Fic: Scraps from From Our Invincible Heights Part II
***
By the time I had woken up again, you were gone, the indentation in the sheets no longer warm with body heat. Outside the window, there was the clamor of pots and bowls, the rusty scrape of the grill being opened and shut, your laugh and your mom’s voice rising above the metallic din. I made my way downstairs after pulling on a pair of jeans and stumbling to the bathroom. The bright daylight had yet to wake me enough to slip the tentative smile from my face. You’d touched me, and the world hadn’t crumbled, hoards of angry fans weren’t protesting on your doorstep, and I wasn’t getting calls from Inside Hockey about my subscription being mysteriously cancelled.
Jessica and Jacquelyn had left with your father to the store to pick up some things for the unplanned dinner we were having tonight.
"So, what are you two going to do now that the season is over?" Erica asked from across the low coffee table. Her grin was barely contained behind her ambivalent inspection of her reptile blue fingernails.
I thought about the almost tangible post-season relief, mind jumping immediately to the all too real and solid form sleeping not next to but on when I had woken up for the second time that morning, foreign arm draped across my chest, blond head on my shoulder. "Training, for sure. Someone's gotta keep Kaner in shape."
It was disturbing to think that my thoughts revolved around two things-hockey and you-and even those were inescapably linked. When I thought about hockey, I always thought about you, and when I thought about you, the subject of hockey was bound to come up sooner or later.
A mischievious smile was beginning to crack over Erica’s face. “You, uh, spend a lot of time-with Patrick?”
“I guess.” I shrugged, jostling my knees nervously as old injuries stretched and flared in protest. “We live together. We play together.”
“And that’s all you guys-”
The backdoor screen slid shut, momentarily distracting your sister from her obvious inquisition when you sauntered into the room, precariously holding two glasses of lemonade filled to the brim in your hands.
"What are we talking about?" you asked, plopping yourself down onto the couch beside Erica, a few drops sloshing over the rim of the glass. I watched them fan out into small, dark patches on your jeans. You wordlessly passed me the drink, saying, “Sorry, sis, yours is outside.”
Erica nodded absently, watching the exchange like a shrewd vulture, ready to parse meaning and interpret body language at the first indication of interest. I made sure not to touch your fingers and to cradle the glass to my chest as soon as it left your hand.
"Summer plans," she said brightly, but her eyes bore the unmistakeable glint of secret deception and suspicion.
"Fuck. Don't remind me," you groaned. "Tazer's a slave driver. Rides us so hard even in the off-season that I’m still sore when I go to sleep."
Erica held back a polite cough behind her hand. Her significant look in my direction clearly said, “Oh, boys, this is too easy.” I had thought respite might come in the form of your mother yelling, “Erica? Are you busy, dear? Come help me with the grill.”
“No, Mom, I’ll be right there,” she called out in the direction of the back door, then turning to us, said, “Well, it’s been fun, but I think the year-long build-up of sexual tension’s killing me so, uh, see you guys outside.” She didn’t wait for an answer, just patted your leg and flashed one last Cheshire grin before leaping away, leaving a train wreck and half in her wake.
“Oh, and your mom texted me back,” she said over her shoulder. “‘We’re putting it in the family scrapbook. Smiley face. Give Patrick and your family our love.’ Patrick, the Toews’ send their love.”
It took you a while to process, tilting your head the way you do when you’re thinking. Your eyes suddenly turned cold. “I thought we’d talked about this. Quit hitting on my sister.
“Sisters,” you amended. “Any of them.”
“I wasn’t,” I said defensively when an idea struck me. “I mean, sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Damn straight.” You left it at that, walking out of the room and leaving me with just my slowly warming lemonade and an empty room.
***
Dinner was a tense affair. You weren’t speaking to me and Erica wasn’t making it any better by batting her eyelashes from across the table, looking at both of us and sighing as if she were in the throes of love.
Luckily, she stopped after your father put a hand to her forehead and asked her if she was coming down with something and your mother kept sending her stern looks.
“Did it take you boys long to get here?”
“Well, Kaner here got lost a few times.”
“I thought we weren’t going to mention that.”
***
“You like my brother.”
“Yeah, what of it? We’re friends.”
“No, no. I mean, you like my brother. I can see it. I totally have a third eye for these types of things.”
“Cool. That’s creepy.”
“Deny it all you want, Jonathan Toews. But I know. Don’t worry though. I won’t tell anyone. Your secret’s safe.”
“Okay then.”
“Listen. Pat’s really young, and like you, he’s something of a hockey prodigy. He tries to act like a kid, but really, he’s not and he knows that. He’ll find himself a girl eventually, but chances are she’ll probably go out with him because he’s a superstar for the fame or the money or because he’s good looking. Either way, he’ll likely wind up unhappy. Honestly, the best bet for him is a hockey player, someone who understands how he works on the ice and off it. Think about it. I think you’d be good for each other.”
***
I press down hard on his skin, my palm in the hollow of his hip and my fingers cupping his side. Patrick likes to be bruised. He moans for me, something low and animal and needy, like he might be dying and this is the last thing he'll experience, I'll be the last one he sees.
When I look down, his eyes are clear and blue and hungry. I close my eyes and push inside him, moving my body forward, my face against his neck. I don't want the people in the lab to see this. I want Patrick to be for me only.
His hands come up to scratch over my shoulders, one at the back of my neck, a hot warm palm. I didn't think it could be like this. I didn't think we were allowed.
"Jonny. Please," he says and cants his hips up. What I like about our bodies is their stamina, their leanness, nothing extraneous about them, and when we move together, it feels like playing hockey except the smell of the rink is replaced by sweat and the scrape of skates by fingernails and surfaces of open ice by skin.
The bed rocks forward. Patrick throws one leg over my hip and the other around my thigh.
I like the sounds he makes as we move on the bed. They're more frenzied than they were a month ago when it had been just our hands. I bite Patrick on his neck as his legs tighten and he shudders beneath me.
I open my eyes. There's a bruise on his hip and the sheets are stained with white where it drips from him. We don't say much to each other as we clean up. I let him use the bathroom first and when he comes back, he slips into bed and when I come back, I slip into bed behind him and tangle my legs with his. The lights are turned out and the lights of the highrises across the river are turned on, here and there, enough so that I can see a little into the apartments through the large windows. I wonder how many others have done what we've just done and are now going to sleep. I wonder how many of them are friends or lovers or spouses or maybe strangers.
I close my eyes and tuck my face into Patrick's short hair and I wonder how many people have watched.
***
I am told I am being shut down. Anita has called me down to her office, her voice serious over the phone. The entire project is being shut down, she says, which I think in her mind is supposed to comfort me, but I think we both know I am the entire project and that for her, it means the end of a job, but for me, it means the end of my life.
"I'm very sorry, Jonathan, you don't know how sorry I am. We've all grown so attached to you."
"What about the Blackhawks?"
"It'll happen over the summer. You'll be in a car crash like the original Jonathan Toews. Don't worry. You won't feel anything."
"And that's it."
"I'm sorry. There's nothing we as a lab can do. It's out of our hands."
"I'm done. That's the end of me."
"I'm afraid so. We're all very, very sorry, Jonathan."
"What about Patrick?"
"Kane? You'll have time to say good bye."
***
END "jonathan"
Jennie.
Winston & Strawn LLP hires Jennie Montenegro on a Tuesday and expects her to be settled into her office by the following Monday. That leaves her four days to pack up her house in Dubuque and move to an apartment a third of its size in Lincoln Park. There are calls to make, temp jobs to quit and boyfriends to dump and Jennie's so overwhelmed by it all that she just sits down on her living room couch, opens a bottle of wine, and takes swallow after swallow.
Her mother calls until the phone vibrates itself off the couch arm and falls to the floor, the battery clattering out. Jennie regrets telling her dad about the paralegal position she was offered this morning. Of course, the information would find its way to her mother not even before noon.
But, Jennifer, how will you get on in Chicago? her mother would say if she knew how to leave voicemails. Don't they have black people and Mexicans there? Won't you get shot? It can't be safe. I heard on the news yesterday that the city is filled with baby killers and rapists, Jennifer. Are you even listening? I wish you wouldn't leave Dubuque.
Jennie lies back against the couch and stretches, languid from the wine. She had chosen Chicago because it was the closest large city to Iowa and because, when she was ten, her dad had taken her there to visit family. She has a picture of herself standing next to the paw of an Art Institute lion, looking amazed that there is even a world outside of Iowa she was allowed to touch. When they returned home, her mother asked her about diseased pigeons and whether any homeless people had touched her and nothing about Navy Pier or Lake Michigan or the Art Institute lions.
Ironically, it had been her mother's idea that they go in the first place, because she was pregnant, nearing the end of her third trimester, and preferred to be left alone. She wouldn't be stressed that way. Her mother was one of those people that liked to be around people on her own terms and only when they had something she wanted.
Jennie's twenty-six and nothing's changed.
After this move to Chicago, perhaps for the first time in her life, she won't feel like every experience she has means she's sneaking off to have it, even while she's been living alone after law school. It's about time she gets away.
***
Her mother cries obscene crocodile tears on the doorstep of her house when Jennie drives over in the moving van to say goodbye. Her dad stands behind her looking a bit pained and embarassed but he hugs his daughter and whispers into her ear that he'll visit and her mother will calm down, eventually. Jennie's not worried-her dad is practiced in the art of dealing with her mother.
Rob hovers in the background, headphones firmly in his ears and gives a stilted wave with one hand. He's coming up on seventeen in a few months. When Jennie comes back for Christmas, he'll be even more grown up.
When her mother finally deigns to let go of her shoulders, Jennie steps onto the sidewalk and takes in her parents' home, the lush green lawn and the meticulously trimmed bushes, the bright chandelier behind the bay windows of the living room. Dusk is settling over Dubuque and further down the street, she can see the sun setting over the line of oak trees.
"Call when you get there. Make sure to wear a scarf in the winter. Try not to entice strangers into following you home," her mother says through some sniffles. She dabs at her eyes with the delicate silk scarf tied around her neck. Jennie nods. She'll call to let her family know she's safe but she has no intention of wearing a scarf or ignoring strangers who look like they want to come home with her.
She tells her mother she will call, she will wear a scarf, she won't invite strangers in, and without looking back, Jennie walks to the moving van on the street, gets in, and drives.
***
Lincoln Park has trees, too. More than Jennie had expected from a city.
***
Jennie, in all her eight years of clandestine, sexual experience, has never been with a man this good-looking who also seemingly takes more pleasure in the fact that he's having sex than the actual sex itself. She tends not to get involved with guys like that anymore, likely candidates for low self-esteem, high testosterone levels, and attachment issues. Premature ejaculators, too-which Jonathan wasn't, thankfully, though his type certainly fits the bill.
Jonathan was-he made her breakfast.
He's an athlete, she knows that, and the wall of jerseys and framed photos make it quite clear he's a famous one. Toews. Jennie thinks about her ex-boyfriend in Dubuque, the hockey aficionado, and wonders if she'd ever heard him mention the name before. It sounds television-familiar.
Jonathan takes her empty plate and puts it in the sink across from the kitchen island. She doesn't say anything as he washes it methodically and places it in the rack to dry. Jennie shifts in her seat, uncomfortable in the silence, and nearly winces at the dull ache between her legs. She'll have to walk gingerly around the office for the day until she can get back home, take a well-deserved warm bath.
"I don't know how this is generally supposed to"-Jonathan still has his back to her, his muscles bunch tightly in his shoulders-"go or, or what."
"You could try to relax enough to enjoy the afterglow," Jennie says. "It wasn't bad for you, was it?"
When Jonathan turns, there is a pained look in his eyes and his jaw works for a few moments as if he is trying to settle on a thought. "I have no point of reference."
"For what? Sex?"
"For sex, yes."
"Please, please don't tell me I deflowered you."
Jonathan crosses his arms over his chest. "That's an outdated term, I believe."
"I can't believe you were a virgin."
"I'm young."
"You look old enough."
"Twenty-two."
"Twenty-two-oh my God. Okay."
"Was it, was it good for you?"
"Yeah."
"I wanted to see what all the fuss was."
"Did you have really restrictive parents or something?"
"I didn't get out much."
"Well, rest assured," she pushed her seat away from the table. "I won't tell anyone."
Jonathan swiftly looks up.
"I think I'm in love with someone. I'm sorry."
Oh, Jesus, Jennie thinks. She sits back down. "Okay. You made me breakfast. The least I can do is listen to you talk about your girl for a bit."
Jonathan gets a pained expression on his face. "I don't even know why I'm telling you this."
***
Jennie leaves her business card on Jonathan's kitchen table. It reads:
Jonathan-
A friend at a law firm is a good thing to have. Call me if you ever get into some legal trouble and want a second opinion. Number's on the front.
-Jennie
Part III