Dindi Pt. 04

"I don't know, man." If I could talk to anyone about this, it would be Max.

My older brother was my best friend. Hardly two years separated us and before our father died we were inseparable. Although we used to fight every five minutes.

"She's fantastic, Max. I've never been with a woman like her before. It feels natural. Right. But she doesn't let me in. I guess she knows I'm trouble." I chuckled bitterly.

I couldn't blame her if she didn't want to get in too deep with me. A two month mark in a relationship was a record for me. Morena was such a smart, independent, mature woman. Who could blame her if she decided to be done with me? We were comfortable enough together, but she never talked about anything too personal with me, not after our first date, anyway. That when I had told her all about my dad and invited her to my mother's house.

"Are you in love with her?" Max asked me the question that had been swirling around in my mind for the past week. Was I?

"It would help if I knew what that feels like. Any tips?"

Max sighed and pat me on the back. "With Josie I knew it when I realized she was the only one I wanted by my side when I felt happy. Even more so and I felt like shit." He said. We laughed together. I didn't remember the last time we did it.

I always needed Morena with me. I wanted her with me all the time, and not just for sex. For herself. Sometimes I caught myself wishing the hours would go by faster so I could see her sooner and just talk to her, hear her laugh. Have her make me laugh, as well.

"If you need help, little brother, I can tell you by what I've seen tonight; that girl is smitten. I don't look at my friends the way you two look at each other."

"What way?" I asked him, feeling insecure which was a new sensation for me.

"What way?" He laughed our father's laugh. "I swear to god I even thought she'd jump your bones right there in front of mom."

I believed Max because I wanted to believe him. Maybe she felt that way, but I would never know unless I ask her. I had to risk it, because otherwise I'd lose her anyway.

"Thanks, Maxie." I got to my feet and gave my brother a hug.

"I've missed you, bro. I'm glad this girl brought you back to us. I like her. And she's hot" He said and we laughed together for the second time.

"I've missed you too, Max." More than I could tell.

****

Max went back to the house when his daughter started screaming 'Daddy'. I stayed behind, reminiscing my childhood and all the times I had fallen off that old swing when I heard the shuffling of Dindi's feet. She'd worn a little blue dress that had my hands itching to touch her thighs all through dinner.

When she reached me I opened my legs for her to step in between. My face came in direct contact with her chest, making it my obligation to breath in her scent. I ran my nose up and down her sternum, half exposed thanks to the dress that only made her more beautiful.

"What's the matter with you, lollipop?" She asked, running her fingers into my hair.

"Nothing." My lie was muffled by her breasts.

"Well, that's not true, now, is it?" She said knowingly.

I smiled. Unlike her, I was good at lying. Way too good. Nevertheless, she could already tell when I did it. I put my hands on her tiny waist, encircling it and bringing her closer to me. Her hair had grown a little since I'd met her. I pulled at one curl, straightening it, then letting it go. It bounced, coiling back to its original form.

"How do you make it look like this?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"What do you mean?" She mimicked my action, pulling at one curl.

"I don't know, just...like this." I snaked a hand around her nape and let my fingers go up into her thick mane of soft curls. She shivered visibly, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. "It's so soft."

"Mmm," She clutched my arm, forcing my hand to slid from her hair to her neck. "It takes a great deal of patience, and leave-in." She dropped her head and pressed her lips to mine. I could taste red wine on them. "Don't change the subject, Travis. What is wrong with you?"

Nothing was wrong. Everything was too right, and that was the problem. I sighed heavily on her lips.

"This is good, isn't it?"

"What is?" She asked, confused. In the dark it was hard to see her eyes. The little light that reached us came from the house, some thirty yards away.

"You and I?" I treated the words as if they were made of glass. "We're good, right? This feels good, it feels right."

Morena tipped her head back. I saw a crease materialize itself in between her rich brows. "Yeah. It's good."

"I don't want it to end." I admitted only to feel her stiffen in my arms.

"Everything ends, Travis." She said. Her voice carried some harshness that made me feel like a child being told Santa isn't real.

As far as her personal life was concerned I knew her father was dead. I knew George was like a brother to her. Her mother lived in England, and that was it. Our -her- agreement was to have sex and sex only. We talked a lot, but she didn't tell me much about her life. Nothing about old boyfriends or what had happened to make her so closed to any intimate emotion.

"I know that, but we don't have to end it, do we? This is good, why end something good?" I didn't have a better argument. I didn't think I needed one. I wanted to be with her, plain and simple.

"Travis, I-" She began, already trying to pull away from my arms.

"Look," I stopped her and held her firmly in place before she could find any plausible excuse to run from me. "I'm not asking you to marry me or anything. Just stay, you know? Sleep in during weeknights. Let me give you breakfast, hold your hand. Let me walk you to the subway in the mornings." She sighed and opened her mouth to discuss with me again. "Come on, Morena. You have clothes in my drawers. You have a toothbrush in my bathroom. My whole damn bed smells of you. Fuck, everything I own smells of you! You spend most of your time with me anyway! We won't label this if it helps you, but I'm not sleeping with anyone else. Are you?" There was more exasperation to my tone of voice than I would've liked.

"No." She whispered, looking down.

"Do you want to?" When she didn't answer immediately, dread flowed in my veins. "Do you?" I asked again.

"No." Her voice was small, like a child being scolded.

"Then just...stay. Be with me. I..." I hesitated, searching for the right words. "I really like you. I like you a lot. Whatever walls you have around you, you can keep them. I won't try and bring them down. I just want you to let me in. Just open a door for me. I promise I'll go easy with you."

Morena's eyes were over my head, in the direction of the trees behind me. Wherever she was it wasn't here with me.

"In my first year of college I met James. We were together for seven years." Morena clutched at the little pendant on her neck. It was an M, the first letter of her father's name. "We got engaged as soon as we graduated from college. Yeah. I was engaged." She added with a bitter smile when she registered the surprise on my face. "We were engaged for two years, actually. I thought I'd marry him, have his children, maybe spend the rest of my life with him, but...two weeks prior to our wedding he broke it off, just out of the blue. I thought everything was fine. We lived together. I was working on my masters degree, saving money, organizing the wedding..."

"He said I wasn't going to be the wife he needed. He said I didn't know how to feel love the right way, that I would never be where he wanted me to be. He said 'I can't marry a woman whose priority won't be me'. He didn't like the idea of me becoming a teacher, mind you. He wanted me to be the perfect housewife. He said I wouldn't need to work, because he would take care of me. Yeah, he was a prick. I know that now. But I loved him. He was my very first love. My first serious boyfriend. I loved him madly. He was my whole life. I lived two years of my life thinking I would, one day, become his wife. He hurt me, Travis. A lot. I don't ever want to feel like that again. I won't let anyone make me feel that way again."

She swallowed hard when she finished. I could see she wanted to cry, but was fighting the urge. That was the most personal thing she'd ever told me, and it explained everything. Why she tried so hard to pretend we didn't have a relationship, why she was so emotionally closed to me. I was paying the price for some sexist douche's mistake, and that wasn't fair.

"I'm not him. Morena." Her eyes finally came back to mine. "Whatever he did to you, it was his mistake. I'm not him. I won't hurt you like he did, so please stay with me. Stay and let me prove to you I'm not him. I need you." I pleaded with her and she only nodded.

Whatever battle she was fighting with her emotions, she lost it, because tears began streaming down her cheeks. I held her face in my hands, not bothering to wipe her tears away. I figured she needed to let them out.

"Will you stay with me?" I asked, bringing her forehead to rest against mine.

"You can't bloody hurt me, you understand? If you do I'll throttle you." She sobbed so hard she could barely speak any clear words.

I held her tighter, wanting desperately to assure her I would never, in a million years, hurt her if I could help it.

"God, no. Never." I promised intending with all I had to keep my word.

"Then I'll stay with you." She wheezed.

She barely got the words out and I was kissing her. Kissing her for all I was worth, tasting her tears. Trying to kiss her into believing I wouldn't hurt her, because I wouldn't. There was no way I would screw up the best thing that had ever happened in my life.

****

"Would you mind?"

"Yes, I would."

"Travis! Stop it!"

"Oh, come on! You're wearing a bathing suit! How can you expect me to not take a damn picture of you in a bathing suit!"

"You have pictures of me naked! You have enough bloody pictures. Now leave me alone, you pervert." She was getting mad. I fucking loved it.

Everywhere I went I had a camera with me. It was a habit, a professional one as well as a hobby. Actually I took more pictures for my pleasure than I did for work. Lately, Dindi was my pleasure. So taking pictures of her in every light and angle possible was what I did. She kept telling me I was a weirdo and a pervert. I didn't think she realized what she looked like. If she were some inches taller she'd belong on the runway.

She was wearing a bathing suit, lying on her back in the sand. It was the same color as the dress she'd worn the first time I saw her. A dusty rose color that matched her skin beautifully. I could swear I could actually see sparkles of gold there, reflecting under the sun.

"Are you still taking pictures?! Travis, you better stop before I smash the blasted thing." She propped herself on her elbows and lifted her ray-bans to her hair.

She made a move for the camera but I dodged her. With the movement, she rolled, landing belly down on the warm sand. Her ass was a marvelous thing, up and dusted with white sand. I couldn't resist reaching a hand to wipe it away.

"Travis." Her voice was a warning. "If you take a picture of my ass, I'll bite your cock off." She didn't even manage a serious expression when she threatened me.

I laughed. Fuck, if I laughed round her. "I won't let your mouth near it." I said.

She huffed. "Like you can resist me." Dindi's tongue darted out, licking her lips, tentatively.

I groaned, knowing full well she was right. I took my picture anyway.

"TRAVIS!" She shrieked and I laughed again.

"Oh, come on! Look at this ass of yours! It's perfect! Let me take my pictures! It's my job!"

"It's not your job to take pictures of my stretchies."

"Your what?" Oh, man, I was laughing to the point my abdomen hurt.

She gave me an annoyed roll of her hazel eyes. "My bloody stretchies. Here," She pointed at her ass. "You're familiar with them. You've met them face to face."

"Oh, these little cracks, you mean." Of course I knew what the fuck stretchies were. I had spent a lifetime photographing models -also sleeping with them on occasion. Stretch marks were their worst nightmare. I just loved teasing Morena. She was easily annoyed. An easy target.

"Cracks?" She sounded like she wanted to punch me.

"Or are they your stripes? 'Cause you're such a kitty. I know you have claws, I mean just look at my back, of course you'd have stripes too -Ouch!"

Her sunblock bottle hit me straight in the face.

"Fuck you, Keegan!" She looked genuinely mad at me. I found it funny, considering she was such a confident woman. At least in my bedroom she had no issues with her so called stretchies. I, myself, only saw a fucking perfect round ass.

"Oh, come on now." I pulled her to me and laid on top of her, feeling the sand between us rubbing against my chest. "I'm just teasing. You're perfect and you know you are."

"Yes, I am. I do know that. I also know that you're a prick." She put her hands on my shoulders as if to push me away, her legs, however, wrapped themselves around my waist.

"You can't complain. It's only fair you pay a price for such an ass." I leaned over to kiss her but she bit my lip pretty hard.

"Ouch, woman!"

"You wanker."

"Wanker?"

"Wanker." She repeated the insult.

I grabbed her hands, holding her wrists tightly above her head.

"I don't do that anymore. I have you." This time she allowed me to kiss her. "And your mouth."

Morena relaxed under me, rewarding me with one of her ironical smiles. "I'll bite it off, I promise."

"You wouldn't dare, you like it too much." I let my lips skim hers, loving how she was becoming breathless so fast.

"I can always find another." She mumbled.

A little twitch of passing jealousy made me kiss her again. "It won't be the same. You know it won't be the same." My seriousness surprised me.

I sure as hell knew it wouldn't feel the same with another woman. Not the way it felt with her. Sometimes she liked to just stare at me. I saw all the questions she wanted to ask me, but never did, afraid of getting to know me too well, I supposed. Now I did the same. My eyes searched her face; I wanted to ask her if she felt it too. How different and rare our connection was.

She had promised me she'd give this thing we had a chance only last night. It wasn't fair of me to expect her reservation to just disappear in a few hours. She obviously had been cultivating it for some time.

"When did you start with this?" She asked, breaking the tension as she always did when things got anywhere near too intense. "I mean, the photographing."

I removed my body from over hers and sat on the sand by her side.

"It was my Dad's fault, actually." I confessed.

"Oh, how so?" Dindi asked expressing real curiosity.

I was elated she wanted to know more about my greatest passion in life. Even if it meant talking about my Dad.

"Well...he had an affair."

"Ah...?" She pursed her lips in confusion.

"When I was about 15 years old he had an affair. When my mother found out she lost it. She spent six months in bed, lost in a pharmaceutical haze." I told her, recollecting the worst period of my teen years. "Max and I had to work in alternate shifts, so one of us would always be home to take care of Charlotte. She was 9." Morena snaked a hand around my ankle, her thumb drawing circles in it. "I worked a part time job printing pictures. Five hours a day in a darkroom. I got a taste for the thing." I continued.

"And your dad?" She asked.

"After six months he came back!" The fight we'd had that day was so fresh in my memory it could've happened yesterday. "Yeah. Pretending like everything was fine. I mean, with the exception of those months he left us to fend for ourselves, when Max and I practically raised each other and Charlotte, he was a good dad. He spent the rest of his life trying to fix things. I never forgave him. Not until he died." I stopped, letting out a long sigh, lost in memories. "I lost so much time with him, just being angry and blaming him for hurting my mother. The worst part is that before all that, he was my hero. All I wanted in life was to be like him. Plus, Max never understood the fact that I couldn't forgive Dad. So my relationship with my brother was never the same after all that."

I conveniently left out the part where my mother remained an unhappy woman whose stability depended on pills while my father didn't hide the fact he'd only ever came back for his children, not her.

Morena forced her body into a sitting position, hugging her shins. "How did you became the Travis Keegan-super-blaster-famous fashion photographer?" She asked.

"My dad he...Well, he came back home, but he still kept the other woman. Without Max as a buffer, I couldn't live under the same roof as him anymore. All we ever did was fight. So, I moved out when I was 17. I studied photography in the NYU, and from there things just worked out for me. I guess I just like my job. It makes it easy."

I took a long gulp of the beer I had forgotten I'd opened. It was warm already. The past was meant to stay behind, except I dragged it along whenever I went. A man in his mid thirties crying over his daddy issues.

Morena's golden necklace sparkled in the sun and it caught my eye; The M pendant she carried in honor of her father. She had lived more of her life without than with him, but she still loved him and seemed to have only good memories of him. I envied her that.

She was looking at me wearing her serious, contemplative expression. I always felt like an open book when she looked at me like that. As if she could she all of the embarrassing, ugly things I had done in life.

"What?" I asked her.

She just shook her head. "Your eyes are very pretty." She said softly.

"You like them, um?" I batted my eyelashes teathertrically at her.

"Yeah, I like them." She said already leaning towards me.

Her mouth met mine, eager as usual. We fell on the sand, me on top of her. I kissed her, allowing my tongue to explore her mouth with no hurry at all. The skin on my back was overly sensible because of the sun, and it intensified the feel of her nails running over it. That sensation her body created in mine was flowing down my spine and just when I felt my cock twitch a little voice interrupted me.

"Why you hurting your girlfriend, ucle Trabis?" I was on my knees and off of Morena in a sudden jerk.

"Tess! What are you doing here, sweetheart? Where's your mom?" I opened my arms to my little niece, who didn't hesitate to step into them while Morena didn't make any efforts to disguise her amusement.

It's fantastic how children work. If they decide to like you it doesn't matter if you're a negligent uncle who they hardly ever see.

"Mommy's behind. I want to play."

Tessa was a lovely child. Looked exactly like her mother when Charlotte was her age. "Let's play, then."

"Not with you, ucle Trabis. With your girlfriend." She pointed a chubby little finger at Morena, who laughed in surprise.

"With me? I would love to play with you, little Tess. What do you want to do?"

"I want to build a castle." Tessa presented Morena with a plastic pink bucket.

She laughed in a way that made me want to cover Tessa's eyes while I kissed her senseless. Then she got to her feet wiping sand off her wonderful ass.

"Come on, then. Let's build your castle." She offered a hand to Tessa who took it without thinking twice.

They marched together towards the sea while I stayed behind as a mere spectator. Morena didn't object when Tessa called her my girlfriend, just as she wouldn't. Not to a 4 year old. Still, I didn't see any silent objections cross her features either. When I thought of it, of her as my girlfriend, that stupid wide grin was back. Splitting my face in half.