Page 46 of Road Refugees

Chapter Fifteen

Heaven

We fell into a blissful pattern of work and play.

Town took me to a Pure and Easy doctor that Maddy recommended, and I was swiftly diagnosed with diabetes. Good God in an evil world! If only I’d known about this years before! This diagnosis, coupled with alcohol and chloral hydrate, explained all my fainting into the nether regions of unconsciousness. Alcohol had been spiking my blood sugar, and I’d been lying about in diabetic comas for years. What a revelation!

Now I had medication for it, and I realized the courage I’d derived from alcohol was artificial. I needed to find out how to nurture a feeling of safety without it. How to stay connected to everyone without it? I had love, vast stores of love, love for Town—though I hadn’t told him as much—love for Linus, now love for Mickey Finn, my brother, even love for Slappy and Crybaby, as annoying as they were. The alcohol courage to laugh, to set myself free, to admit cringeful details of my life, that was all fake. I could find that courage without alcohol, and so I tried. I went without several times and told myself Look! I can connect with people, chat and smile, allow myself to be taken by surprise . . . and that is all right.

Mickey Finn even unintentionally taught me. She’d hobble around the backyard under our supervision, encouraged by Beetle and Linus as they yapped and leaped. We’d ponder on how Mickey was adjusting to her freedom. Was she happy, terrified, bored? She’d been scarred for life, and quietly I wondered if she could tell what a moron I was. I’d grown up knowing the world was a horrifying place, filled with people with creepy, lowlife plans for me. I wondered why anyone would be with me, given a choice. But Mickey must’ve been wondering the same thing, with her shaky, spindly legs, her patchy fur, her darting, suspicious eyes. My fear that no one would like me was as relentless as my desire for booze. I was afraid that my fear might become Mickey’s reality, and stick with her for life.

But dogs lead us into a land that is both loving and frustrating. Dogs can push your buttons, often more pointedly than humans! As I fell in love with Mickey, I entered a new universe with fresh flavors and rituals. Town and I would venture into the forest, and our walks were slower now with Mickey stopping to smell every leaf. When I’d call her name, her whole body seemed to tense into a smile.

“I think we look to pets for love,” I said, “because human love is so hard to find. Today’s world is so alienating. We live in these horrible, lonely times.”

Town ventured to say, “Are you lonely without your flask?”

It was the first time he’d mentioned it, and I was shocked, as though someone zapped electrical wires to my heart. I couldn’t look him in his handsome face, so as usual I looked to Mickey Finn, who was squatting to pee on a fern. Linus looked on with interest, as though about to help show her how.

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “It was my good friend for many years.”

Town surprised me by saying, “I know how you feel. It was a source of comfort, like a baby with a bottle.”

“Yes!” I exclaimed, looking him right in the face. Oh, that brawny, sexy hunk had put his head between my legs! Sometimes the memory was too much, and I had to think of something else. “Exactly, Town. I had no other source of comfort, except maybe my dog Chip.”

“The one you had to leave behind.”

“That one. It’s such a . . . private relationship, both the booze and the dogs. But each day I go without, the stronger I feel. I sometimes wonder if I could . . . drink a little bit, like Slappy and Crybaby do.”

Town guffawed. “A little bit? Them?”

I touched his bicep. “Okay, they sometimes overdo it. But you know what I mean. Not around the clock, like I used to do. Where I could take it or leave it, like they seem to do.” It was a daring concept, I knew.

But Town shrugged. “Possible. I wondered that about myself a few times, then decided abstinence was my way to go. Some people can handle moderation.”

I was shocked that he didn’t oppose the idea right out of the barn door. In fact, I thought I had just made it up on the spot. “I’ll see. Give it another few weeks until I feel stronger. I might try it, though I don’t want you staring at me when I do like some kind of judge.”

Town grinned. How I adored that crooked mouth! It had brought me to orgasm like no vibrator ever had. “Nobody likes being under the microscope. I’m not going to question you, my angel.”

Beetle and Linus had taken off. When the zoomies hit them, they enjoyed zigzagging between trees, flying so horizontally over ferns they were sometimes surprised by a stick in the tummy. I jogged to keep up, trying to teach Mickey to “come.” She thought it was an optional command, and I couldn’t let that happen. She was skittish in her movements, nearly crouching on the ground, and she had to be lured.

“Come, come!” I said happily, and Town burst into a jog too.

Such high drama came with dogs. There was no social judgment such as happens with children. No teacher would call us up asking why Mickey was stressed or freaked. She would be allowed to heal at her own rate, as Town seemed to be allowing me. He was giving me the freedom to make mistakes. But this came with a risk—the risk of heartache and losing him if I blew it.

We had been teaching Mickey to let us pick her up. We only won because we were bigger, but she’d struggle to get out of our clutches, as we told her we’d never let her be hurt again. She wouldn’t let her past mistreatment change her basic nature, an example I tried to follow. I didn’t want to inflict Town with my struggles to obliterate my past. I drank so as not to be constantly reminded of the damage done to me. I was terrified that if I didn’t have that cushion, the memories would carry me back into a dark place.

So far that hadn’t happened. I knew it was because of my basic uplifted nature, my work with the mushrooms, the dogs . . . and Town. When he’d surprised me by sitting on the edge of my bed, I’d responded with a lust I didn’t know I had in me. All the teasing, the flirtation, the brushing my rack against his arm, all of that had just built to a crescendo. It was inevitable as dawn that I had spread my legs and yanked him down to me.

Town was a giant of a man who had been through as much—or more—than me. I felt he understood me. His travails in Syria, the death of his fiancée, the rejection by his family—all these experiences had molded him into a headstrong towering man with a heart of gold. What had started with this man sweeping me from the scene of a crime developed into a slow burn. I watched his jeans-clad ass when he walked away. I couldn’t resist focusing on his stiff nipples through a tight t-shirt. I spied on him once when he was lifting weights. And so on.

My yearning for Town grew in my mind and body. I felt perkier when he looked at me. I wanted my rack to stand out. I wanted him to look at me with hunger. When we cooked in the kitchen and he’d reach across me for some spice bottle or other, I’d turn so my boobs brushed his chest. Sometimes he’d acknowledge me with a smile, but I could tell he was restraining himself. He had his reasons—maybe too much trauma in Syria. Maybe he didn’t want another fiancée to die on him.

When it happened, it was sublime. Just the idea that this superb man was squirming his tongue back and forth across the core of my being was enough to raise me to the brink of climax. His husky shoulders warm beneath my thighs, spreading me apart, unashamed. Laying myself wide open like that without tensing from fear was a revelation. I was a bit suspicious, of course, about his talent with his tongue. But I wrote that down to his fiancée and let it go.

When I did, I was in his hands completely. Just when I thought I’d hit the plateau of no return, he’d squiggle his tongue in my slit. It made me want to scream when he took his focus off my button. But he’d dive right back in after such a sexy diversion, and his rhythmic back and forth against my clit would ratchet me up a whole new level. My cries became quicker and shallower, and soon I sounded like some warped daybreak bird annoying everyone, waking them out of slumber. When the crescendo came, Town was capably prepared, and he bore down into my core with vigor.

Eventually I had to beg him to stop. It was too much. I must’ve been in the throes of the strongest climax of my life for at least three minutes. It became too intense, protracted and fierce. It was like I was about to break an interior organ. Even after I made him stop, I was still coming. I was hyperventilating, chuffing a series of tiny, fast breaths. I had to sit on the edge of the bed for Town to rub my shoulders and make soothing sounds. Then, I think, Wolf Glaser busted in, saying something absurd about Minnie Pearl.