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“I’ll be careful not to say mean shit, but what if I honestly don’t mean to be an asshole? What if I don’t know? You gotta give me slack.” The only way he knew to deal with that awful feeling, thatshame, of being thought bad no matter what he did, was to be bad. If she made him feel it, he’d lash out, and it wouldn’t take long. “You gotta be in this all the way, too, trying to make it work. You can’t always be standing at the exit, expecting me to fuck up. It can’t all be on me. And you don’t fuck around, either.”
Marcella was quiet, clearly thinking. Then she said, “One more thing: we don’t say anything to Ajax until we know it’s working. I don’t want him to think he’s getting something only to have it go away.”
That made sense, so he nodded. “So we’re gonna give it a go?” He closed his fingers around her hand.
She closed her hand as well, so they were truly holding hands. “Okay, let’s try.”
Holy shit. Holy shit!
Eight was seventy percent sure he’d fuck it up somehow, but right now, it felt like a victory, and he wanted to celebrate.
And he knew exactly how.
He tugged on her hand, drawing it closer. “You got anything going on today?”
“Just this, and a couple errands, until Ajax is out of school.” She gave the paper bag a wry glance. “I have to figure out what to do with this.”
“I can help you with that. That’s easy. What time is does Ajax get out?”
One corner of her mouth twitched in an almost-smile. “Three-fifteen.”
Hours from now. Plenty of time for her errands and his lesson on how to take care of large sums of cash. With lots of time left over. “Wanna fuck?”
She tossed her head back and really laughed. “Be still my heart, Casanova.”
Eight had never in his life tried to seduce a woman. He wouldn’t know where to start, and he’d feel like a moron to try. “Romance ain’t my thing. You know that.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“So … you wanna?”
“Your sheets clean?”
The conversation had meandered through some pretty dark, dangerous territory, but they’d come out in the sun. At the prospect of getting what he wanted, Eight’s dick was hard and heavy in his jeans. “Did laundry yesterday.”
“And you have condoms?”
“Always.” He’d always used a condom, his whole life. But back in the day, he’d sometimes played around a little, when he was with a woman who really got his motor revving, going in bare for a while until he felt close. That was, he assumed, how they’d made Ajax. Since that shock, he’d stopped taking the risk.
“Then okay. Let’s fuck.”
~oOo~
Eight felt awkward leading Marcella into his bedroom, and he wasn’t sure why. They’d fucked plenty of times, including a few days ago. She’d been in his bed before—not this bed, or this bedroom, but the previous versions of both had been decidedly less nice.
He’d had lots of chicks in his bed, this bed, and he’d never felt this way before, like he was worried she’d be put off by the room itself.
It wasn’t a bad room. He didn’t care much about decorating, but he liked comfort. His bed was a king, with a solid-wood headboard that was comfortable to lean against when he wanted to watch TV in bed. His sheets were beige—he’d figured out years ago that beige sheets looked clean longest, so he had three sets of identical sheets and pillowcases—and they were clean, but he hadn’t made the bed this morning. He almost never did; he didn’t see much point in making it more difficult to get back in.
Two nightstands and a tall dresser, all matching the headboard, made up the rest of the furniture. The television was the only thing hanging on the walls.
It was just a room, nothing to get excited about, or be embarrassed by, but he eyed Marcella as she took it in.
She walked to his dresser and picked up the one decorative thing in the whole room: a framed photo of him and Becker, taken at the Becker place, probably by Sage. He and Becker sat side-by-side on the top of their big cedar picnic table. Becker was talking, grinning, and Eight was laughing. They each had a beer in their hand.
Most of the details of that day were blurred by age and familiarity. He’d spent a lot of free time out there, and he didn’t really remember that day in particular. By the background, he could see it had been a kid’s party—there were balloons and crepe paper around the tree beside the table—probably a birthday party, then.
Sage had given him the photo, in its frame, for Christmas last year.
