Electrify Me (The Fireworks Series Book 1) (6 page)

Chapter Ten – Charlie

It’s a few seconds before I remember to breathe, before I remember where and who I am. My cock is still twitching inside her as I catch the words I was about to say just in time. Catch them and swallow them back because that’s ridiculous. I only just met her.             

I pull out and deal with the condom, trying to think of something, anything else to say. Nothing seems sufficient. Everything pales in comparison to what I almost said.

“Are you okay?” I finally manage. I lift her off the table and help pull up her tights.

“I’m so much better than okay. Are
you
okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Biggest lie I ever told, and I know she knows because my face is wet. She slides one hand up to my face and around my neck to pull me down to her. Then her other hand closes around my still hard cock as she kisses away my tears. I don’t even have the brain power left to be ashamed of them. I held it together long enough to find her. That’s going to have to be brave enough.

“God. I was so scared for you,” I say. “Did he touch you? Did he hurt you?” There are tears on her face too. I kiss them away.

“He didn’t touch me. I was pretty scared too, though. It’s okay now.”

We encircle each other. Now that those fucking tights are back in place, she can wrap her legs around me. I lift her up, vaguely aware that my dick is still hanging out, but I don’t care. Light-headed from having her safe in my arms again, I might never let go. We stand there as I process how deep and complete this dark is. I’ve been straining my eyes since I got down here, and I still can’t see anything, not even her sweet face, her nose pressed against mine. I tilt my head and capture her lips in a kiss for the ages, a kiss that climbs to the top of my greatest hits of all time kisses. Number one with a bullet.

My watch starts to beep.

Gloria whispers onto my lips. “What’s that?”

“Midnight,” I say. “Happy New Year.”

I think she sobs, but I press my lips on hers again. I’ll keep kissing her until everything is good again. I’ll kiss it all better.

Somewhere in the dark there’s a deafening crash. Then stomping feet. And shouting.
“Police! Police!”

Doors being kicked in and more shouting. And feet stomping downstairs.

Gloria wriggles out of my arms, tugging me down. “Kneel down! With your hands on your head!”

“Wha –?”

“Just do it!”

I make a half-assed effort to tuck my cock back into my boxers and do as she says, kneeling in the dark with my hands on my head. There’s a burst of light, blinding me. I just have time to turn my head to see that Gloria is kneeling next to me before two giant cops appear in the beam of light, guns pointing at me, shouting.

“Get down! Get down! Hands behind your back!”

Then I’m shoved down onto my face. “Gloria!” I try to say but end up with a mouthful of grit and whatever else is on the floor. Pot I think it is. I spit it out as someone cuffs and frisks me, spreading my legs with his feet like he’s planning to rape me. The wrench swishes out from my belt loop and clangs on the floor.

“He didn’t do anything!”  Gloria yells. I try to look up to see where she’s going, where they’re taking her. All I can see is shadows moving in waving beams of light.

“Stay the fuck down!” the cop says. His boot presses on my head, slamming my nose into the floor. I taste blood.

Gloria’s voice is farther away now. “He’s not the one who kidnapped me! Let him go!”

Then I’m being dragged through the dark, upstairs, through a narrow doorway that my head smacks into, down a hallway until I’m blinking and blinded in the bright lights of several police cars. Whoever was dragging me shoves me down to my knees in the gravel.

My blood is pumping so heavily in my ears, I can’t hear anything, just the pounding of my heart. The voices around me sound dull and thick, as though I’m underwater. Someone is shouting at me. A giant shadow above me. All I can see are guns. I close my eyes and try to think of something to block my instinct to stand up and fight. You’re not in Afghanistan, I think. It’s just American cops. Stay down.

Fuck. That was something pretty far back in my mind.

“What’s your name? What’s your name?”
the shadow screams at me, his flashlight raised over his head, blinding me.

“PFC Charles Zhang, sir!” I say.

“Private Zhang?”

Blink. Think. I think I hit my head on that doorway pretty hard. “No. Sorry. Just Charles Zhang. Charlie. I was discharged.”

“What branch?”

“Army, sir.”

“Why were you discharged?”

It takes me a few seconds to dredge up this piece of information. I’d tucked it away from shame, I guess. But for some reason as I say it, I’m not ashamed anymore. It is what it is. There’s no such thing as a perfect hero. “Bee stings, sir. I’m allergic to them.”

The cop says nothing for a few seconds. He tucks his flashlight under his arm, and I risk a look up at him. He’s actually smiling.

“It’s not funny. I nearly died on patrol outside Marjah.”

His face grows serious. “Did you hurt that girl?”

“What? No! What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

I have no earthly idea, and I’m not about to start making suggestions. Did I hurt her? I might have in a good way. I don’t think I should say that though.

“Who gave you the bloody nose?” he asks.

“You did, didn’t you?”

The cop bends down, his face inches from mine. His breath smells. Coffee and cigarettes. “Listen, kid. I’ve seen some sexual assault victims in my years on the force, so I know what it looks like, and that girl looked like she was worked over by someone, so I’m asking was it you? Because you had your cock out when we busted in and there’s a condom on the floor that I bet is full of your DNA.”

Well.

I might vomit all over this nice man, because reliving the scene from his perspective doesn’t look very good. Did I get all the duct tape off Gloria’s wrists? Does she have bruises? She was crying. Her clothes were all messed up. I think I might have torn her tights. “Is she saying she was assaulted?” I don’t know why she would say that, unless maybe she was. Maybe that tattooed prick
did
touch her. Why would she tell me? She doesn’t even know me.

“You tell me,” the cop says, wafting his breath over me again.

This is some kind of game; and I’m too tired and confused to play it to win. I try to think back to what they taught us in basic about getting captured. Don’t say anything. Name, rank. I’ve already given him that. I’m so thirsty. My mouth tastes of dust and mold, and I’m hyper conscious of the fact that my pants are still hanging open with my Batman boxers showing. Thankfully, at least I don’t have a boner anymore. I’m beginning to think I may never get another one again.

“That goon in the other room.” I say. “She said he didn’t hurt her, but maybe he did.” I close my eyes. Damned if I’m going to cry in front of this fucker. If he would just un-cuff me, I could kick his doughy ass into next week. And then go Rambo on that drug-fucked deviant.

“What goon in the other room?”

“He was the one who stole my truck and kidnapped Gloria. I don’t know what he did. I knocked him out and it was dark and…”

“What?”

“Okay, I did have sex with her, but it wasn’t rape.”

“I’ve heard
that
before.”

God.

“You’re saying you found this girl in the dark, and you just had sex with her? Just like that?”

It sounds ridiculous, implausible in the extreme. Even if I tell him the whole story, why would he believe it? What if Gloria is saying something else? “Where’s the other guy?” I try to hide the desperation in my voice. Because I’m starting to think maybe I’m seeing this all wrong. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, or I’m delusional. Did I ask her if I could fuck her? I don’t even remember. Everything they ever told us in boot camp about getting enthusiastic consent from your sex partner was a big waste of time, I guess. My head hurts with the effort of trying to put the pieces together. But I think I remember her begging for it.

“What other guy?” the cop says.

“The guy in the basement. I knocked him out with a wrench.”

The cop looks confused for a second, but it passes quickly. “We found a wrench. But there wasn’t anyone else in the house.”

Fuck. He must have woken up and bailed. Maybe after listening to us fucking for a few minutes. Because I stupidly didn’t tie him up, like I had planned. I want to be un-cuffed bad now so I can slap myself in the head. Some super soldier I turned out to be. My only excuse is that I was out of my mind desperate to find her.

“Where’s Gloria?” I ask. “She can clear this all up. Can you just talk to her?”

Maybe she will throw me under the bus. At this point I’ve stopped caring.

Chapter Eleven – Gloria

The lady paramedic dabs numbing ointment on my chaffed wrists and bloody knees, as I breathe into a plastic bag. As much as I hate the dark, apparently I hate flashing lights and people waving guns around even more. About the time that Charlie was being shoved to the floor, I must have checked out for a few minutes. When I came back online, I was hyperventilating on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance.

“Is that better?” the paramedic says.

I look at my wrists, at the Technicolor bruising and welts around them. I don’t know that I’d even registered the pain before the ointment, but now they just tingle with icy numbness. My knees are shredded along with my favorite tights. “It’s fine, thanks. Where’s Charlie?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. We’re going to take you into the clinic for the kit, okay?”

“Okay…” I look over her shoulder to the dark house and the police cars surrounding it. “Wait…what kit?”

The paramedic looks at me, pity in her eyes. I read her nametag.
Nancy
. Like something from an old movie. “The rape kit. We’ll need that for the court case.”

Did I hear her wrong? “What court case? Against that dealer? Aren’t the two grow houses enough to bust him?” Wait. Did she say rape kit? “I…there was no rape.”

Nancy looks at me again, frowning this time. “Your tights and underwear are ripped. You’re bruised”

Well, I guess she’s never had a frantic comfort fuck over a table in the pitch dark after being rescued from a kidnapper. Because that’s pretty hard to manage without a few things getting ripped and bruised.

“And you were saying something about being kidnapped, just now. Someone kidnapped you?”

“Someone
did
kidnap me, but he didn’t rape me. Where’s Charlie? The guy who was with me when the cops busted in? Where is he?”

Nancy shakes her head, looking so perplexed that I feel sorry for her. “I think he’s been arrested.”

What. The. Fuck.

If the New Year’s gods cooked this up for me, I’ve got to give it to them. This takes the cake. I meet and fuck the man of my dreams literally at midnight only to have him arrested for raping me seconds later. I would laugh if I could remember how. “I have to go.” Mercifully I don’t appear to be hooked up to any machines, so I just push past Nancy and jump down onto the driveway. “Charlie!?”

A whole bunch of cops and various other dangerous-looking dudes turn and look at me suspiciously as I limp across the lawn. Is it possible they’re all called Charlie? Am I in a Dr. Seuss book?
“Charlie?!”

When I come around the side of the house, what I see is like something from a movie. A scary fucking movie. The driveway is bathed in spotlights. No, bathed is too soft.
Flooded
. The front driveway is flooded with light and ringed with police cars and other vehicles. There are at least a dozen uniform and plain clothes cops standing around. And in the middle of it, in the center of the blazing circle of light, kneeling, stooped on the gravel with his hands cuffed behind his back, is Charlie.

“Charlie?”

His face as he looks up at me is devastating. Beautiful and bloodied. His perfect nose is swollen and bruised. Blood is also dripping from his hairline. And when a rivulet of it drips into his eye and he tries to blink it away, something awakens in me. Some instinct I didn’t even really know I had. I want to kill someone. And the fat cop hanging over Charlie seems a pretty good contender.

But then Charlie smiles at me. I take three long strides, shove the fat cop out of the way and wrap Charlie in my arms. “Baby, what happened? What did they do to you?”

“Ma’am, is this the man who kidnapped you?”

I turn back to the cop, a new understanding of the word incredulous blossoming to life inside me.

“What the fuck are you talking about?! Are you out of your mind?
This
is Charlie who works for City Light. And
that’s
his truck, which was stolen with me in it.
By someone else
who apparently with all your fabulous police work, you haven’t found yet. So good job there, Detective Shiny Pants.”

Charlie drops his head and muffles snorts of laughter on my shoulder.

“You know this young man?” Shiny Pants asks, in a futile attempt to hang on to some of his authority.

“Yes, I know him. He’s my boyfriend!”

Charlie looks up and our eyes meet for a second. I don’t know how to interpret his expression. Is he my boyfriend now? When you give someone a hand job and then you get kidnapped in their truck and they rescue you before fucking you over a table, does that make them your boyfriend? I think so. Does Charlie agree? Maybe we should leave that discussion until later.

“Am I under arrest?” Charlie asks.

“No, I suppose not.” The cop hikes those shiny pants up so high his balls split into a moose-knuckle. I feel a little nauseous as he unlocks Charlie’s handcuffs. “Thank you for your service, son.”

Son. He’s like ten years older than us, max. And “service”? What the hell does that mean?

“You’re welcome, I guess.”

I help Charlie stand and watch as he takes a moment to brush gravel off his knees.

“Are we free to go?” I ask.

“You’ll need to make a statement – ”

“No,” Charlie interrupts him. “Let’s rephrase that. We’re free to go. Gloria will make a statement in the morning.”

Shiny Pants looks like he wants to argue but in the end, he just takes my cellphone number and watches us limp away. Someone hands Charlie a Ziploc bag with his stuff in it. Phone, wallet, keys, a crushed condom box. “Sorry for the trouble,” this person says. Like that makes it better. On Monday I’m calling my uncle, the bloodsucking lawyer, and we’re going to sue the Seattle police back to the Triassic.

When we get back to the truck, I steer Charlie to the passenger seat and take the driver seat myself. “You look a little dazed. Did you hit your head? Did the cops do this?”

“It’s nothing.” He fishes the keys out of the Ziploc bag and hands them to me. “Head wounds look worse than they are.” He dabs the blood off his face with one of my lavender Handi Wipes as we pull onto the road.

“Are you sure? Do you want to go to the ER?”

“I’m fine.” He prods his nose gently. “I don’t think anything is broken.”

We drive in silence for a few minutes. Then we’re back on the I5, heading south. Hotels, liquor stores, gas stations flash by. I think to check the gas gauge. Third of a tank. Plenty to get us back to Seattle.

“When that druggie bailed, why didn’t he take the truck?” I ask, more to break the silence than anything else.

“He must have left the keys inside. They were in the bag anyway. I guess the cops found them.”

“Oh. So where do you suppose he is?”

“I don’t know.”

There’s something awkward between us. Since we met a few hours ago, it’s been like we’ve known and loved each other for years. Now suddenly we’re talking like strangers. Or rather, not talking. We’re having one of those silences. I know he’s thinking a pile of stuff. He knows I’m thinking a pile of stuff. Both of us are probably wondering if the other is thinking about the same pile.

The way I see it, there are two choices. We can view this terrible, terrifying night as a blessing–a gift from the New Year’s gods. After going through what we’ve been through tonight, surely we can build a relationship that will survive anything. Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe we can see everything that has happened as a sign–a sign that love and lust are dangerous, a sign that we should both run full speed in opposite directions and never look back. Would the devils of New Year’s do that to me? Would they be so cruel? If that’s what they want for me, couldn’t they just send an email?

Long minutes pass. I glance over, sure he has fallen asleep, but he’s just staring out the windscreen. Silent.

We’re almost at the exit to Seattle before he speaks again. “I was in the Army, did I tell you that?”

“No.” He hasn’t told me anything about himself. And I haven’t told him much either. All those stories and no time in which to tell them.

“I was discharged. Medical.” There’s something in his voice as he says this. Something noncommittal. “I’m allergic to bees. Who knew?”

“Oh.”

He falls silent for a few more minutes. I make the exit into the city and begin winding through the streets. Roughly, I’m heading to my place. I guess I could go back to the church, pick up my car and say goodbye to him there. But what kind of goodbye are we talking about? Is it “goodbye and farewell”? Or “goodbye for an hour while I go home and get a change of clothes because I’m basically moving in with you as of today”? Maybe if I just drive around all night, we’ll never have to find out.

“Back there,” Charlie says. “Before the cops came. You
wanted
to have sex right?”

“What?! Of course! Is that what’s bothering you?”

“The cops were asking me if I raped you.”

I’ve never been one for theatrics, but I slam on the brakes right in the middle of the road. Pulling the hand brake, I turn to face him, thinking maybe I’ll just make a joke out of it, get him laughing, but the dark expression on his face stops me.

“Look, Charlie… I don’t really know how things like that happen. I mean, I’ve been pretty drunk a few times and probably not had enough brain cells online to make a reasoned choice, but I’m sober as a Mormon right now. And I’m pretty sure if you tried to touch me when I didn’t want you to, I’d punch you in the head. Then at least you’d know.”

He laughs. Almost laughs. It’s a bit half-hearted but I’ll take it. I put the truck into gear, pull over and park properly.

“Those cops are idiots,” I say, gently. “They thought they saw something and jumped to conclusions, because you’re a guy and bigger than me and…that’s the just the way it is. I’m sure they’ve seen some terrible things.”

Charlie nods. “I saw some things too, in the forces.”

God.
This
is the conversation we get to have now? Maybe this is what Father Time had in mind all along. Maybe
Charlie
is the one I’m supposed to save. “I’m sure you did.”

“The Army is not a very nice place for women.”

“So I’ve heard.” I wait for him to say something else. And wait. And wait. Until it becomes obvious to me. My heart is pounding though, because there are a few different ways this can go and a couple of them are deal breakers. “Does that have something to do with why you were discharged?”

He doesn’t answer for a few seconds.

“There were these two guys in my unit,” he finally says, though his voice is so low I have to strain to hear him. “I saw them one night with this girl. She was pretty drunk but…” He shakes his head. “I mean, by the time I saw them, it was pretty much over. Whatever it was. The guys ran off and the girl was throwing up, so I went to get a towel for her and when I came back she was gone.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Yeah. I told my commanding officer. He talked to the girl. She denied it. Then she came to me and told me to shut the fuck up.”

“And then they discharged you?”

“Yeah.”

“Because of bees?”

“Yeah.”

“And that was bullshit?”

Charlie sighs, and I see he’s been squeezing the remains of the bloody Handi Wipe this whole time. “Not exactly. I
am
allergic to bees, but they gave me and everyone in my unit epi-pens and that was that. Then two months later, the thing happened and I reported it. Next thing I know I’m discharged and going home.”

“Weren’t you happy to be going home?” He just looks at me and I realize that was probably an ignorant thing to say. “I guess I don’t know much about being in the Army.”

“No. I just...I didn’t do much of anything in the end. A few patrols. Once we got cornered by insurgents. That was scary but it was over pretty quickly. And that girl that night but…I had ideas I was going to be some kind of hero, you know”

“You’re
my
hero, Charlie.” He nods. I hope that’s what he wanted to hear. It’s the truth anyway. “Seriously. That slime ball was just about ready to take off again, and he was going to take me with him. Where do you suppose I would have ended up? Some brothel in Guatemala. Or dead.”

Charlie takes a breath, then leans over the center console and wraps his arms around me. I hug him back. This time there is nothing sexual about it. It’s pure comfort. I realize then how much I needed this hug. And how tired I am. I hurt all over from the effort of keeping my muscles vaguely upright.

“Charlie,” I say into the hair behind his ear. “Do you want to sleep over at my place?”

He turns his head and presses his warm lips on my neck. “Yeah,” he whispers into my skin. “I really do.”