June 27, 2005
BUD

My old man used to say that some people are just born to be slapped around by life. He used to blame his life on that principle. When life slapped him around, he slapped us around. Like he wanted to be sure we never escaped from him. Maybe he was afraid that if we escaped, then we'd find out that we were meant for better things than to be his punching bag.

I put ice in a glass. The scotch almost sizzled as it met the cold. I swirled the glass and let the ice do its thing. When I held the glass out to her, she flinched. But not even a breath later, she raised her chin like she was daring me to take her on.

She refused to say anything.

"Take it," I said. My voice sounded funny to me. Too much anger at the night.

She took it and then paced around, like a wounded animal waiting to chew her leg off to get out of the trap. I knew that look. I've seen it in the mirror often enough. I hated seeing it on her.

I looked away from her but that was worse. Staring at the floor, I wasn't seeing the rug ... instead, I saw her when I'd first pulled her out of the car. Her wrists cuffed behind her. I blinked and imagined her in that house on Esplanade. I didn't want to know but I already knew too much about all that.

"What happened to you? Why would you want that?" Why that when I would have treated you so nice, is what I was thinking ... and hating that I thought it. I finally looked up at her.

"I'm living my life," she said. She was angry but there was something else. "I'm not living hers."

"This isn't a life, Annie."

"You don't know a fucking thing about me."

"You keep saying that but ..."

"You keep thinking I'm somebody I'm not. This is me, Bud. Just me. Am I a bit too disgusting for you? There's the door, Wendell. Don't let me stop you."

"I shoulda fucking let him do whatever he was gonna do to you."

"Let who do what?"

"Nate."

"Nate?"

"You were in cuffs." She started smiling at me. This superior, smug look on her face. Like she liked me saying all this and I hated it. Hated the way this made me feel on her behalf ... or maybe I was just ... Christ. Maybe my old man was right. Maybe I was never gonna stop being slapped down by life.

"What? Oh, Wendell! You were jealous of Nate?" she said, her voice all low and throaty. But angry. I could see the anger in the stiffness of how she walked toward me. In the way her hand came out to tug on my tie, forcing me to get nearer to her. "You jealous that I was gonna let him do all sorts of nasty things with me in handcuffs? Is that what you want? You want to have a little go that way? Where'd you put your cuffs, Wendell? Get 'em out. C'mon. You man enough, Wendell?"

"That is not what I meant."

"No?" Her body rubbed up on mine. Dammit. "So ... you figure you're so big and strong ... you don't need cuffs to keep me in line? Just those big hands of yours? Mmm. They make such intimidating fists. I would quite like that."

"Knock it off," I said, pushing her away and not gently. "What were you doing there? I called the bar, you were working."

"I took off early for a bit of the nasty. You know? Oh, I bet you do." She neared me again. I was sweating. I don't know why I was turned on. I should have been repulsed. "You want to hear what I do there? Nah, look at you. You already got me sussed out, don't you? And that's why you're here, isn't it? I bet it really pissed you the fuck off when you thought Nate would get there first with me."

"Stop it."

"No, that's it, isn't it? Did you and Nate have a bet going? Whoever found me first got to knock the shit out of me and then fuck me?"

"I said stop it!" It came roaring out of me. I don't know where that anger came from ... or who it was meant for. Her? Nate? Whoever the fuck got her involved in the shit at that house on Esplanade? Whoever fucked her over in that other world?

"Make me," she said. 

Her hand ... she raised it ... it was in a fist ... I blocked it ... instinct.

Something happened.

I don't know what.

I just know, I reacted.

ANN

Things can get so messy. Or maybe I just specialize in a messy life.

My life in flashcards: I. Make. My. Own. Messes.

He grabbed me out of that car so fast. Scared me. Truly it did. Imagine hearing this boom of a fist against the top of the car, my door flying open so hard the whole car shook; the look in Nate's eyes one that made the scream stick in my throat; big hands on my arms hauling me through the door's opening and forcing me to stand.

Imagine that.

Too scared to scream. Too shocked to register how messy everything was again. It never once dawned on me to cry. I wonder why that is? Why I never cry until it's way the fuck too late?

He didn't say a word to me. Not then.

I found myself pushed up against the car. I felt the car shift, all quick, as Nate jumped out of the driver's seat. 

"Hold on now, Bud ..." Nate said, his hands up like he was calling for calm.

"The key," Bud muttered to him from behind me.

"Let's just take this nice and easy, partner," Nate said, sounding reasonable.

"The fucking key. Now," Bud said, sounding unreasonable. 

His hand, palm side up, plopped in front of my face. Holding his hand out for Nate ... who looked at me with wide eyes ... who shook his head at Bud even as he fished in his pocket and then tossed a small key on little chain into Bud's open palm.

I felt him behind me, futzing with the cuffs. In my mind, I thought I could even hear the scrape of metal on metal as the key unlocked one and then the other cuff from my wrists.

"Talk to me, Bud," Nate said.

"Shut the fuck up," Bud said.

"I'm not gonna let you hurt her, Bud."

"I ain't gonna let you take fucking advantage of her."

"I wasn't."

"No?" Bud tossed the cuffs over the car. Nate caught them on the fly. "You dragged her out of there but didn't take her in to the station. Instead you're keeping this off the books. You got her in cuffs in the back of the car. You thinking she's gonna be grateful. You don't give a shit that maybe she deserves better."

"I was just trying to keep her from being arrested, Bud."

"Why is she still cuffed?"

"We were talking."

"Yeah. I bet."

My knees seemed weak. I could feel Bud's heat. I could feel the way his fingers flexed in their hold of my upper arm. I don't know what exactly I was seeing because it was like staring into some personal middle space where nothing was in focus.

All my fight seemed gone. All the ways I've sinned. How is it another man gets sucked into my vortex of self-destruction?

"I did what I thought was right," Nate said. "I was looking out for her."

"She's my responsibility. Not yours. You wanted to help her? You should have called me and said you had her."

"Whatever it looked like to you, Bud, I was trying to help. I didn't tell you, sure. But I didn't think you could handle it."

"Handle this, asshole," Bud said, shooting him the bird just as he jerked me away from the car and started leading me up the sidewalk to the stairs that led to my apartment.

"Bud, you don't want to do this," Nate called out.

"Fuck you," Bud said, his voice a growl that made my head spin.

"If you hurt her ..." Nate said, and I could hear he was closer, following us.

Bud turned; I was looking right in his face; he was looking over my head at Nate. "You know me better than that," he said to Nate.

And then his eyes dropped to mine. My knees wobbled. In my mind, I was saying, 'you can go on and hurt me ... I'd like that.' Anything to drown out the way he was looking at me like I'd just killed his last innocent dream about women.

I do know that Nate left at that point. I guess he figured he knew Bud.

But he didn't know me.

Did he?

Anger makes me act. Fear freezes me. I called up anger but it was also just there, like some instinct for survival. 

It's never been good enough unless I feel I can goad them into it. Unless it just seems like I've been the reason they snap. Like Max.

Inside the apartment, I suppose it's truthful, honest to say I cowered for a bit. Humiliated. Unsure what he'd do. Once, I suppose I thought I actually wanted him to know ... wanted him to see me for who I really was instead of the way he'd look at me and I knew he thought I was worth something. It's just so fucking tough ... the way I feel about him ... the way he's restored my faith in men ... the way I just know he's going to be fucking disgusted if he ever really knew about me. And now he had. And I had no room inside my confused irrationality to beg forgiveness or understanding.

It's easier to make him snap and take it out on me. Like doing that will bring him down to my level. Because I'll never be at his ... or at where he has been thinking I am all this time.

He looked angry. Body language, so tight, too controlled. Emptiness in that apartment; silence except even the silence was screaming.

Him not knowing what to do with himself. Looking at me like he was waiting on me to start talking. Me eventually just waiting on him to tell me what a slut, a bitch, a sicko, a sad little lonely woman I was. At some point, him asking me to make him a drink, just to have some reason for us to do something other than start the fireworks that were coming. Me telling him to get the fuck out. Him giving me a look, jaw working. Not leaving. Me thinking he's spoiling for a confrontation that'll shake the rafters. Then he's pouring two drinks, as if to prove to me that he's in charge now.

I thought I had Bud all worked up. His blood, I wanted it boiling. But he wasn't fast enough for me. And then something told me to push it and that's when I tried to punch him.

He blocked the punch.

We stood there looking at each other, his arm up, blocking mine ... "You're not man enough for this, Wendell," I said, softly, sweetly, mocking him. "Go back to where you were playing a tamer game. But then, that one didn't take any balls, did it? Just what were you telling yourself when you were letting them call all the shots?"

This look of incredible hurt flickered out of his eyes. It was slammed out by a blind rage I've seen only once before.

He raised his hand higher ... to strike me ... his hand formed a fist ... I smiled at him. The fire flickered and he shoved me away as he lowered his hand.

"I knew you weren't man enough to do what you really want," I taunted him.

"Shut up."

"She had other diaries, you know. Or did you know that? She had this one about you, Wendell. About how you were never good for anything but games. It's why she never did anything else with you. It's why she started blowing you off in the end, there."

"You're lying so just shut up."

"You know it's true."

"You don't know shit about her."

"Crap, I know all I need to know. She was a slut."

He raised his hand again. I raised my chin. I closed my eyes. I felt the moment take shape. I felt the room fill with his fury and I wanted nothing more that to feel the fury take its revenge on me. I would have done anything ... anything ... to have him hit me.

Everything hangs in the balance. I open my eyes. He is looking at me like ... like ... oh, it makes me ache, ache so ... He is so beautiful ... how can I see his beauty when he's been so soiled by the things he's done in this world?

Can he see that I am worth nothing anymore? That I'm so lost?

Don't look at me like that, Bud. But he is. In another millisecond, he'll forget I'm not worth it.

I strike him. Hard. Open-palmed. A red welt rises on his face. His eyes water but they never waver. He steps toward me. I back up. I hit him again. He takes another step; a bigger one, more menacing. I feel the wall hit my back; it nearly takes my breath away.

When I raise my hand this time, he grabs my wrist and pins it against the wall.

"Hit me back, Wendell," I growl out to him.

He shakes his head; he looks at me with sadness.

"I don't fucking need a white knight. I need ..."

"What do you need, Annie?" he says. His voice is low, a breath. He doesn't trust his own voice.

"Do you know what you want, Wendell."

"What I want?"

"Go on. I won't stop you. I'll let you. Make it hurt."

"Why would I want to hurt you?"

His hand. Soft fingers on my neck.

"I know what you want." I say it; I mean it to come out stronger than it does. It sounds almost like a whimper instead.

"You don't a clue what I want."

I turn my head, jerking myself from his tender stroke along my neck. I am looking down his body, at the tension. My jaw works back and forth. I am ... I am unsure where to go from here. I feel this cloud descending and don't know how to fight anymore. But I also don't know how to surrender.

Surrender.

Oh.

How can I surrender? Won't that be so much worse to go down and not on my own terms?

I don't have a clue what he wants, he said. Don't all men want the same thing from me? All men but ... one man wanted to love me. See what happens?

I can't surrender. What would ever happen if I was ever to be okay with what I've done? The thought is barely whispered inside my brain when an unexpected flicker of a painful memory shocks me ... Terry ... over Uma ... making love to her ... me in the doorway ... my world ... gone.

I forgave him long ago.

My eyes flash to Bud's. "What do you want, Bud?"

"Not what you think." His jaw set. He looks like danger.

"You want me?" I say, my eyes flickering over his lips, purposefully flirtatious.

"Not how you think."

Our eyes meet.

In his ... a tormented want of me.

An innocence even in this man who knew depravity, who knows what I have been doing ... and he can still look at me as if I'm too good for the likes of him.

His eyes drop from mine; a sudden shyness on his part, just as he dips his face close to mine ... his lips on my cheek. Lingering.

Wanting.

Everything about him is wanting.

I hear a soft sound. Like someone is about to weep. My chest is so tight. I am shaking my head against his. He is slowly nodding as his head drops into my neck and his arms are circling me, gathering me up into him.

My hands are still in fists. They hit at his shoulders but with no real conviction. 

I always cry when it's too late.

He never lets go. He never says a word. Just holds me.

BUD

Women. They give up so much. So many nights, I have lain in my bed and wondered how they are able to do what they do in life.

How many nights have I stared at my ceiling, wondering how far she'd fall before she'd let me pick her up and put her where she belongs?

This is the night she hits bottom. I do what I can.

I do what I want.

What I've wanted for so long.

Just to be standing there, holding her when she finally gives in ... I have longed for this moment to break over us.

She feels even smaller. As if I am a brute, all clumsy and rough. While she is soft, knowing.

When she is still and holding on to me, I relax my arms and she glides down to rest on her feet. All I'm left holding is one hand in mine. I walk over to her couch; she follows meekly, done in by the catharsis of tears. I sit down on the cushions and my hands guide her to stand before me. It's like there's a signal between us; she sinks down before me, onto her knees and simply slips into my hold. Her ear is on my chest. My hands rest on her back; my cheek smoothes over the top of her head. I rock, gently, side to side. I feel so strong in this moment; like I've just slapped life back on its heels and I've done that on her behalf. It feels good. Good.

"Why me?" she asks me.

I smile. Even so far down, she has the ability to sass me.

But a moment later, I remember how it felt when I'd asked Lynn that very question. And how it had mattered to me to understand how she could have seen that kind of worth in me to let me see a side to her she showed no one else. Is that what Annie figures I'm doing for her tonight? I have a confidence with her that I wasn't sure I'd really find.

"Because you've needed me to be a good man for you."

She moves until she is kneeling up and now we are on the same level; our eyes looking into each other.

"You're so beautiful," I whisper to her. I hadn't planned to say that to her. I half-close my eyes; a flinch, waiting for her to rebel.

"I've done such horrible things, Bud." Her voice breaks. She looks almost child-like. As if everything hard and nasty that had ever happened to her has been washed away.

"But not to me, honey. Never to me."

Her hand reaches out to me. I let her stroke over my face with her thumb until she slips her hand behind my head to draw me close. So close. All I have to do is lean forward slightly and I can kiss her.

ANN

I don't deserve this. God, how I want it, though. He just sits there before me, solid, all man, strong enough to be a man with me. I feel the rush. I haven't felt it in so long. We're so close. I don't even know what to do with a real man anymore. A man like this.

He treats me as if I am of the greatest value. As if there was never a question, never a hesitation ... as if the only person he has ever seen is this woman before him. The sinner who finds forgiveness too great a burden.

I want to be the woman worthy of the way he's looking at me. He wants me to want him. If he only knew how much I do. God, the way he's touching me. He is so afraid of hurting me.

No one's been afraid like that in so long.

When he kisses me, my mouth this time, I long for the lurching brutality of being thrown on the floor and taken hard, rough, mean.

Except ... except he kisses with a seduction all his own.

He is leaning in on his knees. Leaning toward me. His hands no longer touch me. Only his lips are pulling me toward him. Anything that happens now, it happens with him controlling me by calling forth the part of me that is soft, questing, wanting him.

I wrap my arms around him and glide, open mouthed, from his kiss. I catch my breath. He kisses my shoulder. I feel myself tremble; I am so scared of this. I feel so dirty. I try to pull away from him but I am struggling I move back but then I don't want to be away from him. He is so solid. So sure. He finally touches me; his thumb grazes over my hip. Just that one firm motion; one flicker of his thumb and I still my movement.

"What do you want, Bud?" I whisper. "Tell me. I don't understand why you'd ever want me."

"We're in this together, Annie. And that's just the truth." His voice is kind, as if he knows I need something to believe.

"Wouldn't it be good sometimes if we could just hop a flight to anywhere? Just take off from this life?"

"You can spend your whole life walking in the shadows of life, watching everything just pass you by. But you can't ever blame anyone else if you never even try when a second chance does come your way."

"You don't really know what I've done."

"Open your eyes, Annie. You're at the crossroads. Trust me. I know because I'm at the same one."

"You want to be my friend, that's what you're saying?"

"More than friends."

My voice is shaky. "Just tell me what you want."

He tilts his head. Takes a long, deep breath. His hands smooth my hair back, over my shoulders. He does it with the utmost care, delicacy. His big hands ... who'd imagine they were capable of touching a woman like this?

His voice is a soft, deep whisper of a man; I feel it wrap around me. "Part of what I want is to show you how you should be touched. It should be by someone in love with your smile. Someone who looks in your eyes and gets lost each time."

This is when he begins to really touch me. Of course, he would. He's figured it out ... that there is this indefinable aspect of him, of the man he is, that speaks to the sinner in me and can bring me down to my knees not in defeat or supplication.

We are in this together. Bud. Me.

"What else do you want?" I ask him as I tremble at the way his hand strokes down my neck. It stops at the base; the pad of his thumb caresses circles there as I swallow and turn my face from his. Embarrassed by the way he regards me. As if I deserve this.

"The only other thing I want ... Annie ... for you to believe in me."

I still can't look in his eyes. I put my hand along his cheek; my face nestles in against his neck. I can feel the heavy, strong beat of blood coursing there. His hands, so light, grazing knuckles, tracing down my body's valleys and rises. God, he smells good. He feels so good. Being in his embrace feels so good. Like nothing else. I've dreamed of this; it was never quite this good.

"I haven't believed in anything for so long, Bud. Except you. That's the saddest part of this. I just always was ashamed to get too close ... if you knew what I've done ..."

"Hush." He kisses in at my temple. "That was the past. It had nothing with me. Just like what I've done, it had nothing to do with you."

"What if I mess up again? What if I hurt you?"

"I'm more than willing to take that chance. I have faith in you."

"I have faith in you." We are poised and I don't know what for. We gonna shake hands and go to our separate corners until this night dissolves into meaningless memory?

He reaches down, nudging me from my hiding place; his lips find mine. My hands are so demure; one on his nape, one on his jaw line. But he does something ... I don't know what ... some impatient swirl of his tongue ... My fingers flex and clutch just a bit. He groans, soft ... urgent, forgetting for just a moment that he wants to be infinitely tender with me.

Lightning fast ... somehow it happens ... all that sedate, meaningful, heart-wrenching talk gives way in the breadth of a small groan from him ... Both my hands move, clasp the back of his head ... shove him into me ... our mouths both wide, gone wild.

His hands, no longer the sweet caress of his knuckles ... he grips in tight, tighter, hands flexing ... grabbing my buttocks ... squeeze, release, squeeze ... pulling my groin tight in against his ... He's hard.

It's passion.

But it's passionate ... not abuse ... not anger ... some sadness, some lingering remorse ... it swells inside me to the point where I don't need to think ... and where I can feel and it isn't because someone has hurt me ... I thought maybe I'd never feel another man's touch unless it was a punch or slap ... that maybe that's all I deserved.

I don't realize when I let go.

But I do.

In Bud's arms.

He feels it happen. He changes the tempo between us. He makes me feel clean again. He makes me feel tiny and sweet and funny. He undresses me like I'm a precious gift and he is untying the most perfect bow he's ever seen. Those tender hands of his get to me all over again. I can barely breathe for the way he makes me feel as he takes such time, such care.

And all he's done is take my clothes off me.

BUD

Everyone, I would say, loses their heart some time or another. Later on, you take the chance again but there's always that little boy inside you that remembers the first time some girl left you pining for her.

Lynn told me once that every love you have teaches you something. If you're smart, you learn it. She said it's maybe the reason you ever get the nerve up to love again.

I have never been too sure about that. Mainly, I think love comes to a man and he has only two choices: go for it or always kick himself in the ass for walking away. Maybe women have other choices.

This is mine.

I'm going for it.

It's not really my style to dig too far down and start dissecting my feelings. Fuck. You feel, right? And you do something about it.

I have my needs like any other man. I can love a woman who doesn't love me back; that woman I can walk away from if I know it's never going to be two-way between us.

My needs when it comes to love are pretty simple. I want someone who'll be honest with me when it comes to the important stuff. No games, no bullshit. If she says she loves me, she means it. If she loves me, she wants me. She needs me.

She gets me.

Not too many women do. When they do, though, I will give them every part of me. 

You were to ask me why I stuck around, watching over Annie, getting my heart torn up when she kept falling so far down and trying to take me with her?

I guess the best I could say to you is ... because she gets me.

It is, I suppose, the real reason I didn't really have a choice in whether or not I stayed in there and waited for my chance.

You think I'd blow it now?

She let me undress her. I've been with her body before but not with her, you understand. So I got some prior knowledge of what I'll see, what I'll feel. What I'll taste. Except it's a lot different when you're this close and you realize, it's not the same because you're not the same ... and she's not the same.

How do some women get their skin so soft? I love the smell of her shampoo; I can sniff it out past the mild sour notes of cigarettes that linger there ... the remains of where she'd been earlier that night. I don't want to picture her there. Someday, I'll be able to and it won't hurt me to imagine it. But not tonight.

Tonight, I just want to capture this whole. Her skin is pale, smooth. When I kiss at her neck, in that crease that turns into her shoulder, I can taste sweat. She's wearing perfume; it's very faint, light ... I've always noticed that a certain class of woman wears her scent that way ... nothing the least bit cheap.

The first Annie I knew told me that her mom taught her that a woman's perfume should only be strong enough to be smelled when a man comes in close enough to hug her. Heavier than that, I can picture her saying with that teasing way she had, and it's so vulgar.

I look down into this Annie's eyes; she swallows like she's nervous but she never wavers in looking to me. 

Looking to me.

Am I worthy of this look? Of the faith and trust she has that I know what I'm doing? God, I need this woman to believe in me. I need to believe in myself. When did this night become this important to both of us?

She's kneeling before me now, nude. There's a lamp on in the corner of the room. The only other lighting is in the kitchen, behind her. I could look at her forever, I suppose. Maybe I could even just hold her forever.

But not when she sighs when I touch her. Not when she moans when my finger strokes through the wet, soft cleft between her legs. Not when she whimpers when I slide one finger inside her, so careful.

I want tonight to be about the opposite of what she's been doing with other men. I want her to begin to long again for the touch that doesn't hurt.

Every so often, though, we just seem to lose ourselves to how much we want.

She wants me.

And she reacts to the way I touch her. She makes me feel like a man again.

It is the way her hands clutch and release where she's gripping in around my arms or my shoulders or my thighs. That little whisper she does, begging me but not saying for what. How wet she is. The way her body seeks out the position that brings her in closest to me. Her nipples puckering and hardening when I cover them with my mouth and circle with my tongue. The way her head lolls to the side and she murmurs soft, almost a hum, when I kiss in on the side of her neck.

She reads my growing desire to make progress without being rough. Her fingers work at my buttons, drag off my shirt, help me out of my slacks. I lift my hips; she slides my briefs down. She looks, touches ... but it is with something approaching reverence ... What man would not find that a fucking turn on? I bite my tongue and concentrate everything I am on not coming when she pushes me to lean back into the couch ... and her mouth kisses up my cock even while I am squeezing it at the root.

I whisper to her.

She takes me in her mouth.

I open my eyes; see her. Does she know how bad my want is?

Oh, yeah.

ANN

All my life, I prided myself on being a tough cookie. Nothing and I mean nothing gave me more pride than being able to stand on my own two feet. It took me a long time to learn that being in love isn't supposed to mean that you're not still on your own two feet ... but that it means there's someone else standing right with you who can carry you if you get hurt; or to whom you can lend an arm to lean on if he gets tired. Sure I didn't always get it right, but I did reach that stage of knowing I wasn't giving anything up.

The hardest thing in the world for me is to admit when I'm drowning and when I need someone to save me.

I am not the damsel in distress type.

But even so ... even so ... if Bud hadn't been there ... he was like the spark that ignited the final, catastrophic pyre ... but he was also the one man brave enough, caring enough to rush in and save me.

In this night, the way he treats me, I feel like he's giving me back the faith I used to have in myself and in good men. It's not perfect, it doesn't solve everything, but I was drowning and now I'm clutching on to him as he's pulling me back to shore.

He is such a man.

When he is nude, I look at his body and it makes me sweat. Broad, tough chest. Thighs like these huge telephone poles compared to other men. They grip around me; I feel the hair of his legs against my skin.

I glance up into his face; he's nipping in at the corner of his lips. He looks so fucking serious and yet so sweet, all at the same time. Ah, there, a tiny smile ... no, more like a grimace. My hand moves over his penis; it jerks just a bit as if it wants more.

It is still wet from my saliva.

I am on the verge of just asking him what he wants ... but instead my eyes drop from his. I think how I'd like to somehow miraculously be able to touch every square inch of him, to explore him, to get my fill somehow by knowing I've felt every part of him. I think of all the places I'd like my mouth on him. I think about where I'd like his mouth.

It makes me groan. It makes me tremble when he scoots toward me, his body at the edge of the couch, all around me. My hand on him, stroking.

He shifts. Pulls me in, tight, to his chest ... one hand on my buttocks, the other cradling the back of my head. It is one smooth movement ... gathering me to him, him slipping off the couch, to his knees, lowering me before him, placing me on the floor, under him.

All this time, I'm holding his manhood in my hand. The other hand is holding his face to mine because we are kissing so deep, long, searching.

He's kneeling between my legs. His fingers spread me ... oh ... so gentle ... I want him so badly ... he's so sweet to me ... he's so hot in my hand ... I feel the tip ... he's placed it just at my opening ... I release my hold on his hardness. How I have dreamed of this moment with him, never thinking it would come and that if it did, it would never be like this.

We're barely kissing as he begins to slip inside me. I jerk in a breath. He whispers into me ... "Let me come inside, Annie."

"It'll be all right," I whisper back, for some reason.

His big hand pulls my leg up higher over his hip. He pushes in further. Every time I shudder, he stops, pulls out, tries again. By the time he's finally in all the way, my eyes are rolling back with the way it felt to have him go in that slowly.

"Love me," I say to him, as he seems to be waiting for me.

"Do you want me?" he asks me.

I open my eyes; look deep into the shadows that I know hide his eyes in the odd lighting in my apartment. I can't see him; but I know ... I know I'm safe. I know I'm wanted. I know I'm going to be okay again.

Tears. Not sobbing, just tears.

"I want you so much, Bud. So much."

He kisses the tip of my nose. Nuzzles my lips. All this time, he's not pumping; he's just moving, side to side, as if he's deciding what he'll do.

But then he takes me.

I can't say it better than that.

Perhaps I could describe every second and every move ... but  I suppose I didn't pay enough attention. I was too absorbed in what he was doing with his body ... I never even once worried about not coming.

For so long, ever since that night with Max, I have thought the only way I could come anymore was if some man hurt my body enough to make it feel. Like I was dead inside and I guess I was.

But I'm not anymore.

And someday, soon I think, I will have to have a reckoning with what I've done and I will have to see if the love and affection of one good man can make me risk it all again.

In my bed, later, we seem to doze off and on. We have made love twice and we are thinking about it again ... or at least our bodies are. It's like we've both been so thirsty and now we are greedy bastards.

I can't get enough of touching his face and kissing his neck. He can't get enough of cuddling me in under his arm and caressing my breasts.

Our legs are entwined. I turn over to look at the clock on the bedside table. I get the most vivid déjà vu moment. I don't know when I've done this simple movement ... but it triggers that odd sense of having been here before.

It's just a shadow walking by me. I shiver.

"You okay, Annie?" he asks me, in that lazy half-awake state.

"I wish I could right the wrongs."

He sighs, deep. Turns over; spoons behind me. His arms envelope me. I stroke his biceps. They are strong, impressive. They will never be used to hurt me. They will only ever want to be used to protect me.

"You don't have to suffer anymore." He says it so soft. I feel his breath ruffle across my ear. I wonder if he's staring, like I am, into the dark.

There in his arms, I felt like the pain could be washed away. As if this man was strong enough to hold me in this time. "It's so hard living with it all. It's going to be so hard getting past it."

"No one said life would be easy."

"No one said it'd be this hard."

"Yeah, I know, Annie. You have to let it go, though. I'll help you."

I turn in his arms, face him. His eyes are open. His face is solemn and yet there isn't a lick of meanness there. Only concentration, concern, conviction.

"I got lucky the day you came into my life," I tell him.

"Luck," he says, grinning suddenly. "Luck's something I can believe in, Annie."

I nod my head. Try to smile but it's lopsided and shoddy. He jostles me as if to ask what else ... what else ...

What else? Nothing in this life is easy. Maybe it shouldn't be. But in this night, I want it to be easy for me. I need to be carried, just for a little while.

I whisper to him, "Even if it's a lie, say everything will be all right, Bud."

"I'll make everything all right again, Annie."

"Is that what you want?"

"It's everything I want."

"Just say, honestly, that you won't give up on me ... and I'll believe."

"I'm not gonna give up. Not on you."

We both know he can't make it all right. I suppose the best he can is make it not matter so much. Actually, we need to do that for each other.

And maybe that's really it.

Two wounded souls, two imperfect people, two shadowed lives. 

On the verge of something much bigger than we'd have imagined separately.