I do not own "Warrior." It belongs to director Gavin O'Connor. Belated Oscar comment: I really like Christopher Plummer and admire his work but I fully believe that he received the Academy Award not for his performance but for his underrated career. In terms of performance, I think it should have gone to Nick Nolte. P.S: I'm very sorry about the delay. My life has been a wreck, lately.
Chapter Twenty-Two: To Feel Something Good
When Jane comes back from her meeting she sees a piece of paper taped to her door, with the signature declaring it's from the woman downstairs. She furrows her brow. Mrs. Shropshire would still be at church around this time. She must've put the sign up earlier.
She pulls the paper off of the door and reads what at first seems like some kind of joke.
Dear Jane,
I wanted to let you know that even if you think I'm an old woman my hearing is still good enough that I could hear your sinful activities last night and this morning. Up until now I haven't complained because you hadn't given me any reason to think that I should. But having to deal with the volume of your indiscretion is something I will not tolerate. If you refuse to keep your legs closed and continue to risk damnation I suggest you do so in a different location.
-Mrs. Shropshire
She's pretty sure she should feel annoyed, maybe self-righteous, but instead she starts laughing. It's enough to assuage the sudden, inexplicable sadness of returning to an empty apartment. She's always been private, hated the concept of having so much as a roommate, but now she doesn't want to be alone in a shoebox of a studio apartment with a bed meant to contain only one person but has proven to be durable enough to handle the "sinful activities" of her and someone significantly larger and stronger than she.
It has changed everything in ways she had not imagined. It's like something has been turned on a bit later for her than others and now she feels the full force of it all, the lust and the understanding that she can satiate it, that she's actively sleeping with someone, sharing laughter, sharing sweat and everything else to the chagrin of older folks.
She doesn't regret any of this. And while his touch, his sex is something she enjoys instead of dreads like she did with all forms of physical contact before him, it all scares the hell out of her. Did she take things too fast?
You're not thinking with your head right now. You're thinking with your pussy.
I've wanted this since long before I knew how to ask for it.
But it's happened. They've done it. Twice. And they both enjoyed it. Just the memories of it send an insistent ache through her body, and it's like she's finally learned how to feel. All of a sudden the warmth, the giddiness turns into something else, an odd overwhelming sensation that twists at her insides. She ends up running a couple of errands just to keep herself busy, to avoid thinking about it, but she can't escape her body, which remembers what her mind somehow tries to shut off. Her body won't let it go, persists with how it felt to have someone touch her like that, the phantom sensations of Tommy's mouth on her breasts, hands traveling like sentient beings, cock filling her up, seed spilling into her. It makes her self-conscious throughout the day as she avoids other's gazes and acts like there's never any pressure building inside of her.
She resolves to call Dionne that night, but gets caught up studying for Advanced Spanish and ends up forgetting to do it, or at least that's the excuse she uses.
Work goes more slowly but conversely provides her with a distraction. Screaming children? Bring it on. Finicky diners with specific enough orders to give Meg Ryan a run for her money? Fine. Guys from either the U-Pitt or Carnegie Mellon summer football camp sneaking glances at her tits and asking if there's some agreement, that if they eat the food fast enough it's free? Whatever. She can deal.
After work Monday she and Carlos talk for a few minutes before she goes home.
"The arrangement we made last week about you coming over…?" he starts.
"Of course it's still on! What would make you think otherwise?" Jane says.
"Because it looks like it's back on with your man and I didn't want to interfere." He smiles a little at her 'How on earth did you know?' look and says, "You're in a crazy-good mood again. And the way you're walking kind of reminds me of that time in college I came across a guy nicknamed 'The Python.'"
Jane pulls a face while laughing and Carlos grins as he offers a good-natured hug. "I'm still not backing down from seeing you guys this weekend. How about if I brought him along?"
Carlos furrows a brow. "Are you sure? I wouldn't want you to have to drag him over to visit your gorgeous gay friends and their amazing food."
"For a couple of hours? I don't think he'll mind. I'll ask him. If not, I'll still meet you guys in the afternoon and wait until the evening to see him."
F
When he shows up she meets him outside.
She smiles, shields her eyes for a second from the glare of the sun. "You want to go for a walk?" she says.
She's pretty sure he'd prefer to go upstairs to her apartment, and the thought crosses her mind as well. Then again, her neighbor's inside, probably waiting for Jane to bring up the man with whom she's been sinning so she can chew them both out, and she has no interest in addressing that now. For her part, though, she shows Tommy the letter, and he laughs; it's a sound she loves, mostly because he doesn't laugh often, and hell, anything to see him smile.
"Is it weird that I see it as a challenge and not a warning?" Jane says as Tommy hands it back.
"Probably not, if I was thinking the same thing. Give her some real noisy sinful activities to complain about." She smiles at the idea, unable to hide the slight blush growing across her cheeks. Is it normal to still get bashful, considering they've already done things past blush-worthy? She's still on edge, even now while with him, though all this somehow makes her feel contented, filled but simultaneously exhilarated and more than a little frightened. She doesn't know how much of this he gets, or feels in return. She glances at his hands, thinks that he's the only person who's taken the time to explore her body; he's the only one she ever allowed to do it. She watches him and voices something that's been pestering her.
"You really didn't have sex during all that time?"
Tommy looks disgruntled. "What, you'd rather I had fucked other girls?"
"No!" she flushes scarlet with anger at the very thought and admits, "I hate the idea of you with someone else. Even if it was during those three months we weren't…you know."
"Yeah. Same."
"It's just a little surprising, you know; that you hadn't been with anyone for several months before then, before we met. You could've gotten it easily, if you wanted."
"When I was training I was staying with my old man. It'd been one of his conditions to train me for Sparta. It just would've been weird to bring a girl over. Especially since my room was this space I used to share with my brother when we were kids and the beds were small—"
"So is mine, but that didn't seem to be a problem."
"Becauseit belongs to you. And even if that hadn't an issue I was too caught up in prepping for Sparta I didn't have the time for anything like that. My body was serving one purpose only. And after that," he bites his lip, tucks it to the inside of his mouth, "I was in too much pain to really want to."
"You didn't have to do anything to put stress on your shoulder."
"I know. That isn't what I meant. Just being in that kind of pain turned me off. I couldn't get my body to work; not the way it used to, anyway."
They keep walking a little longer, and Jane remembers the arrangement she and Carlos made the previous week. "I have a couple of friends I'll be meeting for lunch Saturday afternoon. Would you like to meet them?"
He hesitates. "Are they from meetings?" he asks. It's still something that bothers him. He wishes it didn't.
"No. A friend from work named Carlos and his boyfriend Michael. They're hilarious. And Carlos is one hell of a good cook. I'm not even talking just burgers and fries; I mean pretty much anything."
His expression deadens a little all the same, and she picks up on it. "Does it bother you that they're gay?" she asks without accusation, but with a little disappointment that makes him look away.
"No," he tells her, "It's just that I just wanted to spend the weekend with you, not with anyone else."
"I…well," she almost laughs. The genuine interest in and attraction he has to her is something that still surprises her. Guys like him don't go for girls like her, or at least that's what they've both heard. But she doesn't question it, at least not right now. "It'll be only a couple of hours out of the weekend." She procures a small smile, a plea with her eyes; he looks at her and the corners of his mouth twitch upwards for a moment.
"Yeah, sure."
She remembers something else. "I didn't think you were but just to be safe, you're not allergic to cats, are you?"
"No. How many do they have?"
"Oh, just one. A really affectionate one. He's a silly, happy little thing."
"A cat that acts like a dog," he says, a hint of a smile matched with heavily-lidded eyes.
"Yeah," she replies, amazed that he remembers that conversation. "A real sweetie; he might jump into your lap." She's silent for a while, just walking with him. "Would you get upset if I said that this kind of scares me?" she says, looking right at him.
Tommy looks back, and then away. "Nah. I get it." And he does; there's no malice in the statement. He exhales a sharp breath. He's not good at this, goddamn it. He doesn't know how to say the words right, doesn't know how to talk like this, shift gears and talk about relationships. He could handle going overseas and risking his life on a regular basis, could handle things that were painful, confrontational, violent, because that's the person he was trained to be, not just in the Corps. If anything, it was the rest of his miserable fuckin' life. But this? He doesn't know. "It's, uh, it's different."
"Yeah." She takes a deep breath, tries to laugh on the exhalation, and asks him how physical therapy with David's going. He tells her it's good. He doesn't mention they grabbed a beer at one point after a session when David was free for the rest of the afternoon, where David told him a little about his family; his eight-year-old twin kids, a girl named Toni and a boy named Malachi, and something else seemed to click into place, something else he'd been missing for too long. The feeling of a casual friendship, which is something he hopes continues after PT's over. David has a lot of the same easy-going warmth and lack of bullshit that Manny had, and that he admires in a person.
Yeah, he knows why she's scared. Things feel right, feel great, actually, even though they're both in situations they've never had before, and it feels like something should be getting in the way. Like the other shoe's about to drop. There's one way it could drop for him—if he's finally found—but he can't think about that right now. And sure as hell can't talk about it. Instead he takes her hand. "Maybe it's time you actually got what you wanted without any strings attached. Ever thought of that?"
She smiles.
E
Saturday afternoon, he meets her outside, and she tells him about them as they take the bus to the center of Pittsburgh, where the apartments turn into modest houses with clean front yards.
"Michael does pretty much what I would like to do someday. He works for a nonprofit organization that raises awareness about sexual abuse and discrimination, and addresses child abuse."
"So, social work?"
"Exactly." She grips the rail when there aren't enough seats and they both stand. "I won't go on about what I've seen, read about and heard about, but it's kind of personal to me."
Well…yeah.
"All right, we're here." They get off and head to a house that's identical to the ones around it except for the herb garden on the front porch, some of the plants shaded, some of them in the sun. When they knock on the door, a guy in his late twenties opens it, smiling and welcoming them both in. Tommy notices his nose looks like it's been broken a couple of times. "Come on in," the guy, who he guesses is Michael, tells them, holding the door open.
It's a nice place; kind of small for a house, but clean and the walls are lined with drawings and paintings, most of them of people. And not glamorous portraits, either. Most of the people in the drawings are pretty average-looking, or rendered in a way that their appearances don't matter; it's about how they're done. He doesn't know anything about art, but he knows he likes it. The work's kind of stylized, but not pretentious or anything like that.
He and Michael shake hands and introduce themselves, and he's okay at this part; his mother taught him manners.
"Is Carlos still in the kitchen?" Jane asks, grinning as she accepts a hug.
"Not anymore," comes a voice from the kitchen, and another guy in his twenties emerges to say hello, to shake Tommy's hand and introduce himself, to urge them both to have a seat. A small marmalade tabby waddles out of the kitchen behind Carlos, following him like a shadow, squeaking and mewling for attention until he catches sight of Tommy, who is by now sitting on the couch next to Jane, and jumps up onto the arm of the couch next to him. Tommy's eyes widen, mirroring the cat's as it leans in and sniffs him, eyes wide in genuine curiosity. He's a damn-near kitten-sized cat that gives a loud purr when Tommy hesitates, and after Michael's encouragement ("Don't worry; he's neutered and he doesn't have rabies") reaches out and pets him. The cat not only keeps purring, but gives a squeak every time Tommy pets him.
"Hey, could you pass him this way?" Jane asks, and after Tommy obliges, scooping the cat up as gently as he can and passing him to her, she immediately stands the cat up on his hind feet in her lap, raising the front paws with the whites socks that look like mittens, going, "Penguin!" to show the expanse of fluffy white belly, ruff and socks. She kisses the top of the cat's head and immediately picks him back up to hold him like a baby, exclaiming in a high-pitched voice, "Little 'un! Little baby cutie 'un!"
Alarmed and wondering where his girlfriend went, Tommy says, "Come on, cats hate that…" and he's silenced by the sound of purring as Jane kisses the top of the cat's head again as it lies placidly as a sleeping baby in her arms.
"He's a weird cat," Michael concedes. "His name's Fuzznugget. As long as he's being shown attention and affection, he really doesn't care how demeaning it is."
"Didn't you realize?" Carlos adds, grinning. "Your girlfriend has a soft spot for animals. I think the term is 'squeeing' over cute animals."
It seems lunch is ready immediately, and at one point the cat jumps into Carlos's lap, not interested in the food but purring as he sits as though the man's lap is a throne, and he can see everyone's faces.
And Jane's right. The food is great. The guys are hilarious. He didn't know any gay people growing up and if he did they were people who were too afraid of being persecuted to be honest about it, so all he knows is stereotype. Carlos is a little closer to it; he has a lisp and a more outrageous sense of humor. It turns out he's the person that did all the drawings and paintings, and makes a decent income off of his art as well. At one point he gets serious.
"When I went to art school, professors and administration told me, learn a trade, get certified in something, find a decent job that you can stand, because you won't be able to live off your art the second you graduate. Probably not for a long time after you graduate. And let me tell you: there is no such thing as a starving artist. Decent art supplies cost a buttload."
"But it's worth it?"
"Oh, god, yes. It's not even getting paid to do something you love. It's not. When someone buys a painting, the money is nowhere near as satisfying as the knowledge that someone likes something you drew or painted so much they want to keep it in their house, look at it every day and show it to people who stop by." At one point he gives Michael a secret smile; one that's meant for just the two of them, but Tommy sees it.
He looks down. He'd gotten so used to being the single friend of couples that for a moment he's transported back to that time, and he's staying over at Manny's house while they're on leave, taking the couch while Pilar offers to set him up on a date with one of her friends, but he honestly doesn't care, though he can't help but feel fascinated by the bond of such a loving couple. Thousands of miles apart for so much of the time but still holding onto that spark that always makes him feel like he's intruding on something special, something made by God, if he believed in him, which he hasn't in years.
He glances over at Jane, who looks at him with a small smile, as if to say, 'Was I right? Completely painless.' It's not entirely true. He's thirty fucking years old. He'll be thirty-one in the fall. And he's only starting to get to experience a real relationship, one where he doesn't have to worry about when he'll have to leave for a country thousands of miles away, worry about whether he'll come back alive. And that worries him. He knows more about sex, knows more about the short-term things, but he's just as clueless as Jane about the idea of relationship commitment.
But he's pretty sure he loves her. Which also kinda scares him.
He's stuck in his own mind. He needs to get up, move around, because his knuckles are going white around his water glass and if his grip gets any tighter the glass will break. He can't look at anyone.
Then Michael and Carlos ask him what he does, tell him he's a lucky man having Jane, as if he didn't know already. They ask how the two of them met, and Jane is the one who tells them.
"Holy shit, that's romantic," Carlos says. "The whole damsel-in-distress thing; yeah, it's cliché and feminists hate it but seriously, that's sweeter than Ryan Gosling in a chocolate fountain. And you're usually the damsel-who's-doing-just-fine, thank-you-very-much."
Jane grins at the comment. "At the time it didn't feel very romantic, just terrifying, but I see your point."
Tommy appreciates that if either of the men have heard of him as either a soldier or an MMA fighter, they don't mention it. They treat him the way Jane did; like they're getting to know who he is outside all that. And he gets part of why Jane's so at ease with them; she seems to relate to men just as easily as women, but she knows without any doubt that neither of these guys will ever hurt her the way she was hurt in the past. And Michael…something about him seems old, though he couldn't be older than Tommy. An old soul, like Jane; like him; something a little damaged about him. When he talks about his work, Tommy wonders if, also like him and Jane, he knows what it's like to be abused, to be hurt. It takes him out of himself a little, makes sitting down, being still easier to deal with. Carlos, Michael and Jane are talkative enough that, between the three of them, he really doesn't have to say a thing, and he prefers it that way.
They're at the house for nearly four hours, talking, laughing, walking around and looking at art pieces, and he realizes he doesn't mind having to hang out with Jane's friends. They were four hours he liked, not four hours wasted. And they were still with her. They walk partway, both wanting to move around more after spending several hours mostly sitting down, and he likes the way her hand fits into his. Times like this he feels almost normal. Actually feels something good, and lets that feeling stay.
A
Tommy isn't sure how to phrase it, how to admit it; now that he knows what it's like to have sex without a condom, he really doesn't want to go back to using one. The way it feels when it's his skin against hers, the full force of it, is just too fuckin' good.
So he's relieved when she's the one who says it. "I was thinking," Jane says, a coy smile on her small, rosebud mouth. "Since we've both been tested, we're both clean, and, well, I'm barren as granite, unless it's a force of habit…"
"It doesn't have to be," he says immediately, knowing exactly what she's talking about.
She grins a little wider. "So it's really as much of a pleasure-deadener for men as they say?"
He shrugs. "I didn't know until last week whether it was true or not. But kind of."
"All right, then," she says. And it's clear she wants it as much as he does. She's nowhere near good enough of a liar to convince him otherwise.
They head to her apartment; Tommy insists that his place, while no smaller than hers, is far less romantic despite the full-sized mattress (no bedframe, just the mattress) and as Jane moves to pull up his shirt, she hesitates. "Have you been through this before?"
"I've dated a few times, yeah," he says, not really looking at her.
"I mean, like this. No worries about heading off to war or anywhere else. All the time in the world to take things farther."
"No."
"Me neither." After a few moments, "It scares the hell out of me."
"Me, too."
"But I really want it. I want to keep going." Her eyes are enormous. And he can't believe he felt any kind of rage towards her.
Instead of continuing with the "yeah, me, too" bit, he just kisses her. And kisses her again, until that tightly-wound, high-strung body starts to relax in his grip and he can pretend that he's not tightly-wound at all.
But then Jane nips at his neck, his pulse point, soothing each nip with her tongue, and he no longer has to pretend.