Rain Storms Ch. 03

"This is good!" she effused.

I smirked. "You sound surprised. I told you that I could cook."

"Everybody thinks they can cook. Just like everybody thinks they can drive."

"Point," I grinned. "Eric taught me to cook."

She laughed. "All that sex appeal and he can cook too?"

"He can. He doesn't like doing it. He'd rather eat out," I said. "That's not true. He likes to cook, he just doesn't like the mess it creates. He's fastidious about being clean. He lives in this big warehouse that is also his workshop. You should see it when he's working wood or stone. Anything that kicks up dust. He covers everything in these big plastic sheets. It's a riot. It's like living in a haunted house."

"How long have you guys been together?" she asked between bites.

"We met over eight years ago but we didn't get serious for a year."

"Eight years," she repeated. "It's hard to fathom that you've been involved with an artist for eight years and you don't have a single piece of his work."

I nodded while chewing. "I do. Just not in here. When I moved out, I brought a piece with me. He made it for me so..."

"Can I see it?"

"Umm. Yes?"

"You're not sure?" She arched her eyebrow.

"It's just that it's a little..."

"Personal?" she suggested.

"Erotic," I supplied. "But personal too."

"All art is erotic."

"Yes. But this is erotic in that it's art, but the subject matter is also erotic," I explained.

"Ah," she nodded. "I'm fine with it, but if it bothers you then say no. I won't be offended, just disappointed. But I'll live."

I sighed. "It's fine. You can see it. It's in my bedroom." I set my plate down.

She put her hand on my knee. "Eat," she insisted. "If you decide that you're comfortable with it when you're finished, then I'd love to see it. If you don't, then I'll understand."

I nodded and picked back up my plate. The only person that had seen the box, other than me and Eric, was Ryan. It hadn't seemed like a big deal to me to let Ryan see it, but we were intimate. I wasn't sure how I felt about letting a virtual stranger see something so personal to me. But then, she had basically been a third party to all of my sexcapades for the month that I had been living there, so I couldn't really keep thinking of her as a stranger. Sharon and I had been intimate in a very strange way for quite some time, even if I hadn't known about it.

After we finished eating, I cleaned the kitchen while she made another drink for each of us, then I led her to the bedroom. I stopped at the doorway and let her continue on. I silently pointed to the box.

"It's a hope chest!" she exclaimed, crossing the room to get a better look.

"A what?"

"A hope chest," she repeated while kneeling down in front of it. "That's what it's called. They were where girls stored all the things that they collected during their lives in hopes of using them when they married." Her voice had taken on a distant and distracted quality while she lovingly ran her fingers over the carved top.

"I didn't know that," I admitted. "I've always called it a toy box."

"Toy boxes have flat lids," she explained, still with that faraway sound to her voice. "This has a fitted lid. It's a chest."

She examined the image on the top and then moved to the front and the sides. I was getting more and more embarrassed the longer it went on. It felt like she was dissecting and placing judgment on the love between me and Eric, and it was unnerving.

"This is stunning," she breathed. "Eric carved this? This is amazing work. It's so detailed. I had no idea that he was this talented. Is this accurate or artistic license?"

She had her fingertips rested on the side that displayed me in full frontal, fully erect in all my glory. My face heated as the blood rushed to it. It hadn't even occurred to me that my body was completely exposed like that until her fingers brushed against the very true to life depiction of my arousal.

"It's... umm..."

She smirked at me. "I'm teasing you. Don't get so flustered." She went back to examining the chest, thankfully, no longer tormenting me. She slid it away from the wall to see the back side and then plopped down on the floor in front of it. "I'm not this good."

Eric was an exceptional artist. I knew that. But I hadn't meant to upset her by showing her the piece. I moved in to the bedroom and plopped down on the edge of the firm mattress. She looked up at my sharp intake of breath.

"Are you ok?" she asked, concern etched on her face.

"I'm fine," I assured her. "I just forgot to be careful."

She arched her eyebrow at me in an unspoken question. I hesitated but decided to hell with it. "You know all that 'Harder! Harder!' stuff? That should have been 'Please me gentle with me'."

She snickered. "Does Eric do gentle?"

"Oh yes," I nodded. "He loves gentle almost as much as he loves rough. He's got so much more control than I have. I'm usually the one that ends up begging for it."

She smirked at me and shifted her attention back to the chest. "Look at this." She reached out and caressed the faces in the wood. "You can see the love there. It's unreal to me how some people can look at this and think this is sick or wrong. This is love. Did he do this from photographs?"

"No. He did sketches. He did maybe a hundred of them before he decided on five."

She shook her head in incredulity. "He's amazing. I can see his influences too in the expressions on the faces and the lines of the bodies."

"Eric told me that being influenced by another artist is fine but outright mimicry is intolerable."

"Well, this is pretty close to mimicry," she said.

I frowned. "Don't let Eric hear you say that. He'd be devastated."

"I'm not an expert on sculpture or anything, but I took this class over the winter on modern artists, and there was one of the artists featured whose work was just like this. I remember him because the instructor named his periods after emotions. Painters usually get colors, the blue period, the yellow period. This guy got things like sorrow and pain and love. This is straight from the love period. Except for the fact that his subjects were all hetero couples."

"I promise you that was all Eric," I replied with a slightly defensive tone. "I watched him do every bit of that. He wasn't copying anyone."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," she rushed to explain. "I'm sure it's his work. The skill and talent in the carving alone is astounding. I just meant that he's obviously heavily influenced by Unger in the subject matter. It's gorgeous and I wish I had this much talent."

It took me a second to realize what she had said. When it sank in, I started laughing.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"God. You had me so worried," I chuckled.

"About what?"

"Eric," I chuckled. "You don't know what he does to work he thinks is too much like someone else's."

"I'm sorry," she frowned. "I wasn't trying to upset anyone. It's just very similar."

"It's identical," I replied with a grin.

She nodded. "It is."

"It should be."

"What?" She was very confused.

I decided to let her off the hook. "It IS Unger. Eric Unger."

Her mouth dropped open in shock. "You're fucking with me."

"I'm pretty sure that we aren't fucking," I teased.

"Your Eric is E. Unger? Seriously?"

"Serious as a heart attack," I promised. "That piece is signed on the bottom."

"Holy shit!" She smacked her forehead with her hand. "I'm such an idiot. I knew he was local. I mean, the class was on local artists, but I never thought... Wow. I'm a moron."

"What the hell class is this?" I asked, chuckling. "I'm sure Eric would love to take it."

"It's a continuing education class at the community college," she explained. "I just took it for fun."

"I'll be sure to mention it to him." I smiled.

"He's really Eric Unger?" she asked. "That's so cool. He's a pretty big deal around here. Like I said, I'm not an expert on sculpture or anything, but he's about as famous as an artist can get and still be alive."

"He's always been a big deal to me." I grinned. "But don't go getting all star struck. He's still just a person. He's got his issues just like everyone else."

"Still," she replied. "It's pretty cool."

"You know what?" I smirked. "We should tell him." I jumped up and the vodka that I had consumed hit my head. I got a little woozy for a second but went in and grabbed the phone. I plopped back down on the bed and winced automatically but it didn't really hurt. Alcohol, the great anesthetic.

"Are you really calling him?"

"Sure." I shrugged while dialing. "Why not?"

"Rain?" Eric answered.

"Hey Sexy," I purred. "What are you doing?"

"Sexy?" I could hear the humor in his voice. "Are you drunk, Baby?"

"A little bit, yeah," I admitted.

"Nice," he drawled. "Want me to come over?"

"Oh yeah," I husked. "But no."

"Well damn," he sighed.

"So I'm sitting here in my bedroom with my neighbor..." Eric's growl rumbled through the phone line and I giggled. "Not like that, Goof. You remember my neighbor, Sharon?"

"The one with the eagle bait?"

"Yes," I grinned. "She's a painter and she makes really potent drinks."

"How much have you and Sharon had to drink, Baby?"

"Just a couple," I told him. "Hush. Let me finish my story. You'll like this."

"Ok. Go."

"So I was showing her my toy box. It's called a hope chest, did you know that?"

"Yes."

"You let me call it a toy box all these years."

"I thought it was appropriate considering what's in it," he argued.

"Ok. So anyway, turns out she took a class a few months ago about you."

"A what?" Eric asked.

"A class."

"You're not telling it right," Sharon chided. "Give me the phone."

She took the receiver from me without waiting for my objection. "I took a class at the community college on prominent local artists and you were featured in it. Rain thought you'd be amused."

I laid the top half of my body across the bed, with my legs dangling over the edge, while they talked. The drinks were stronger than I had thought and my head was spinning a little. I had eaten so I didn't think I should have been that affected by two drinks.

"He wants to talk to you." Sharon stuck the phone in my face and I took it.

"Baby?"

"I'm here." My voice was slurring a little, even to my own ears. "Don't you think that's funny?"

"Are you ok, Baby?" He was worried. His voice got sharper when he was worried.

"I'm fine," I tried to reassure him.

"I'm coming over," he stated.

"You don't have to," I told him. "I'm fine."

"You're drunk and alone with a stranger in your bedroom. I'm coming over. I'll be there soon."

"No, Eric. I'm fine," I insisted to no avail. He had already hung up.

"What's wrong?" Sharon asked.

"He's coming over," I said as I let the handset drop onto the mattress beside my head.

She giggled, "Awesome." Then she noticed my expression. "What's wrong? You don't want him to come over?"

"Not really," I replied. "I mean... I do. I want him all the time. It's just not healthy. We have a hard time being together. We fight a lot."

She nodded. "Artists are like that. We wear our emotions on our sleeves."

"I get that," I told her. "I understand that he feels things deeper than other people. I just don't understand why he won't or can't share those feelings with me. He can't vocalize what's going on in his head and it causes major problems between us."

She was silent for a few minutes, pensive. "Hey Rain? I know it's none of my business, and we just met and all, but maybe you're not paying attention."

"What do you mean?" My head was swimming and I was trying to keep my dinner down. I hated throwing up and I was concentrating really hard on trying to make sure that didn't happen.

"I mean..." She pointed to the chest. "Maybe he is vocalizing in the only way he knows how and you're just not hearing him."

I tried to follow her train of thought through the foggy haze in my head but couldn't. I sat up to take a look at the chest and listed over to the side.

"Damn!" she giggled. "You're drunk. I didn't know that you were such a lightweight. I'll go get you some water."

"I'm not a lightweight!" I called after her while I slowly inched up to the top of the bed.

She brought me some water and I just stayed flat on the bed, letting her babble. She was excited to meet Eric, even though she had already technically met him. I couldn't blame her. Eric excited me too but for a totally different reason. Or... maybe not. I gathered from the small amount of her incessant chatter that I heard, she was crushing on him hardcore. I was mostly tuning her out. I knew it was rude but I couldn't seem to get a handle on why I was so fucked up. I didn't really notice time passing but it must have because the trip from Eric's place to mine was twenty minutes on a good day but, suddenly, he was there.

"Rain?" Eric's sultry voice affected me in ways that I knew were dangerous this soon. He crawled onto the bed with me and snuggled up tight to my side.

"Who let you in?" I grinned at him so he knew that I was teasing.

"I let myself in. I know how to work a doorknob," he smirked. "Contrary to all indications."

"Did you meet Sharon?" I asked.

"Yes." Eric looked up at Sharon who was suddenly pretty calm in comparison to before. "Hi Sharon. How much did he drink?"

"Two White Russians," she replied. "I didn't know he was a cheap drunk."

"He's not," Eric defended my honor. "Did you eat today, Baby?"

I nodded. "I don't know why it hit me so hard but I'm doing better now."

"What happened to your arm?" Eric asked, noticing the bruise on my right arm.

"Nothing," I explained. "I went to the doctor today."

"You had a blood draw?" he asked.

"Oh shit," I cursed as it dawned on me. "I forgot."

"You can't drink after you have blood taken, Baby."

"I know, Eric," I sighed. "I forgot. It was stupid."

"How much blood did they take?" he asked, running his finger lightly over the bruise.

"Enough for a full work-up," I told him.

"I brought him some water but he wouldn't drink it," Sharon tattled on me.

"Come on, Baby." Eric lifted me into a sitting position, leaning back against his chest for support. He handed me the glass of water. "Drink this, Rain."

I took a sip. "Come on guys," I sighed. "I've been far more fucked up than this. What's the big deal?"

"It's just scary when someone gets like that on two drinks, Rain," Sharon supplied. "It's not normal."

I couldn't argue with the logic. I would have been freaked out if it had been someone else. "You didn't have to come, Eric. I would have been fine."

"I wanted to take care of you, Baby. I always want to take care of you."

"Besides, now that we know what the problem is, I get to talk to a famous artist about art," she smirked. "How cool is that?"

"Famous artist?" Eric smirked.

"Don't get a big head," she giggled. "That's all the hero worship you're going to get from me."

"I like it when his head gets big," I mumbled under my breath.

At least, I thought it was under my breath until both of them turned to look at me. Sharon burst out in a fit of giggles and Eric held me tighter and kissed the top of my head. I snuggled into Eric's embrace and sipped my water while we all sat on my bed and they talked. This may have been a new experience for Sharon but this kind of thing was old hat for us. There had been hundreds, if not thousands, of times that Eric would just hold me while he socialized. It had begun the very first day that we had officially been a couple and had never stopped. My state of mild inebriation lowered my defenses enough that, for the first time in years, I felt absolutely no hostility or distress being in his presence. Enveloped in his arms, scent, and sound, I felt cherished, protected, and loved. The comforting feeling of Eric's heat around me, and his deep voice rumbling through me, soon lulled me into a contented slumber.