hidden by the dune in Ensenada. So desperate and in need of one another, so reckless but at the same time as careful as we could be not to get caught.
There is no such prohibition here.
In this beautiful home, on this crystal-clear night, with no neighbors for a thousand yards in any direction, we can be as reckless as we want. Urgent. Needy. Primal. For the first time since we had sex in his apartment on Halloween, we are actually alone.
We’re not in an alley where someone can find us, or my place where my roommates might walk in, or a hotel room with my parents in the lobby, or even hidden under the Hoover Dam with Terry the security guard promising not to watch us on security cameras but knowing damn well that he probably is. For only the second time ever, it’s just us.
The only other time we were completely alone, I cried during sex for the first time in my life. I know it was because it was wrapped up with a lot of other things. Halloween, and feeling trapped, and wanting so much for this thing with this “Ford” guy to work. (Ha. Ford.) And then it all went bad. And then it somehow got better. And then it got terrible. And now here we are. In this Eden, all alone, like we really are the only two people on earth. And while that’s not true, it’s a nice way to think of now.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me harder,” I command. And he obliges.
He’s grunting and panting and pulling me towards him. I have my hands on the edge of the hot tub so that I can assist him by pushing back every time he pulls. It’s so unyielding and savage that you’d think we hadn’t had sex in ten years. As opposed to twice this morning.
The water is splashing all around us now, spraying up into the sky, the droplets mingling with the steam and mist. It’s beautiful. It is the very spirit of our bewildering and impenetrable love for each other lifting towards the sky. It is passion rising, and it is carrying us with it.
“Oh, fuck, babe, I’m gonna come,” he pants.
“Me too, baby. I am too. Come with me? Please? I want you to come with me.”
His breathing is fast and shallow and so is mine as he pitches into me. And when we both come, the wailing moan from him and the frenzied scream from me blend into one sound. The sound of us echoing out of Eden and into the vastness of forever.
TYLER
“The food’s probably cold,” I say into the top of her head. We’re sitting in the water. She’s leaning against me, her head on my chest, and it really doesn’t hurt. Either this hot tub is mad therapeutic, or her pussy has healing powers. Possibly a little of both.
“I’m good,” she purrs, stroking her fingers on my chest, tracing my scars.
“Yeah.” I sigh.
She sits up and looks at me. “What? Are you thinking about your dad again?”
“No. Not exactly. Kind of? I dunno.”
“What’s going on?” She sits up even further.
“Just... Honestly? Thinking about how much I spend on ordering food makes me feel really shitty.”
“Why?”
“Because when we were in Mexico all I could think about was how fucking privileged and entitled Carlos is. Was. Whatever. Just, of all the ways I think the guy was a piece of shit, one of them is that he had all this fucking money that he made off of someone else’s suffering.”
“OK,” she says, “but that’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” I interrupt. “Because privilege and entitlement is privilege and entitlement whether you’re using your money to run drugs and hold women against their will, or you’re just sitting around ordering an ass-load of crispy noodles with duck sauce.” She eyes me dubiously. “OK. So maybe it’s not exactly the same, but it still makes me feel like crap. It’s all tied up with seeing my dad. Fuck. He’s selfish and shitty just like me. But then, today, he seemed like he was genuinely remorseful. Like he really wants to try to set things right. To put the past behind him, just like I do. And even though something in the pit of my stomach is telling me to be careful, I really want to believe.”
“Well. That’s good. Right?”
“I dunno. Just... to be reminded that all I’ve done for the last however long is a whole lotta nothing just makes me mad at myself. Because I don’t deserve what I’ve got right now. I know I don’t. You, your forgiveness, your love, your generosity of spirit. All this.” I gesture around us. “My life.”
“Hey! Stop that.” She tugs on my beard. I think she’ll miss it more than she realizes.
“No,” I say. “Seriously. What’s fucked up is that I thought for a really long time that I deserved to find happiness. Or something. That I’d earned it.”
“You have.”
“Bullshit. I don’t deserve half of what I’ve got.” Those steps we climb to get where we’re going? More often than not, they’re built on top of the discarded bodies of the less fortunate. I remember thinking that and feeling like, Oh, well, that’s life, and just accepting it as the truth. And maybe it is. But it doesn’t have to be.
She takes a long moment to let this settle, and then she finally says, “No. No. I know. I get it. I feel that way too.”
“Really? You do?” I’m genuinely surprised. “Why? Your life has been totally terrible.”
She nods and gets a terse smile. “Thanks.” She pats my shoulder.
“You’re welcome. I’m super helpful. Everybody—”
“Yeah, everybody says so, I know.” (I guess I do say it a lot. Huh. I may just let her start finishing it for me. We can make it a bit.) She goes on, “I saw Caroline and Diane today when I was picking up my stuff.”
“Oh, yeah? Did, um”—I can’t remember if the one I saw with the Christmas tree was Caroline or Diane. Shit—“either of them say anything about running into me the other day?”
“No. Why? Did you?”
“Yeah. I was kind of a dick to whichever one it was because you had just left and I was kind of freaking out.”
“Oh. May have been Diane. She seemed extra annoyed with me.”
“Yes! Diane. Pretty sure it was Diane. Unless it was Caroline. Anyway. Continue.”
“Just...” She pauses for a while. “I’m... out. I guess. You know? Like, I’m moving on and they’re still where they were.”
I nod. I understand what she’s feeling. I really do. “Yeah. Yeah. I get that,” I say, stroking her cheek. “What do you want to do?”
“I dunno. Help them somehow. I guess?”
Now it’s her turn to get sullen and self-retreating. We’re a real barrel of monkeys. “What’s up?”
“What am I gonna do, Ty?” She turns to face me. I move a strand of half-wet hair from her face.
“About what, angel?”
“With my life? I mean, I didn’t really think much past the Carlos stuff. What’s next?”
“Um, I... dunno. We hang out? Have sex? Travel around and shit? Get into adventures? Solve problems wherever we land? Like Bonnie and Clyde. Only not robbing banks but being helpful to people and shit. That sound fun at all?” I flash my toothiest grin. I know I’m super charming. I don’t care if anybody says so.
She lets out a huge sigh. “Dude, I’m not just gonna live off you.”
“Why not? Evan lives off Robert and he says it’s the bomb.”
“Yeah, but Evan has a job. No, not a job, a calling. He’s doing the thing he’s always loved and always wanted to do. I don’t have that.”
I consider this for a moment. That’s tough. She’s right. I’ve always known what I wanted. So did Evan. And Scotty, and... yeah. That’s tough.
“Want to buy another drone?” I ask.
“Fuck a drone. That was a ridiculous idea. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”
“Oh. Cool. Because I wasn’t gonna say anything, but—” She shoots me a look that is simultaneously terrifying and... Nope. That’s it. It’s just terrifying. “Sorry. Continue.”
“But I have to figure something out.” She swirls her finger in the tub, letting her head fall back to rest on my chest.
“OK. Awesome. Well, then tomorrow let’s talk about what I’m gonna say to my dad, figure out what you’re gonna do with the rest of your life, and maybe see if we can get me a shave and a haircut. Deal?”
“Deal,” she says, leaning in to give me a kiss on my chest. It feels like, if she does that enough times in our life together, she might...might...actually be able to heal my scars.
And then, suddenly, a cold chill races down my spine. I can’t describe it, but it’s that thing that people get when they joke that someone’s walking over their grave, or whatever. A shock to my system that makes the hairs on my arm stand on end.
I don’t know why it’s happening or where it came from, but I look around a little just to make sure... I don’t know what. I just do it. It’s a sense of dread. Foreboding.
Shit. My guess would be that it’s probably my subconscious cautioning me not to get too comfy. Because my subconscious probably can’t believe that everything’s as good as it is, given how FUBAR shit has been for so long.
I decide not to think about it too much and instead, I lift Maddie’s chin up, bringing her mouth to mine and give her a long kiss. As our lips separate, she laughs and shakes her head.
“Wow. Deal with your dad, figure out my life, get you a haircut and shave. That’s gonna be a full day.”
“I know! Two of those things are gonna be really friggin’ tough.”
“Yeah.” She sighs.
“Fortunately, sorting out your existence should only take a minute.”
New-look Tyler Morgan can still be a smart-ass, I decide.