The whiskey burns as it slides down his throat. Liquid fire. Brain fogs, soul numbs, veins burn like fire. More whiskey, please.
Not scotch tonight. Scotch is for gentlemen. Tonight he is no gentleman. Tonight, he needs some Jack, straight up, until it all goes away and his life-ravaged mind will quiet enough for him to get some semblance of sleep.
He lies back against the couch cushions, bottle dangling precariously from his limp right hand. Closing his eyes against a world he wants no part of, at least for the rest of the evening, he turns his head into the back of the couch and is assaulted by apple blossoms, cassis, and girl sweat. He thinks back, forty-eight hours, a lifetime and a heartbeat ago; they'd been watching The World Poker Championship and he'd been overcome with a desire to ravish her—she didn't smell like apple pie, but she was an aphrodisiac all on her own. He can still hear her eager and willing giggles; feel her fingers fist in the hair at his nape, and the one manicured nail tracing a maddeningly lazy path from his waist band, up under his shirt, to his nipple and all points north and south.
Jack, where are you? Come now to my aid. It is the alcoholic invocation of a man made atheistic by life and (strangely) devout by profession. He's seen too many miracles, just none of them have related to him in anyway. He thinks He must exist, the He must be out there, but doesn't believe in him.
A breeze sprints through an open window, bringing with it the smell of the promise of rain. He thinks, as he swigs some more of Tennessee's finest that has yet to sufficiently numb him, that if she were here, she'd be chilled, and would probably curl against him like a great cat, and he would at once understand why the Ancient Egyptians once worshipped cats as deities.
He tries to picture his goddess rain-drenched. He can see her clearly in his mind's eye, which is not yet blinded my alcohol; she is wearing: flip flops (in a down pour, of course), her feet pruny and picking up the dye of the cheap footwear; one of those annoyingly trendy and utterly sexy peasant skirts, white of course, plastered to her skin and to curves he knows better than the roads he drives every day; pink camisole, with lace trim and a built in bra that does nothing to hide her nipples, that have hardened in the cool summer rain. This is his favorite of her many outfits. He calls her "Strawberry Shortcake," voice inflected with enough sarcasm to sell the tease, even though truly, it reminds him of her skin, pale and alabaster smooth that grows flushed for many reasons (desire being his favorite). He sees her standing in the rain, head thrown back in joyous laughter, long hair turned to a tangled, wet mess.
The image is so powerful that it overwhelms the booze and he feels himself harden. He quickly calls on his old buddy J.D. The goal here is to be numb, not to think. Be gone, ye fair temptress. If he was an artist, he is certain she would be his muse, the kind that tormented and ultimately drove you to cut your ear off. Out, out, brief dream.
Fingers betray his brain—the right side says "leave her be," while the left asks "Where is she?" He reaches for his phone, knows he should call her. Instead, he fires off a text message that says he knows not what. He passes out before receiving her reply.
For ninety minutes, he dreams of her: wet, dry, warm and supple. When he wakes, he finds two things—that he needs to change his pants, and her two words on his LCD screen: You ok?
Leaving the whiskey bottle on the coffee table, he stumbles to the bathroom, strips, pees, and cleans himself up a bit before replying: Long day.
He barely makes it to his bedroom before she replies. What happened?
They don't speak in more than two words. It is a sign of her patience and his reticence. He slips on a clean pair of boxers and crawls between cool sheets, groaning with the effort. He slumps against the far side of the bed and his nostrils are once again filled with the scent of her. He wonders if she's spraying her perfume places when he's not paying attention. He fumbles for his phone.
Everything. Nothing. Going to bed. Talk tomorrow.
The phone vibrates before his head can hit his pillow and he think she must be Bionic, to have sent a reply that quickly. He wonders what she's doing right now, that she can respond to him with such speed and promptness. He knows he couldn't be counted on to do the same.
Need me?
He does not reply for fear of what the answer will be. This is why he doesn't say much, because his instinct is to be utterly honest with her, but he knows where utter honesty leads in an intimate relationship, so he keeps her at arms' length. What amazes (and terrifies) him, is that she accepts him, accepts his faults and foibles and seems not even remotely put off by them. Most women would have had the good sense to leave him by now. He makes them leave him so he doesn't have to worry about disappointing them. Now all he does is worry about letting her down.
He falls asleep soothed by the anesthesia of whiskey in his veins and by the lullaby of her scent on the pillow beside him.
During the night, he dreams she comes to him, a guardian angel he doesn't deserve, carried to him in a ring of fire (the flames of which came from a match he struck) and christened by moonlight.
When he wakes, he can still smell her, and thinks the whiskey did not do its job properly. Then he realizes the weight of a hand on his chest, the tickle of hair on his arm, the feel on skin against his skin.
Of their own accord, his lips find hers and she responds in kind, wrapping herself around him, draping herself across his body, enveloping him in her warmth. He thinks he has never been this warm, not even with the alcohol.
"I used my key," she murmurs sleepily, before he can ask, then settles back to sleep.
He waits for her breathing to be slow and deep and even before speaking. "So, it turns out I need you."
He runs his fingers though her hair and finds it damp and a bit tangled. An almost smile crosses his face and he closes his eyes, listening to her breathe, and to the rain falling on the rood above them.
In the morning, he will find a white skirt and a pink top draped over a chair to dry.