Chapter 22
Callie
My memories of the first few weeks in Sacramento aren’t very clear. They’re mostly a blur of setting up my new place and registering for a new school, but every single one of them has one clear focal point. Asa.
Poet had made some calls while we drove north, and there was an empty apartment waiting for us by the time we’d arrived. The complex was owned by one of the members of the club they belonged to, and according to Asa, the guy had given him a smokin’ deal. He refused to tell me how much he was paying, but when I saw it for the first time, I couldn’t help but think that whatever he was paying had to be too much.
It was clean, but old and small and completely unlike what I was used to. The house I’d grown up in wasn’t a mansion by any means, but my dad had kept the appliances updated, and my mom had taken pride in the way our house was decorated. Needless to say, the avocado green sink, toilet and bathtub set in my new bathroom and the fridge in my new kitchen that made a loud humming noise whenever it kicked on, were a far cry from my old home. But I didn’t say a word.
What was there to say?
I wasn’t about to bitch about the apartment not being up to my snobby standards—it would make him feel like shit. Asa was paying for an apartment that he wouldn’t even be living in, and I had no room to complain, not really. All the appliances appeared to work, there was a lock on the door, and most importantly, it was clean. And if, when I saw my new home the first time, I had to pretend to use the bathroom so I could lock the door and let a few tears escape—well, I’d never admit to it.
The first night we were there, we had to drive to Wal-Mart for blankets and toilet paper, but we were too tired to shop for anything else and ended up sleeping curled up on the floor of the bedroom wrapped in my new blue and yellow comforter set.
Sleeping was a very loose term for what I’d done that night.
The arrival in my new apartment had not only marked the beginning of a new life, but also the start of nightmares that would plague me on and off for the next few years. It was also the first time Asa wrapped me in his arms and calmed me down afterward, but it wasn’t the last.
Our first week was spent outfitting the new apartment with anything and everything I could need, from shampoo to barstools for the kitchen counter. I tried to be as frugal as possible, knowing that even if my parents had some life insurance policy no one knew about, I still wouldn’t be able to pay Asa back any time soon. Asa, however, insisted on buying anything he could get his hands on while I tried to bite my tongue and sneak odds and ends back onto the shelves without him noticing. He didn’t let me get away with it, though, and we ended up backtracking, more often than not, for the items that I’d placed haphazardly around the stores.
I finally snapped in one of the kitchen aisles at the local IKEA.
“We don’t need a freaking orange peeler! Who uses an orange peeler? It’s ridiculous!” I was griping at him, waving the offending peeler in the air while he watched me in amusement. “People have been peeling oranges for hundreds of years, and they’ve never needed one of these stupid things!”
“Not sure why a ninety-nine cent peeler has got your panties in a twist, Sugar,” he mumbled at me quietly.
“Because it’s a waste! Ninety-nice cents here, two ninety-nine there—it freaking adds up, Asa! I’m never going to be able to pay you back for all of this!” I hissed in frustration as I willed tears of embarrassment to stop forming at the back of my eyes.
“I didn’t ask you to pay me back,” he told me, his jaw tight and his eyes angry. “Never once did I tell you that you were paying me back for a goddamn thing.”
“I know that,” I replied, “but you just keep buying things that I don’t really need and it’s making me crazy! I don’t need a coffee table. God, I don’t even need a couch! I can just sit on my bed when I’m home…”
His voice was still slightly pissed off as he reached up and grabbed my chin, lifting my face so he could look directly into my eyes as he spoke, “We need a couch because I wanna sit on the f*ckin’ couch when I come home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, home. I might not be living there full time, but me and you? We’re making a f*ckin’ home. With a comfortable couch, that we will not be buying here because these couches are too f*ckin’ small, and a big-ass TV that I can watch Westerns on. And we’re gonna buy anything you need to cook and organize shit the way you like it. Because, baby? I’m gonna be gone a lot, and I want to know that when I’m gone, you’re going home to a f*ckin’ comfortable house where you can relax and feel safe.”
I stared at him for a moment, sifting through everything he’d just said and trying to find an appropriate response, but the only thing I could think of was, “Westerns?”
“Really? That’s all you got?”
“Are you sixty-five?”
“Shut the f*ck up.”
“Do we need to get one of those denture containers for you to put your teeth in at night?”
“Callie…”
“I think we need to go a few aisles back for something like that…wait, do we need to call AARP and make sure they’ve got your change of address?”
I squeaked as he moved toward me, trying to scoot around the cart so I could use it as a barrier, but I couldn’t escape him. He was too quick, and soon I was in his arms and he was tickling my neck with his beard.
“You think you’re so funny,” he grumbled into my throat, his chin digging into my shoulder.
“Westerns!” I hooted, pushing at his shoulder and gaining the attention of the shoppers around us.
My hoot made him redouble his efforts and we knocked into shelves as we scrambled into a position that left little room between our bodies. One of my arms had pushed up his chest and over his shoulder while the other wrapped around his trim waist, my fingers clenched into the back of his belt. I was breathing heavily, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to pull up on his jeans and give him a wedgie, like I would’ve done if he was Cody, or take the safer route of dragging the gray beanie from his head in an attempt to annoy him.
It was all giggling and growling until he opened his mouth against my neck and bit down playfully.
My breath caught in my throat and I froze mid-wiggle. I was suddenly hyperaware of every place our bodies touched, the scrape of his beard on my collarbone, and the heat of his breath on the side of my neck. I no longer thought anything was funny, and by the way his growl turned into a deep moan and he bit down harder and start to suck, he didn’t either.
Then I wasn’t thinking of anything.
His arms tightened around me as I felt my eyes falling to half-mast, barely registering a couple starting down the aisle only to quickly move the other way. He pushed his foot in between mine, never letting up on the suction at my neck as he positioned us so that I was just barely straddling his thigh. I was trying to find my balance in our new position, holding back whimpers in my throat and trying to remember why we shouldn’t be doing what we were doing in a very public store when he used the hand at my hips to rock me against him and the one on my back to catch my hair and tilt my head back.
I won the fight against whimpering and stayed silent—but I couldn’t stop my hand from sliding away from his neck and into his beanie, gripping his hair tightly in my fist as I took over the rocking motion with my hips.
I’m not sure what would have happened if an employee hadn’t interrupted us, asking us to cease and desist or she was going to call security. I stumbled back slightly in embarrassment, my face burning as I gaped at Asa’s smug face.
“No need to call security, ma’am. I think she’s learned her lesson,” he told the employee dismissively, grabbing a hold of our cart and sauntering away.
He freaking sauntered away.
I didn’t saunter. I shuffled … with my proverbial tail between my legs.
We were quiet as Asa grabbed the last few things he wanted from the store. I was still completely mortified, scanning the area around us for the employee who’d verbally bitch-slapped me from my Asa fog. God, I never wanted to see her again. How humiliating.
It wasn’t until we were emptying our kitchen utensils onto the check-out belt, and I turned to Asa with a glare, holding not one, but two orange peelers, that he finally spoke.
“Westerns are American history brought to life. Those f*ckers were badasses, Callie,” he told me with a smirk. “Plus, John Wayne’s the f*ckin' shit.”
I shook my head at his smirk and continued emptying the cart, “I’ll take your word for it as long as you don’t make me watch them.”
“F*ck that. You’re sitting through every single one…”
“I’ll just read or something,” I told him distractedly as I watched the numbers on the register move higher and higher while biting the inside of my cheek.
I wasn’t prepared for him to move in behind me and settle his hand low on my belly.
“I’m pretty sure you’re gonna watch them, Callie,” he whispered in my ear, pushing his hips lightly against my ass.
“Oh yeah?” I replied, trying to sound dismissive but ending up breathy like Marilyn Monroe.
He didn’t answer back right away because he was busy swiping his credit card and gathering his receipt from the clerk, so I moved slightly away from him, thinking the conversation was over. I was surprised when, instead of grabbing our bags, he moved to me and slid a hand into my hair at the base of my neck, tilting up my face for a quick peck on the lips.
“Yeah, baby. You’ve got a hickey the size of Texas on your neck that tells me you’re not gonna be tellin’ me no.”
He chuckled once and let me go, slapping me on the ass before picking up our purchases and walking toward the exit.
I should’ve been annoyed but I wasn’t. His words had flipped a trigger, and my mind grasped on to one simple fact.
Almost every minute I was conscious, my mind was consumed with grief and guilt. It was burying me slowly in a depression that I had no idea how to deal with. It just kept beating at me, never letting a smile cross my face or a feeling of gratefulness sink in before I felt like shit for enjoying anything when my parents were dead.
But when Asa was touching me, I wasn’t thinking about anything else. Not one single thing.
It was a heady feeling—knowing I’d found my oblivion.