It

He thought this would bring some faint spark of protest, but she had only looked at him in her shy, wanting-to-please way. Her voice had been low and meek and obedient. All tight, Tom.
Pitch it then.
She pitched it. Tom had been in a good humor for the rest of that night.
A few weeks later, coming out of a movie, she unthinkingly lit a cigarette in the lobby and puffed it as they walked across the parking lot to the car. It had been a bitter November night, the wind chopping like a maniac at any exposed square inch of flesh it could find. Tom remembered he had been able to smell the lake, as you sometimes could on cold nights — a flat smell that was both fishy and somehow empty. He let her smoke the cigarette. He even opened her door for her when they got to the car. He got in behind the wheel, closed his own door, and then said: Bev?
She took the cigarette out of her mouth, turned toward him, inquiring, and he unloaded on her pretty good, his hard open hand stroking across her cheek hard enough to make his palm tingle, hard enough to rock her head back against the headrest. Her eyes widened with surprise and pain . . . and something else as well. Her own hand flew to her cheek to investigate the warmth and tingling numbness there. She cried out Owww! Tom!
He looked at her, eyes narrowed, mouth smiling casually, completely alive, ready to see what would come next, how she would react. His cock was stiffening in his pants, but he barely noticed. That was for later. For now, school was in session. He replayed what had just happened. Her face. What had that third expression been, there for a bare instant and then gone? First the surprise. Then the pain. Then the
(nostalgia)
look of a memory . . . of some memory. It had only been for a moment. He didn’t think she even knew it had been there, on her face or in her mind.
Now: now. It would all be in the first thing she didn’t say. He knew that as well as his own name.
It wasn’t You son of a bitch!
It wasn’t See you later, Macho City.
It wasn’t We’re through, Tom.
She only looked at him with her wounded, brimming hazel eyes and said: Why did you do that? Then she tried to say something else and burst into tears instead.
Throw it out.
What? What, Tom? Her make-up was running down her face in muddy tracks. He didn’t mind that. He kind of liked seeing her that way. It was messy, but there was something sexy about it, too. Slutty. Kind of exciting.
The cigarette. Throw it out.
Realization dawning. And with it, guilt.
I just forgot! she cried. That’s all!
Throw it out, Bev, or you’re going to get another shot.
She rolled the window down and pitched the cigarette. Then she turned back to him, her face pale and scared and somehow serene.
You can’t . . . you aren’t supposed to hit me. That’s a bad basis for a . . . a . . . a lasting relationship. She was trying to find a tone, an adult rhythm of speech, and failing. He had regressed her. He was in this car with a child. Voluptuous and sexy as hell, but a child.
Can’t and aren’t are two different things, keed, he said. He kept his voice calm but inside he was jittering and jiving. And I’ll be the one to decide what constitutes a lasting relationship and what doesn’t. If you can live with that, fine. If you can’t, you can take a walk. I won’t stop you. I might kick you once in the ass as a going-away present, but I won’t stop you. It’s a free country. What more can I say?
Maybe you’ve already said enough, she whispered, and he hit her again, harder than the first time, because no broad was ever going to smart off to Tom Rogan. He would pop the Queen of England if she cracked smart to him.
Her cheek banged the padded dashboard. Her hand groped for the doorhandle