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roosterforme · 2 years

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Just Desserts | Rooster x Reader

Summary: Rooster only has eyes for his girlfriend and her baked goods.

Warnings: Fluffy Smut

Length: 2000 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female Reader

Based on this fun request from an anonymous friend!

This was written to accompany my series Is It Working For You? but it can be read on its own!

Check my masterlist.

Early Saturday morning, Bradley went out to play a round of golf with some of the guys. He had left you sleeping in bed, just pressing a soft kiss to your forehead before he left. He had promised you he would return around lunchtime and spend the rest of the day and the entire night with you.

He was getting close to his next deployment, and he had initially scoffed at the idea of forfeiting even a few hours of your day off together, but you had got on him about being more social. So he accepted the golfing invitation from Bob, Hangman and Coyote.

Turns out you were a genius, because he ended up having a great time playing golf, kicking back a few 'breakfast' beers and hanging out. Bob was the only good golfer in the bunch, so it didn't really matter that Bradley lost a few balls along the way and that he had to fudge his score on the 15th hole.

And now he was heading back home to you. When he unlocked the door and stepped inside, he audibly groaned. "Smells so good in here," he mumbled, taking in the sight before him. You were in the kitchen, wearing your I Love Meat apron that he bought for you randomly one day when he saw it. And you were surrounded by cupcakes, muffins, pies and brownies. One of your perfectly curated playlists was playing on your phone next to a stack of cookbooks.

Then it clicked. You had mentioned you needed time to work on things for the Navy's bake sale with the San Diego Children's Hospital. Apparently you volunteered for this fundraiser every year, and Bradley had promised you weeks ago that he would be your personal taste tester.

"I'm back, and I'm ready to work!" Bradley said as he kicked off his golf shoes and headed into the kitchen. "Give me stuff to sample."

"Hey, Roo. Did you have fun?" you asked, and he wrapped his arms gently around your waist from behind. He kissed the side of your neck as you unwrapped some sticks of butter. He thought you looked extra cute in your sweatpants and tee shirt with your hair piled on top of your head. And there was a smudge of flour on your cheek that he really wanted to take some time to kiss away.

You always made him feel like this. He couldn't figure out if he was more horny or more loved up. He wanted to romance you and tear your clothing to shreds at the same time. It was very confusing and oftentimes overwhelming, but he usually just went along with it.

"Yeah, golf was fun. Thanks for making me go," he whispered next to your ear. He didn't want to distract you too much, since you seemed to have a lot of baking to finish. "Can I help at all, Baby Girl? I know how to separate eggs now, remember? Or I'm more than willing to sample what you've made."

With a grin, you turned in his arms slightly and kissed his lips. "Want to try one of the brownies for me?" you asked, nodding your head toward a tray cooling on the island.

"Yep." He cut himself a large square and took a bite. Of course it was perfect. "So good, it brings tears to my eyes, Sweetheart," he mumbled around another bite.

"Good. Now try a blueberry muffin," you instructed him as you set two beautiful looking pies in the oven.

Bradley ate a muffin in three bites and moaned. "Delicious, Baby Girl. Can I try a cupcake?"

"Sure, they're cinnamon spice with cream cheese frosting," you said, but he'd already eaten half of one. And now you were mixing ingredients in a bowl with a wooden spoon, kind of dancing along to the music playing, and Bradley really couldn't help himself.

He stood behind you and kissed your neck again, letting his hands come to rest on your hips. "And what about this? Can I try a sample? It looks so pretty, I'd love to eat it."

You giggled and then gasped as Bradley slid his hands to the front of your hips, in between your sweatpants and your apron. He rubbed himself against your butt and you moaned, "What are you doing, Roo?"

He grinned into your hair and kissed your ear. "I heard you like meat."

You burst out laughing, and he was so happy he had bought you that apron. He loved making you laugh, and tried to make it a daily priority.

"I like your meat," you whispered, still laughing.

"Think you can take a little break, Sweetheart?" Bradley untied your sweatpants and slipped his hand inside the elastic band, caressing the soft skin of your belly. You tipped your head back against his shoulder as he drew little circles with his fingertips next to your belly button.

He let his fingers trail lower until they toyed with the top of your underwear. Your phone started playing I Only Have Eyes for You, and Bradley sang along.

'My love must be a kind of blind love,

I can't see anyone but you.'

You whimpered and spun in his arms so you were facing him. Now his fingers were kneading into your lower back. You looked up at him, and he was struck by the expression of desire on your face.

'Are the stars out tonight?

I don't know if it's cloudy or bright.

I only have eyes for you.'

"Bradley," you moaned, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him down to kiss you. You and he drifted slowly around between the kitchen counter and the island, dancing to the song. Your languid kisses were making him dizzy. The lazy way you moved him around the kitchen and the softness of your sighs was mixing with the sweet smell of baked goods.

Everything took on a hazy quality as Bradley untied your apron and tossed it gently aside. "I love you," he whispered before claiming your mouth again. Your fingers tangled gently in his hair, pulling softly on his scalp; Bradley was practically panting at your touch. He wrapped his arms around your waist until you were flush against the front of him. When his mind registered that you weren't wearing a bra, he groaned. He gazed down at you between kisses. A different song started playing, but his brain couldn't tell what it was. He couldn't focus on anything but you.

He watched your tongue flick out of your mouth, and you licked his chin and then his lower lip, and soon he was devouring you, pulling your lip between his teeth and nibbling. "Good enough to eat," he murmured as you pulled his golf shirt over his head.

You giggled as you ran your hands over his bare shoulders and chest. "I agree," you whispered, placing open mouthed kisses just below his collarbones before licking the scars on the side of his neck. Bradley's head tipped back as your fingers connected with the button of his golf pants, and when you guided them down his legs along with his boxer briefs, he had to bite his lip. You were placing gentle kisses to his thighs and along the length of his erection.

He hauled you up to your feet and wrapped his arms around you, backing you up against the counter. "God, Baby GIrl, you feel better than anything." He kissed you hard as your legs tangled with his, and he held you upright, delving his tongue into your mouth.

Bradley was dimly aware that you were pulling your shirt over your head, and he watched some strands of your hair fall around your face. You were gorgeous like this, your eyelids half closed as you bit your lip and looked up at him. He shook his head slowly, taking it all in.

When he guided your sweats and your underwear off, he wrapped his hands around the backs of your thighs and lifted you up, setting you gently on the edge of the counter. Your hands immediately went to his chest, and you yelped, but he wasn't going to drop you. Then you welcomed his lips back to yours as you scooted to the edge. Bradley could feel the warm wetness of your opening pressing against his length when you spread your legs open for him. He adjusted himself so you were perfectly lined up, and he wrapped your arms around his neck before wrapping his hands around your waist.

He kissed you gently, reverently as he pushed himself inside you. You sighed into his mouth and he moved in a slow, steady rhythm, in time with the sweet melody playing from your phone. He would remember this moment when he was deployed; he'd play it over and over again. Knowing he could come back home to this, to you, made everything okay.

You ran the tip of your nose along his cheek, kissing him there and whispering his name. Your voice spurred his movements, and he pushed himself into you harder and harder without picking up the pace. He watched your breasts bounce each time he bottomed out, and you tipped your head back, guiding his lips to your neck. He sucked on your soft skin, biting you and nuzzling against you. Then he soothed you with his mustache and his tongue. He only wanted to make you feel good.

He could feel you starting to squeeze him, so he slid his knuckles back and forth along your belly before settling his fingers on your clit. He gathered some of your wetness and teased you closer to coming. When he wrapped his other arm around your back and pulled you hard onto his length, you cried out, your voice breaking on his name.

Unable to control himself, he fucked into you with faster strokes, nearing his own end as you wrapped your legs around him, riding him to completion. Once you were both panting, and he was just thrusting his cum further into you as his thrusts slowed down, Bradley realized that the kitchen timer was going off.

"Sweetheart, what's the timer for?" he rasped next to your ear, nuzzling against you. He didn't want to pull out of you yet, but he needed to in order to reach the timer. He fumbled with it, distracted as his cum dripped from your pretty pussy and onto the counter.

"Umm," you hummed, biting your lip and running your hands through your very messy hair. "I ummm... the pies? I think I put pies in the oven?"

Bradley nodded and shoved your oven mitts onto his hands, he carefully pulled both pies out, setting them down gently on the stove burners. He turned to you, and you winced when you saw them. They both had slightly burned edges and very dark tops.

"I'll still eat them!" Bradley offered when he saw your face. "And I'll love them!"

You cradled your head in your hands and laughed. "This is because you're never quick, Bradley."

"Okay, okay," he said in mock-defense, tossing the mitts onto the counter. "You can complain about a lot of things when it comes to me, but do not complain about that, Baby Girl."

"It was merely an observation, Roo. Not a complaint," you said, giggling as he wrapped his arms around you and kissed you senseless.

Then after you cleaned up, he helped you bake two new pies while he ate one of the burned ones directly out of the pie pan with a fork.

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*sigh* Thanks anonymous friend, I really loved writing this one!

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#bradley bradshaw fanfiction #bradley rooster bradshaw x baby girl #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster x reader #rooster x you #rooster fanfic #rooster x female reader #rooster x reader #top gun fanfiction #bradley bradshaw imagine #bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw

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treedaddymcpuffpuff · 8 months

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Beneath Miles of Stone - Part five - John Wick x Plus Size Fem Reader

Summary: John has been in prison for nine months. He’s content to stay if it means appeasing the high table and keeping peace between the owners of each continental. However, he meets someone who erases that willingness. Peace be dammed.

TW: Bullying

Michael has a lot of stuff. A lot of heavy stuff. Despite him assuring her that he can move it all in on his own, she still wants to help.

It would be kind of a dick move if she didn’t assist with all of this. An hour in, and the apartment is already transformed from bland and empty into a hoard of pastel rainbow decor and soft white staple pieces.

She takes a break to admire the painting of a fluffy white angel cat over watercolor Van Gogh scenery. Michael comes through the door, panting, with his White Cottage microwave in tow.

“Who painted this?” She asks him.

He smiles, blushes, puts the microwave down and then his hand on his hips. “I did.”

Her eyes grow wide. “This is amazing.”

He chuckles. “Thank you.”

She likes Michael a lot already, but she’s also very jealous of him and his many talents and cool possessions. He makes her want to decorate and be creative, both skills she’s never been able to possess correctly.

She hasn’t gotten the key made yet, so she goes out and does that while he starts unpacking his things. By the time she’s done, her apartment looks astonishing. Fairy lights twinkle over gauze white curtains and a big speaker plays soft hiphop music in one corner of the living room. Her couch is full of comfy white and grey fluffy throw pillows. An incense burner releases gourmand, smoky aroma into the air.

Michael is stretched out on the couch, taking a break, watching Legally Blonde on DVD. Her small TV is now in her room and his bigger flatscreen dwarfs the stand that it was on.

She sits down beside him with two glasses of water. Before she can set hers down on the coffee table, he stops her. “Wait! Coasters!”

He digs through two boxes of stuff before he finds new marble coasters for them to set their drinks on.

She laughs at him and he grins back. “I know, I know,” he tells her, “typical trust fund kid BS.”

“You’re fine,” she says. “I was laughing at the coasters because the table is already a mess.”

“Listen,” he says, “this table just needs some tee ell cee. A sander and some paint would do her wonders.” He pats the wooden top.

“Can I help?” She asks, excited and jumping at the opportunity a little too eagerly.

“Of course you can,” he assures.

She remembers him telling her that his mother is an artist. “Did your mom teach you to paint?”

He nods. “She also taught me how to make miniatures. You know, like dollhouses but for adults?”

“That’s amazing. Do you trade art with her?”

“I do,” he says, “we send things back and forth in the mail. Although my dad says it ‘clogs up their post office box’.”

“He’s not a fan of art?”

Michael snorts. “He hates everything except golf. Sometimes I think he hates me.”

She shakes her head. “Does he really hate you? You’re the perfect son.”

Michael sighs. “No, but he hates gay people, so it’s close enough. When I first came out to him, if my mother wouldn’t have been there, he would’ve probably shot me. He’s a real man’s man if you know what I mean...”

She nods, smiling ruefully. “Oh, I know exactly what you mean.”

Michael thinks for a moment. “We should get a dog.”

“I would love that, but it’s no pets here.”

He raises his eyebrows and sips at his water. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

They decide it has to be a quiet dog, one who’s comfortable being alone at night, and there are an abundance of local shelters displaying perfect furry candidates online.

“Rocky. Pitbull mix. Potty trained, good with kids and other pets, sweet and loves everyone.” She shows Michael a picture of a medium sized black, stout dog with shiny grey eyes.

Michael shows her his own selection, a retired service beagle named Winnie. “Short for Winnifred,” he reads, “loves people and other pets, very polite, and hardly ever barks.”

“I love them both,” she groans, leaning back into the couch cushions.

“Same,” Michael sighs. “It’s one in the afternoon. Do you work tonight?”

“Yup.” She presses an arm over her face, blocking out the ceiling light.

“Don’t you have to sleep?” He asks.

She’s not tired at all because she slept through the night—wet dreams work wonders on insomnia—but she agrees because Michael sounds like he needs some alone time. Plus, her DVDs and TV are in her room now, and if she can’t sleep she can watch an old, comfortable flick.

The problem isn’t getting to sleep, it’s staying there—waking up sweating, gasping, whining John’s name. She slaps her mouth shut, presses her face into her pillow, and prays to any deity listening that her voice wasn’t loud enough for Michael to hear. First day in the new place and his roommate is a fiend. It would make any sane person want to revoke their rental agreement immediately.

She should be embarrassed and anxious that Michael potentially heard her, but instead she’s grinding against her sheets and thinking of tall men handcuffed to beds.

This won’t work. This isn’t working. She’s so pent up that it’s borderline painful. She sticks her hand into her sleep pants, past her underwear, and into a sloppy mess, tries to think about anything but John while she rubs herself raw, but in doing so her brain latches onto the thought of him and pretty soon he’s the only thing on her mind.

She tries to paint a decent fantasy of what she would like sex with him to be, but really she doesn’t give a shit as long as it’s him. And that’s what scares her. He could be absolutely celibate and she’d still crave whatever he wanted to give her whether it be a rough kick or a soft caress—she’d be his dog, and **this is the worst time for her to realize that because her alarm is going off for work.

She orgasms at the cost of being ten minutes late.

The locker room lights are off when she goes to put her things away, which is unusual. Since she started, they’ve been lit around the clock. In fact, she’s not even sure where the light switch is in here because she’s never had to use it. Fumbling around in the pitch black is making her even tardier. Finally, when she finds the switch and flips it, the room illuminates, and standing under the migraine-inducing glow is someone who makes headaches seem like a dream come true.

Benny grins from his seat on the bench, which he quickly abandons in favor of looming over her. Once again, the sweaty, edematous mass of him blocks her exit.

She’s too busy contemplating if anyone would hear her scream to see him hold his open palm out expectantly.

“Give it to me,” he says.

“What?” She asks, imagining in another universe she sounds angry and oppositional instead of whiny and terrified. In another universe, she can also kick his ass. Not in this one, though. In this universe, she does as Benny demands and hands him her phone so she doesn’t have to suffer through the touch of his greasy skin a second time.

He holds her phone in one hand while the other holds his own. She doesn’t bother trying to see what he’s doing because she can’t get her feet to move let alone stand on tiptoes and look over his shoulder.

This goes on for a while in which her only thought consists of asking herself if she could run to the door and make it into the populated infirmary before he can catch her. Again, this is a solution mainly dependent on her stubborn feet.

She’s not really worried about what he puts on her phone. It’s what he’s getting from it that sets her pulse careening.

He reaches out and tries to shove it into her jacket pocket, but luckily that’s when her feet decide to save her and step away from his hands. He scowls at her like she just insulted his mother.

“Fine.” Benny opens his hand and drops her phone on the stone floor. She winces when she hears the shatter, then looks back up at his pleased, disgusting expression.

“Remember our trip.” He pushes past her, not enough to hurt but to make her yelp and stumble, and slams the door shut on his way out.

Her phone isn’t broken. The screen has a tiny crack in one corner but other than that it’s still perfect.

She grabs her bag from her locker and brings it with her to the nurse’s station, labeling the locker room as an unsafe and off limits space, which are becoming more bountiful by the day.

John is not her patient tonight. On her day off they must have had an influx of admissions because she’s responsible for 10 of them and the infirmary is unusually and appropriately staffed.

Her hopes of his nurse trading him are slim to none because he’s a wonderful patient and over time everyone has seemed to agree that they want him on their assignment sheet.

The other nurse’s that take and give her report always talk about what a cool, easy going guy he is and how they’re surprised that he needs that many guards with him.

“What do you think he did?” Stan, one of the day shift nurses, asks her.

“My bet’s on released a circus full of wild animals and let them trample a small town, but I could be wrong.” She taps her pen against her report sheet and laughs at her own joke.

Stan snorts. “He probably killed some rich guys.”

The other nurses like him so much that most of their theories on why John is in four point restraints with four men guarding him at all times is because he’s done something valiant that pissed someone powerful off.

That’s probably the other reason his wound looks better; not just because of her, but because if you like a patient or connect with them you’re more than likely going to give them the best care you can provide.

If she’s honest, it kind of makes her feel sick. Not because everyone has grown to like John, but because that means she’ll have less chance of being his nurse from here on out. Also, she knows it’s kindergarten mentality, but she liked him and treated him well first while the other ones had to get to know him beforehand.

Her case load is heavy. A couple IV’s, wound changes, someone with a tracheostomy. She sits down to chart, finally, at 3 AM.

One of the other nurses, Bill, calls for her across the hall.

She fights the urge to groan while standing on sore feet and walking over to his medication cart.

Bill grins at her, looking like he’s really enjoying himself. “My patient in 9 wants to see you.”

“Me?” She asks.

Bill shrugs, still looking very amused. “He says he needs to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Bill tells her. “Seems that he likes your company, though.” He gives an eyebrow raise at the awkward expression crawling onto her face.

She reminds herself that this her workplace for the 80th time and that Bill’s suggestive expressions are just him messing around. Joking. That’s all. He’s joking.

John is watching the door, waiting for her. When she pops in like a mouse and scurries to his bed, he feels the urge to pat her on the head for showing up which would be the only thing he could do to stop himself from grabbing her up and kissing her.

His smile is wide and genuine. “How’s the roommate search?”

“Uh, I got one.” She smiles timidly, hoping he doesn’t think she’s erratic and air-headed for finding someone so fast

His eyes widen just the smallest bit. “That’s good, is she…nice?”

She nods too eagerly. “He’s great. And he has great decorations.”

The key word here—at least the one his ears attune to—is he. Not because a woman and a man living together automatically entails romance or connection, but because John knows men—John is a man—and most of them turn out to be less than good.

He tries not to look mean, to keep his smile, to focus on her being here with him in the present and alive and well; If he doesn’t, rage will start talking, nefarious, whispering sin in his ear, assuring him that it wouldn’t be hard to break out of these handcuffs and make sure her roommate becomes her loyal dog for the rest of the time he spends living with her and alive.

“If you wouldn’t have suggested it, I’d probably be homeless by next week.” She tries to sway the conversation toward optimism because she sees something in his expression that reads like he’s a little upset. He probably does think she’s a moron at this point.

Maybe it’s just good that she’s happy. He tries to shift focus onto that. The roommate can’t be malignant if she’s so upbeat.

It’s been very easy to talk to John most times, but then there are moments like this when something awkward and unsaid hangs between them and more often than not she doesn’t know what it is. Maybe he doesn’t either.

“Just be careful,” is what he decides to say.

She chuckles. “I will, don’t worry.”

He doesn’t understand what’s funny—again, but he appreciates the laugh. One of them can get him through a few hours, and they’re so easy to wring out of her pretty throat.

One of the security guards stands, stretches, yawns. He says he’s going to take a break. The other guards are asleep, so once he leaves they’ll be alone.

“I’m gonna go to vending, John you want anything?” He asks.

John shakes his head no. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry if I bothered you while you were busy,” he says, too eager to talk as soon as the guard walks out. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

She purses her lips, which he thinks means she’s trying not to leak an expression that will probably be embarrassing. Really, she’s trying to tame her lion heart back into its cage before it sinks its teeth into him and refuses to let go.

“I’m okay, John.” She attempts smiling. “You’re the one in the hospital bed.”

He shrugs like his stab wound and near death are just a hiccup.

She talks again. “And I’m glad you called me in. I like talking to you.”

His face is all smile now. “Likewise.”

He tells her to pull up a chair if she wants, and she steals one of the metal ones that the breaking guard left behind, sitting by his bedside. They start with a casual conversation about the weather that turns into a discussion on harsh winters in Belarus.

“Did you grow up there?” She asks him.

He nods. “I traveled a lot.”

“So, you’re Russian?” She puts her chin in her palm and stares at him like he is the most interesting person in the world. She’s adorable like this. He wants to brush the stray hairs from her cheeks.

“Yes. American, now.”

“Do you speak Russian?” Her eyebrows raise.

“да, красивая девушка” His tone automatically slides into a deeper baritone when he says this, and it makes her shudder.

He needs to be nerfed. Outlawed. He should not be handsome, nice, like-able, and be able to speak a different language in his perfect voice. It’s really not fair at all.

She’s too busy trying to tame her rogue thoughts to ask him what he even said. The desire to climb into his lap and straddle him crosses her mind twenty times in different ways. She blinks heavy. “You’re the coolest person I know.”

They talk until the guard comes back from his break, mainly about Belarus and what it was like there and where else he has traveled.

Although she has a ton of charting to catch up on, she doesn’t want to leave him. The taste of human connection is on her tongue after a couple years of abstinence and she’s becoming addicted.

When she exits his room, it’s with reluctance and impressive self control.

She tells him to sleep. He promises he’ll try.

It would be easier to do her job if she wasn’t catching Benny sneering at her whenever they’re in the same space, but she gets through it, reasoning that John has it worse than her because he has to suffer through six hours with the asshole guard in his room. And, it’s easier also because of…well, John himself.

#john wick fanfic #john wick fanfiction #john wick x plus size reader #john wick x reader #john wick x you #keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves fanfiction

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dbaydenny · 8 months

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Wooden shaft golf clubs

in a well worn leather bag,

a few balls and tees,

implements of someone's sport,

the epitaph never etched.

D W Eldred

#poetry #tanka #old golf clubs

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hannahssimblr · 8 months

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Chapter Fifteen

I sit on a kitchen chair sulkily drinking my burned cappuccino, crafted with minimum love and far too much bubbly froth, as Jude rifles around downstairs doing something that I didn’t bother to ask about. I only hear the occasional thump, or opening door, while his Americano gets cold on the table across from me.

I stare out the window at the blue, sparkling sea under the afternoon sun and resent the fact that I’m finally back by the water, my favourite place to be, and it’s far too cold to swim in it. If I stare long enough and let my vision blur I can almost see myself out there like a ghost, seventeen in a little bikini, paddling out as far as my waist and then gliding forward with my face towards the horizon, early morning, an empty beach when everything was so much easier than it is these days. I thought life was complicated then. I thought that I had it hard, but I didn’t. I didn’t know a thing.

I don’t know what Jude is doing downstairs. He stopped making sounds a while ago now, and I half expected him to come back up to the kitchen. My cappuccino is down to its final dregs, and his coffee sits full, black and so still that the light from the kitchen window reflects perfectly on the surface. When I reach out and touch the cup it’s still relatively warm, so I take it off the table to bring it to him.

He’s sitting on the couch with one foot up on the coffee table. His profile is facing me, tilted down to look at the book he has balanced on his lap. One hand is on the page, the other rests on a little pile of rumpled orange neoprene on the cushion. He hardly glances at me as I make my way to him and place his coffee on the table next to his ankle, and holds out the fabric to me.

“Your bikini.”

“You found it?”

“Yeah I had a look. It was in my sister’s room.”

“Someone must have thought it was hers.”

“Yeah.”

I take it from him, and he looks back at the book in his lap, which, now that I’m nearer to him I see is full of pretty pencil drawings. There’s a drawing of fishermen climbing aboard a little boat. A man teeing up a golf ball. A woman having a cigarette, leaning over wooden railings with a distant look on her face. I sit down next to him and look too.

“Is this your work?”

“Yeah, this was my sketchbook from a few years ago. I found it when I was looking around, actually, I forgot that I even did some of these.”

“You never showed this to me before.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No, even though you promised.”

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad I didn’t see these, they would have shattered my confidence.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true, evidently you were twice the artist at eighteen than I ever was.”

“Your work was beautiful. And it isn’t a contest anyway, you can’t compare one style with another.”

He clearly underestimates my ability to compare anything and everything in my life in order to make me feel as awful as possible about my own abilities at all times. “Yeah I suppose.” I say benignly.

He flips a few more pages in silence, and I wonder perhaps if he’s remembering where he was when he drew these things. I wonder where I was at those moments too. When he drew the couple playing tennis, was I lying on the beach with Claire? What about that drawing of Kasper playing Xbox, his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth in concentration? Maybe I was destroying Kelly in a ruthless game of ping pong in the caravan park community hall. We were doing all of the things that normal teenagers do when left to ourselves, but I do know that I never really did anything back then without thinking about him, where he was and what he was doing. Not from the moment I clapped eyes on him.

He turns over to a new page close to the back of the sketchbook and we both tense up. I’ve seen these drawings before. Five heads arranged on a page. One on each corner, and one in the middle. Me. My face. My expressions. Jude says nothing, he doesn’t move. I wondered two years ago, when I found these drawings in the depths of his Instagram page, just as I wonder now; what was he thinking about when he drew these?

“It’s me.” I say, pretending to be surprised.

“Yes, it’s you.”

“I like the way that you drew me.”

“Thank you.” He’s frowning now. “I liked drawing you.”

“That one in the middle.” I say. “I don’t know what that expression is. You know, I’ve never seen myself look like that.”

“You make that face all the time.”

I try to mimic it a bit, the quirk at the corner of my mouth, the cheeky tilt of the head. “I do?”

“Yeah it’s how you look when you’ve said something that you think is going to make me laugh.”

“Ah, that explains it. I try to make you laugh all of the time with my shit jokes.” And I laugh then, hoping that I’ll set him off too, as I usually can. Just a smile usually has him grinning right back, but not now. He stays perfectly still with that flat, stoic expression on his face, and I let my grin slowly slide away and we lapse into a long silence.

“I don’t want to be your friend.” He says.

“What?”

He looks at me and his hands fall limp by his sides. There is a tremble in his voice. “I don’t want to be your friend. I’ve thought about it, and I can’t do it.”

My heart kicks up and I start to feel sick. “What do you mean?”

“You told me, outside the hospital, that you don’t want to ruin our friendship with any other complicated feelings, that it’s all too important to you. Well I’ve thought about it now and I don’t think I know how to be your friend without my feelings for you getting in the way. It’s not fair on me. Or on you. I can’t do it.”

“Are you saying that you don’t want to be in each other’s lives anymore?”

“I’m saying the same thing to you now as you said to me that night in Jen’s flat. I’m not sure that friendship – like, real friendship with no other feelings involved is possible for you and me. I thought that maybe you were wrong at the time, but you weren’t. If we’re not going to be together then this just isn’t fair. So, yeah, I want to be in your life, but apparently it’s not in the same way that you want to be in mine anymore. I can’t put myself through it.”

“Put yourself through-”

“Having to be around you and not ever getting to have more than just friendship. Like, to potentially be around when you decide that you want those things with another guy. That’s too hard, and I just don’t want to do that to myself. This isn’t an ultimatum or anything like that, I’m just stating a fact. You can feel, or not feel, whatever you want, but I need to take care of myself here, and I’d rather if my heart didn’t break every time I look at you.”

I start to feel flustered. “But that’s not what I want.”

“Well, sorry but I-”

“No, I don’t want that.” My voice shakes. “Where is this coming from all of a sudden?”

“This is not all of a sudden. This is what I wanted to say to you at breakfast before our plans got derailed. I’m sorry I put it off, I just find it hard to face things.”

“Jude, no, I want-”

“Yeah, what do you want?” He looks straight into my eyes with an intensity that makes me want to shrink away. It’s the simplest question in the world, and yet so weighted and complex that it hangs heavy in the air. I can’t speak.

“What do you want, Evie?”

“You.” I manage.

“As a friend, or as more?”

I try to derail. “You’re being different around me. You’re all distant and withdrawn, I don’t like you when you’re like this.”

His mouth is a grim line. “You’re so confusing. I have no idea what you’re thinking, or what you want from me. You really mess with my head.”

“I’m not! You’re the one who’s confusing! You’ve always been confusing and unclear and non-communicative, so I don’t know why-”

“No, don’t do that.”

“Huh?”

“You’re trying to turn this around and throw it back at me. Just face it. Am I being unclear right now? Was I unclear with you in Berlin? The way I remember it I looked you right in the face and I told you what I felt, I broke up with my girlfriend for you. I made moves and I took action, so don’t try and say that to me. Unclear. Please, Evie. You have some nerve.”

I’m stunned. I fully expected him to back down straight away, to sit there and take it, but I realise immediately that I was a fool. He sees right through me, and my stomach starts churning.

“Yeah.” He goes on. “You’re right that I couldn’t talk to you about my feelings four years ago- two years ago, and I had reasons for that, but yeah, I’ll freely admit that I was a bad communicator and I confused you, but to be honest, all of that stuff pales in comparison to the way that you are. You are so much worse at it than I ever was. I don’t know what to do, or what to say to you, because it seems like no matter what I do or say it’s the wrong thing, or it upsets you or freaks you out. Am I allowed to want you or not? Like, which is the right thing? If I tell you I do, you’re frightened, and if I keep my distance and pretend like I don’t you’re devastated, Evie, I’m in limbo here. What do you want?”

Tears spring to my eyes. “I… I don’t know.”

He stops, takes a slow breath, and says more gently. “I thought that you’d want me to kiss you. That’s why I did it. I thought I was sure about it, the things you said to me before about having never gotten over me, the way you acted around me that night I got kicked out of the bar, you looked at me like… like you wanted me. I thought it was a sure shot, I’ve never been that wrong before. I really thought you’d be all in.”

I did too.

“And you kissed me back. You did. You grabbed my face, bit my lip and you, you kissed me back. I was there.” His exhale is a shaky whoosh. “And I don’t understand why you were so enthusiastic about me when you thought I still had a girlfriend, but the minute you found out that I didn’t you were so put off.”

“I… wasn’t.”

“Yeah you were, as though there was something more exciting about having me sneak around with you than having everything out in the open. Why is that?”

“Maybe I’m just awful, then.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like a victim, that’s not you. I don’t think you’re awful, I just want to understand.”

“Maybe the things I feel and do don’t make logical sense.”

“No, come on. Stop that.”

I feel trapped like a mouse. All I can do is sit blinking, and wonder what the repercussions of getting up and running away from this might be. Surely I could just hide in the bathroom or something. I feel unsettled in my seat, uncomfortable in my skin, too overwhelmed to meet his eyes.

“Stop buying into this image of yourself of being somehow defective, irreparable or too complicated to understand. You do things for a reason, I just wish you’d help me understand what those reasons are instead of deflecting and trying to wriggle your way out of talking about things in a normal way.”

“I don’t.”

He whips the book off his lap and drops it onto the coffee table. I look at it. Stare at the yellowed pages and the crease along the damaged corner of the cover because it’s easier than looking at him. “My God, yes you do. Yes you do, and you have to stop doing it, because it’s boring. I don’t know why you do it, but you lean so much on this victim mentality and tell yourself stories about how badly you’ve been hurt, and how nobody wants you or loves you or could ever possibly do so, when it’s all a big lie. Look in the mirror, Evie. You’re a pretty girl, and you know it, you act like you don’t, but you do. Believe me, I’ve heard the way men talk about you, I’ve seen the way they watch you walk across the room, and I know you’ve seen it too. You just prefer to act like the world has cursed you with averageness because it better fits your narrative, just like this insane, teenaged idea about who’s in and out of your league.”

The hierarchical structure of the dating pool.

“Do you like living by the idea that I’m somehow too good for you but I want you anyway? Is it an ego thing? You know, I was pretty flattered by it when we were younger, but now I think it’s ridiculous. I’ve told you, I’m sitting here telling you that I like you, I’ve been obsessed with you, I lose sleep over you and you’re ignoring it in favour of your own, comfortable delusions, and your whole ‘poor me’ mentality. What the hell is that?”

“Well you are too good for me.” I manage, with words shrill and wobbly, and I’m not even buying it anymore.

“Let me decide those things for myself. It’s always been obvious to me that I’d love you, you’re everything that I love. You’re so funny and goofy, ambitious and talented and so beautiful that you make me weak from looking at you sometimes, but sometimes I really wish that I didn’t, you know? I think my life would be easier if I felt nothing for you at all.”

“Well, fine, I feel the same.” I say as stinging tears pour over my cheeks. “Because being around you only reminds me of all the things I don’t like about myself, and you’re the reason I feel like shit.”

His spine stiffens and he shuts his eyes for a beat, like he’s trying to bear the full weight of my ridiculousness upon his shoulders. “That just isn’t true. If I wasn’t around there’d only be some other person to pile this onto. This mentality, this inherent dislike you have for yourself has nothing to do with me, and the way you’re blaming me for all this… You know that it isn’t fair on me, it makes it near impossible for me to communicate with you about how I’m feeling. When I call you out on something that’s hurtful to me and you turn it around and immediately internalise what I’m saying as some confirmation that you’re a bad person it kills any chances we have of talking this out rationally. It means that we can’t work through it together.”

Nobody has ever said things like this to me before. Something inside my head is misfiring, and I realise that everything I want to say is some variation of an expression of my victimhood. But even as I sift through a catalogue of defensive words I could use, things that shift the blame away from me, make me look innocent, but I know it will be useless to say them. They would only push him further away from me and be the final blow in this relationship that I’ve already made gallant inroads in destroying. I can’t, not when he looks at me like that, with this painful mixture of upset and confusion, frustration and vulnerability. But mostly because deep down I know that he’s right. I feel my brain trying to chew on that new thought, almost, almost taking it on before deciding it can’t digest it. It ejects it right out the top of my head. “You’re wrong.” I say with wild eyes that can’t focus on anything in front of me. “You’re just plain wrong.” But he knows he isn’t. He doesn’t look pleased about it, in fact he looks completely drained, but he knows.

“Evie, I’m not. You have to think about the way that you are, the way that you treat yourself and speak to yourself. You are more horrible to yourself than anybody else could possibly put the time into being.”

“The way that you’re speaking to me is horrible.” I manage, in one last half-hearted attempt at combat in a war that I’ve already lost and he shrugs. “There isn’t anything wrong with conflict. You and I have needed to talk about this for a long time.”

I just give him a jerky shrug and sniffle. “Oh.” I say, thickly into the wrist that’s wiping tears and snot from my lip.

“I want you to see it from my perspective, I’ve hurt you, really badly, and I know that and I’ll never stop being sorry for it, but you’ve hurt me too. I know you don’t mean it, and it’s because of the way that you feel about yourself, but I’m just asking you to step out of your own head for a minute and think about you’re affecting the people around you instead.”

“I really don’t know how to be different, Jude. This is just how I am.”

He takes both of my hands in his, linking our fingers together and looking into my eyes with his steady, unflinching gaze, and if he cares about the snot, he doesn’t show it. “Look, I’m telling you, I, Jude Turner, am in love with you. I have felt like this since I was eighteen, and it’s not some big joke, or a big, elaborate trick on you. I do not have a psychiatric disease. Do you feel the same?”

He waits, eyebrows raised for what must be a full, agonising minute for me to say something, and then, more gently than anything he’s said in the last ten minutes he says “Evie, do you have feelings for me?”

“Oh of course I do.” I whimper, and new tears pour freely down my face. “How obvious is it? Everyone knows about me and my affliction. I can’t hide it. I’ve hardly ever thought about another guy since I met you.”

“So talk to me.” His eyes are pleading, and his thumbs stroke the soft underside of my wrists. “What is going on in your head?”

“God, I’m just so afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of change. Of being hurt. Of what people might think. Of you and what you’ll want from me.”

“What do you think I’m going to want from you?”

I pull one hand out of his grip to swipe my face again and my lip quivers. I’m sobbing now, and Jude is patient, even as I let the silence stretch on and whimper and cough until I feel ready to speak again. “God, I’m so insane.”

“You aren’t.”

“It’s going to sound stupid, but I’m afraid that you’ll want me.”

He hesitates. “Well…”

“Me. My body. Sex. Things I won’t be good at. And that I’ll show you new ways to be disappointed in someone that you couldn’t even conceive of before.”

“I’m honestly not sure what to say to that.”

“It’s so stupid, I knew it, I shouldn’t have admitted that, God, never-”

“No, I just don’t know what to say that won’t make you feel worse. Do you want me to say that I don’t want that or that I do?”

“Tell me the truth.”

“Well I do. Of course I do. Don’t you?”

I recall my heady, vivid dreams of my hands on his body. “I’ve thought about it.”

“You wouldn’t disappoint me. Never. I’d never expect anything, any kind of wild performance out of you, or whatever you believe I might want. I’ll worship you, you won’t ever regret it.”

“It scares me.” I say, very quietly. “I’ve done it before, plenty of times, but, I don’t know. It’s just that it never… I never…”

“I hated it at first too.” He confesses, tucking my hair behind my ear. “It can be terrible if it’s the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

I blink. I was sure that Jude, who in my head is the master of his own sexuality, would have had nothing but a rich history of total satisfaction. I never imagined a reality where things didn’t always come easy for him in that regard. He reads my questioning expression and shrugs lightly. “I was fourteen the first time.” He explains. “It was in a playground with this girl I used to know. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but I remember all the other details about it, like how I could hear my friends talking and laughing somewhere off in the distance, and the way my mouth tasted too sweet, like the cider we’d stolen from someone’s dad. I hated it so much I really thought I was going to get sick, and then in school, every time someone brought it up again I thought I’d be sick then too.”

“Oh, Jude…”

“We were really big on trying to be adults at the time, but I didn’t want any of it. I wanted to ride my bike around and climb trees, but that kind of thing was too embarrassing to admit, so…” A shrug. “It’s how it was. You can’t really go backwards from there, you know, like, have sex one day and then cycle race down a big hill the next day, you’re just like an adult and you have to live with it.”

“I never would have thought that about you.”

“Well, it’s pretty much the only topic that you and I never seem to be able to talk about, isn’t it? Sex, I mean.”

“I suppose so.”

“It gets better.” He tells me. “I swear, and like, I’m not saying this so that you’ll leap into bed with me, but if you ever wanted to try it out with me then I promise I’ll show you it can be good. It’s meant to be fun, and nice, and yeah, obviously it’s a bit vulnerable but it’s gone from being the worst thing I’ve ever done to the best thing, so I think it can be the same for you.”

“And if I’m really shit at it?”

“You couldn’t be.”

“I think you might be shocked at how shit I can be at things.”

“I just don’t believe that. You’ve never been bad at a thing in your life, and I’m a good teacher.” He splits into a grin, but there’s new heat in his eyes as they trace a slow triangle from my eyes to my lips and back. He’s thinking about it now.

I start thinking about it too, and heat instantly flares in my face, and the sun hits the angle of his cheek, warming his apricot coloured skin. Nobody has ever looked quite as pretty as he does at this moment. I look away quickly. “Those things you said in Berlin, about wanting me to be your girlfriend. That was too much.”

“Okay.”

“That feels too intense too soon, that’s why I was afraid. It felt like you’d done all of this thinking about what you wanted and you’d broken up with Astrid and you’d put all of these things in place and you expected me to just go along with it all without warning me.”

He hesitates. “Yeah, you’re right. I kind of did.”

“I really don’t know how to deal with things like that, when people just come at me head on and expect me to react, I can’t. I panic, and I don’t know what to say, and that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be with you, it’s just that the idea of going all in like that feels like too much change all at once.”

“We can go as slowly as you want. I don’t mean to pressure you.”

“You’re just used to asking for things directly, I get it, but it doesn’t work like that with me.”

“I understand that, I’m sorry.” He looks like he might cry.

“I’m sorry.” We reach for each other and I slot my head under his chin while he wraps his arms around me, and immediately I notice that I’ve blinked wet mascara onto his shirt. Oops. “I’m sorry that I’ve confused you and hurt you like this. I was so wrapped up with my own stuff that I didn’t think about you. Or maybe I did, maybe I just assumed that you could handle it.”

“I’m just a human man,”

“I know.”

“It’s only painful because of how much I care about you.”

“I’ll try to be better with the whole… victim thing. I didn’t even know I was like that.”

“It’s best to talk to someone about that stuff.”

“Like in therapy?”

“It mightn’t be a bad idea.”

“I don’t think I’m bad enough for something like that. It feels a bit extreme.”

I feel him sigh. “Alright. It’s up to you.”

I shut my eyes for a few moments and listen to the sound of his heartbeat beneath his ribs. I’m so tired, my body is weak and drained from the conflict and the emotion of this whole conversation, but I’m finally peaceful, like the worst is over. It doesn’t feel like the times I fought with Dean, I don’t feel beaten down and stripped of dignity and made a fool of, I feel a distinct calm, as though something has been repaired. Yet there is still one thing eating me.

“Can we be something between friends and a couple?” I say, and I tilt my head up to watch what my question does to him.

His eyes do a tour of my face. “What does that entail?”

“It means give me time to get comfortable with you.”

“Okay, I promise I won’t try to coax you into bed with me before you’re ready.”

“You might find that hard.” I tease, he smiles. “I’ll keep my hands to myself at all times.”

“Not at all times.”

“Okay sometimes. I might need some sort of guidebook for this. I’ve only had girlfriends and friends before, not grey areas.”

“Have you ever considered being more like a normal boy?”

He laughs for the first time all day and it feels like he’s filling my body with sweet honey. What have I been doing? I’m crazy about him. He doesn’t scare me, not when we’re sitting like this, wrapped up in eachother, basking in the warm spring sun that comes through the windows, and maybe we are meant to be together, because he makes me feel this indescribable way that nobody else ever has before him, and maybe nobody ever will again.

“Okay, so just to confirm, you want me?”

“Yes, Jude, I do.”

“Then the rest is just noise. We can figure it out.”

We smile at each other, and I say “I bet no other girl has ever made things so hard for you before.”

“You haven’t made it hard.”

“That’s a lie – I’m sure you’re used to women just flinging themselves right at you.”

He looks at me like I’ve said something really weird. “I feel a little concerned about the things you believe about me at times.”

“Please.” I grab his americano from the coffee table and put it into his hands. “Finish this, I spent good money on it.”

“This really is a horrible coffee, isn’t it?”

“Yeah it’s rank.”

He takes a perfunctory sip and pulls a sour face. “Thanks a lot, Liam.

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#lucky girl part 3 #tw: sex mention #tw: mental health

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alan-duarte · 1 year

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TIMING: Mid may

LOCATION: Portland country club PARTIES: Alan and Siobhan @banisheed SUMMARY: Alan wants to have a nice afternoon. Siobhan wants to have a nice afternoon. CONTENT WARNINGS: n/a

Everyone who golfed thought they were better than the people that didnt, that was a fact of golf. It was another fact of golf that Siobhan was bad at it. Which was partially why Siobhan loved golf. She also loved it for the stupidity, the several different sticks of varying sizes that she never understood, the fact that humans couldn’t be bothered to maintain green spaces unless it was for some sport, and, of course, the tiny carts she could ram into people. Being bad at the sport, for obvious lack of trying, meant that men often approached her to help. In the end she had them curled up in a puddle of their own tears; promise bound to help her and finally succumbed to the realization that she was never going to get any better or sleep with them and that they were stuck here, with her. Usually though, it didn’t happen so quickly. “Oh, come on, Greg.” She poked the man curled on the ground with her putter. “Don’t be such a baby about it. You’re the one that promised to help.” Prodding his gut earned her a few more wails. Siobhan sighed, this was boring. Her attention turned back to the length of the range: empty mostly except for the dark silhouette teeing up. Another person to bother. She jabbed the putter at Greg again. “Yeah, yeah, I release you from all your promises to me. Crack on then, Greg.” Greg didn’t move. Siobhan assumed he’d be fine. She picked up her clubs and ran down the range.

There was a piece of actual golf that Siobhan did enjoy. Of course, it was her own variation of the sport that she’d devised in her head: hit humans with golf balls. When she was playing hit-humans-with-golf-balls she was the best at it. Taking a ball out of her golf bag, she squeezed it firm in her palm as she ran down, waiting until she was close enough to swing her arm back and throw. The ball took a perfect arc right into the stranger’s back. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she called out immediately after. “Look at me! Such a klutz; I never know how to hit with these things.” She gestured to the clubs in her golf back. “Do you mind if I tee up with you?” Today would be a good day of hit-humans-with-golf-balls.

Alan had picked up golfing after a particularly unpleasant encounter with a guy who used to be in the Year book club during their senior year and claimed that anyone who couldn't golf clearly hadn't made it. It was before he started his business. Ten year reunion. The horror. He hadn't attended the one for twenty years since graduation day, mainly because at that point, it was clear to Alan that didn't want to be the sort of person who cared for living in the past. He had left that to people who peaked in high school. In the meantime, Alan however had grown fond of the sport, and had been going to the local golf course every fortnight.

He was picking one of his wooden clubs when a sharp pain on his shoulder brought him out of his stream of consciousness. A sharp ow escaped his lips and the man turned around to look in the direction of the woman's voice. Great. Another one of those.

He gave her a smile that looked like a grimace and turned his back on her, waving all that happened off with a brush of his hand. Hopefully, she'd stop in her track and find someone more interested. Instead she walked closer, asking him if she could join. Come on, this was his day off. "Fine." He cleared his throat and adjusting his stance, set the ball down on the tee before launching it far across the freeway. His eyesight might have been sharp, he'd have to walk a little to see precisely where it landed. Still he was mostly happy with his swing.

Silent as ever, he gave a look at the woman, moving aside as if to invite her to take his place.

Maybe this man was good at golf, Siobhan didn’t know. She was distracted by all the places she imagined hitting him with a golf ball: the temple, the shins, the ass, maybe one right between the eyes if the day went well for them. Should she hit him with the clubs too? Oh, but she’d killed a few people that way in the 80s; she couldn’t do a repeat. It was more fun to treat the stranger like target practice. Blunt force trauma with golf clubs was easy and trite. She skipped to the place he had once been, setting up the tee for her shot. “Do you golf here often?” She asked casually, the chipper lilt in her tone being indicative of her mischievous glee but passable for friendliness instead. She took out one of the thick clubs meant for distance, taking her stance at an angle that would be peculiar for anyone playing golf. But Siobhan wasn’t playing golf. “I haven’t seen you here before.” She tightened her grip on the club. “Are you any good at golf? I’m just horrid at it.” She swung; another clean shot. The ball whipped through the air, shooting into the man’s shin. What’d they call that? A hole in one? Siobhan smirked. “Oh no!” She wasn’t doing a very good job of pretending to be shocked. “I’m so sorry! See, that’s just what I was saying about my golf skills!”

“No, I don’t,” he did. Every fortnight, but he didn't want her to entertain the idea that this occurrence might become a recurrence. "Not good, not bad," with a shrug, Alan turned his back on her which was truly his sole mistake.

A sharp pain in his leg was all the man needed to realize this.

"¿¡Pendeja, que mierda te pasa ?!" He couldn't bite the insults back, nor the look of absolute anger in his eyes as he turned to look at her and her faux air of shock. Then it dawned on him. She must have been hired by someone to ruin his day. He might have ruined a few lives after all. Fair. Well played, he thought, while a smile etched itself onto his lips. Now that he knew what this was about, Alan could probably get something out of it.

"I've seen worse. In fact, it's rather impressive, considering…" he trailed off, leaving her time to think about it, about what he might imply here. "Well, I just think you're really brave about it, you know." This said, he gave her another smile, sympathetic as ever, and put his club back in its bag. Slinging it over his shoulder, the man began walking over to where the ball might have dropped.

Some people were fun to harass, they gave Siobhan a lot to work with. Other people, like this man, clearly just wanted to be left alone. It made annoying them very easy; she guessed that she’d bother him just by breathing too close to his face. He seemed like a sensible man, a normal man that just wanted to golf. Unfortunately, he was Siobhan's victim for the day. However, the thing about people that wanted to be left alone was that they were boring. The best she might get out of him was a ‘fuck off’ and ‘fuck off’s for someone like Siobhan were two a penny. She got ‘fuck off’s even when she wasn’t trying (she refused to entertain why that happened; entertaining it usually made her sad). She wanted more. She wanted his day so horribly ruined that when he thought of her face, he thought of it with the vitriolic anger reserved for people who litter, or whatever the equivalent for human sensibilities was. People who don’t clean their murder knives? Siobhan didn’t know.

“Brave about it?” Siobhan opened her mouth to say more but he was already off, walking down the range. She hadn’t even earned her ‘fuck off’. “Wait!” She chased him down, coming up beside him. “I just feel so bad about hurting you!” Her skin flared for the lie and she swatted her arms as if mosquitoes had been swarming. “Please, how can I make it up to you?” She reached into his bag and pulled out two golf clubs. “What if I got these warmed up for you?” Siobhan began swinging them around wildly in the air as she chased after her prey. Hopefully, one would just hit him. “I could use some golf pointers, you seem really skilled.”

“Really? You didn’t seem so…” Alan stopped himself. No, he had to pretend that he didn’t know she was hired to annoy him. She started scratching herself and the thought of scabies quickly made its way to his brain. How many times did his mother tell him not to go anywhere near people who scratched themselves? It’s contagious, mijo, she’d say, clinging onto his small hand to ensure no mishaps. But he hadn’t seen anyone with scabies in years and had forgotten about that event until now. “Hold up, stay right where you are.”

If he wasn’t going to insult her further by letting her know why he didn’t want her anywhere near me, he was also not happy with letting her think it was hitting him that did the trick. He had it worse every month. “You don’t have to make it up to me. Just… Stop following me around and we’ll be just fine,” he tried to scoot away while she reached for his bag, but she was swifter than him. Heh, those only cost $300 a piece, it wasn’t such a terrible loss. Yes it was. But it also wasn’t. “I suggest you go to the training range, and leave the green for more skilled folks, alright?”

Siobhan didn’t mean to obey him, but the suddenness of his voice caught her off guard and, just as he said, she stayed right where she was. “What?” She stared at him. “Why do you want to send me away? I’m just here to learn how to play golf from someone I admire as much as you.” Another lie. Siobhan swatted at her arms as her hives kicked up again. She scratched at her skin, moving closer. “Don’t you want to be a kind man and help a woman out?” She swung around the clubs again, finding that she was getting into a groove about it. It was a little like an interpretive dance: two swings to the left, three to the right, separate the sticks and flourish.In another world, it could have been a golfer mating call. “Look at me….I’m so helpless…” she tried to flutter her eyelashes at him. “....I need a big strong golf man to teach me how to golf.” She approached him slowly, hoping to get in closer for a hit or seven.

“Why?” Remember Alan, she’s here to ruin your day, don’t let her get the satisfaction. “Because that’s where you’ll find a lot of guys who are way too eager to help the poor damsel in distress,” who, if she was not sent here specifically to piss him off, was looking for someone stupid enough to marry her without a prenup.

He took a step back as she started swinging furiously the golf clubs around. Someone, him, was going to lose an eye if she didn’t stop that. “Will you stop behaving like a windmill for a second?” Wait. What in the romcom hell was going on here?

“Can you spare me your Notting Hill slash Harry meets Sally nonsense? I’m just trying to enjoy my day off and I’m extremely gay and uninterested.”

Oh, but the eager guys were exactly the ones Siobhan wanted. Eagerness was the perfect way to trap someone into promises they never wanted to keep. An eager man will agree to everything up to a certain point and she’d won a lot that way; a car, another car, a house, thousands of dollars, a newborn baby once but she returned that to the far more responsible mother and urged her to seek divorce. “Oh? You don’t like my waving?” She grinned. “Okay.” She threw his clubs as far away as she could, watching them spin and fly through the air before their eventual plummet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Siobhan turned back around. “My name isn’t Sally. Or Harry. Or Nottinghill.”

But it was his admission that gave Siobhan pause. It was certainly a lot harder to trick someone into giving her a car when they weren’t interested in her, but it wasn’t impossible. Her approach needed to be adjusted. “My condolences,” she started, “for the fact that you like men; men are terrible. I assume dating in Maine is like wading through a swamp of men who show off their big fish and men who want you to try their artisanal butter. The pickings are…” She gestured around the golf club which featured its own array of Maine locals: mostly older men who refused to admit they were never good at golf to begin with. “…slim.” She dropped her hand. “I have to suffer with this too. Do you think women come to this range? No. Absolutely not. I would love to do this with a woman instead.” She wouldn’t even take her hypothetical car. “But no, I get old men. I understand that there are those applications for dating inside of your phone—the tinder and the grinder and what have you—but I can't imagine the choices are really that much better.”

“Really?” Well it wasn’t like she was going to break them but the walk of shame that would follow isn’t one he was eager for. If he’d been doing quite a good job at controlling his face so far, realizing that she hadn’t seen the hit classics Notting Hill and When Harry Meets Sally brought out his most outraged expression just yet. How dare you, he mouthed out to himself.

While he went to pick up the golf clubs she’d just thrown away, Alan thankfully no longer had to hide his reactions to her nonsense, so much that he forgot not to chortle as she offered her condolences. What in the unhinged hell? “Are you seriously suggesting men wanting to offer me food is the worst that can happen? It’s not,” he put a hand on his hip and turned to look at her, “I’d rather that than men in graphic tees and men capris, thank you very much,” there was actually something attractive about a guy who knew how to fend for himself, which clearly wasn’t the case for the latter mentioned men. “I sometimes come with my sister,” but his sister had been off the dating scene for a bit, and just gave Alan a new niece for him to spoil. “Oh you really don’t want to try those apps. These people only want to get in bed and leave before breakfast,” how could you do that? He couldn’t fathom leaving the house on an empty stomach. Appalling. “You’d get along with one of my friends,” friend was a broad word to call his neighbor, but he figured Xochitl could get along with this woman, he had no doubt about it. She was friendly enough, but she didn’t let people walk on her toes.“She wouldn’t be caught dead posing with a fish either,” he put away the golf clubs and picked one to hit his ball closer to the hole. “I really wish you didn’t hit me though. I’d happily introduce you to her otherwise.”

Siobhan watched, a little stunned, as the man went after his clubs. She was convinced they’d be a lost cause. And as he went on, something less sinister clicked inside her head. The sort of thing that clicked when someone was being interesting enough that she didn’t feel the need to stab them to make the fun. Siobhan approached him. “You’re a romantic,” she said, stating it as if she’d known him all his life. “That is, at least, a very romantic outlook to have. I never said I was looking for a partner.” Could she argue? Perhaps she wasn’t entirely interested in romance, it always seemed to pass her like a train she just missed, but she was a romantic in every sense as well. She grew up to her grandmother’s poetry about death and read Austen by candlelight; some romance was simply baked into her core. “Or maybe you just really like food,” she conceded, realizing there was another explanation to his words. But was the act of feeding someone a meal crafted by one’s own two hands not a little romantic? It all circled back.

As he went on about his friend, Siobhan considered it. Not about having a friend, she didn’t care to, but if some woman was bemoaning the lack of good candidates then she assumed there was a plush bed she could fall into. But, no, she’d come here on a mission: she was going to bother men until the dull and constant ache over how much she hated herself subsided for that singular moment in time where she could feel superior to the puddle she reduced someone to. She didn’t care about meeting someone else, some hypothetical force she might— “Is she hot?” Siobhan’s curiosity got the better of her. “Oh, get over yourself. If you had to golf all day you’d want to hit people too. This sport is nonsensical.”

“You look desperately like someone who is looking for a 5th husband,” the kind of woman who hadn’t taken off the pins from her bridal chignon yet that she had already slipped on a form fitting black dress for the funeral of her husband who died such a tragic, accidental, unexpected death. He gave her a sympathetic look. Though Alan hadn’t lost any of his husbands to the reaper, he didn’t particularly feel like it would be just to judge her for it (especially since he was simply judging a book by its cover here). He made a living exploiting people’s weaknesses. If most of his deals were sealed without him using tricks, Alan knew that he wouldn’t have been as successful if he had let other realtors walk over him. That would be unacceptable. “I do like food though, cooking for others too,” he pointed out. Alan wasn’t the sort for grand gestures. He wouldn’t cover you in presents, but he’d make you dinner, make sure you had everything you needed to be comfortable and check on you regularly.

“Xochitl?” Alan might have not felt a thing for women, he was born with two eyes who worked very well. “She’s beautiful,” the kind of person that made heads turn. Whether she could give that woman a run for her money was to be determined but Alan figured he might have his revenge here. “Actually, I might give her your name and phone number,” he also would subscribe with a good number of newsletters with said phone number, though she didn’t need to find out yet how petty Alan could be. “I’m Alan, by the way,” he held out his hand for her to shake. “Though if I do that, I expect you won’t disturb my days at the golf course ever again.”

Siobhan’s nose crinkled. Yes, the ‘ready for the fifth husband who will also mysteriously die’ was both the vibe she hoped to give off and also the one she was aware that she did. If she was ever going to get married, it would be to a string of men who all met early deaths. Preferably they’d have a lot of money, but Siobhan wasn’t so picky—she would murder a poor man too. Still, it wasn’t nice when someone pointed it out to her. “And you look like someone on their third divorce,” she replied. Something about golf attracted sad people, in Siobhan’s mind. There was something humiliating about chasing a tiny white ball down and then just guessing at where it landed. It was something only a thrice divorced man could appreciate. “You can’t seduce someone with food,” she said, knowing that if someone presented her with a full cake, she would probably think about sleeping with them. “What do you do? Wave potatoes around?”

Siobhan’s nose crinkled again; this conversation was slowly approaching friendly. She didn’t come here to be friendly. Somehow, in fact, Alan seemed to be striking a deal with her: the number and name of some lonely attractive friend of his for her granting him the peace of golfing alone. Siobhan didn’t like it but clearly her golf violence was getting her nowhere. She ought to cut her losses and see if his friend was more fun to harass. “I’m not making any long-term promises,” she said, “and I’m not agreeing to that deal.” She reached out and shook his hand. “But for today, I will leave you alone if you provide me with her number. Agreed?” She paused. “And I’m Siobhan, by the way.”

“Second,” he corrected her, and finally granted her an honest smile. The idea that he could wave potatoes around even made him scoff although he didn’t reward her with a response. Wave potatoes around. That’s ridiculous. She was quite ridiculous, yes. But she was no longer harassing him. All he had to do was make her feel important, huh? And so he didn’t comment further on that, offering her a friendly smile instead.

“That’s alright.” He knew what she smelled like, Dior, the countryside and something rich. He could avoid her if she decided to show up at the golf course again. It wouldn’t be too difficult. She, however, didn’t need to know that.

“Very well. I can do that,” he just needed to find it in the HOA What’s App. They hadn’t precisely been on a phone number sharing basis, but that was fine, right? He just needed to let her know that a Siobhan would reach out to her, and that she was just a poor old widow looking for company in those trying times, right? “Are you ready to take notes?”

“Well, are you looking to get divorced a third time because I can set you up with someone,” Siobhan said, whipping out her phone. “Take notes?” She blinked. “Yeah, right. Whatever. Crack on. I hope she’s more fun than you.” After entering the woman’s details in, she stuffed it back into her pocket and stared at Alan. He had agreed to leave him alone for the day and while he wasn’t the man she needed, or the man she wanted, or the man who would let her hit him indefinitely with golf balls, he was the man who had given her a new fixation. She waved at him, offering one last smile before she turned to leave for good. Xóchitl, whoever she was, probably would be more entertaining than Alan.

And if she wasn’t, Siobhan would just hit her with golf balls too.

#wickedswriting #banisheed #shiobhan threads #under blue moon threads

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