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She’s sitting outside on the porch smoking her third cigarette of the day when she sees the car turn down the driveway. There’s no mistaking who it is—no one else drives a car like that around here. It looks offensively shiny as it pulls up next to her own Jeep.
“Morning,” Raylan greets as he steps out.
According to her watch it’s a little past noon. “Sure,” she says. There’s a fly resting on her bare knee, rubbing its hairy, stick-like legs together. She can’t be bothered to do anything about it. “What do you want?”
Raylan smiles and shakes his head at her blunt tone. “Is Boyd in?”
“No,” she says and sucks on the filter, “he’s at work. Ain’t you done bothering him by now?”
“Well, Ava, let’s just say that there are reports coming in about certain activities and behaviours and all I want is to make sure that Boyd’s not involved in anything untoward.”
“He knows the deal. He gets to live under my roof as long as he’s doing honest work.”
Raylan nods and taps his fingers against the gun in his holster. As if she needs a reminder. “I just want you to be careful.”
“Oh, you just want me to be careful?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She can’t help but laugh. It sits high in her mouth and comes out stupid and coquettish. He hasn’t touched her. He doesn’t need to. His presence alone affects her more than if he had caressed her. Bowman’s love had killed her from the inside out. Chewed through her and spat her out, already hungry again for more. So when Raylan had knocked on her door last year, after Bowman, she could hardly believe it. He had stood there like some hero from the old westerns returning to his frontier bride. He had stood there, fiercely handsome and powerfully charismatic, and she had felt like she was thirteen all over again. It was a feeling that made her realise that her body was really the one in control and that she would do whatever it demanded. She had been starved for affection and he offered it freely.
“You’re not going to invite me inside?”
Her cigarette is burnt down to the filter and she desperately wants another one. “Last time, you declined,” she reminds him. He’d told her it wasn’t a good idea and then looked at her like she was crazy for even offering.
Now he looks down at her. His gaze is impossible to escape, making her feel like the most special girl in the world. “I’m sorry,” he says, “if I made you feel…”
“What?” she snaps. “Pathetic? Unwanted?”
He sighs her name, and she almost marvels at how he can make three letters sound so put upon, so she tells him to just shut up already. She squashes the cigarette into the ashtray and gets up, opens the door, and gestures for him to get inside. “Well, come on, then.”
Raylan does; walks in slowly and assessing, eyeing Boyd’s jacket that is draped over the hanger in the hallway. Walks further into the house, into the kitchen, where two mugs sit on the counter, one with stains of lipstick on it, one without.
“Coffee?” he asks. The windows and backdoor are open and the apple-green garden slants in.
“In the pot.” It can’t be more than lukewarm at this point but he grabs the mug without lipstick on it, and she almost tells him that that one is dirty too but doesn’t because he knows, they both know, and pours himself some coffee.
“You seen his tattoo yet? Big, terrible thing on his right arm,” he says.
She has, in fact, seen it when Boyd so generously mowed her lawn the week before. “I don’t know how that’s any of your concern.”
“Thought you’d want to know about your bedfellows.”
“You’re doing a lot of presuming about the nature of my relationship with Boyd.”
Raylan’s jaw tenses. He steps towards her and she gets a finger pointed at her face. He says her name like that again, patronising. It makes her want to rip her hair out. Mature enough to fuck, young enough to scold. The hand moves to cradle her face instead, his thumb brushes along her jawline.
“I worry,” he says quietly. The sun lands on his lips.
“About Boyd?” He’ll always worry about Boyd.
Raylan’s palm is clammy against her cheek, his other fanning out over her hipbone. She won’t let him, she decides. Not again. But she sways and pulls or is pulled in; she kisses him and he walks her backwards until the backs of her thighs hit the table. He lifts her up. She wraps her legs around him and his hands are everywhere and they are warm and soft and hard. He slides her panties to the side and as he buries himself inside her, he says, “Like this?”
“What?” she breathes.
“Does Boyd fuck you like this?”
She doesn’t tell him that she’s only been with Boyd once, many years ago. His long body, the gleam of his belt buckle, his breath on her face, her legs around his waist.
“Yes,” she says, “exactly like this.”
Raylan groans, long and laborious into her hair.
She remembers. It was past midnight and she was at the Crowder house, tip-toeing out of Bowman’s room to go pee. Outside, there was the sound of wheels on gravel, a low rumble, a motor stopping. She looked out of the window and saw Boyd stepping out of the passenger side. The headlights cast harsh yellow shadows on him, his smile was all teeth and animal in the way only eighteen-year-old boys can be. Raylan got out too, downing a can of beer and throwing it on the ground. Boyd hushed him. He said something and they both laughed. The two of them in the darkness, the cones of light piercing the forest next to them. The way they moved; it was like a dance. Boyd stepped closer and Raylan stepped back, grinning, until he was against the car and Boyd was right there too. Hands on waists and a foot hooked around an ankle. She felt a tug low in her gut. Hands snaked up along Boyd’s back, to his neck, pulling him closer. Boyd’s face tucked into the bend of Raylan’s neck and Raylan smiled. Tensed. His lips moved and Boyd whipped around and they were both staring directly at her. Boyd’s hands were underneath Raylan’s shirt. She ran. She ran back into Bowman’s room and crawled underneath the covers.
“What’s up, baby?” Bowman muttered.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “Nothing.”
Warm dusk makes the house rosy and gold-dusted. A tiny rivulet of sweat pools inside her bra. The drink is cold in her hand. She lifts it up to her mouth only to find it empty. As she gets up to refill her glass, the front door opens and Boyd steps in. He beams at her before his brow creases and he looks around the living room. Guilt buzzes underneath her skin and her breathing doesn’t quite reach her stomach, it stays high in her lungs and makes her feel dizzy. She sits down at the dining table and takes another sip. Boyd walks up to her and she notices the streak of black coal down the side of his throat.
“Alright?” she asks.
Boyd nods and his gaze flits around the house. “Well, I reckon in the grand scheme of events, today was alright, yes.”
He kisses the top of her head. It’s a habit he’s formed and she allows it. He lingers for a moment longer than usual and caresses her between her shoulders.
“You know,” he says into the crown of her hair, “Raylan's used the same damn cologne since he was seventeen.”
She is still dizzy. “I reckon you’d know.” She dares look up at him. In a flash, Boyd appears twenty years younger and lit by the headlights of Raylan’s shitty old car.
“Yes,” he says, “I reckon I’d know.”
How much of this web is of her own making, she wonders. Seeing Boyd and Raylan, watching them, and barely being able to breathe, discovering a new feeling. Boyd, stinking of liquor and passed out on the Crowder couch, while Ava and Bowman giggled in the kitchen as Bowman licked into her mouth and pushed his fingers inside her. In the darkness, in the secrecy, with the anguish she felt at the possibility of discovery, there had been this marvelous expansion moving through her body. Ten years later she would feel it again when Bowman was black-out drunk and asleep in the bedroom and she was gasping into the crook of Boyd’s neck as he fucked on her on top of the dryer.
Another ten years and here she is. Boyd buries his nose in her hair once more and inhales deeply.
She has been driving aimlessly for two hours. She told Boyd she was going grocery shopping and it wasn’t a lie but she can’t stand the thought of going into town. She sees the way people look at her. After Bowman. Everyone knew what was happening, everyone knew how this would end. Terrible men and the women who stay with them. Expensive divorce so why do it? You can’t run because he’ll find you anyway. You can’t call the police because they’ll just ask you well, Mrs. Crowder, what do you want us to do? Except not this time. Ava shot a hole in Bowman’s chest before he had the chance to smash her brains in.
And she can’t stand the thought of looking at Boyd again just yet. It’s how she finds herself in Bennet country, way off where she usually goes. The doorbell chimes as she steps into the convenience store.
“Oh,” says Mags behind the counter, “you’re that Crowder girl.”
“Yeah,” she says and wishes it wasn’t true. Crowder girl like she’s part of the family. Bo did treat her like the daughter he always wanted when she was little. He doted on her, pinched her cheeks and made her sit on his lap while Boyd and Bowman watched. “You’re all rose and honey,” Bo would say, “ain’t you, girl?” He would touch her tanned knees and fiddle with the hem of her gingham dress. That all stopped the moment he caught her with Bowman.
“How’re things?”
“Fine, thank you,” Ava says as she gets milk out of the fridge and into her basket.
“It takes a brave woman to do what you did.” Mags isn’t even looking at her, she’s rummaging with cans of tomato soup, printing price tags and sticking them on.
Ava’s mouth is dry. “Thank you.”
“And how is that Raylan Givens?”
When Ava doesn’t answer, Mags chuckles and says, “My oldest, Doyle—maybe you remember him—he’s chief of police here. He hears things through the grapevine.”
“Raylan’s fine,” she says and buys her groceries with a shaking hand.
For his part, Boyd seems largely content to avoid her as well. They stay in their ends of the house, Boyd stays in his room and reads and listens to music and she musses about, passing time by smoking and smoking and smoking on the patio. The sun dazzles and the leaves of a voluminous elm splay their mellow shadows on the grass. It’s a lazy kind of Sunday. There is a pile of dirty clothes she’s been ignoring for weeks, gnawing at the back of her mind, and it’s getting dire. She hates it. She drinks two glasses of whiskey before getting up and getting to it. In the bathroom, she throws the washing in the machine, and she wishes she had just brought the bottle with her. Staring at the clothes as they spin, time passes, she acts on auto-pilot, moving the wet clothes into the dryer. Boyd lingers briefly in the doorway and tells her something, and she responds, yeah, sure, just a minute.
She used to do so much. Cleaning, always cleaning. Washing. Her hands were perpetually dry and rough. She used up a tremendous amount of energy on cleaning the windows, dusting between the slats of the Venetian blinds, scrubbing the floors, folding the laundry.
She is folding the laundry. She blinks and looks at the shirt in her hands. It would do good to iron it but the thought alone makes her nauseous. She places the clean clothes on the bed. The door to the bathroom opens and a familiar scent flows into her room.
Boyd steps out with a towel slung low on his hips, straight after shaving, soapy-earlobed. She stops folding the laundry and walks over to him, and Boyd is unmoving, eyes tracking her, and she reaches towards him, wiping off the shaving foam with a small pull of his ear. Boyd breathes loudly. She trails her fingers down his throat and lets her hand rest on his naked chest.
“You smell nice,” she whispers.
“New cologne,” he answers. “Do you recognise it?”
Yes, she doesn’t say. A wave of desire washes over her and it’s more fear than joy. She says his name and he cradles her face. He kisses her softly, nothing like Bowman and nothing like Raylan either. His skin is fever-hot underneath her palms. She tells him she wants him and he says, yes, yes, God, Ava, and they make their way to the bed and she lands on her back. His towel falls to the floor. He hovers over her.
“Did you sleep with Raylan in this bed?”
She laughs in his face. Wildly, he rips her shirt off. Tears off her shoes. Unzips her pants. He lifts her leg and kisses the arch of her foot, kisses his way up her calf and thigh. Kisses every inch of her and she buries her hands in his hair. His lips meet hers and she moans into it. When he’s inside her, looking at her face, she nods, out of her mind with want.
They settle into domesticity. It’s an odd thing; being in love. An expectation of a person who would make her life marvelous, who would whisk her away from the impasse she had placed herself in. It’s hard to say when she fell in love with Bowman. He always claimed he noticed her first, out in the schoolyard when they were in the first grade. Maybe it’s the truth. Or maybe she set her sights on him first. The tight-knit Crowders were impossibly alluring. She had certainly seen Boyd, and by extension Raylan, before she even realised that Bowman existed.
Ava and Bowman were two peas in a pod, and everybody said they’d get married when they grew up. Bo’s hand was resting on the small of her back and he said, “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll walk you down the aisle,” when her daddy died. And he had. Both of her parents were gone and she found herself surrounded by Crowders.
As a person, Boyd is altogether unlike Bowman. Where Bowman was loud and volatile, Boyd is quiet and patient. He talks in a low, melodic voice and his touch is gentle and constant; her shoulder, her arm, her thigh. He kisses her thoroughly. Once, in the kitchen, he had said, “Want to take this to the bedroom?” and she had whined and pulled him to her. Boyd had frowned and told her, “Let’s go.” She wants him not to care so much. She wants him to turn her around and lift up her dress and fuck her. But if you don’t ask for it, you don’t get it. It is as simple as that.
She wipes the sweat of her brow and buries her fingers in the earth. It hasn’t rained in a long while and she has forgotten to water the flowers. They’re dry and brittle as she pulls them out. Her throat clicks and she longs for a drink. The sun weighs down on her and burns her shoulders and she knows that she should head in, drink some water, sit in the shade, cool down a bit. Her knees dig into the arid grass. The flowers are sad and wilted. Misery suddenly bubbles up inside her and she releases a single wet sob and tears sting her eyes. Maybe Bowman did win, afterall. Maybe he did kill every part of her except her body. She can’t cry because she can’t afford to lose the last bits of moisture in her body, else she die of dehydration. She gets up and the world spins immediately and she trips over her own feet. Boyd is there to catch her, always so attentive.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ve been in the sun too long. I think.” She leans back against Boyd.
He places the back of palm against her forehead. “You’re burning up, baby. Let’s go.”
Later, laying in bed, awake, the lamp on her bedside table is on, soft yellows and creams circle the room. There is a pile of clothes in the corner. Boyd is next to her, his chest moving with each breath. He breathes like Bowman. Anxiety moves like ants under skin, followed by phantom hands.
“I’m not going to rape you,” Bowman once said, mockingly. Like you’re not worth it. Like you’re not worth the effort.
She used to dream of running away. She had stashed away some money—in the second drawer of her vanity, in an empty jewellery box, hidden underneath old makeup—but it remained a dream. It was something to hold on to. When Bowman was away, she would sit and count it, finding comfort in knowing that she could get away if she wanted to. Somewhere better than this dismal mining town, with the insects droning and the sun burning and the people watching and the women tutting and the men grinning and Bowman leering.
She gets up and makes her way downstairs quietly. Makes coffee and sits out on the porch, watching the sun rise. At some point, Boyd joins her.
“You okay, baby?”
“Just a bad dream.”
“Anything I can do?”
She shakes her head. “No. Thank you.”
“You know, I really do blame myself for not stepping in. For not intervening—”
“Boyd, please.”
He kneels down in front of her and takes her hands into his. Her vision turns blurry.
“I’m sorry, Ava. I’m so sorry.” Reaching up, he wipes his thumb along her lashes. She nods.
“Okay,” she says. Once more, “okay,” and then she clears her throat. “I’m hungry.”
Boyd chuckles and makes breakfast for them and kisses her gently. Kisses her goodbye before leaving for work. Blows a kiss to her as he drives away. She can’t help but smile. It’s nice; being in love.
Bowman insisted on a clean house. She was always scrubbing the floors, wiping down surfaces, cleaning the windows. Once he had pushed her down on her knees and shoved her face into a dusty, sticky spot on the floor like a dog forced to look at its own shit. But Bowman’s gone now. Ava likes to swipe her finger through the dust that’s settling on the windowsills. She likes letting the dishes pile up. She likes to stuff her face into the sheets after she’s had sex with Boyd, smelling the sweat. She liked how there was a faint earthy and moldy scent in Raylan’s motel room.
After Bowman, she didn’t shave for weeks. She let the hairs on her legs grow sharp and stubbly, in her armpits, between her thighs. Sure, she showered after and cleaned away the blood. She wanted him gone. She wanted him out of her house and out of her body. And then she let it rot. When Raylan knocked on her door, she could smell herself and smell the alcohol wafting out of her mouth. She felt incredibly satisfied by it for a moment and then completely horrified once he left. She had run up the stairs and showered and smoothed herself back into shape.
Her heart nearly jumps out of her chest when she sees Raylan outside of the salon. Her and Kathy are closing up and the afternoon ripens into evening. She brushes a hand through her hair and checks herself out in the mirrors.
“How do I look?” she asks.
Kathy looks at Raylan, who is leaning against the hood of his car, then at her. “Like a million bucks.”
The first thing Raylan says to her is; “How’s Boyd?”
“Oh my God, you are unbelievable. How’s Winona? That was her name, right? Winona?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Ain’t it always with you.”
Raylan shakes his head. “I was going to say ‘come get a drink with me’ but now I’m not so sure—”
All the old, confused emotions tangle together in her gut and form a heavy knot of pain. “Is she still technically married?”
“I was married to her first,” he snaps, fast and angry.
She steps closer. God, that fucking cologne. “And Boyd?” she says quietly. “Was he yours first too?”
Raylan’s lip twitches. He whips around and opens the door to the passenger’s side. “Get in the goddamn car.”
They don’t say anything as he drives and they don’t talk when they sit down at the bar by his motel. Raylan orders them both a glass of whiskey and a beer. The whiskey burns as she shoots it down but she doesn’t wince.
“Bowman used to laugh at me whenever I drank hard liquor. He’d laugh and then he’d lean in like this—” she places her mouth close to the shell of Raylan’s ear and trails a hand up his thigh, “—and he’d say, ‘You doing okay, baby? Don’t you dare throw up.’” She laughs. She wants to get wasted.
Raylan doesn’t look half as amused. “I’m sorry—”
“Oh, shut up. I wish y’all would stop feeling so fucking sorry.”
The first time she got really, really drunk she was fifteen. Bowman picked her up from her waitressing job in that small roadside restaurant outside of Harlan where she wore a uniform so short that her ass cheeks peeked out whenever she bent forward. A thrill worked its way down her body whenever she caught Raylan or Boyd staring. Her and Bowman and their friends sat in Marshall Park which was the place everyone met to get drunk or high or get jerked off three feet into the woods. It was one of those endless summer nights where the air hung low around them and her arms were sticky from sweat and residual sun screen. A bottle of warm whiskey was being passed around between them, the rim was ringed with pink lip gloss after she had sipped from it. One of the other girls waved a cup of lean in front of Ava’s face. “It makes you feel so good, baby,” she said. It tasted like the sweetest Mountain Dew and it coated her tongue. It made her feel warm and drowsy.
She’s shredding the label on the beer bottle down to nothing and she forces herself to stop. Raylan has been talking but she hasn’t really been listening. She is amiably drunk though, and that’s got to count for something. She hasn’t eaten since her lunch break and they’re on their third bottle of beer and second drink. They’ll be smashed soon at this rate.
“You working on anything interesting?” she asks.
Raylan smiles coyly into his bottle. “There are certain things, Ava, that I’m just not able to tell you.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“So whatever you’re working on has to do with Boyd.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She shrugs. “Buy me another drink, then.”
The third and fourth go down easier. The fine hairs on her nape are starting to stick to her skin. The bar is lousy and clammy. Raylan looks glazed already too, like the lack of dinner is affecting his tolerance as well. His hand rests on her hip and one of his fingers is twirling in the fabric of her dress. Heat moves through her body.
“I need some air,” she says. As far as excuses go, it’s an innocuous one. They stand outside and Raylan sways a little. “I’m not getting in your room.”
He looks offended which is hilarious considering where they are. But it doesn’t matter because Ava’s body has decided for her and it wants and it wants. So she does get in his room and still smells like that, a little off, and he’s on her. She’s feeling spiteful—at him, at herself—so she says, “You want to know what he does that I like?”
It takes a moment for Raylan to catch her meaning but she sees the moment it clicks. His face goes slack. She's the closest he can get to Boyd. She’s already carrying his name without being related, without even being married to him. Crowder girl. Like Boyd’s swimming through her blood.
“He kisses me here—” Ava points to the junction where jaw meets ear. Raylan kisses her there. “And here.” Her collarbones. “Here.” Her nipples. They’re so much alike, the two of them, though neither will ever admit that. She can hardly tell the difference between them when they’re naked and on top of her.
She lies half beside him, half on top of him. He strokes through her hair.
“You okay to drive?” Raylan asks. “I promise I’m not being a cop.”
“You’re not driving me home,” she scoffs.
Raylan just looks at her. “No. I reckon we can’t have that.”
The house is dark when she gets home. Boyd left the lights in the hallway on for her. It’s a nice gesture. She tries to make as little noise as possible as she makes her way to the bathroom. Her drunkenness has moved on to queasyness and she sighs into the sink, splashing cold water on her face. She can still feel Raylan between her legs, dripping.
Boyd is awake and sitting upright on the bed when she enters.
“Baby, I was worried,” he says.
“Sorry. Sorry. I just grabbed a few drinks with Kathy.”
Boyd’s face does something she can’t quite parse. She crawls into bed and he envelops her, tucks his face into her throat. “Ava,” he whispers, “I can smell him.”
It’s impossible to breathe. Boyd kisses her lips and her neck and her collarbones and her tits. He sits up, her thighs on either side of him, and he removes her nightgown. She lets him. He kisses down her body and—
“No, Boyd,” she pulls him up by the hair. “Don’t.”
He bats her hands away and goes down between her thighs, mouth hot and insistent.
The house burns like an oven in the summer heat which is why they’re both on the front porch drinking whiskey sodas when Raylan drives up.
“Look at you!” Boyd bellows. “Still lookin’ good.”
Raylan dutifully rolls his eyes and she wants to ask him why. Who is this show for when it’s just the three of them? Boyd asks him if he wants a drink and Raylan looks around like he might get caught before saying yes, actually, he’d love one.
“Ava, darlin’—” Boyd says and gestures sweepingly so she gets up and into the kitchen to fetch another glass. She stops and listens. Their voices are muffled by the sounds of cicadas like nature itself is stopping her from eavesdropping. She looks at them through the window. Boyd has gotten up and they’re both leaning against the railing. They look so alike, their long, slender limbs and the tilt of their hips. If she were to squint, they might melt together. Are they talking about her? Are they calling her a slut? Bowman did.
“My brother wants to fuck you,” Bowman said once, his hands around her throat. “Maybe it’s because you walk around like that.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Even Johnny can’t keep his hands to himself, can he? Can he?”
Later, Bo had found her. Her face was bruised and her nose was crusty from dried blood. “Oh, baby,” he said and pulled her to him, rocked them back and forth, his body was so big. “It’ll all be alright,” and then he kissed her cheek. “You’re too beautiful to cry,” he said as he wiped her tears away.
She catches Raylan’s gaze and he tenses just the tiniest bit. She can see it in his shoulders. Boyd smiles with all his teeth when she comes back out. He pours Raylan a drink and she lights up a cigarette. She offers Raylan one too but he shakes his head.
“Never got the taste for them,” he says.
“A miracle, really, considering” Boyd smiles, “Aunt Helen was smoking a pack a day.” Aunt Helen, because they’re family, because they’re all one big family. They grew up together, drifted apart, and found each other all over again in a new, twisted constellation.
“Still is.”
Boyd nods. Reminiscing, they talk about their childhoods. About little league, smoking weed for the first time, about Marshall Park, about Doyle Bennett getting so high that his brothers had to carry him home and did Mags ever find out? Probably not, Doyle’s still the favourite.
Ava listens and smokes. The sky is turning pink, the line of trees darker. Her first kiss was Bowman, twelve years old, in the garden of the Crowder house, some kind of party inside, all the adults were drunk. They sat bow-legged across from each other and she’d done it. He had asked for another and she said no. Then she did it again, more deeply and pressing and delivered with a sharp inhalation before, thinking this is how the grownups do it. Boyd, two years later, Ava leaning in, braver yet surely she must have been shaking. Raylan, last year. Usually, she looks at her past with a sort of distant passiveness but right now it makes her indignant; at all of them, at herself most of all, at her own lack of spine, at her inability to say no.
She focuses back on their conversation. Boyd is looking at her with a glint in his eyes while talking to Raylan. Their back and forth is getting more charged. She looks at Raylan who is looking at Boyd. They are all orbiting each other. She’s too aware of the narrow line they’re all walking. It’s a knife’s edge; all of them watching each other, pushing a little further. She feels it in her stomach. The way Raylan is still standing there infuriates her.
Boyd’s mid sentence when she says, “Did the two of you ever—again? Since you’ve been back?” She arches an eyebrow at Raylan who has gone stiff.
“Ava,” Boyd grits out, the usual playfulness is completely absent in his voice.
She takes the last drag of her cigarette and puts it out and stands up. “Alright.” Moving into the living room, she feels her heartbeat everywhere. She flexes her hand, wills it to stop trembling, and she considers smoking another cigarette even though she doesn’t like smoking in the house. Everything is muddled and she presses a thumb over her eye to relieve the pressure building in her skull. Anger settles inside her, squirms and writhes into a terrible kind of love.
Boyd comes up behind her and kisses her shoulder. She turns around so fast that Boyd’s eyes go wide before she kisses him. She paws at him and Boyd lets her push him onto the couch where she straddles him. His hands slide up along her back and the slide of his tongue makes something inside her brain pitch like a whistle.
The screen door slams against its frame and they look up. Raylan’s staring at them, his jaw working, his breathing loud. “Go ahead,” he says, like he owns the house.
So she grabs Boyd’s face, cradles it in her hands, and keeps kissing him. Raylan moves to sit in one of the armchairs and he’s watching and she wants him to and Boyd’s erection is poking her inner thigh. They get her dress over her shoulders and Boyd kisses her breasts the way he does and Raylan presses the heel of his hand to his groin. She undoes the buttons on Boyd’s shirt and he lifts himself up to slide his jeans down. It’s a familiar dance and she rides him and the couch creaks and Raylan is keeping his hand to the outside of his pants, not touching himself as if denying himself now would make it less than it is, and she gasps into the sweaty crook of Boyd’s neck.
She forces Boyd’s face to the side. “Look at him,” she pants and Boyd moans. The look in Raylan’s eyes matches Boyd’s; hungry and greedy. “Look at him.” Boyd grabs her hard as he comes, head thrown back. She eases herself off of him and waits. It takes a second for Boyd to stop breathing as if he has run a marathon but when he does, he gets up and stalks toward Raylan. His whole body is languid and slow, seductive in a way she hasn’t seen him before.
Raylan grips Boyd’s hip. He’s holding him back. Boyd nods once and then he’s slowly sinking to his knees, opening Raylan’s pants and getting his mouth around him. Raylan groans as if he’s been hurt, a hand in Boyd’s hair, the other covering his own eyes. Ava walks up behind him and pries it away. “Look,” she whispers though she can hardly look at Boyd herself. Disgust and the lust that follows, she wants to recoil, she wants to watch, it makes her want to vomit, it makes heat flow between her legs; she tells them what to do and they do it.
Raylan breathes, “Fuck,” and Boyd takes it. In the silence that follows, she can hear her own heartbeat. Slowly, the sounds of the trees rustling and the insects humming fills the house once more. The world creeps into view again. Raylan pushes Boyd away and quickly zips up. He stands with his back to them, hands on his hips, head shaking back and forth. He leaves without looking back.
She wonders what she would have seen all those years ago if they hadn’t noticed her in that window. More than this, perhaps. Maybe even tenderness.
She waits for Raylan, sits around outside the salon for an hour sometimes, and waits for him. And when she comes home Boyd looks at her for a long time, only his eyes moving, the rest of him stiff and tense. He’ll fuck her over the kitchen table later and ask, “Was he there? Did you fuck him? Was he there?” Ava can only gasp and tell him that yes, Raylan was there. Afterwards, she’ll say that she hasn’t seen him since that night.