His Red Hat, My Empty Beer Cana short story by sabrina alyss klassen
The bar is crowded and I'm crabby after a long day at the camp. I'm still in my work clothes- an old pair of olive green army pants from my high school days with a rip in the knee and a white blouse over a stained white tank top that is probably from high school too. One of the many gems I'd found packed away in the spare room; why anyone would keep this junk I don't know, but I'm glad that they have.
I weave my way through the drunken masses towards the bar where Shirley is pouring drink after drink while men who'd watched her grow up here look down her shirt, and guys who'd made fun of her in high school offer to buy her a drink.
"Shirley," I yell, knowing it's hopeless that she'll hear me over the music and the shouting that passes as conversation in a country bar. I sigh, and lean against the counter, biding my time. I'd told her I'd wait for her to finish her shift, but I can tell already that she'll either be working over time, or she'll be late trying to clean up the disaster that is behind the bar right now.
She turns in my direction, to help a man who is enthusiastically waving a hundred dollar bill over the bar top. I wave too, and she catches my eye, rolling her own. She snatches the bill out of his hand, folds it into a neat rectangle and slips it down the front of her black tank top. "Hi sugar, what can I get for you?" she purrs, leaning over so he can look right down at his hundred. The guys eyes nearly pop out of his head as he stutters out an order. Shirley smiles at makes it at a record rate, and the guy doesn't even ask for his change back before ebbing away into the crowd. She turns to me.
"I have no idea how you do this five nights a week," I tell her with a shake of my head. I have to raise to be heard over the crowd, but she's leaned in closer to make it easier.
"Sometime's six," she says with a look of distaste and I laugh at her. "Do you want to wait in the back?" she asks, gesturing towards the kitchen doors. "I can give you a beer to take back there."
"You're a genius," I say with a wide smile of my own, and she hands me a perspiring can of Khokanee, and I'm the most cheerful I've been all night. "I'll hurry," she yells as I make my way through the crowd for the swinging doors that lead into the back of the bar, and the closed kitchen.
I sip on my beer and poke around the kitchen, which is surprisingly well kept and clean for what I might expect of a backwoods bar kitchen. Another judgemental stereotype I'd have to get over.
When the door swings open again five minutes later I've just finished my beer and am attempting to 3-pointer of it into the recycling bin. "She shoots," I say in a commentators voice, "and she scores!" I miss, the can banging off the wall and clattering noisily on the floor. "Can you tell I never played sports?" I say with a laugh, bending down to pick it up.
"Well, I definitely wouldn't quit your day job," comes a male voice from behind me, and I drop the can again, quickly standing up to spin around in surprise. "Lloyd," I choke out, and smile toothily. "How nice to see you. Sorry, I thought you were Shirley… I'm waiting for her… She's working tonight. Said we'd have drinks together, you know, Friday night fun…" Shut up, I think but the word vomit is already spewed. He's smirking at me, the one that I used to think was charming but I now think deserves a blow torch, probably because he always seems to be wearing it, and it's always because he's laughing at me.
I continue to smile inanely at him, wishing I had another beer. Or that I wasn't here. Or that he wasn't here dammit! What is he doing here? "Why are you here?" I ask, politely.
"Meeting up with Buck," he says in response, a much simpler and smoother response. Sometimes I just hate men, you know?
"That's nice. I'm sure you guys will have a great night," I say, continuing to smile inanely, hoping he will leave if I smile at him enough.
He doesn't. He takes a seat in the break section of the back room, where the staff takes their lunch. It's a beat up old leather couch and a few fold out chairs around a low coffee table strewn with playing cards and dirty coffee mugs. A momentary silence falls around us and I am trying to think of a safe topic to broach when he opens his mouth.
"So you still seeing that tool Danny-boy?" he asks and I throw my hands up in the air, looking at the ceiling in exasperation before asking the powers that be for patience.
"Was that necessary?" I ask in disbelief. "We can't even have a nice conversation without you turning it into open warfare?"
"Not if you're going to keep seeing that fanboy of yours," he says calmly, sipping his beer and I want to strangle him, or drown him in the contents of the bottle, whichever is easier.
"Whatever is going on between Daniel and I is absolutely none of your business," I say tightly, feeling no need to tell him that Daniel was in fact on the highway back home after our not so nice fight last weekend. It would give Lloyd too much pleasure to know that I've scared off yet another man. "I can't do this," I say instead, and march past him to grab my jacket, which is folded over the couch arm. I go to step by him again, coat in hand, when he grabs my wrist.
"What are you doing?" I say, and I can feel my god-given patience slipping, as the anger and the panic and the nerves boil up inside. "Let go of me," I shriek, a little taken aback myself at the shrill in my voice. Lloyd lets go immediately, his eyebrows near his hairline. "Woah, Dana, calm down. I just want to talk."
"Well I don't want to talk," I say stubbornly, knowing full well I sound like a petulant child. "I want to go. Right now," I say, and I'm halfway across the kitchen when he's caught up with me again, reaching out one hand to cup my shoulder. I spin around and smack him with my jacket a couple times before he pulls it out of my hand and tosses it on the floor, grabbing me by the waist to get me to hold still. I wrestle against his grip before giving up and glaring up at him.
"You have no right to touch me!" I say, still shrilly, and I hate that he looks so good, feels so good against me. I just want him to let me go, just want to get away.
"Well I'm going to touch you if I want to touch you," he says and his voice is low, his eyes dangerous and his hand on my waist is hot and strong and his hold isn't forceful but I find myself stepping forward, pressing against all that long, lean, hot heat.
"You're not going to touch me if I don't want you to," I hiss at him, despite the ache below my belly. I reach my hand up to slap him, to stop this, to take control of the situation. He grabs my wrist in his other hand before I can do any damage.
"It's a good thing you like it when I touch you then," he says, and then he lets go of my hand and slides one hand up my neck and angles my face up and kisses me. His mouth presses hard against my own, unforgiving and I'm frozen for a moment in disbelief and then in my finest attempt yet at failing Darwin's Theory, I kiss him back.
You know, survival of the fittest? Elimination of the stupid?
But I can't seem to help myself, he feels so good and I moan into his mouth like an idiot. He bites my lip as my mouth opens and I nip his back, before his tongue presses in, claiming its territory. His hand on my neck is igniting a number of pleasantly vibrating nerves. I press my body up against his, nearly on tiptoe to have as much of my body touching his as I can, to relieve the pressure, any of the pressure as it slowly builds up below my belly.
His fingers are stroking my hairline, his mouth demanding as it strokes heat into the very farthest ends of my body, including my brain. Which is absolutely useless now, even the once screaming voice of 'don't do this," dulled to a very satisfied murmur that I'd ignored it. "Dana," he is saying and I have to pull myself back from all that good heat to listen, though my hands are trailing up and down his broad shoulders, the only part of reality I'm interested in being the hot hard lines of him.
"You feel so good," he is saying against my mouth, and I smile against his despite myself at the similarly dazed tone in his voice. Definitely not something he'd say to me if this was reality. Not considering our penchant for arguments. "You're so fucking hot," he groans, pulling back and I'm so cold that I follow his heat, but he's backing away, pulling off his jacket and his hat and the cold is suddenly a good thing because this is bad, bad, bad, I don't want to be doing this, I don't even like Lloyd Brevan.
Now I'm the one backing away, something like a stutter escaping my mouth. "We shouldn't be doing this. No, no, no. Bad idea. Bad Dana." I back towards the kitchen doors and the crowds and the safety and suddenly Lloyd is back on my trail, stalking me like a predator across the suddenly minute kitchen. He's wearing only a white t-shirt stained with grease, and his blonde hair is falling into his eyes now and he's infinitely as desirable, as dangerous as ever.
"Nope," he says, his long legs eating up my much shorter escape - attempted escape I should say. He reaches one long arm down to wrap around me once again and presses me against him and his new friend, something I hadn't had the time to notice before. The hard thick length is pressing out from his jeans and burning my stomach where it touches. One hand fisting in my hair he yanks me closer so our faces are aligned, and all I can see is his old white t-shirt and all I can smell is his day at work, the grease and the oil and the sweat and the soap of the t-shirt. No cologne for this mechanic, but I think I can live with that as I breathe in deeply and try not to bite into that shoulder.
"Why are you always trying to escape me Dana Jean?" he whispers into my ear before pulling my earlobe into his mouth and sucking and I shudder and melt against him once more.
The unending game of cat and mouse, Lloyd Jenkens and I, I think, but then I don't think anymore because the heat is back and thinking is a lot harder than just giving into the dark insistent pull that is Lloyd and our bodies and Fate.
Twenty minutes later and Lloyd has me lying down on the couch, my pants undone and one hand up my shirt when Shirley walks into the kitchen.
"So sorry that took so long!" She is saying, and then she catches sight of us and what we are doing and I have the traumatizing experience of being caught in shock as Lloyd tweaks my nipple between his thumb and index, and I moan half in panic half in pleasure and Shirley gasps and spins around. "Um," she says uncertainly, and I am pushing Lloyd off, and scrambling up from the couch, trying to make myself presentable. "We were… just… talking…" I say lamely and smooth a hand over my hair. Shirley turns around to find me more appropriately attired.
"Uhuh," Shirley says and she doesn't even try to hold back her laugh. "Talking huh? I'd sure like that kind of conversation," she says, eyeing Lloyd as he comes up behind me, placing a very anchoring palm flat on my hip, pressing me in against his side. I squirm uncomfortably, and make a move to escape, and he pinches my skin warningly.
"Actually, Lee, we were just about to head out. Do you think that you could give Dana a rain check on that there drink?" I open my mouth up to argue with him when he grinds his not so unnoticeable erection into my other hip and I shut up as the blush rises again. "And could you tell Buck that I'll swing by tomorrow night and help him with the door? He mentioned needing some help, and now I'll owe him."
And then the blond bastard winks at my best friend and pulls me towards the exit, my jacket and his coat suddenly in hand, his hat back on his head.
The truck ride to his house is a tense silence, while I go over a thousand different escape excuses in my head. He pulls up to his driveway, and I open my mouth to say something of a smooth exit and he turns off the engine and turns to me first. "If the next thing coming out of your mouth isn't a no, then I'm going to take you inside and fuck your brains out." I inhale a sharp breath, speechless and Lloyd glares at me, daring me to say no, and when nothing comes out of my mouth he opens his own door, slams it shut and stalks inside.
"Remember the charm, Dana?" I murmur to myself, but I am going inside and I know it.
I am letting myself into the front door, taking off my shoes in the front hallway, when he walks out form the kitchen with two beer bottles in hand and half a sandwich in his mouth. His shirt is off, his feet bare and he's so unbearably sexy without even trying and I bite my lip to keep from going to him. He gestures with one of the beers towards the back hallway and his room and I take the lead ahead of him, my body a mess of quivering nerves.
He's finished the sandwich by the time we get to the room, and he hands me a beer bottle before opening and chugging half of his own. I open mine, sip it. I'm scared that if I get drunk I'll say something stupid, do something dumb.
He's watching me over his drink. I place mine on the bedside table, move to sit on the bed. He sits on the edge of a chair at the other end of the room. I raise an eyebrow at him. He raises one back.
"I can leave if you want me to," I say finally, stubbornly. He could at least try to seduce me for gods sake. I go to get off the bed and suddenly he's there, pushing me back, pushing my hands over my head and holding them there. "Don't even tease me with that," he says, his voice husky. "I want you so bad right now, it hurts," he says, and his voice is aching and I squirm under his touch at the want in it.
"Nope," he says still holding my wrists in place. "You're mine now," he says, and it's a promise I hope he can keep.
He finally lets go of my hands, but I keep them where they are as he kisses his way down my body, removing my pants and then my top so I'm just in my panties and bra- not matching, unfortunately. His long strong fingers stroke my leg muscles, turning everything to jelly, and causing my breath to quicken. Then my bra is off and his mouth is there, nipping and pulling at one while his hand works over the other. "Lloyd," I gasp, pressing my thighs together in an attempt to gain some release. "Nuh uh," Lloyd says, nudging my legs apart with his free hand. He brushes over the wet heat there and sucks harder on my nipple. "That's mine tonight baby," he says, but his voice is guttural and when I press my core harder against his hand, seeking his heat, he groans and gives up, pressing his forehead against my collarbone in defeat.
"Every time I see you, and I just want to be inside of you," he says, and his finger suddenly slides there, deep and I start at the and then shudder against him, clenching against the invasion before biting my lip and giving into it, settling around all that long length of him, thinking about an even longer, harder part of him. He presses in deeper and I gasp and curl up against his arm. "Does that feel good baby?" he grunts and pulls out before pushing in again, this time with two fingers. I'm shaking, biting my lip and looking right into his hooded eyes, so turned on I can't think straight, can't speak until I say; "I want you inside of me," so quiet I'm scared I'll have to say it again but his eyes go even darker and then he's kissing me and pressing me back on the bed.
There's a moment where he's putting the condom on and I'm so scared that I think about making a run for it but then he's back, this time between my legs, pulling them up so my feet can clench behind his back. He pushes the hair back from my face and I'm shaking, I don't even know why I'm shaking and he looks me right in the eye and says, "Are you sure about this Dana?" and he's so vulnerable, and still so fierce, so scared and fighting so hard against it in the lamplight and I slowly nod my head. We don't break eye contact as he takes himself in hand and slowly presses into me.
I'm scared by the size of him, feel him filling me up, overflowing me and I choke on my moan, it feels good but it doesn't feel great, not as great as the other things he'd been doing to me, and because it's Lloyd he knows, he just knows, unlike any other man has ever known me or my body, and he reaches down to adjust me, to touch me and the pleasure starts to come back, and I moan louder this time because it does feel good. All the time, he's watching me, his eyes taking in every detail and I'd blush at the scrutiny but it feels so good I can't even think about anything else.
He finds a rhythm, winding me tighter and higher, touching me everywhere and watching me the whole time with those big, dark, hot eyes, and I can't think of anything that turns me on more than this man with his long limbs and leanly muscled body, with his scruffy bearded face that leaves my skin raw, and his messy blonde hair always in need of a cut, and those dark hot eyes devouring me, even from across a room, even from across a country.
It's the eyes that do it, that send me crumbling across the threshold and falling through the stars, shuddering in his arms and biting his neck to muffle my pleasure. After I come, there's an abandon to his love making and he's taking his own pleasure, pounding into my body and I'm giving him back as much as I can, not nearly enough, I'm never enough, but he's whispering in my ear, "Say my name, baby, say my name," and the tears leak out of my eye as I tilt my head back to whisper, "Lloyd," quietly into his ear and then its his turn and he loses himself and I hold his sweat slicked body until he comes back.
I roll over, so my backs to him, and he cuddles me in close so that I'm in the safest place in the world, my favorite place, all alone with him. This is what I'm scared of. Not the love making or the pleasure taking but the quiet moments afterwards when the world seems so far away and it's just him and I and I fall all over again, every time. "Don't leave me in the morning Dana," he says into my hair, and his voice is tired, his grip tight on me, and I pull up his hand to kiss the back of it, but I don't say anything because it's a promise he has to know I won't keep.
—
He finds me at the grocery store the next morning. I assume someones told him, though it's not a big town and there are only a handful of other places he'd check before heading to the small mart where all the fresh produce and dairy is sold everyday.
He's wearing the same outfit from last night; the dusty jeans and the stained white t-shirt. The beat up work jacket with 'Rusty's' stitched in Italics on it, and 'Lloyd' just below that. The faded red baseball cap that had once belonged to his father, before Doug had passed. He's also wearing a familiar angry expression, as he hones in on me in the grocery store parking lot, and beats a warpath towards me.
I push my cart towards my car, pretending no cares, though my heart is in my throat and my palms are sliding on the handle now slick with sweat.
"You said you weren't going to leave," he says, caging in my shopping cart and forcing me to stop. I smile at him, eyeing the few other early morning shoppers in the lot. Surely they'd come to my rescue if he reached across the cart and tried to strangle me?
"I forgot that I was out of eggs," I say, still smiling, my voice an even modulated tone. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you know!" My face is starting to hurt from all the smiling, my eyes from trying to hold back the tears.
He was so beautiful when I woke up this morning, all soft alabaster skin and dark lashes, slow breaths and quiet snores. I could wake up next to this man every day for the rest of my life, I'd thought, but I'd shut the thought down. I'd thought that before, hadn't I? And look how that had turned out.
It still made leaving Lloyd hard though.
"Dammit, Dana, if you keep smiling at me I'm going to tip this cart and then you're going to have to go get more of your precious damn eggs." He's so mad he's clenching his jaw with every other word and I hate that I do this to him, hate that I have this power over him.
"Let it go, Lloyd," I say quietly and his glare on me is so deadly I shrivel a bit in my skin.
"Let it go?" he spits at me. "I'm not going to let it go. I love you," he says, and I wince, and let go of the cart. "Don't," I say in a low voice. I step away from the cart. I don't need the eggs. Not really. I walk past him, towards my car, but he's following me. "Don't?" he is saying, and his incredulous echoing of my words is grating on my nerves. "I love you Dana Jean Bevran," he says and I snap and turn to him and push him. "Don't call me that!" I say. "That's not my name, that hasn't been my name for years."
Bevran. Lloyd and Dana Jean Bevran. Newlyweds, and then expecting parents. And then patients, enemies, and then separated and divorced. And then I'd been gone, young enough to move away and start somewhere else fresh, no high school sweethearts, no lost babies, no problems. But then Grandpa had gotten sick and suddenly here I was again, ten years gone by but just like not a day had passed.
The first time I'd seen Lloyd I'd thought I was going to combust. Explode into itty bitty pieces to be scattered to the universe. My heart beat had sped up so erratically that I'd actually thought death might be in the cards. But instead we'd fought and I'd gone home madder than hell and he'd shown up again, everywhere for two months and then I'd fallen into his bed just like old times.
Except it isn't old times, and I am not going to get my heart broken like that again, not for a million orgasms or quiet moments in his arms, a million arguments made up with laughs, a million more memories. Not for anything. Not when it has been ten years and I still haven't recovered from the first time around.
But we are stuck in each others gravity, and here we are, a third morning after and he is threatening to throw my eggs and I am trying to think of a way to run over him with my car and make it look like an accident. Grandpa is gone, had died two months ago, but there is the house to look after and the accounts to settle and I've made friends again, have reconnected with old ones and to leave and not see Lloyd ever again is currently unbearable. But love?
"Let me into my car," I say, because he is standing guard over my front door. "Lloyd, move, and let me into my car."
"Did you hear me?" he says instead, leaning down to make eye contact but i don't want to hear it. He slams his fist on the car and I jump a bit. "Dammit, I said did you hear me?"
"Of course I heard you," I say, "But I'm refusing to respond to the stupid things you say!" And I kick him in the shin. Of course, instead of going down like a normal person he has to grab a hold of me and take me down with him. We end up in a tangle of limbs between my car and an SUV, both of us rolling around, me trying to escape and him trying to get me to remain still while keeping his bruised leg from further injuries.
Breathless and suddenly exhausted I give up and lay my head back on the pavement. Silent tears leak out of my eyes and stream towards the ground. "Dana?" Lloyd says, reaching up caring fingers to brush away my tears. "Dana, are you okay? Did I hurt you? I'm so sorry Dana. Dana, talk to me." And his voice is so gentle, his touches so soft. I curl into him, my baser weakness coming through and when he realizes I'm not fighting him anymore, he wraps his arms around me in a tight grip and rocks me back and forth.
"Baby," he coos, coaxing me into looking up at him. He's stroking my hair and my lower back, taking most of my weight so I don't have to lie on the cold hard ground. "Talk to me baby, what's wrong?"
I let out a hysterical laugh at that, a bark of a sound. "What's wrong?" I say through my tears, reaching up to smack him on the shoulder. He smirks down at me as my tears slow and my breathing evens. Then he's pulling me up to sit between his legs while he leans against the strangers SUV. "Talk to me baby," he murmurs in my ear again, and then kisses my neck. I shudder as my body response to him, curling into his heat, ten years older but right back to being a dumb teenager all over again.
The sobs start anew.
"It wont work," I say through my tears, "It didn't work before and it wont work now. We don't work," I say, and cry all the harder because I'd give anything for the words not to be true.
"We're not the same people that we were," he says, still rocking me, my rock, always here, always strong and waiting for me. I'd told him not to, told him to move on; he hadn't listened. "I love you," he whispers again in my ear, and I keep crying, wishing the world were a different place, that I could be a different, less broken person too.
The End