Page 7 of Free Fall #1

Leenie huffs but leaves him and returns to pulling baby food out of cabinets and fastening the wailing Sarah Kate into her highchair.

Jeremiah rubs his little blond head against my chest. I typically don’t mind his small body against mine, but after the long overdue satisfying of my sexual needs with a very hot stranger in his tricked-out van, I’d crept in as the sun crested the horizon and hadn’t wanted to wake anyone by taking a shower. So I can’t possibly smell nice.

“C’mon, buddy,” I say, trying to extricate myself from his clinging hold. “I do love you, but I need to shower.”

“Daddy’s gotta go ta work. You hafta wait.”

I haul myself up to sitting, dislodging him. Jeremiah doesn’t seem to mind, though, at least not once Leenie opens the fridge and pulls out the jug of chocolate milk. That kid has a sweet tooth to rival my own.

I smooth my hair back and hoist it up into a ponytail with a band I find discarded on the floor.

Hair ties are a choking hazard for Sarah Kate, so I need to be a lot more careful where I throw them when I take one off.

But when I got in this morning, I’d been so fucked out I’d nearly fainted on my way to the couch.

I don’t even remember taking my hair down at all. The band probably fell out on its own.

Speaking of fucked out and exhausted, my legs quake when I stand up to snag the hallway bathroom to take a piss.

I hear the water running from the bigger “master bath” off Leenie and Martin’s bedroom, so I don’t flush.

I know from the last year of being dashed with ice-cold water every shower—because Jeremiah flushed a toilet, or Leenie started the washing machine—that their couch is comfy, but their plumbing is not.

After all, the shoemaker’s kids never have any shoes.

“Heard from Uncle Buck?” Leenie asks me when I return to the main rooms and seat myself at the counter between the living room and the kitchen area.

I rest my elbows on the cool laminate and watch her spoon green, soupy stuff into Sarah Kate’s open baby-bird mouth as Jeremiah carefully prepares his own cereal with chubby, four-year-old hands.

Leenie and I both watch with bated breath as he heaves up the half-liter of milk and shakily pours it into his bowl.

This seems like a high-risk situation to me, and I don’t know why Leenie’s letting him do it, but she hasn’t asked me to help so I keep my opinions to myself.

We both heave a sigh of relief when Jeremiah completes his task and puts the milk down with a little grunt.

“No,” I say, when Leenie looks back my way, expecting some kind of reply to her question about whether I’ve heard from my dad.

“He doesn’t talk to me much ever since…” I trail off.

I don’t want to say “since Mom died” because then I have to think about the fact that my mom is dead and I don’t like to think about that. Especially not so early in the morning.

I’d rather think about the guy from last night, and how he’d railed me into next month, and the way he’d gripped my hips with such rough, calloused fingers, and—

“Sejin, you can’t avoid him forever.”

But the thing is… I can.

I can just not call Dad, and he won’t call me, and we can both suffer our loss alone the way we prefer.

“I know. I’ll call him soon.”

Leenie raises her brow, but doesn’t say anything else because Martin rushes into the room to kiss her cheek, kiss Sarah Kate’s bald head, and run his fingers through Jeremiah’s hair fondly.

“Got any more of those granola-peanut butter thingies?” he asks, tearing open the cabinet where Leenie keeps stuff he can grab on the go. Because Martin is always on the go.

“Sejin, can you…” Leenie holds the spoon out to me, and I come around to take it from her. She wrinkles her nose when I get close and shudders.

“Good God, I don’t even want to know,” she mutters. “But shower as soon as I get Martin settled.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n.” I sit down across from Sarah Kate and giggle at her little face. Her open mouth searches for the spoon eagerly. I fill it with more green goop and aim it into her wide gawp.

“You workin’ both jobs today?” Martin asks me, scratching at his dark beard. His West Virginian accent rivals my own. His parents didn’t move out to California until he was grown and Appalachian roots are hard to shake. “Paul says he could use you.”

“I am, actually,” I say, glancing at the clock.

I could probably fit in some time with the plumbing company too, but I really hate getting down on my knees in other people’s bathrooms. Since I’m working at the preschool in the late morning, and the coffee shop in the afternoon, I figure I have a good excuse to beg off.

It’s not like I’m being lazy, just not fully productive.

But not taking advantage of every opportunity to earn a little cash always makes me feel guilty.

“S’okay,” Martin says, glancing over. “Don’t sweat it, man.”

He gives me his reassuring smile, the one that’s soothed my anxieties since we were kids.

I’ve always looked up to him, especially back when he protected me from bullies who had something to say about the shape of my eyes or the color of my skin.

Those jerks only ever said it once, though, because Martin “talked” to them with his fists.

He’s always had my back, and I know he always will.

I just hope I can move off his sofa before it starts to affect his marriage. Leenie’s great, but having her husband’s cousin crashed out on the couch for over a year can’t be how she imagined her life would go when they moved into this little place just before Jeremiah was born.

But to move off their couch, I need a lot more savings, and the money-making opportunities in Mariposa are few and far between.

Which is why I really ought to just move on entirely to somewhere that offers more job opportunities.

It’s what I’ve always planned to do anyway.

But this place has me bewitched. I keep telling myself I’ll go after one more month here, and then one more month, and now, somehow, I’ve slid through nearly two years already.

If I don’t leave—and let’s be real, I’m not going anywhere—I really should take Martin up on the plumbing work.

Any money I can add to the shoebox of savings under the sofa will help me get a place of my own at least. How is Mariposa so friggin’ expensive when no one really lives here at all?

Just people passing through… And yet every apartment boasts a rent so far out of my league it makes my eyes water.

I tell myself there’s no rush. Martin and Leenie’s couch is comfortable, plus they get free babysitting out of me. I help with the dishes, the lawn, and the cleaning. I’m not an asshole roommate. Not me.

But still…

I really should get out of their hair soon. Any day now.

Leenie never complains. She takes my presence as easily as she takes everything else.

Easy as pie, like my Grandma Helton used to say.

I can still see her rocking in her La-Z-Boy chair, tinny gospel music playing from her old record player, explaining to me for the hundredth time how to crochet.

“It’s easy as pie, doll baby,” she’d tell me. “Easy as pie.”

I never got it right, though, so maybe that’s not a good example.

But Leenie’s never made me feel like she’s in any kind of hurry for me to get out of here. That’s all on me. I just know I should.

Martin and Leenie kiss goodbye. He pecks the kids’ cheeks before sending me a salute. Then he’s out the door, and I hand over the spoon to Leenie and hightail it to the shower to claim the next batch of hot water.

It pours down on me like a blessing.

As I wash, I briefly consider what Leenie said about calling my father. She’s right that I should call him, but I’m right that I could just not, and we’d avoid another round of being awkward and sad together.

I hate awkward and sad.

After dismissing that train of thought, I tentatively feel my asshole.

It’s a little tender, and I smile remembering the way Dan took me at my word, fucking me like I was a rag doll in his hands.

Unnnfff. So good. Dan hadn’t seemed to think my height was any obstacle to manhandling my body into any position he wanted me.

I’d felt breakable beneath him, like he could own me. Like he already did.

I shiver.

This weekend can’t come soon enough. There’s no way sex with Dan can possibly be as good the second time, but I’m willing to try.

And it’s embarrassing how relieved I am that Dan seems to want me again too.

His “seconds” comment had sent my stomach swooping in disappointment and mortification, but when he’d immediately flipped and agreed to another encounter, I’d been dizzy with a renewed rush of excitement and lust.

Even if it’s not as good as the first time, I’m certain there’s still tons of fun to be had together. Things we haven’t done yet. I haven’t fucked him , for example, and I’m very much up for that. My dick, rising against the heat of the shower, agrees.

With my hand wrapped around the base of my cock, I admit the truth. Part of me—deep down, where some odd kernel of golden light has ignited—feels a kind of tugging sensation. It’s hard to call it hope, but no other word comes to mind.

All I know is Dan—wow, I don’t even know his last name—has beautiful eyes and powerful hands.

I know the way I felt while he fucked me is different than any other hookup I’ve ever experienced.

And I know the way he kisses after he’s shot his load, all slow and hot and wet, is something I don’t think I can ever get enough of…

And that’s all I know. But I suspect so much more.

The seasonal tide is washing into Yosemite, bringing new fish into my figurative sea. Has it also brought me a seahorse? Only time will tell, but my heart whispers yes .

*

Dan