He tasted the same. Which was deeply reassuring and disturbing. His taste was something that made her quiver from memory alone. When she allowed herself to think about it, but the thoughts were like a bad penny, they turned up.
Jo hated blow jobs, well, she thought she did. One of those things done because it was done. A reciprocal relationship: she blew them so they would lick her, and she had a chance at more than disappointment after eight minutes of pounding thrusts. They didn't look her in the eye, so they never noticed the faraway stare.
That's what it had always been like. Before Harry. Except one or two, who had bigger faults than their performance and still didn't notice the bored look.
After Harry, well, everything and everyone seemed to be different after him. The sight of his nude body, his erect penis, transformed her preferences, she was sometime struck by such a thirst for him, a hunger to feel him in her throat, she didn't know who she was.
She had told him this once and he'd smiled, a little smugly. Probably because she was bleary-eyed with her mouth wet from him.
Then he had said, "I think that just means you're mine. That this Jo, all of you, together, for me, is different."
"Am I different?" She wondered aloud. It was an existential question out of place in a carnal embrace. Harry had an answer though.
"Well," he laughed. "You're a cocksucker, and apparently that is different!" She'd tackled him down and tickled him. She loved that he was ticklish, so big, but powerless against wiggling fingers.
"Takes one to know one!" She'd shoved two fingers in his mouth, without real intent. Harry had gleefully sucked. They both moaned over it and Jo wiped the wet onto his cheek. They matched. The slide up his torso to sit on his face was inevitable after the hunger sucking him off had stoked, and watching, feeling, understanding more when he licked at her pointer and middle. It had pumped her heart and It had answered a question she'd never asked. She liked his answer that day.
Now it was a memory, like so many others, tarnished by revelation. Because she knew too much.
Even knowing things she couldn't forget, she still wanted to talk to him and stayed put in the art store aisle. Jo waited for him.
Apparently, despite all her efforts, she was still his. When their eyes locked, she expected to feel fear or heartache, but she felt relief. And Harry, as ever, could read her glass face like a mirror, because he approached her.
"Hello Jo," was his smart, but quiet opening. When she imagined them meeting again, which she did and practiced the conversation, she thought he would look chastened. Look mostly around or down, at their feet. Instead, his gaze went over every inch of her body to the parts underneath her clothes, through and down to her bones. His eyes were hungry and she was the first bud after a long winter.
She bit her lip. She wanted to take her sweater off, the whole place had gone up a few degrees. She looked to the window and the sun had peaked out from a cloud hitting them through the windows, that must have been it. It had been warm, but gray. Now the sun was out and she knew she was overdressed. She was more than ready to take her clothes off.
He was so close that she could see his pores.
She loved his skin, the mole near his mouth and on his thigh and the few on his back. She was watching his mouth still, starved. "Hi Har-Harry," she got out and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his pupils were blown and only the cyan color at the edge showed.
He shook his head a bit and his body followed, like the temperature had dropped for him instead of inched. "You out of supplies, been painting?" Harry looked hopeful.
"I've been trying to paint, I'm having just a bit of trouble actually getting color onto a canvas, so I'm out." She bit her lip to stop talking. And Harry reached up to pull the flesh free, stopped just short of touching her, she felt his deft fingers anyway. They looked at each other a moment and Jo felt young and vulnerable.
"What colors were you buying, what are you out of?" Harry asked and Jo couldn't help but look at the can of gold he had in his hand basket. Could you go to heaven in a hand basket? "I'm forever out of gold." His smile was shiny.
"Yellow and blue, for greens," she confessed. "Of course."
He closed his eyes and his smile was pleased pain when he opened them. "Grab it, I'll walk you out."
Jo knew she should say no, beg off, say she had places to be, but she didn't. She didn't want to. So she went over and grabbed her supplies, and a can of gold. Harry smiled down at the belt when he saw it. At the register, their elbows rubbed and her thighs heated. She could hear the sizzle of his skin. The feelings burned brighter.
She followed him out to his van, like he had ambrosia for her to feast on, they always shared a little immortality. He opened the back and set down his paint in the little box he kept there. He hadn't turned back to her. Jo felt the step board under her feet, and the mattress on her bum before she thought enough to stop herself. He looked up at her and the bob of his Adam's Apple and pop crackle of the fire in his eyes charred her flesh. She unbuttoned her blouse and waited for him.
Jo hadn't even waited for the door to close before she popped her hard nipple out of her bra. "It's hot," she moaned.
"You're hot." He crouched to walk to her, she grabbed him by the side of his belt to get her hands on him. Fingers in the flames, mouth dry, she licked her lips when he came to his knees in front of her.
"Jo—"
She stopped him with her mouth on his. She was steaming and her hands danced to his belt and swirled over his bulge, fed on his groan. His shaft bobbed free and she tore her mouth away from the alchemy of their tongues to catch a glimpse.
Apparently, Harry's Jo was a cocksucker. Her dry mouth was wet further by the gathering pearl at his slit. Jo swiped her tongue under his foreskin and memorized the strangled moan he gave her when her hand brought his velvety skin down and up, hiding and revealing his glans from her hungry eyes and avid tongue. His hands were in her hair, pulling down her messy bun, and she missed the mornings when he was too sleepy and horny to stop himself from pushing her down to feel her soft palette.
"Your mouth, baby, please."
Jo gave him a catlike smile, it glinted in her eyes, golden when she watched him watch her lick the heavy ridge under his shaft.
The desperate groans and the push of her head down, the grip on her hair, tighter, all of the moisture in her body was running out of her fount or her lips around his dick.
She had to touch. Jo popped the button on her jeans and got a hand into her cunt. Harry must have heard. His eyes, basically turquoise rimmed abyss by now watched her movement beneath the fabric.
"Jo, I need to smell you."
She whined when he pulled her hand out and put it under his nose, she could feel the suction of his breath, he loved to stick his nose in it, a sommelier of her pussy. When she felt him sucking her fingers into his mouth, she mimicked his moves. His long arm awkwardly between her legs and she rode his hand and sucked his dick until her pants were wet and her thirst was quenched. She licked over his tip and put her head on his thigh to clean him up. He played with her hair, combing out the tresses.
Their breaths were heavy for longer moments than a back seat blowie required. But they were both already wondering what it meant. She could feel the hope and fear radiating off of Harry. His touch was familiar and sweet, like that morning after golden sunrise.
For her it was sundown. She didn't want to say goodbye again. All they seemed to do was try to say goodbye and then find themselves weak for each other so soon after that she wasn't done mourning the last time. It was like picking off a scab the moment it forms.
And Ethan, he had been gone less than a week, and she was getting off with Harry in a parking lot. Harry's Jo was also disgustingly weak.
She had to get his hands off of her. Jo reached down and did up her pants, slithered out from under his touch, wanted to shed her skin. She could feel every point where his sweet touch had been, and she loved it. But it was the source of her weakness.
"Um, I'm gonna..." she looked up for just a moment and his eyes were the color of a spring leaf, a beginning. Her ends had to meet. Jo tore her eyes away and got to the door.
"Baby, where are you going?" He grabbed her hand and Jo felt pressure mount behind her eyes. She went down on his knee. Her whole body radiated happiness and repletion. Her mind rebelled.
Jo, in a way she never had before, was counting the minutes. The tick of the clock was usually the furthest thing from her mind while he was touching her, she was more likely to be in a state where dawn caught up to her, chased her down and washed over her golden.
Today, she was shamed and torn and wanted to get away. A week and she was betraying her boy. Ethan had not so much asked her to stay away from Harry as assumed that she would. Because she would be disgusted by Harry.
Harry was not disgusting. He was light and art and opportunity. He'd hurt her, and they were impossible, but he was romantic and optimistic and impossible. Impossible to hate.
Harry did not disgust Jo, not even that he had been with her son. Everybody had a past, and for whatever reason, perhaps the pop, sizzle, expand of her synapses when he was around, the singing of her nerves, made that matter less. The way the caress of his eyes made her 10 feet tall, or when he said her name how she was made of gold, made of lights.
He was saying her name now, like a prayer into her hair that was tangled down her back, no brush had touched it this day, and it was sweaty with the still heavy air of the van. He sounded ecstatic, like he knew nothing of post coitus triste, the sadness after sex, but only the transcendence of giving her his body and wine.
That was the worst of it. She had taken the wine and was drunk on it, but she'd found that place in her intoxication where she was sorry she was off her head before it was even over. A bad trip of loving.
She was breaking promises, unspoken ones.
She was breaking hearts, dear ones.
Including the man loving her with his whole prostrate self. She was the communicant, but he was a pilgrim. He was murmuring, and when she let herself tune back into what he was saying, rather than flagellating herself on his lap, it hurt more.
He tasted so sweet, so bitter, on the back of her tongue while he swore, "I love you Jo, you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Don't slip through my fingers. Please love me." The pleas were low, not meant to be heard. Maybe her hearing was better than she thought. She heard him, saw him, had to leave him alone.
"Harry," she interrupted his soliloquy. "I have to go." She didn't look at him, but she put her hand on his chin and the rasp of bristles there made her ache.
"Where do you need to go?" He nudged her chin up and tried to find her eyes. She couldn't bring him into her storm. She slid her gaze away. "Is Zoe at Colin's? You lonely in the house by yourself?" He looked at her purchases, lined up next to his. "Why you are buying the necessary articles?" He ran his nose over hers and down and kissed her again. God,
he tasted like the sweetest lie. "I can come make sure you don't get lonely, I won't give you a minute to be lonely. I miss you so bad, I'll follow you to the loo."
His voice was a bubble, pink tinged, before a rainbow of shine. "That's not a good idea." This time she got off his lap and made it to the box, picking up her stuff before he got his hands on her again. Pop.
He was behind her on his knees again, head on her ass. "Why's it not a good idea? Thinks it's the best idea I've ever had. Being near you." He was forcing the silver linings into his voice now, that irrepressible optimism struggling to float.
Jo should open the door, go, but she knew he would follow her. She'd given him too much hope this day. Paid him passionate lip service so he was believing again.
She let the bag go, and undid the clasp his hands had made in between her belly button and her pelvic v. Jo faced him and looked him in the eye.
His shoulder sloped down. "Ok." That was all he said. So she let it go, and opened the door to leave. "I love you, Jo." It was just loud enough for the air to sink it to her on the paving stones.
"And I love you." Came out before she could tie up her tongue. So she ran.
"One one one, cuz you left me, and two two two for my family!" She tried to sing over Kiss Off. The music was so loud, she couldn't believe she could still hear her thoughts. She checked the mirror over and over. Harry was not there, but she expected him to be. The obsessive checking indicated hope there too.
Hope, that's what she was running from, and screaming her lungs out with the windows down over. How could she be so stupid. That was unforgivable, to Ethan and Harry. She was leading him on, following her pied piper to play his flute and telling him she loved him. Loved him. She did but that didn't matter.
Later, after a comedy special meant to force laughs and a dinner of cold chicken and cucumber slices, and still no housework, the dishes piled in the sink and the laundry on the end of the couch, Jo walked into her studio with her purchases. The gold paint she put up high on a shelf. She couldn't bring herself to open up the makings of green. So she stared at the canvas and pulled out charcoal, in art school, she'd loved to sketch before she painted. That crutch fell away as she got more confident with paint.
She felt confident of nothing now. Not even the lights, so she drew in candlelight
It started as lines, then the lines turned to hair and an obscured face, maybe a blank one.
Hair, it was kinda like Harry's. She sent him a picture of the drawing and waited. She had deleted his number, blocked him. The memory could not be deleted, would not be blocked.
He didn't respond and she relaxed, good. Today would become tomorrow and they would stay apart. She slid a piece of cloth over the only thing she'd created in weeks. Took her unopened bottle of wine and went to her bedroom, drank half. Hoped the salt coming off her face was not going into the bottle, sour.
"How the fuck do I know what I'd like?" She spoke aloud to her empty house while she looked through her recommended list on Netflix, full of larva and animated vampires, with a few shows from when breastfeeding was her full time job. She needed something, to fall asleep. She'd resigned herself to another viewing of Sons of Anarchy when she heard the knob of her door go.
The bat felt almost warm in her hand, the way organic material does and she wished it was cold steel, even a golf club rather than a cricket bat from Ethan's very short lived interest. Jo creeped around the corner and was relieved to see her door was closed, until she realized that her studio door was open.
She might have hit him, if his bun and the hand still extended holding the drop cloth wasn't tattooed. Jo guessed an intruder would be interested in something other than her art anyway.
"Harry!" The breath was loud. And his head came up immediately and he smiled at her bat. "I almost killed you. What the fuck are you doing?"
She knew what he was doing, he had answered her text. He fished out the phone and showed her the screen, he'd set it as a background, the sketch she had sent him. "I wanted to see it in person. On my phone I couldn't tell who it was."
"It's nobody. It's nothing." She shrugged and was trying to figure out how to ask him to leave. "How'd you get in?"
"Baby, I still have a key." He answered, still totally invested in her piece. Harry was getting a pencil and leaning into it. He started sketching detail, movement on the hair. And she watched him, sat on the stool behind him and watched him create thick waves out of lines.
"I guess you should give that back." Jo said after a long pause in any sound but breath and the scritch-scratch of the pencil.
Harry looked over his shoulder and set down his pencil, he came to her and slipped his hands around her ears into her real life hair. "Should I?" He asked the crown of her hair.
Jo didn't answer but lifted her head to him.
"Are you lonely, Jo? Or do you miss me?" Harry had his forehead pressed to hers, was running his hands down to hers to hold her close. Laced their fingers like the weave of cloth.
Both was the answer. She was lonely. Zoe was adorable on calls, and was becoming an engaging child, but she wasn't one for conversation. Ethan, well Ethan was getting bronzer and bolder in his love everyday, if her occasional texts and his insta were anything to go by.
Cidra and Chels had their families, but she was calling them more.
Jo wasn't ready to date.
Well, anybody but Harry.
"Yes." Was all she said.
"Which one more?" She watched his eyes close. Felt his teeth capture his bottom lip.
Her tongue smoothed over his top lip and he released his bottom one when his mouth fell open. "You." Her eyes fell closed as well.
She cried, when he first pushed inside of her, and he licked her tears off her face. That was the second time he'd had to swallow her tears. When he got his face between her thighs, their communicant roles reversed, she noticed a detail that had escaped her all those months. Turned out, deeply dimpled men had indents when they gave head too. She wasn't sure why that revelation laid her out so bad, but the force of the torrent it unleashed damaged her. The orgasm was a soft kill. And she knew he had to go, before they started, but especially when she cried for his dimples.
It was so unfair how they fit. Into each other's creation, and life, and bodies.
They fit everywhere.
She'd slipped from the covers while he dozed to shower, and hoped the water would mask the sobs.
They did not mask the scream! She shouted when the water went suddenly icy and she had nowhere to go to get out of its way.
"Jo! Are you alright?" Harry came tearing into the bathroom just as the water returned to the temperature she had set originally.
"The water went freezing!" Her teeth chattered and she got under the warming water, tuned it hotter to fight the chill.
"Oh shit, sorry, I wasn't thinking. I started doing dishes." He gave her a sorry smile with a tiny shrug and adorable look.
"So?" Though she almost told him to not do her dishes. She, as always, was so thankful for the help he gave without her asking.
He cocked his head like a spaniel. "When somebody else pulls the hot, it makes the shower cold. Does nobody else do the dishes?" He didn't say the name.
"Not really." She said, because it was Ethan's least favorite chore, so she gave him others.
"Ok, well, I'll finish later. Take your time, then I wanted to show you something." He pressed his hand to the glass and she reached hers up to touch his print.
As he walked out, her hand stayed there, as his helping handprint started to fade, she burst into tears.
"Baby?" He said.
"Go, I'm just emotional. I just...just...." she couldn't finish.
Harry slipped his clothes off and got into the shower with her. Let her cry out the tears of regret, and didn't press her. Because this is what they couldn't have, and they both knew it. There would be no other domestic revelations about partnerhood for the two of them.
He washed her hair, as he had many times before, and her body to absolve her of the tormented feelings. Then dried them both off.
"C'mon!" They laid out on the couch, her wet hair on his chest before he combed and braided it. It was the most relaxed she'd felt, well, in ages, since before graduation.
They watched a documentary on sculpture, and Jo watched his face.
"Do you think that's true?" Jo asked when the art historian posited that the first portrait was created on a wall with a lamp and charcoal by someone needing an image of their leaving lover.
"It makes sense, think about daguerreotypes when they first became mass producible. People gave them to their sweethearts on their way to war." He smoothed her hair back in that heart shape.
"Portraits take a lot longer though. I guess a rough silhouette would be quick. You could fill it in from memory when the lover leaves."
"Does the lover have to leave?" He bore his eyes into hers and the creative smile faded.
"Don't they always?" She grasped his hair. Held on.
"Would you be able to fill me in from memory, if I had to go?" His smile was brittle.
"You're painted on the back of my eyelids, Harry." She admitted. "And when, when you have to go, I'd be able to fill in your lines." She thought of how he had done that just hours ago, on her blank face.
"Then I suppose we will have to do silhouettes, though luckily I'm not marching off to war." She wished he'd stop being brave for her, acknowledge their glass draining, way below a half way line.
"No, at least I'll know you are somewhere in the world alive."
"Alive and loving you. You'll be able to feel it. And I know you'll be able to draw it." Harry kissed her and they made love once more on the couch, drawing each other's silhouette with their hands like they were both going off to war.
Jo kicked him out before reveille, but they had unspoken plans to make art, and he still had a key. She wondered if he would come before or after taps.