Messy Ch. 16

Tori left after dinner, pushing her empty plate away and heading for her townhouse without a word. Sienna raised her eyebrows at me and ate faster. "I'm gonna go over and watch a movie or something with her. I don't think she should be alone."

I smiled at her. Kind and considerate, and adapting quickly to the new, desperate, pained existence of her friends complaint. "Thanks. Let me know if you need anything."

I washed dishes and then locked myself in my bedroom with my tablet, pulled up Skype, and tapped on the name Jessie Rigg. The ringing of the artificial dialtone was the only thing to quirk the corners of my mouth up in even a small smile all day.

Sienna was sitting in the hallway outside my room, back to the wall when I finally exited three relaxing hours later. "Hey."

I learned against the wall opposite her. "Hey."

"Talking to your girlfriend?" she asked with a smirk.

A single burning bolt of guilt spiked through me. "Nah. Not girlfriend. Just a friend. It helps to talk to her."

Sienna unfolded herself from sitting, rose. "You can talk to me. I'm here."

"I know. And I'm glad. Thank you."

"Can I do anything for you? Get you anything?"

I smiled tiredly at her enthusiasm. "I'm doing ok, thanks."

She moved to me, stood so close that I could feel her body heat. I could've kissed her if I'd leaned forward less than a handful of inches. Eventually the blonde did just that, tilting her head towards mine, her barely parted lips just barely brushing my own in the most gentle kiss I'd ever received. "You can use me... If you want." Her voice was a low, almost embarrassed whisper.

"Use you?"

"If you need to be aggressive, get off, whatever. If you need to let it out, use me."

I closed my eyes and sighed. I didn't deserve someone so...devoted? She was still there when I opened them again, not a figment or a fantasy. I stroked her cheek and she tilted her head into my hand. "See, thank you, but that's the last thing on my mind right now. I...I just wanna sleep."

"Can I sleep with you? Next to you?"

"Yeah."

We crossed quietly into Tori's apartment after brushing our teeth, and I pulled out the sleeper sofa in the livingroom, spread it with the sheets and blankets I'd brought from my apartment. I stripped down to my boxers, set the Glock I'd been carrying all day on the end table, and crawled under the covers. I watched as Sienna undressed down to her panties and socks and then lay down beside me. As was usual for her, she turned her back to me, and I slid an arm under her neck, wrapped my other around her side, hand pressed to her abdomen.

It was weird, like a switch had been flipped on my brain, I wasn't interested in her sexually anymore. Honestly, I wasn't too interested in sex at all. Usually the feel of a nude or almost nude female body warm against mine would've given me a raging hard-on.

Especially Sienna's nude body. Especially with her barely-covered ass pressed against my groin, my hand resting just above her pubic mound.

I could do whatever I wanted to her. I knew that. Knew that she'd let me. Knew that she'd encourage me. However I wanted her sexually, she'd comply and participate, happily.

Maybe that would be a good thing.

Maybe tomorrow.

Right now, all I wanted was sleep.

Life changed.

Tori and I seemed to switch behaviors. I'd dumped most of the alcohol in my townhouse, started guzzling water.

She started drinking. Not to the level of an alcoholic, but probably as heavily as I had for the past four years, ending every night with a cocktail or two. Or four.

She quit working out, going to martial arts class once a week instead of her usual three. I could only imagine it was because she and Nina used to do that together as often as they could.

I picked up her slack, starting martial arts training at a dojo an hour away, for the first time in my life, spending every free moment in the ring or on the mats, sweating and burning and aching as I learned violence.

I started shooting as well, joining a Minneapolis gun club and running through every class they offered, and then running through every drill and instruction I'd learned on their outdoor range, running and shooting and freezing my ass off in the cold Minnesota winter air.

When I wasn't learning how to be violent, I was working. I got a part time job as a bank teller. Having been out of the financial industry for almost five years, it was the best place to start, and easy enough that I could do it with my eyes closed. The skills I'd learned as a teacher - how to talk to people, how to communicate WELL, how to persuade people - came in handy, and I started getting noticed for things like sales and conversion rates, rising quickly up the internal rankings.

Tori lay on the couch. She'd moved to my townhouse's second bedroom only because I disconnected her cable and emptied her cupboards, and her sole activities throughout the week were watching TV or the wall, and getting groceries. It pained me to see her in such a state, but I reminded myself that everyone grieved differently, and I have her space...while keeping an eye on her.

Sienna moved in, and honestly did more of the keeping-an-eye-on-Tori than I did, watching over her friend and making sure she didn't starve or drink herself to death, or self-destruct in some way. She was probably keeping an eye on me too, but I wasn't mostly catatonic with grief and alcohol. She spent days in school or in the college bookstore, coming home at night to cook for us and do homework. I'd come home from working my four-hour afternoon shift at the bank, help her with making dinner or with her homework, and sometimes she'd join me downstairs for late-evening workout. We showered separately afterwards, and she alternated sleeping in Tori's room, on the couch, or with me.

We lived together with a depressed chastity, Tori and I not so much abstaining from sex but so emotionally fucked up that we were totally disinterested and turned inward, Sienna going along with because she wanted to be with us and the idea of going out and getting some for herself didn't seem to appeal to her.

The only bright spots in my week were the semi-daily Skype sessions with Jessie. While I forced myself to be smiling and talkative and happy at the bank, at the dojo, while I let out my anger and aggression and ferocity on the mats and on the gun range, talking into my tablet screen with the vampirically-pale woman five hundred miles away was the only part of my day that felt...NORMAL. I could smile, I could talk without it feeling forced, I could hear a female voice without it feeling like a business transaction or like I was dealing with an interloper in my house.

As much as I was glad to have both girls under my roof, it still felt weird.

And under all of it, chewing at my brain like a vodka buzz was the knowledge that the people who'd killed my friends and tried to kill me were still free, still out there, still dangerous. Every creak of the house, every car backfire, every set of headlights that followed me a little too long set me on edge and had me reaching for the block of Austrian metal and polymer that had become my constant companion.

Sienna has suggested that both Tori and I get some kind of mental counseling. Tori told her to fuck off, I told her I was just fucked up and a doctor couldn't help.

It wasn't PTSD, it was grief and anger and depression, and I dared anyone else to go through the same experiences I had and not feel feel terrible. Just because I felt terrible though, didn't mean it was a disorder. It just WAS.

Life changed.

"You wanna go get a drink?" Deirdre asked me after class. "Hell of a night to be drinking alone."

I leaned against my car and contemplated the offer. Nine at night on Valentine's Day, and I was worn out from three hours of mixed martial arts. I just wanted to go home and shower and sleep.

"We both stink," I said by way of an excuse. "I sweat so much I smell like sourdough bread."

The redhead snorted with laughter, stepped a little closer and inhaled. "Shit, you're right."

"I quit drinking too. Well, mostly. So I'd probably be unwelcome in a bar."

"What about a dive? I promise they won't notice."

I sighed. "What the hell. Lead the way."

Deirdre O'Bannon had joined the dojo shortly after I did, and us two newbies had gotten paired together often as the teacher didn't want our collective ignorance detracting from the more experienced students learning. We got to roll with the higher belts during practice, but for lessons we mostly wound up together.

I knew very little about the redhead aside from the fact that she didn't practice very much - certainly not on the level that I did - but she seemed interested in the instruction and wanted to do well. Women flitted through the dojo regularly, an air of desperation about them as they used martial arts classes like single men use ballroom dancing lessons, but they rarely stuck around once they realized it was actually hard work and they might take a punch to the face. Deirdre wasn't like that - she was there to LEARN. She couldn't learn very much, only going once or twice a week, but she took readily to basics and was always asking questions.

Which was why following her car through light snow to a dive bar on Valentine's Day made very little sense to me - she wasn't one of the desperate depressives that looked at mixed martial arts as a way to hook a man, she was a real student. Maybe I'd won the jackpot, and she was just interested in ME, I thought bitterly. Fuck, was she in for a surprise if that was the case. I lived with two - former - sex partners, my only real income right now was being a part-time banker, and I was a suspect in machine-gunning one man, caving in the skull of another, and sexually torturing and murdering one of my good friends.

I'm not anywhere close to being "a good catch."

The parking lot was full of rusted vehicles and the interior was full of light-up alcohol signs and exposed wood. Not the designer type like rough hewn timber, but actual exposed two by fours and four by fours. I couldn't tell if they were going for an unfinished look intentionally, or if they just hasn't finished building yet. Damn, was that a sheet of Tyvek on the wall in the back?

Deirdre ordered a rum and coke, I hesitated at the thought of Wild Turkey, asked for just the coke, and the bartender muttered something about me changing my name to Sally. I carried our drinks to a table in the back while Deirdre hit the restrooms with her gym bag.

When she came back, she looked a little more presentable, having untied her hair and changed out of her rashguard and gi pants to jeans and a hoodie. I had to admit, she cleaned up - at least partially - nice. Her face was clean and clear as a painting, porcelain skin as befitted her mane of red hair and obviously Irish heritage, piercing blue eyes, and a cute button nose that she was currently wrinkling at me. "What?"

"Country music. And you were right, you do stink."

I sipped at my soda, hoping the sugar would revive my flagging energy. "I can always go..."

"What did you think of class tonight?" she asked, changing the subject.

I shrugged. "I get more out of the standup classes. I don't want to fight on the ground."

"But fights always go to ground..."

"Not if you shoot them, stab them, or punch them out first," I said with a wicked grin. "Besides, what do you know about fights? I bet you've never been hit in your life."

"I wouldn't take that bet," she replied dryly.

"What do you DO for a living?"

"No comment. You?"

"Part-time banker, full-time landlord, hoping to get back into teaching."

"That's an odd combination. Why did you get out of teaching, if you want to go back?"

Get out of teaching. Fuck. More like forced out for no good reason. "No comment." I covered up my look of disgust with a long drink of my soda.

"Busy night," Deirdre commented, watching the crowd.

"Surprisingly." The mass of people around the bar and battered pool tables was an equal mix of though looking men and women, and none of them seemed to be together. Glancing around, the couples seated at the table all appeared to be like my redheaded drinking buddy and I, together but distant, more than a worn wooden table between. "Why aren't you somewhere higher quality, celebrating with someone higher quality?"

She snorted, held up the four fingers of her left hand to show me the lack of jewelry, folded down three fingers until just the middle remained upright. "Like my cat?"

I very obviously looked her up and down. Despite the lack of mental attraction caused by my stress-related lack of libido, I could objectively judge her as hot. Gorgeous, actually. The classically beautiful Irish face, the flowing red hair above a slim, softly muscular body. She wasn't hitting the weights and the cardio and the dojo nearly every day like I was, but she took good care of herself, I could tell. The body that struggled with mine on the mats during class had some strength in it. And the breasts still squished together under her athletic bra had to be a pleasing size, neither too big nor too small for her frame.

"Should I strike a pose?" Deirdre asked. "You seeing something you like?"

I smirked. "Haha. I'm just wondering why you can't get a date for Valentine's Day, have to resort to drinking with a smelly guy in a dive bar. I'm sure there's no end to the line of guys who'd want to wine and dine you tonight."

"Less than you'd think. What about you?" She gave me a similar, exaggerated up and down oggle. "No misses Galloway to bury your face between the legs of on this Hallmark holiday?"

Coke exploded burningly out my nose as I laughed. "Where the fuck did that come from?"

The redhead grinned. "So that's a no?"

"No misses Galloway, no. But...my life is complicated. I'm not really interested or looking right now."

"You gay?"

"Straight as an arrow."

"Why aren't you looking?" she seemed genuinely curious.

Because I'm depressed as all hell. Because being falsely accused of my friends murders and just barely avoiding losing my career over it has killed my sex drive. Because I'm wondering if I'll be having a relationship with an impoverished Goth-looking girl five hours away once I can finally leave the state. "No comment."

"You sure do have a lot of 'no comments' in your life."

"Like I said, complicated life. You ever been to this bar before?"

"Yeah, it was my dad's favorite."

"What's good on their menu? I'm famished."

I ordered a very inauthentic version of poutine for both of us which turned out to be way better than expected. The conversation, which had included some friction early on, turned to family and friends, and finally martial arts, and by the time we left, Deirdre had extracted a promise from me to practice with her if she ever found a place that was open when she was free. We exchanged telephone numbers, shook hands, and I drove home feeling relaxed.

It had almost been - very almost - like talking with Jessie. Around Deirdre I could be somebody different, somebody new. There wasn't the undercurrent of tragedy girding our conversations like there was with Tori or Sienna or any of my current friends. I was free to be the original Gary Galloway, the one who hadn't been stalked and blamed for his friends murders.

It was NICE to step out of that life for a while.

I cracked the backdoor of the townhouse open slowly, stepped inside slowly. It was after one in the morning and I didn't want to wake anyone. I set my gym bag down in the kitchen and padded into the dimly lit living room. Sienna was wrapped up in a mound of blankets on the sofa, watching a sitcom. "Hey," she said tiredly.

"Hey. How was your evening?"

The pile of blankets rose and fell as she shrugged. "Dull. Yours?"

"Sore." I rotated my arm through a few circles. "Hard workout. I went out to a bar with one of the other students after class."

"Mmmm."

"How was Tori tonight?"

"Same as always. We had dinner, she had a few drinks while we watched TV, she went to bed at like nine."

Damn. The Latina showed zero signs of pulling out of her funk.

"I'm gonna shower and then go to bed, I'll try to be quiet for you."

"'kay."

I grabbed new boxers from my bedroom, came back downstairs and turned the water to almost scalding before stepping under the spray. The painfully hot, hard drumming of water on my back was just what I needed to relax my knotted muscles.

The door shut and my eyes snapped open. See stood on the other side of the glass wall, wearing an emerald green satin robe trimmed with black lace. She made eye contact with me, held it as she untied the robe and shrugged out of it. Beneath she wore a bra and panty set, skimpy green satin with black lace edges, black stockings.

I could feel my heart rate pick up.

Sienna unclasped the bra behind her, holding it to her chest for a moment before turning her back to me and letting it fall to the floor. She slowly worked her panties down to her ankles while bent at the waist, giving me an unobstructed view of the green-jeweled plug clenched in her asshole and her open, wet pussy. Staying bent over, she rolled down her stockings, then straightened and pulled them off. Her tits were as gorgeous as I remembered them, pale and firm and full.

Cold air preceded her as she stepped into the shower. "Happy Valentine's Day," she told me. There was an edge of bitterness in her voice.

"You ok?" I asked.

She closed her eyes and exhaled, her shoulders slumping. When she looked at me next, her face held sadness. "I made a nice meal for us," she said quietly. "And I waited, while you were out having fun. I got dressed up in new lingerie, hoping you'd come home before midnight, and you didn't - "

"See, I'm sorry, I - "

She interrupted my interruption. "I'm lonely, Gary. I'm glad to be here to keep an eye on Tori, and to be here for whatever you need... But I don't feel like you need me. I miss you. I don't like feeling like this."

I reached out and stroked her cheek and she tilted her head to my hand. "Neither do I."

"I can't imagine how you feel," she said. "To lose friends, all that shit with the police and your job... I'm sorry. I just..I just want to feel like you still want me. I don't mean to minimize what you're feeling or say it's not important, I just feel...like I'm not important to you. And I'm trying to be important for you, because of all this crap going on, and I..."

She ran out of breath and I pulled her into a hug, enjoying the warm, wet, smooth slickness of her skin against mine. "It's ok, See. Its ok. You ARE important to me. I don't know what I would've done without you here this past month."

We held each other for a long time, just enjoying the warm solidity of another body against our own. Eventually, Sienna pulled away slightly, met my eyes. "Can I do something for you? Well, for me too..."

"What is that?"

Her small hand moved wetly between us to close around my dick.

"See, I - "

"When was the last time you came?" That small hand gently pumped me.

"Up north? I just haven't been in the mood."

"You need to cum," Sienna whispered, leaning in to flick her tongue against my ear. "It's not healthy to go that long. And you... You need to dominate. Be aggressive. You need to fuck. Its in your nature, in your blood...just like its in my nature to need to be on my knees, getting fucked...like this..." She took her time kissing her way down my torso, tongue gliding electrically around my nipples, along every angle and cut of muscle between my neck and my prick.

She teased the head for a long time, flicking it with her tongue, mouthing and gently kissing it, looking up at me and smiling sweetly as I swelled and lengthened at her touch. Once I was fully erect, she took me in her mouth, sucking gently before sliding further down, slowly moving her head back and forth, the underside of my cock sliding across her tongue, the tight ring of her lips stroking my whole shaft. She moaned happily as I involuntarily thrust into her mouth, and she took my hands in hers, moved them to her wet blonde hair.