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I step out and close the door before more dirty thoughts can invade, and I give myself over to the repetition of the scoop / lift / toss until the whole porch is emptied of snow. For good measure, I throw in a few pushups on the cleared planks.
I’m only thinking about what to fix for lunch as I head inside, Rusty pushing in ahead of me.
I’m unprepared for the sight of Lorelai wrapped in just a towel coming out of the bathroom. It’s tucked loosely in-between her breasts and barely skims the tops of her thighs. It leaves her long, long legs naked. I’m instantly hard imagining them wrapped around my hips. My eyes travel slowly back up to meet her silver gaze, and I see her realization. She knows there are sexual thoughts swilling through my wretched brain.
I watch her mouth open a fraction as she breathes in a gasp. I’m probably terrifying her. Given her initial fear, and the PTSD type panic attack this morning, she’s been through some shit. The last thing she needs is someone old enough to be her father drooling over her body.
Then she pulls her long tresses over one shoulder and drops the towel to the floor.
I’m drinking in the bouncy curves of her more-than-a-handful breasts, down her trim torso, imagining my hands circling her waist, caressing the curves of her hips, down to the barely-there strip of copper in the triangle between her legs.
I actually feel myself salivate. Like the fucking dog I seem to be right now. But I can’t force myself to stop looking.
She takes a step toward me. An almost-smooth step. And another. She’s definitely moving better now. I’m trying to find the cold, clinical space my head lives in when my team is doing rescues, but it won’t go there. All I feel is heat.
Then she’s directly in front of me, her slim fingers unzipping the coat I’m still wearing, smoothing it off my shoulders, down my arms.
My hands come up automatically to grip her waist. And her skin is cool and smooth and soft and I want it in my hands forever.
Her face is lifted to mine and I’m drowning in the pool of silvery blue as my head descends to her peachy pink lips.
“Fuck.” I swear and come to a dead stop just before our mouths touch. “Stop,” I grind out. “We can’t do this.”
Her features scrunch into a delicate puzzled expression. I give her a subtle push away and yank my hands back.
“Are you—” She stumbles over the words. “Are you married? You didn’t say—”
“No. I'm not married.” I growl at her.
Her auburn eyebrows arch up. “You’ve been so kind to me,” she says. “Let me say thank you.”
“Lorelai, no.” My whole body is screaming at me for turning down what she’s clearly offering up. “That’s— That’s not what I want.”
She gives a pointed look at my groin, and I’m sure the evidence of the lie is damning in these sweatpants.
“Well...” I sigh at the obvious untruth. “I’m not going to take advantage of this situation, and you’re— What? Half my age?”
I make a rough turn, so she's no longer in full view. I dive my hands into my hair, gripping the strands until the slight pain chases a shot of the lust away. Just enough for some intelligence to leak back through.
I hear her footfalls heading back to the bed where her pack is sitting open, then some rummaging, and cloth sliding over skin.
I head into the kitchen and grab a sharp knife and cutting board and start slicing through a tomato from the basket on the table. After that, I tear some romaine into shreds and dice a cucumber with heavy handed strokes. I’m hacking my way through a couple of carrots when Lorelai limps in.
She doesn’t say anything. She just heats a skillet with some oil, grabs the two chicken breast filets I’d defrosted and tosses them into the pan. She hunts through the row of spices and coats the chicken with her choices.
As soon as I’ve emptied the contents of the cutting board into salad bowls, she gives it a swift wash and turns out the finished chicken. I set out the dressing options I find in the refrigerator, and she makes quick work of slicing the breasts into strips and placing the pieces atop the bowls.
I pour sweet tea into a couple of glasses, and she grabs napkins and forks. Together, we balance the dishes and carry everything to the table. As we sit down, I recognize that we had fallen into a pattern that usually takes time working together to learn. There was no asking, no instruction, simply an automatic filling-in of next steps.
Today’s band shirt features the Korn ragdoll in its typical discarded position. I motion with my fork. “Were you even born when that came out?” My voice sounds angry, and I see Lorelai’s wince before she squares her shoulders and meets my eyes. I know I’ve looked into her eyes before, but this time they’re wide open.
I see the same loneliness and pain, fear and self-loathing that I’ve seen in some of my army buddies. They’re the eyes of a person who’s seen more than they should ever have to, experienced a side of life they should have been sheltered from. The eyes of a person much, much older than she looks.
She swallows and almost chokes, then swallows again.
“I was two,” she whispers. I can barely make out the next words. “Make Me Bad was playing on the radio the night my mother left us. I know because it was the anthem for my father’s drinking binges for a long time, but Falling Away From Me is my personal favorite.”
My brain is frantic, trying to do the math to get her age at the same time filling in flashes of the music video I’d watched on MTV with my buddies. The same friends I’d joined the Army with just a few short months later.
