Read Unbound: (InterMix) for Free Online

panic. But even shaky and nauseous, she had
     a glow to her face, matching her glossy brown-black hair. Her eyes were the same color,
     and her skin . . . peaky as the chill had made her, it shone against the yellow of
     her top with a natural tan.
    “You don’t look particularly Scottish.”
    She smiled. “Only my mom was from here. My dad’s family’s from Mexico.”
    “Ah. That must make for an interesting marriage.”
    She laughed. “No, no. My dad’s gay. They were really good friends, and my mom never
     wanted to get married, but she wanted a child, so . . . Anyhow, here I am!” She smiled,
     gesturing as if to say,
Ta da!
    “How very liberal.”
    “She had this dream from when she was about ten that she was going to move to America,
     to California, just like Joni Mitchell. And she did.”
    “And you couldn’t talk her into coming back to the homeland for this trip?”
    Merry’s smile wilted. “She passed away, actually. A little over a year ago.”
    “Oh.” Perfect. His first attempt at speaking to another human being on a meaningful
     level, and he’d already dropped a clanger to the tune of her dead mum.
    “It’s a bummer, because we used to talk about making a trip like this someday. But
     she got sick, then eight months later, she’s gone.”
    He nodded, thinking of his father. “It’s shocking how little time we actually have
     to get around to the things we tell ourselves we’ll do.”
    She smiled suddenly, making Rob’s chest feel funny. “How old are you?”
    “Thirty-six.”
    She blinked, and he had to laugh.
    “I look that rough, eh?”
    “No, no. I had my money on forty, but only because of gray,” she said, stroking an
     imaginary beard on her own chin.
    Yes, only the gray.
Plus the years he’d spent pickling himself in half a handle of gin every night.
    “But still,” Merry said. “You got around to retiring early. So many people must think,
     ‘Someday I’ll escape the rat race and go live off the land.’ But you did, and only
     halfway through your thirties.”
    “Yes, I suppose.” But it hadn’t been a choice. It was just that Rob had stumbled upon
     a secret passage to this place, out of the blackness of his rock bottom. He turned
     the topic back to Merry. “And what exactly are you looking for on this walkabout of
     yours?”
    She took a deep breath, seeming to search the room for an answer. “I don’t know for
     sure. Sometimes I feel like I’m looking for the question. Like, is it ‘Who am I?’
     Or ‘What should I be doing?’ But I feel like I know those answers already, or enough
     that I’m not in any philosophical crisis about them.”
    He studied her face as she thought, unsure if he felt unsettled or envious at how
     easily she let her most personal thoughts tumble from her mouth. It made him want
     irrationally to kiss her, if only to see if he could taste something there—her honesty
     or humility. To know if he’d feel it in her touch, in the press of brazen fingertips
     at his jaw.
    Rob hadn’t had sex in at least three years, and it’d been perhaps twice that long
     since he’d been with a woman in a way that felt at all joyful. He’d forgotten it could,
     until this moment. He’d never been burdened with a great and consuming physical need
     for female contact. He’d been a scoundrel of many sorts, but womanizing had never
     been one of them. He didn’t
lust
for women, though he longed sometimes for their nearness and affection. His lust
     was reserved for drink, it seemed. And other things.
    But nothing that could ever love him in return.
    Toward the end of his marriage, he’d come to dread sex. But he could recall a time
     with his wife, and with girlfriends before her, when sex had touched him. When he’d
     felt humbled and grateful to have been invited to share someone’s body that way, in
     awe of the heat and softness of a woman. Though of course in the end, he always succumbed
     to the troublesome thoughts,