Darker Places Than I Want To Feel Ch. 03

"More than one?"

She looked at him with searing intensity and snorted. "You have no clue do you? How could you possibly understand? You've never been beaten nearly to death have you?"

"I have."

She turned to him shocked. "What? When?"

"A long time ago. It was the nineteen seventies. I was barely out of high school. It was at the tail end of a war that this country had no business fighting. But I was a soldier and I was trained to follow orders. My unit was trapped in a firefight that lasted most of the night. By morning only three of us were left and they overran our position. We ended up in a camp in Cambodia. I saw two of my buddies die right in front of me. I knew I was next and would have been if it weren't for those "bufs" dropping eggs where they weren't supposed to."

"Bufs?"

"Big Ugly Fuckers. That's we called B-52s in those days. They were making daily bombing runs out of Utapao, Thailand every fifteen minutes like clockwork. One of those runs saved my life. But that was a long time ago. I don't carry knives any more."

* * *

Sarah sat dumbfounded as her eyes began to glisten. She turned away and wiped them quickly. They both were silent for a long time after that. She reached out and took his hand to hold it tightly in hers. That was the first time she held his hand. It was the first time he shocked her out of her smug assumption of who he was. It was the first time she realized just how much this all meant to both of them.

"Bobby, put that stick down. And tell your brother to stop kicking those rocks," she shouted at her nephews.

Ryan took a big breath and let it out slowly. "You said you wanted to ask me a question. Do you have something you want to know?"

"How did your wife die?"

"Cervical cancer."

"Fuck, that sucks."

Ryan picked up a stick and used it to trace tiny circles in the gravel at his feet. "Yeah, it still does."

"What was her name?"

"Teresa."

"How long were you married?"

"Twenty-eight years."

"Oh." She sighed.

* * *

Ryan gazed off across the park. He didn't want to think about Teresa, the pain was still there, lurking in the shadows, and the loneliness too. He hated living alone. He hated that big lonely house that they bought together. His apartment was better; there were fewer things to remind him that she was gone.

He turned back towards Sarah with a faint smile on his face. "Was there any one person who stood out as somebody you wanted to get to know outside of your work?"

"There might have been several but I tried not to think about it too much. Most of the guys I spent time with then were there for a quick fuck and that was the end of it. There was a boy I met the first year I was working who seemed kind of special but when his friends found out about me they teased him mercilessly. I never saw him again."

"How did your dates find you?"

"Craig's List. I had a computer that my mom bought me for graduating from high school. I would hang out in the public library or Starbucks, anywhere I could get free Wi-Fi."

"So if they came to you, where did you go?"

"Motels mostly. Some of them were okay; some others were pretty skanky. They smelled of mold and cigarettes."

"You said that sometimes guys would get rough with you. Did you ever hurt someone back?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I stabbed a guy once."

Ryan turned and looked at her incredulously. "Why?"

"He owed me money and he was trying to bust me."

"Did you kill him?"

"No but I thought about it. I called the paramedics instead then I called a cab and just left him laying there."

"Where was he?"

"In his home, his wife was at work and his kids were in school."

"Did he come after you?"

"I hid out for a while but he never found me."

"If he had found you what would you have done?"

"Told his wife and kids."

"Oh." Ryan shook his head.

"He was a big time local politician. He spent his time bragging that he was a leader of the community. That's probably what kept him from looking for me. He acted like he could give a shit about his family. Votes were all that mattered to him. "

Ryan sat a moment looking out at nothing and trying to absorb all of this. "Would you ever stab me?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you would never do something like that."

"How do you know?"

"I just do. You learn to be a pretty good judge of people after a while if you are going to survive on the streets. I could tell on the phone that you weren't someone who was going to try to fuck me up."

"Because I sounded like a weak person?"

"You're not weak, you're the strongest person I've ever met. Right here," she looked steadily into his eyes and tapped a finger on his chest over his heart.

"And you can tell that? How?"

She shrugged and looked away.

*><*><*

Ryan walked back into the last room of the special exhibit and found Sarah staring at a small sculpture of a child looking through a window. "It's getting to be three o'clock, I suppose we should probably go." He pulled at Sarah's hand and led her out of the exhibit hall.

"Can we come back here again soon?"

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a little hug. "Of course, anytime they're open and you have free time."

She smiled meekly. "Thanks, but I'd like it better if we went together."

"Okay, how about next week? We can make it a Friday thing until we get bored with it."

She nodded as they walked out of the front entrance of the museum toward the parking lot. Ryan wrapped his arm around her shoulders and she wrapped hers around his waist. The sunlight filtered through the trees overhead leaving a dappled pattern of light and shadow on the sidewalk that danced across their shoulders as they walked. It was magical.

*><*><*

At the bus stop Sarah waited in Ryan's car for the school bus to arrive. "What are you doing tomorrow?"

Ryan shrugged his shoulders and gazed off through the windshield. "Nothing much. Saturday's are for house cleaning and laundry, plus some grocery shopping, boring domestic stuff. Why?"

"I like boring domestic stuff."

"You lie like a rug, Sarah Daniels. You hate domestic stuff, you told me that the second time we met."

"I did not, I said I hated doing my own laundry but I wouldn't mind helping you with yours."

He scoffed and she punched his shoulder playfully.

About then the school bus screeched to a halt. She leaned across and held his face in her hands then planted a big kiss on his lips. When they parted she smiled seductively and giggled.

Ryan opened his mouth and was about to speak when she placed her index finger over his lips. "Don't you dare tell me how old you are Ryan Sullivan, I don't want to hear it. I'm a big girl, I know what I'm doing and right now all I want to do is kiss you." She leaned forward and hesitated, her lips lingering a hair's breadth away from his. "I'm so glad I answered your note on craigslist. It was the luckiest day of my life." She closed the distance between them and kissed him again.

Her nephews jumped out of the school bus to land on the ground and started running towards Ryan's car. Sarah opened her door and got out. She closed the door then leaned down to look back at Ryan with a sweet smile. "Thanks for taking me to the museum. It was wonderful. Ooff!" Her nephews collided with her and grabbed her into two big bear hugs. They released her and pushed in beside her to look through the window at Ryan.

"Hey Ryan, what cha'doing?" Bobbie grinned; a front tooth was missing.

"Just dropping off your Aunt Sarah. We went to the museum today. What happened to your big tooth?"

"Michael knocked it out last night when we were wrestling. It was loose anyway. I put it under my pillow and the tooth fairy left me a whole dollar!" Bobby pulled a dollar out of his pants pocket and pushed it through the window for Ryan to see.

Ryan grinned. "Man, you'll be rich before you know it if you keep that up."

"I know! Me and Michael, we have a plan."

"What's that?"

"If we save all our money from the tooth fairy we could get that new game we wanted."

"Don't you want to save it for something really special?"

Michael tried to grab at the dollar that Bobbie was waving in front of Ryan. "See Bobbie, I told you he would say that."

"All right you two, that's enough."

"Hey you guys, ask your mom if you can go with me to the ball game on Sunday." He glanced at Sarah with a wink. "I think there's a matinee home game that starts around noon."

Bobbie ducked back into the window pushing Michael aside. "Baseball? That would be so cool. You want to go Michael?"

"Yeah, but Mom says we have to clean our room on Sundays."

Sarah laughed and pushed Bobbie's head back out of the window. "Well just clean it tomorrow so it will be done already. All right you two, go over there and wait while I say goodbye to Ryan."

Her nephews grinned and high-fived then sauntered over to the bus stop bench to wait for their Aunt.

"Thank you. You know you don't have to do that."

"Ah, they're guys, going to a baseball game is a guy thing. Besides, I want to go and what better way to go to a game than with a couple of kids to tag along. You want to go too?"

"I wouldn't miss it." She blew him an air kiss then leaned back and stood up.

"See ya!" Ryan pulled away from the curb and watched Sarah and the boys walk down the sidewalk towards their apartment in his rear view mirror.

Sunday was going to be fun.

*****

A NOTE TO THE READER:

This story is a work of fiction. All of the characters, their names, and the places that they visit, are purely from the imagination of the author. Any resemblance to persons, places, or things is not intentional and purely coincidental.

If you believe in coincidence I'm happy for you. However, if you read my other stories you know that I do not, but the lawyers like to see that word in there anyway.

Thank you for reading my work, I hope you enjoyed it. If this is the first time you've read one of my stories, welcome. I hope you take a look at the rest of my work. If you are a returning reader, welcome back, it's nice to see old friends.