Broken and Beautiful Read online

  “No kidding. You want a beer?” I asked and held out the icy cold bottle.

  “Thanks,” he said and to my surprise he took it, but instead of drinking it he pressed it to his neck. His forehead.

  “Can I join you?” I played with fire for a living so I totally recognized the danger I was courting.

  This was his upstairs world. And it was complicated. Loaded with night. Heat. Beer. My raging curiosity about him.

  The chemistry.

  “Sure.”

  He moved up a few steps and shifted his legs as if to make room for me, But I sat several steps beneath him and turned sideways. The metal step bit through my denim and the railing was a hard rod against my back.

  “Hot,” I said again, because it bore repeating.

  “So hot.”

  I drank my beer. He didn’t drink his.

  I’d squashed the question for months, but it was here, again. Maybe because we were upstairs and not down.

  Maybe because I could feel the heat of him all along my shoulder.

  Are you the Mountain Man from Minnesota?

  Don’t say it. Do not say it.

  “Someone new is moving in on the corner,” I said, instead.

  “A brewery.”

  “Like beer brewery?”

  “That’s what the guys in the shop said.”

  “Well, they would know.”

  Luka laughed a little. “They do like to gossip.”

  I took another sip from my beer. He held his unopened in his hands.

  “Did you grow up in Minneapolis?” he asked.

  “Nope.” I could feel my own doors locking, my own shutters coming down over my windows. Stop. You want him to open up to you, you have to open up to him. Maybe. Or something.

  “Oklahoma,” I said. “I came here for grad school six years ago. Never left.”

  “Grad school?”

  “Art.”

  He shifted on the steps and his knee pressed briefly into my shoulder, and the heat of us, the sweat between us, was not off-putting. I felt my skin was too tight and my body was too tight. I needed something to break me open.

  I glanced at him; his blue eyes found mine in the moonlight and for a minute it seemed possible that he needed the same. He needed something to break him open.

  His eyes took in my tank top and the pile of hair on top of my head. It was as if he traced each strand looking for the one piece he could pull and the whole thing would tumble down around me.

  He wanted to touch me.

  I could feel it in the air between us. Smell it. Taste it even.

  Kiss me, I thought. Touch me.

  But instead he said: “A dog at one of the farms I visit had puppies.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I was thinking of maybe taking one of them. He’d go to work with me, but he’d be here at night.”

  “A dog?” I smiled at the idea. I didn’t want the responsibility of having a dog, but I wouldn’t mind having one around if someone else was taking care of it. “I had a dog growing up. Or my dad did, I guess. He was totally my dad’s dog. Paco just barely tolerated me.”

  “We had dogs too. Lots of them. We didn’t name them.”

  It was the very first time he’d mentioned his past and I held my breath waiting for more. But he was silent as stone.

  “Go ahead and get a dog,” I said. “But you have to name him.”

  That made him smile at me and it wasn’t unlike getting my father to smile. That serious man with so much weight on his shoulders. I felt far too clever for so small a thing.

  “I’ve never lived in the city during the summer,” he said. A car alarm went off in the distance. A woman shouted.

  I exhaled slowly. Carefully.

  “I spent my whole life in the woods,” he said. “Cities were bad. That’s what I was always told. All the bad things—corruption and crime and evil…it all happens in the city.”

  “Evil happens everywhere.” I was feigning a kind of nonchalance. I doubted it was believable.

  It happened to you, I wanted to say. Out in the woods. It lived with you.

  He laughed and used the collar of his shirt to catch a bead of sweat rolling down his neck.

  “But so far…” He sighed. “So far the city is just hotter.”

  I laughed.

  He shifted and so did I and my shoulder touched his knee. I waited for him to shift away. To move. To keep the distance between us, but he didn’t. The denim of his pants pressed into my skin and I could feel his sweat and his heat and his…intention. This wasn’t an accident. He was touching me on purpose.

  “It’s lonely too,” he said. “All these people and I’m…I’m so fucking lonely.”

  The swearing was a little shocking. Almost as much as the admission.

  It doesn’t have to be would be the cheesiest thing to say. The stupidest so I just managed to swallow it back. I took a sip of beer to make sure that the words stayed down.

  “Anyplace can be lonely,” I said. “I’ve been in relationships that were the loneliest place on earth.”

  He made a laughing sound in his throat and I glanced up at him, smiling myself.

  Oh God, his eyes. His entire body was coiled, heated with some kind of intention. Some internal heat. Some wild instinct.

  I felt the same instinct rise up in me, fierce and unguarded.

  “Luka—”

  “I don’t….”

  He swallowed, his throat wet with sweat. The shoulders of his gray shirt dark with sweat. I knew I looked the same, wet and steaming. We were evaporating in the heat between us.

  Carefully, like I might spook, he touched my hair, carefully tugged it, and fuck, wouldn’t you know, it all came down around my shoulders. I had no idea I was a puzzle that could be solved so easily.

  “I want to kiss you,” I said. He blinked, holding himself so still it had to hurt. I could see his heart beating in his throat.

  “Can I? Kiss you?“

  “Do it.”

  He said it like I was going to remove a bullet from his skin. Like I was going to hurt him with force. And I didn’t know how to get around his obvious discomfort. I almost said forget it.

  But then he said, “Fuck…just—” He grabbed my arms and hauled me up and across the metal steps. Into the open vee of his legs. His mouth met mine, open and wet and hungry.

  I shook off his hands and wrapped my arms around his neck, better to hold onto him. Better to grip his head. And he was doing the same to me. His hands in my hair, too hard. Too wild. But it didn’t matter.

  My mouth was cool from the beer and his was hot. He tasted of mint and summer. Of man and coppery desire. He sucked on me like I was an ice cube he wanted to melt on his tongue. Sweat pooled and ran between us and he held me close to him in his fists. Fists in my hair and my shirt.

  It was rough. So rough. Too much and not enough all at the same time.

  Gleeful and on fire I cried out against him.

  Loud.

  The sound vibrated up through my chest, up my throat across my lips into his mouth.

  Suddenly he stopped. He let go of me so fast I fell back on my heels between his legs. I would have fallen down the steps but I caught myself on his thighs, hard and round under my hands. So big I could stretch my fingers out as far as they could go and I wouldn’t even cover the tops.

  His face was red and running with sweat. His lips swollen from my teeth. His eyes wide with horror. With horror. Real…horror.

  His hands were lifted, frozen over my shoulders, like he wasn’t sure if he was going to grab me or push me away.

  I dropped my hands from his thighs and fell back against the railing, the metal scraping my back. I barely felt it, stunned by his horror.

  Was I hurting him? What…what happened?

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “There’s nothing…”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. All the way shut, like a child with a nightmare, and I got to my feet, trying to catch my br
eath.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, because he seemed so not okay.

  His eyes flew open. “Are you?”

  “I’m fine…” I laughed, a kind of awkward and gusting thing. Part laugh part groan.

  He got to his feet and I had to step away again or risk falling down. He reached out for me but stopped when he saw I was fine.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said.

  And then he was gone.

  For a giant man he was down the steps, past me and through the window so fast and so silently it was eerie.

  And then I was alone on the fire escape. With the moon and the heat and a beer and a thousand questions. And no relief in sight.

  Fall

  ~ FALL~

  The interview aired in November. On the Sunday just after Thanksgiving.

  Anna, the girl Luka saved, had come of age and written book and now she was on air with Leslie Stahl. I watched it on the exact same couch on which I’d watched his story unfold four years ago.

  It was just as awful as it was four years ago. Worse even. Anna was being so brave. So careful.

  I hope Luka isn’t watching.

  That was all I could think.

  Please don’t let Luka be watching.

  After that I saw him even less. He didn’t come downstairs anymore in the loft. There was no more tea. No more studying at the counter.

  If he heard the alarm go off in the loft when I came in, he’d come to the second floor landing—see it was me and then go back to his room.

  A few times I stood at the bottom of the steps and thought about going up there. Thought about asking him if he was okay.

  But then I chickened out.

  So, just before the holidays, I texted him.

  I won’t be coming in this week. But I will be having a New Year’s Eve party at the loft with some people from the neighborhood and some friends. Would you like to come? You’re more than welcome. I haven’t seen much of you.

  He wrote back:

  Thank you.

  I stared down at my phone for a long time. But he didn’t text anything else.

  Winter

  ~ Winter ~

  Paulo and I sucked back the shots and then I tipped my glass upside down on the counter, letting him know he could keep the rest of his tequila to himself.

  “No mames!” he said, his silver eyebrows lifted in surprise.

  “I’m onto you, Paulo,” I answered in English. Since Dad died I didn’t speak Spanish much anymore. I didn’t crave his posole for breakfast. I didn’t go to mass. Or light candles for him and my abuela. Dad died and I immediately moved. Left everything I’d been behind. “You just want to get me drunk so you can take advantage.”

  He laughed and poured himself another shot. “No one takes advantage of you, Rennie. No one.”

  He knocked back the shot and I started dancing backward to the dance floor.

  “You coming with me?” I asked. Rolling my hips, dipping my shoulders. I loved the way my brown skin looked under the Christmas lights, the way my rings gleamed. I loved everything tonight.

  “I like to watch.” He cocked that lean hip in those two-hundred-dollar blue jeans against the counter and I heard the sound of panties dropping all across the land.

  Jesus. Paulo was so handsome it hurt. But for some reason I couldn’t do it.

  Well, not some reason.

  A Luka reason.

  After that night on the fire escape I’d done my best to fuck him out of my head. Well, Paulo had done his best, but in the end it didn’t work.

  I couldn’t not think of Luka and that kiss.

  And I didn’t want to think about it anymore.

  Tonight was for tequila and dancing. It was New Year’s and my only tradition was getting blind drunk and trying to forget.

  I lifted my hands above my head and waded into the dance floor. It was my party so I could say it—this was the best damn party.

  In the most fucked-up way.

  The guys from the custom hot-rod shop on the corner—most of them were here. They’d been in this desolate part of Minneapolis as long as I had and we’d grown friendly. Ish.

  The microbrew guys who’d just moved onto the block came with a keg. That was nice.

  The beer was shit, but it was nice.

  And they’d all shown up in their tight plaid shirts with their beards and smarty-pants glasses.

  A little bit; I loved them.

  And to round it all off there was a group of art students from the grad program at the U.

  We’d met on the gallery circuit the past few years and some of them were okay. Some of them were awful. A few were fucking fantastic.

  Say for instance Priya and Keesha, who’d brought the weed brownies (honestly, like it was undergrad week or something), and were grinding each other in the corner of the dance floor. Much to the Neanderthal pleasure of the shop guys.

  Scattered amid that strange assortment were some other artists and a few of my models. Like Paulo.

  And tonight—everyone was young and beautiful and shit was easy.

  The lightest of my welding equipment had been pushed to the side, the giant steel wings with the filigree feathers that I never seemed to have time to finish were wrapped in Christmas lights.

  It was festive. It was weird. It was perfect.

  The bracelets clinked and my necklaces got tangled with the hair at the back of my neck but I closed my eyes and gave into it. Gave into it all. The tequila. The music. The scent of lust and ozone in the air.

  A sudden draft, the cold of Minneapolis in the winter, announced the entrance of another person, and everyone turned to the door.

  A big man stood in the doorway, in a thick black coat and a black knit cap pulled down low over his ears. His face was flushed from the cold. Bright and pink.

  Everyone else went back to partying.

  I could only stare.

  Luka.

  Shit. He must have forgotten about the party.

  Petey, his dog, saw me and came over to sit on my foot, nosing my hand until I patted him.

  Luka’s white/blue gaze took in the lights and the crowd. His whole body arrested and he dropped that aloof expression of his that made me crazy with curiosity and a lust I was growing increasingly embarrassed over.

  All the people scared Luka—well, maybe scare wasn’t the right word. I didn’t know the guy well enough to know what scared him. But he was clearly uncomfortable walking into the noise and heat of my party, and it took him a minute to hide it.

  A minute, there at the doorway to gather himself.

  Among the hipsters and hyper-aware models, the gearheads with the grease under their fingernails, he seemed altogether different.

  Altogether…more.

  More real. More awkward. More haunted and hunted. More self-contained.

  More fascinating, clearly. To me anyway.

  Stay? Go? Which one was it going to be?

  It shouldn’t matter to me. I tried to make it not matter to me. But somehow it didn’t work. I wanted him to stay.

  I wanted him.

  He took off his knit cap, his white-blond hair falling down into his eyes.

  Stay. He was staying. Slowly, I blew out the breath I’d been holding and told my hormones to give it a break. He would undoubtedly go right up to the room he lived in. Luka might not go back into the freezing cold night (because who would) but that did not mean we were going to be having tequila shots and dancing.

  Though God…Luka dancing. Dancing with Luka.

  My hormones were not giving it a break.

  Petey went to examine the kitchen floor, littered with delicacies.

  “Your junkyard dog is here,” John, a model and former lover, muttered in my ear. That was John’s strong suit. Muttering in ears. We’d been together four years ago when Luka had been all over the newspapers. Without sleeping we’d sat on my couch and followed the story day and night for a week. We were all wrapped up in the Mountain Man from Minnesota update
s (never mind that there were no mountains in Minnesota—whatever, who needs journalistic integrity when you have a shot at such alliteration).

  John and I watched Luka fall from hero to victim to suspect all in a week’s time. And a few months ago I made the mistake of telling John that Luka was living in my loft, and now he wasn’t letting that shit go.

  “Did you see that interview with the girl a few weeks ago?” John said. “Jesus—”

  “Her name is Anna,” I said. The girl. Like she was a part in a play that needed casting.

  “Right. Whatever. Anna. The point is that was some harrowing shit. I get you’re a tough woman, Rennie. And that guys has…charms. But he’s dangerous. And I worry—”

  “Fuck off, John,” John’s jealousy stank like privilege and failure. I grabbed a glass of wine and made my way through the crowd toward the door.

  And Luka, still standing in the doorway like he’d grown roots.

  If I were to sculpt him I’d use earth elements. Wood and clay. Bone would be interesting. There’d been that installation at the Walker a few years back with the repurposed old classroom skeletons. That would work. So would fur. I’d made my name in metal but that was far too cold for Luka.

  Luka breathed. He pulsed. He illuminated.

  The dark room seemed brighter for his being in it.

  I opened my mouth to yell his name over the noise but before the word was out of my mouth he looked my way. It was strange how he did that. How he found me. It wasn’t just that he saw me. Or heard me. It was like he scented me before he saw me.

  Felt me in the air of the room.

  “You’re having a party,” he said in his clipped way. Observation more than question.

  “I am. I told you—”

  “I forgot.” He smiled, that sheepish boy smile so out of context on his face. The loud heart of the party was over on the dance floor and even that was thinning into the darker corners my studio space offered.

  “Wine? Beer?” I asked.

  Luka surprised me by taking the wine. “Thank you.” He dropped his leather work bag down by the door. “What’s the party for?”

  “New Year’s!” I pointed up to the wings, draped in lights as proof.