Push(35)

I push my head back against his hand and turn until he drops out of my mouth.
“Touch me,” I tell him. “Do it. Please.”
He is looking down at me, but he doesn’t say anything. His face doesn’t change. The motherf*cking freight train is still there, though, in his eyes. He turns my head back towards him again, and I take him into my mouth, licking and sucking and wrapping my tongue around him. I see his head tilt back, and he lets go of my wrists. Then, at last, I feel his fingers. They are sinking into me over and over, nudging me closer to where I was. My back arches up off the car, and I try to hold myself steady as I push my hips up to meet his hand. Each time his fingers glide into my body, his hips push forward and his hand tightens against the back of my head. He begins to go faster, and I am starting to feel frantic, anxious that he is going to stop again. He doesn’t, though. He keeps going, and a minute later, I am there, wrapped in a blend of his strength and my own ecstasy. When I come, my hips lift completely off the car, and I let out a deep, choked groan. He pushes himself all the way to the back of my throat and lets out a harsh sigh of his own. When he is done, he steps away from me, and I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I close my eyes and flatten my entire body against the car.
The freight train ran me right the f*ck over. Jesus H. Christ.
I hear David breathing, and I open my eyes as he is zipping up. I watch him walk around to the side of the car. A minute later his is back, holding all my clothes in his arms.
“Emma...” he says, as he hands them to me. I am sure he is going to say more, but he doesn’t.
“What?” I ask, swinging my legs off the front of the car and slowly sitting up. He is standing in front of me, holding my clothes and suddenly looking very shy. His eyes are still charged, but this time I think it’s with contentment rather than with power.
“I just want you to know that I think we’re pretty great together. That’s all.”
“Oh,” I say, as I slide down off the hood of the car and begin to get dressed. “Yeah, well, now that you mention it, I guess we are pretty great together. For a couple of f*cked-up creeps, anyway.” I look up at him as I button my jeans and smile one big f*cking crackpot smile. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes tight.
A few seconds later he hoists me back up onto the hood of the car, hops up next to me, and leans his back against the windshield. We sit there, watching the sun rise over the city. When it is bright enough to see, I look up at the bridge. Its trusses are covered in a riot of graffiti, the words and pictures blended together in a surprisingly beautiful way. David is looking at it, too, and the next thing I know, I am listening to his awed voice singing the praises of the artist, telling me how this bridge is someone’s masterpiece. Some kid’s, most likely. Some kid who doesn’t even know how good he is. Some kid the rest of the world will probably never know. I hear admiration in his words. And I am enthralled.



chapter Seventeen

Elizabeth

I am standing on this bridge fully aware that Shep Calgaro is watching me from the bushes. He’s hunkered down in the honeysuckle at the end of the bridge. I don’t know why he thinks he’s being so stealthy—he’s drunk off his ass again, and anything but quiet. The moment I got out of my car and started walking across the bridge, I knew he was there. I could hear him moving around, and I could smell the Scotch and sawdust on him from across the street.
He knows that it was David. He must have overheard our conversation in his office yesterday, and now I have to do this in front of both of them. And that sucks.
I started working for Shep three years ago, when David was still in high school. I never aspired to be a contractor’s secretary, but the pay was decent, and when Mark left me for that strung-out hussy, I had to start paying the bills somehow. What I didn’t plan on was falling for Shep. Yes, he’s a bit of an * when he’s drunk, but when he’s sober, he’s sweet as pie. Buying me flowers and jewelry and taking me dancing down at Peyton’s nearly every Friday night. When you date an older man they work harder to impress you, and Shep did a fine job of that.
His relationship with David, though, isn’t nearly as sugary. I have seen how raw they are together. How they can spend an entire day working side by side, building some rich woman a gorgeous kitchen, and not say a single word to each other. There is so much bitterness between them, and I don’t think it will ever go away. And now, somehow, I have managed to make it so much worse. But, in all honesty, if I could go back, I wouldn’t change a thing. I complicated things for sure, and I know there will be a price to pay, but now that I am here, I am going to be honest with David and ask him to forgive me. To move on. I want all this bullshit to be over.
David walks toward me now, carrying a duffel bag. I am beginning to think he is going to call it quits. I have a sudden and sinking feeling that he isn’t going to listen to me; he isn’t going to forgive me. He is next to me now, asking me what the hell I was thinking. Asking me why I thought it was all right for me to do this to him. I tell him that I don’t know, and that sometimes life is complicated. I didn’t know all this would happen. I didn’t know it would be like this. I didn’t mean to hurt him.
When Shep and I first got together, David was dating Kelsey. I thought they were going to get married someday. Shep and I would sit at Peyton’s drinking beer and Scotch, and he would go on and on about how Kelsey was too good for David and how one of these days she’d figure it out and dump him like the loser he is. But I always thought they were sweet together. They were an unconventional pair, for sure, but sometimes there is balance in those kinds of relationships. They were together for nearly a year when Kelsey ran. That’s when it started for David and me. He came to me for help when he found out she was pregnant. David was sure that Kelsey’s parents would disown her, that they would make her life miserable, and that he would be to blame. He didn’t know what to do. Kelsey would not terminate the pregnancy, that he was sure of, because she was so Jesus-y. He told me that he begged her to run away with him, begged her to let him take care of her and the baby somewhere far away from this town. But she refused. She said she didn’t want to be with him anymore because this whole mess was his fault. She was going to do this on her own, and God would take care of her and the baby. David was devastated. He wept in my arms.