Did I want to shag him again? This time sober? Does Yogi Bear shit in the woods? That was actually a good question.
“Does Yogi Bear shit in the woods?”
I swear he stopped breathing, the only movement coming from him the way his hands spasmed slightly on my sides. And then he rolled over onto his back, taking me with him, and a massive bellow of laughter came bursting out of him. Given that I had an ocean of alcohol in my system, the movement made my stomach roll, and when he didn’t stop, I came close to losing control of my ability to hold it in.
Which was why I started begging. “Please, please stop shaking me unless you want me to throw up all over you.”
The words had an effect, and it stopped as he rubbed my back. “Not sure if he shit in the woods, but seeing as how he was a bear, I’m thinking he probably did. Was that last night’s dream?”
Dropping my head again as I gulped in as much air as I could to try and settle my pissed off stomach, I had zero control of the shit that came flying out of my mouth.
“I dream vividly. As a kid, it was always cartoons, tv shows, or books. Then it moved onto real life after…” I trailed off, not wanting to stretch the limits of my puke control by talking about the near-rape. “They tried me on sleeping tablets to see if it would help, but they made it worse because I couldn’t wake up to get away from him, so I stopped taking them. Thankfully I’m back to dreaming about lighter stuff, but I still sometimes get ones about him. I don’t know why these are happening so often just now. Maybe it’s just one of those things?”
His hands hadn’t stopped rubbing my back through the explanation, not even when I’d gotten close to mentioning it, and I had to admit it helped—like an emotional support rub instead of a dog.
“How often do you dream about it?”
Realizing breathing this close to his chest wasn’t helping my nausea much, I turned my head to the side and rested it on his pec. “Maybe once every couple of weeks. It’s gotten better since I moved here, like the distance helps my mind cope when I’m asleep. But sometimes I have one, or I overthink something and imagine him looking through the windows when I’m in the kitchen, and it triggers one.”
He made a humming noise like he understood, and the pressure from his gigantic palms increased as he continued skimming them up and down. “Did you ever speak to someone about it? Like a professional?”
“Yeah. I had a therapist for a while, but then I decided I just wanted to move on with life, so I stopped going. The woman I was seeing was okay with it and said to take it at my own pace, so that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Really, what was the point? Reliving it or talking about how it affected me wasn’t helping, it was just making me more aware of it. Therapy had taken me a long way from the person I’d been after, but it felt like I was hitting a wall after a while.
“I kept having dreams about drowning after Coop died, so I went to see a therapist and felt the same way as you did. Dreams can take over our minds and emotions so they seem real, but talking about them when I was awake and aware that it hadn’t been real just made me feel stupid.”
“What about bereavement therapy? Did you try that?”
“No, I can talk about him with friends, and I enjoy hearing about their memories. That does more for me than talking to someone who didn’t know Coop.”
Now that made sense, but I wasn’t sure we’d made the right choices. Still, I didn’t want to speak to a stranger about it and analyze everything I was feeling. I had control of myself enough now, and a few nightmares weren’t going to kill me.
“Maybe we could be each other’s support network?” I offered, thinking out loud and mulling over how that would work.
I was brought out of my thoughts by him shifting under me so that my legs were either side of his, making me aware that we were both naked. Not just semi-naked, completely naked, and pressed up against each other so tightly, even a feather wouldn’t have been able to squeeze its way between us.
“Um, Elijah—”
“Shh, pixie,” he muttered, rolling us so that I was now the one under him, with his big ol’ pierced wiener pressed up against my whore of a vagina. And why was she a whore? Because she was practically begging him just to do what he wanted to her, with zero thought for me. Then again, it’s not like I’d argue against it.
Lowering his head, he began kissing from my jaw down my neck, making his way to my right boob. “Uh, what are we doing?”
“I’m getting some support from you,” he whispered, bypassing my nipple and kissing down my middle. “Yeah, I need to work out some tension, and I think you do, too.”
I wasn’t stupid, so I wasn’t going to argue. If sex therapy was a thing, I was all for it if it included Elijah being the therapist.
Three weeks later…
Time flies when you’re having sex. I don't know why that wasn’t one of those motivational memes on social media because it was fucking spot on. I’d never felt so relaxed and in the zone as I had recently, so it was working for me. The same could be said for Elijah, or at least until last night.
We’d been curled up on the couch watching the news and discussing the boxes our Chinese takeout had been delivered in versus what we got back home. I preferred the stuff here, minus the little metal handles, because it made it a bitch to stick in the microwave. You only made that mistake once, and fortunately, I was close enough to catch it as soon as the first spark happened. And I loved that they always gave me disposable chopsticks. It was small plastic containers and zero chopsticks at home, and you were lucky if you got a fortune cookie.
We’d both been reading our fortunes while Dobby crunched evilly on the cookies when the news had cut to a reporter discussing a fishing boat that’d disappeared somewhere in Alaska.
Elijah had immediately shut down, his attention laser-focused on the television, as she mentioned the five missing fishermen and how the weather and temperature meant they only had a small window to find them before they died. I would’ve thought and hoped the wording would be a bit more sympathetic given that they had friends and family who could be watching it, but that was precisely what she’d said.
After that, it was like he’d become a robot. Instead of the shared shower we had every night, he’d waited for me to finish up and taken his own separately. I wasn’t offended by this in the slightest because I knew that having personal time was a must, especially if something had triggered a memory or hard emotion. But after it, he’d just gotten into bed, turned on his side, and fallen asleep without saying a word.
That was the first time in almost a month that I had a nightmare. In it, I was awake while the bastard tore my leggings and knickers off while he unzipped his suit trousers. I was trying to scream for help, get up to run away, or even kick him, but it was like my body was made of concrete. He’d just been lying down on top of me when I’d woken up, only just catching the scream before it scared the shit out of Elijah.
Seeing as how he was still out cold and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go to sleep, I snuck into the kitchen and made a cup of tea while I thought about my security. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that Elijah’s change last night had triggered a nightmare. It was probably because more of my mates had seen Orson walking around West Wickham like he didn’t have a care in the fucking world.