TWO
Autumn
"Is it another letter from Prison Blue Hottie?" my sister asked as I came through the front door with a small stack of bills in my hand.
Okay, so... I couldn't tell you why the hell I wrote him at all.
I really had no idea.
I mean, the first time was because I knew he loved his dog, and would want to know that he was okay. That was just the right thing to do.
I would have sent it sooner had I realized who he was. I had heard his name when he got arrested, but among rushing to get dog supplies, dealing with Randy, texting my sister to tell her we had a new pet, going to work, coming home to clean up the mess that Coop made, yeah, I had totally forgotten his name.
It wasn't until I was out with friends one night at Chaz's, celebrating the big three-two (every single year after thirty, in my humble opinion, called for adding 'big' before the actual number), I had seen a man walking around who looked a suspiciously lot like Coop's former owner. He had the same tall build, the dark hair, the light eyes.
Then someone had yelled out Hey, Mallick!
And the name flew right back into my head.
Eli Mallick.
That was his name.
And if you had a name, you could do a computer search that would tell you about his crime, his trial, and where he was going to prison.
It was maybe only a matter of days between getting the name and his letter being in circulation.
That letter I understood completely.
The second one? The Halloween one? Yeah, man. I had absolutely no idea where that came from.
Okay, fine.
It was maybe, just maybe born out of the fact that once I had his name back, and, ah, did a social media search, yeah... that gorgeous face and those amazing eyes - let's not even discuss the body because there was a poolside picture of water dripping down his abs that had nearly made my ovaries freaking explode - had been haunting me. They crept in in quiet moments. You know, between weighing the pros and cons of various floggers to a newbie to BDSM and having to explain to a set of obnoxious barely-eighteen-year-olds that, no, the Ben Wa balls were not for some weird BDSM beating, that they, in fact, got inserted into the vagina to strengthen the muscles of the pelvic floor, a fact that shut them up and had them promptly leaving the store.
In the moments when the store was quiet save for the music overhead, constantly set to an ever-growing sexy playlist because it would be weird to walk into a sex store to hear, I don't know, Taylor Swift playing.
Don't get me wrong, I love me some Swift, but yeah, it wasn't exactly the kind of music you wanted to hear while picking out your first Wand.
You had to keep it sexy.
Even if you heard the song about 'riding' for the four-hundred-and-thirty-thousandth time.
But yeah, when the store was still as it often was in the afternoon and early evening, he crept into my mind.
Blame sexual frustration while around a room full of toys meant to ease it.
I could have been fantasizing about the hot UPS guy and his little short shorts and muscular ass. I could have thought about the guy in the leather cut who said 'baby, fucking gorgeous' in a very matter-of-fact way as he passed me on the way out of She's Bean Around. I could have even gone back to my favorite go-to, the silver fox who once stopped - in his expensive suit! - and fixed my busted tire. I never even got the poor man's name. Boy, would he be surprised how many times I slipped on a finger vibe with his image in my head.
But they weren't where my mind went.
No.
It was all about those ocean eyes, that dark hair, that amazing bone structure, that smooth voice. And, well, the damn dripping abs too. They couldn't be left out.
Maybe it was because we, sort of, shared a dog.
Maybe it was because he was in prison for doing what, in my opinion, was the right thing.
Whatever it was, he was there. In my head. A lot of the time.
When I looked at Coop, sometimes his image would flash up of him trying to make the dog sit. He totally did sit. And lay down. And come. Other than that, he was a wild freaking animal still.
When I saw that asshole cop cruising around, yeah, then too.
And, well, when I started watching reruns of Oz when I really, really hated watching violence, and the show was full of it, so I could only blame the fact that I knew of a real-life prisoner, and was a bit curious about life behind bars.
In fact, I had just gone off a pretty serious prison documentary show binge the week before Halloween.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe it was all the stories of all the men who had been abandoned in the penal system. Who had no one to write them. Who had no updates on the outside world.
What can I say, I was always a sucker for that type of thing.
So I sent him a picture of the costume my sister had made for Coop - because she was quirky like that - and sent it off, not expecting anything.
One could say I was a bit, well, floored when three days later, I got a letter back.
Autumn,
Thus far, no one has been crucified to the gym floor.
We got that going for us.
- Eli
He wrote me back.
He even referenced the show I mentioned.
Granted, it was only two sentences, but it was a response. And, I felt, maybe a bit of a cry for help. If he was responding to me, a complete and utter stranger, then maybe his family had disowned him, or just slowly lost touch.
He was trying to reach out.
I just figured... what harm could it do to keep in touch, right?
I mean, maybe I had laughed at the people who kept prison pen pals before, thinking it was a little strange to keep up a relationship with someone you never met who was in for a violent crime.
I guess I never fully understood it.
Until I was faced with it too.
If someone who was locked up for five years needed some lifeline on the outside, and you were the one holding it, could you really hold back from tossing it out there?
I knew I couldn't.
At first, I always started mine with comments about Coop and the occasional talk about some prison TV show or even the weather. But before long, once he seemed to loosen up a little - and once I did as well - they were just letters.
I learned the names of the prisoners he talked about and what their respective 'hustles' were, noting that all the ones he mentioned seemed to have legit businesses, not selling drugs or prostituting themselves. I jokingly asked what his hustle was, if maybe he was the in-house Hallmark Card writer.
In response, he sent me back a folded-up piece of sketch paper.
With me on it.
I was sitting outside the coffeeshop, leaned back in my chair casually, frappe in front by my chest, straw in front of my lips like I had just taken a sip, my mouth curved up in a small smirk, eyes dancing, hair kicked up slightly in the wind.
Like I had been when I had been watching him and his crazy ex.
And, God, it was good too.
It was better than the art I had on my walls that I paid an arm and a leg for at a gallery featuring local artists. It was leaps and bounds better than the portraits my family had had commissioned of my sister and I growing up, shelling out thousands of dollars for work this man could do inside concrete and barbed wire from memory.
That was insane.
I wondered how he used it to make money, and even told him about wondering. He'd informed me that prisoners would pay a pretty penny for family portraits to have in their cells, or to send home to family members. He even told me that he had designed a piece of artwork or two for tattoos, but that wasn't something he liked to do, saying that that was 'a job for another brother,' and I got the distinct impression he meant his own. He was careful to never speak of them - his family. I didn't know - and didn't feel it was my place to ask - why.
So, instead, we stuck to more neutral topics like prison life, like TV, movies, and music. Like the weather. Like what businesses were popping up in and around Navesink Bank since his departure. When I had once mentioned She's Bean Around, his response had been almost immediate, though we usually went weeks or months between letters.
Autumn,
No shit? They actually did it? The coffee truck girls opened the shop? How is it?
- Eli
It was maybe the first letter I had ever received from him that hadn't had a sort of disconnect, a coolness, that showed actual excitement about something.
But there was no way to describe how amazing She's Bean Around was. It was the kind of place - and coffee! - one had to see to truly appreciate. With my caffeine addiction, I had been to many a coffeeshop in my day, all to varying degrees of corporate or indie. None had even come close to the flair Jazzy and Gala gave their shop.
So, aside from describing the decor that I warned was often changing, that was what I told him - that it needed to be one of his first stops when he got out. That the salted caramel hot coffee was the stuff caffeine addicts wet dreams were made of.
His response had been more of a typical one for him, telling me simply that he would keep that in mind.
After that, there was nothing for almost six months, until I had a Coop Christmas card to send.
I had actually even looked into sending him a package, believing that everyone should get a little something for Christmas, but the rules had been vague, but strict at the same time, leaving me too confused to make a decision. So I just stuck with the card.
Autumn,
How the fuck'd you keep reindeer horns on him for long enough to take a picture?
Also, who the hell are you sending an entire box of finger vibes to for Christmas?
- Eli
My eyes went huge as I scrambled to my fridge to get the Christmas card, you know, the Christmas card I sent out to literally everyone I knew. And, yep, sure enough, I had a supply box of multi-colored finger vibrators sitting off in a corner. They actually were a Christmas promotion for the store. I had a loyalty card for frequent customers. And the top twenty of them got a free gift at Christmas and Valentine's Day. I had brought them home to package up so I didn't have to stay late at the store.
And there they were.
In my Christmas card picture.
Granted, they were off to the back and barely in focus, but there nonetheless.
Oh well.
Anyone who knew me knew - whether they liked it or not - that I owned a sex toy store. They would just chalk it up to me being quirky like that. Or as proof of my descent into the fires of hell. You know, whichever.
I looked back down at the note, at his somewhat slanted, but small and neat writing.
And there wasn't, there absolutely was not a fluttering sensation in my sex at seeing the words finger vibes from him.
Nope.
Because that would be nuts.
No matter how long a dry spell I had been in.
I had written back something witty, brushing the subject away, knowing if I said anything suggestive, that it would get tossed out and he would never receive it. I mean, not that I was thinking of saying anything suggestive.
Fine.
I thought about it.
I thought of about fifteen suggestive things to say.
Then needed a goddamn session with my own finger vibe after.
But then... that had been it.
Suddenly, I didn't get another letter.
And I had no reason to write him, so I didn't, not wanting to seem like I was being pushy or whatever.
That was December.
This was April.
And, apparently, I still looked at my mail hopefully every day if my sister's response was anything to go by.
"Just bills," I said as I moved into the kitchen, dropping them on the small island with the special, shiny, white quartz countertop I had finally saved enough money for over the winter.
The apartment had been a special project over the past year. I guess I had always seen it as a transition for me when I moved in, figuring it was a stepping stone to a townhouse or just a house someday, something that I owned with a yard and some equity. As such, I hadn't been overly concerned with fixing up the apartment. But, it seemed, I was likely in it for the long haul, and I had even started to be completely okay with that.
But if I was staying, it needed work.
So I set to it.
I had the carpets ripped up, and laid wood flooring. I skimmed the walls, then painted them a soothing light sage color. I ripped out all the old kitchen cabinets that were straight out of the seventies, and replaced them with nice, clean white ones. The apartment didn't get a lot of natural light, so I tried to keep everything inside it as bright as possible.
The couch my sister was sitting on was a light cream color and still on a payment plan as were the two accent chairs, end tables, coffee table, and the cream and green carpet beneath them.
Slowly, but surely, it was all coming together.
My room was my current project, but I had hit a snag with, well, money for the new furniture. I would get there eventually. Then I would do the renovation of the bathroom.
"Don't try to act like you're not disappointed. You can put on a good show, but these here walls are thin," she said, waving her book around in the air. "I hear those good vibrations when you get a letter. You want that bad boy D. And, well, who wouldn't? Just think of the solid dicking you would get after six years of abstinence in prison. You wouldn't walk right for two weeks. Man, maybe I should get me a Prison Blues Hottie of my very own."
My sister was, well, a character.
We had been raised in a very, ah, what's the nice word here, conservative household where we were taught abstinence-only education, had purity pledges (ha!), weren't allowed to wear any shorts shorter than our knees or any tank tops at all. We had eight o'clock curfews all through high school where we weren't allowed to wear makeup, listen to inappropriate music, or, of course, date.
To say we had rebelled would be the understatement of the century.
My cherry got popped at barely sixteen; my sister followed suit.
We bought makeup that we hoarded under floorboards like contraband in a fascist dictatorship.
At eighteen, my ass had high-tailed it out of there into a shitty apartment with a shitty boyfriend.
A few years later, as I was just about ready to open my store, my sister moved out and joined me.
She promptly pierced her ears and nose, tatted her arms and chest, and colored her hair like a mermaid.
Peyton was, well, the best roommate you could ask for.
And the best sister there was on the planet.
It had never really even occurred to either of us to live apart. It simply worked. Men came and went, all of us either fitting comfortably, or us spending more time at their apartments. I worked mostly days; Peyton worked mostly nights. Someone was always around for Coop.
It was the best arrangement.
But, ah, yeah, Peyton was not the kind of sister or friend to have all kinds of limits. No topic of discussion was off the table, from dick size to period products, we discussed it all. As far as I was concerned, nothing in the whole damn world would ever be half as funny as Peyton discussing her misadventures with a Diva Cup after having half a bottle of Citron vodka in her system. There were props involved. Including ketchup. And she had made a 'Flo' chart, the name of which made her laugh until she almost peed her pants.
She had been right there beside me on the couch watching Oz, cheering on the eye-gouging and stabbing and hangings. See, where I cringed at violence, Peyton loved it. She watched all the shows my stomach couldn't handle that everyone else in the world adored. From Sons of Anarchy to Game of Thrones, she was my own little story teller. She would watch the episodes, then tell them to me, going light on the murder and rape stuff she knew I couldn't handle. Her love of gore and horror extended most extensively to her book collection. You wouldn't believe the stuff these twisted psychos come up with, she once gushed, talking about why she chose to read indie over traditional. No way would any publishing house touch this content.
If there was a single person in the world who I could hide absolutely nothing from, it was Peyton.
So there was no use even trying to deny that I was disappointed about the sudden lack of contact.
"I hope he didn't get killed or something."
"He's probably in the hole," she tried to comfort, in her very Peyton-way - meaning a bit matter-of-fact and aloof even on a heavy subject. "That should get the vibe going don't you think?"
"Ah, how so?"
"You know," she said, climbing off the couch, lips twitching. "In a cell. Naked. Nothing to do but jerk-off. Likely to the memory of you. That's some hot shit right there."
Okay, maybe it was mildly hot.
Maybe the image of him naked with his hard cock in his hand was, well, scorching. But, for me, the whole punishment in a cold, dark, damp cell somewhere kind of ruined the image for me.
Not for my sister, mind you, because that was just her kind of twisted.
But for me.
I would definitely rather he be in a cell jerking off than dead, though, so I had to hold onto that, erm, hope.
It shouldn't have mattered.
He was just some dude who got arrested, who occasionally wrote me letters in his detached way, who had a really pain in the ass, but wholly lovable, dog that I happened to adopt.
What we had was a whole lot of little nothings.
But even a lot of little nothings could add up to something, right?
A whole lot of tiny grains of sand made up the entire shoreline.
Oh, good God.
What was wrong with me?
"What?" Peyton asked, over her shoulder from where she was bent looking in the fridge, brow raised, making me realize that the growling noise I thought I had made internally, actually came out of my mouth.
"Nothing."
"Don't you be going 'nothing-ing' me, young lady!" she snapped in the absolute perfect imitation of our father.
We hadn't exactly cut ties with our parents, but one could say things were rather, ah, strained. They couldn't have us at their Thanksgiving table. I mean, what would they tell their other ultra conservative friends?
My eldest daughter slings smut for a living and, as you can see, our youngest is intent on becoming a human canvas.
Since we both moved out, there had always been this unspoken rule that we didn't show our faces at their events, but we must call on Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and their anniversary.
It was a system that worked out well for all involved since we were all such different people. That being said, Peyton liked to imitate the way they continued to speak to us on occasion. You know, to remind us what we weren't missing by not being too in touch.
"Were you having impure thoughts about a boy?" she went on, this time making her voice high and just slightly nasal - a spot-on mother impersonation. "Because you know what you're supposed to do when you have impure thoughts, dear," she went on, but then came back with a big cucumber and wiggled her eyebrows at me.
I laughed, snatching it away from her, deciding a salad was in order for dinner. Mainly because I planned to hit the local bakery and bring home half a dozen donuts just for myself.
"It's not that," I said, then rolled my eyes at her raised brow. "Okay, there is a little bit of that. But it's more that... I shouldn't care. Right? I mean, it's crazy. I don't even know the man. I haven't even officially met him."
"And yet you share a dog with him."
"I don't share Coop with anyone. Except you. I mean, I've had him for almost six years now. He's mine."
"You send him pictures. And updates. Let's face it, your doggy-daddy is serving time in the penn, and you are making sure he gets to watch him grow up."
"Be serious."
"I mean, this will be new for me, but I can sure try," she agreed, pressing her lips into firm lines, but her eyes were dancing. "This is my serious face." It took two seconds for her face to break out into a grin. "Come on, Autumn!" she said, shoving her shoulder into mine. "What does it matter if you maybe get the downstairs tinglies about some guy you saw once?"
"It's not the 'downstairs tinglies' as you so maturely put it," I countered. "It's more that, I dunno."
"You give a shit about him?" she suggested, her shoulder moving up to her ear as her nose scrunched up, like the idea was completely foreign to her. "And you think you shouldn't because he's a prisoner."
"It's less the prison thing--" though maybe that should have been more of a factor, "and more that I don't even know him! But I think about him way too much."
"You know what it is?"
"No, what?" I asked, turning toward her.
"You desperately need to play sink the sausage." At my snort/laugh hybrid, her smile curled further upward. "When was the last time you rocked the Casbah? Or kneeled at the altar? Given someone your lunchbox? Oh, wait, I know. It's been almost two years. Years, Autumn. Years."
"I can't do..."
"Sex without a commitment. I know, I know," Peyton finished for me, shaking her head. "I'm just saying. If you're wondering why you can't get Hottie Mc Death Row--"
"He's not on death row!"
"Off your mind," she went on. "It's because you haven't done the four-legged foxtrot in far too long."
"Nice alliteration."
"Just saying," she said, raising the cucumber again, giving me a serious nod.
"I own a sex store! I can more than keep my sexual appetites appeased."
"Oh, please. You and I both know that that is not the same. You need to feel a man's weight on you, have his hands sink into your ass, have his mouth over your tits, hear his grunts and growls while he fucks you... it's different. You know it is."
I did.
That was maybe the worst part.
I loved sex.
I mean I loved it.
I almost felt bad for the men I did end up dating because they needed to mainline Gatorade and protein shakes to be able to keep up with me.
And I loved all the amazing, brilliant nuances of the act. The feels, the tastes, the smells, the sounds. It was the best creation in the universe - the way two bodies entwined.
I missed it.
But I couldn't foxtrot with a partner who was going to tap someone else's shoulder for the next song.
"Yeah, I know," I agreed, wondering how many sessions with a vibrator it would take to even get the edge off my frustration.
I had a feeling there weren't enough batteries in the world.
But it would have to do.
And no matter how much I told myself to think of the UPS guy, the biker, or the silver fox, oh yeah, I thought of him.