Page 45 of Misadventures of a Curvy Girl
The thought of tonight haunts me as I toil over the new floors in the tavern this afternoon. As I work, my mind fills with worrisome scenarios ranging from good-old-fashioned insomnia to the humiliating release of tears I sometimes wake to find on my face.
It’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal, I repeat to myself as I work on fitting and gluing the floorboards down. People sleep with their lovers all the time, and surely I’m not the only person in the history of human relationships to have trouble sleeping. Ireland and Caleb love me, I remind myself and feel the tight anxiety in my chest loosen a little.
I want to make them happy. I want to be closer to them.
I can do this.
I’ve survived years of bullying in school, and I’ve survived war zones that have since become legendary for how hellish they were. Fists and bullets and fire—I’ve lived through it all.
I can survive the night snuggled against someone I love.
The tavern door opens, letting in a welcome rectangle of warm sunlight and fresh air, and I look up to see Ireland in the doorway wearing the short skirt Caleb and I beg her to wear all the time and a blouse thing tied around her waist, showing off a tempting tease of pale skin. With her blue lipstick and colorful clothes, she’s like kissable, lickable city-girl candy, and I want to wrap my fist in all that dark, silky hair and press my mouth against all her sugar. My cock is pulsing to life just looking at her.
I wipe the sweat from my brow with my forearm and get to my feet, taking off my work gloves so I can grab at her and kiss her. She giggles as I do, fussing about her lipstick and halfheartedly trying to keep her distance from my sweaty, sawdusted body, but she eventually gives in, letting me crowd her against the wall until she’s moaning into my mouth and arching her soft breasts into my hands.
The door opens again and Caleb walks in. “Oh fuck, you guys,” he says in a husky voice. “Fuck yeah.”
“No, no, no,” Ireland protests as Caleb joins us and starts in on her neck. “We just fucked this morning. Twice!”
“Doesn’t matter,” I mumble, brushing my thumbs across her hard, needy nipples. My cock is raging to be inside her, and with her short, flirty skirt, it’s all too easy to push my hand between her legs to find out if she’s wet enough to fuck.
She is.
She moans again as I slide my thumb under her panties and start rolling it against her stiff little clit.
Caleb’s already grinding his erection against her hip, taking up where I left off on teasing her nipples, and I whisper in her ear, “We could do it a third time…and a fourth time…and a fifth time…right here against this wall. You coming so hard on our cocks that you can’t even hold yourself up…”
Her eyes are fluttering almost all the way closed, and for a minute, I think she’s going to agree, but then her phone buzzes in her skirt pocket and she jolts.
“You guys,” she admonishes, pushing us back with a flat palm to each of our chests. “I’m supposed to meet a reporter from the Star at any minute, and I can’t do that with lipstick all over my face and a used condom in my pocket.”
“Well, obviously we’d throw the condom away after—”
Her hand moves from my chest to my mouth. “Your talking privileges are suspended for the time being.” Her half smile fades a little. “It’s important to me, Ben. My pictures of Holm and all the rebuilding that’s been happening here could be the start of something exciting, and I don’t want to fuck it up. Now where can I fix my lipstick?”
Caleb points her to the bathroom—which has running water and a mirror, even if it’s still trashed from the storm—and then turns back to me with a thoughtful expression. “You think we should go with her to meet this reporter? Like emotional support?”
I’m already walking toward the bag I’ve got sitting on a makeshift table made out of sawhorses and plywood. I rummage for a clean shirt and wipe the sweat and blue lipstick off my face. I’m thinking of her anxious, hopeful expression just now, and also about the way she’s been all over this town taking pictures of both the tragic and the hopeful.
I wonder again why she isn’t already doing something she obviously loves so much.
“Yeah. I think we should.”
The reporter and her accompanying photographer are friendly and engaging. The reporter interviews Ireland for a good forty-five minutes as we stroll around the recovering but still visibly scarred Main Street while the photographer drifts away and back again to take pictures of various buildings and piles of construction materials. Caleb and I more or less hang back, and I’m sure we look like country boy versions of bodyguards as we trail behind our girl and cast looming six-foot-plus shadows along the street. The photographer seems a little nervous around us, but the reporter is just curious, peeking back over her shoulder and then back at Ireland, as if trying to guess if we’re related or something. It’s strangely irritating, but I force myself to remember that two is not the usual number of boyfriends to have. And also that Ireland wants to impress this person, so it won’t do her any good if I spend the rest of the afternoon scowling.
Ireland herself is adorably oblivious to our presence as we go, so used to us following her around like overgrown—and overprotective—puppies that she only spares us a glance every now and then. But each glance is elated and grateful and makes me fall in love with her all over again.
“Well,” the reporter says, hitting stop on her phone’s recording app and giving Ireland a warm smile, “I think that’s probably all I need. We’ll just get some photos of you and then head on out.”
Ireland freezes, and I can see the moment the panic hits her like a lightning bolt. She swallows, and there seems to be effort in keeping her voice light when she says, “Photos of me?”
“Of course!” the reporter chirps. “I think it will really drive home the point of the piece, which is all about the girl behind the camera, you know? The face behind the pictures that everyone’s been talking about.”
It’s astonishing how fast the well-kissed, confident, animated woman taking them around the town vanishes. In her place is a woman who looks terrified, tugging unconsciously at her hemline and rounding her shoulders ever so slightly, as if she’s trying to hunch into herself.
As if she’s trying to hide.
I don’t understand it, but every protective instinct in me roars to life, and they must be in Caleb too because he’s already taking a step forward, as if to put himself between Ireland and danger. Danger in this case being a chirpy, five-foot-four reporter.
