Read Online Further Out Than You Thought by Michaela Carter - Free Book Online Page A

lightly. And when he stiffened, she straddled and rode him.
    â€œYou like this, don’t you,” she teased.
    â€œYes,” he said, under his breath.
    â€œWho am I?” she said again, but he was beyond all talk, this thrust fast and needful. Unconscious of himself, Leo had been, for the first time with her, one with his hunger, his passive, pleasing mode a shadow.
    She’d rolled off him, her knees red. He was still sleeping, the hint of a smile on his lips. At the top of the hill, an old Greek woman in a black dress, sidesaddle on her donkey, had stopped and was watching them. How long she’d been there, Gwen hadn’t known. She imagined she’d seen everything.
    Gwen had smiled and waved at her and dove into the sea. Her hands parted in a breaststroke, her legs kicked and closed. Under the water she opened her eyes, and swimming was like flight in dreams, how it makes you free and limitless. Leo was hers. In that moment—in which he’d trusted her completely, the way a child trusts his mother—she had the power, had that willful, girlish, stamp your foot, dance on the tabletop if you want to power. She had been charged with it.
    Now she looked at him, in the passenger seat, lost in his own voice, singing with his eyes closed. She could take him anywhere and he wouldn’t know it. She could get on the freeway and head west, till they hit the Pacific, and then veer north, up the coast. She had an aunt up there, in Santa Cruz—her mother’s youngest sister, Sam, who lived with Loni, her partner. She’d told Gwen she was welcome anytime. They could stay with them awhile. Get out of the city, have a few days at the sea.
    His chant gave way to “The Freedom Song.” Her birthday present the first year they were together, it was her favorite of his songs. But the cars were moving too fast. She wanted to hear one verse at least before she let him out. He sang and she joined in, singing higher than him, harmonizing.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  You gotta roam, darlin’, to know you are free.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  You gotta roam, darlin’, but if you come back to me,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  I’ll be your new pair of sneakers,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  I’ll be your old bicycle chain.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  I’ll be your home, darlin’, come back again.
    They were at his stop—the curb before the freeway on-ramp—and she pulled over, watched him open the door, step from her car, tap his hat onto his head so it would stay put in the breeze, and wave good-bye with his fingers— toodle-do —one at a time. She had to smile.

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Seven
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    BY DAYLIGHT THE exterior of the club was something Gwen tried not to look at. Like a condom under the pier, or a beggar at a stoplight. It was made of cement blocks and was big and boxy as a warehouse. The white paint was peeling, showing Pepto-Bismol pink beneath. It was ugly—uglier because it aimed at ugliness, because the ugliness was itself an attraction. The club was, simply, ugly as sin.
    But then, a club is a weapon. It’s all about function. A heavy stick with a thick end. One good whack on the head will do the trick. Boom, down.
    Men came to the club to feel the beat of the music in their blood, in their bones. To sit in the dark and watch.
    Sometimes, dancing, she’d gaze at the field of men’s faces and wonder. How many had planned to go there? How many had tried to drive home? How many had girlfriends, wives? Did they tell them where they’d been? Or did they lie?
    These men came to the club to be someone else for an hour, to feel their heart beat in their chest as if they were nameless. To glow with anonymity in a place where anything could happen.
    And then there were those men who were single, or at least interested in more than a mere glimpse of flesh. There were the ones who gave her their cards: coffeehouse kid, artist, real-estate agent, M.D., executive