The 'Cory Cofield' Rose saw when he opened the door was a far cry from the one she'd last seen when she and her Husband had kicked him out of their house after finding pot on him when he was 16.
Rail thin, without a hint of the baby fat he once had, Cory was a shade over 6 foot 3. Hard living had also taken it's toll. Even though he was only 20, any rational person would have guessed him to be 25 or maybe 30 in the right light.
Standing in front of him, seeing him dressed much the same way he was in the picture she'd masturbated to a few days earlier, in a pair of tight and faded jeans with an unbuttoned flannel shirt, Rose felt her throat turn to sand and her knees knock under the hem of her two size too small and rain soaked skirt.
"... Mrs. Dwyer...?" she heard Cory ask, his brown eyes bugging out of his skull.
"... Hi Cory," Rose surprised herself by being able to respond.
For Cory, seeing Rose Dwyer standing in the doorway of the motel room he did business in when he was in Huntington left him more than a little stunned. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her, but like most of his relationships, he was sure they didn't part under the best of circumstances.
Having set up an encounter with a man who was due at the motel in less than an hour, when Cody had heard the knock at the door, he'd sprung up angrily thinking the guy was early. When he opened the door and saw the Wife of his hometown's preacher standing there staring back, Cory's mouth suddenly filled with a bitter backwash of confusion.
"I know... this has to be a little of a surprise... " he heard Rose start to say.
"Get in here... you're drenched," Cory coldly interrupted, grabbing the older woman's arm and pulling her inside the room.
Closing the door quickly behind her, Cory then turned towards the bed and grabbed the towel he'd dried himself off with a little while earlier.
"Here," he said before tossing Rose the towel.
The obvious question for Cory to ask was, "What the Hell are you doing here?" but he couldn't bring himself to utter it. Whether it was the fact Rose was an authority figure from his past, or if he was simply too flummoxed by the surreal nature of seeing her standing there, but Cory couldn't quite process his jumbled thoughts into words.
"I know what you've been doing," Rose carefully addressed Cory, trying not to look directly at him. "I'm here to beg with you... plead with you Cory... please stop... before you catch something... or get hurt... or worse. "
Cory just stood beside the bed absorbing Rose's words, feeling just a twinge of innocent warmth that someone still cared enough to want to help him. Unfortunately, the stink of his lifestyle had become so thick, no one, including the well meaning and angel-hearted woman standing in front of him was going to be able to pull him from his depths. And like anything to do with gravitational pull, it becomes much easier for things to fall then to raise themselves up.
"What the Hell do you know?" Cory shot back, trying to sound as defiant as he could. "And who told you?"
"No one," Rose bowed her head and replied softly. "I sort of just accidentally stumbled upon it. "
Rose was gonna add to what she was saying when she saw some drug paraphernalia laid out on the dresser beside her. A knotted, choking silence ensued as the reality of Cory's plight became apparent.
It struck Rose that Sam Puttnam might not be the only person from back home involved with Cory if he instantly didn't suspect Sam for leaking where to find him.
"I've got someone coming in an hour or so... you're gonna have to leave," Cory said with a polite, almost pleading tone, but Rose didn't budge.
Cory knew he could manhandle her if he wanted and simply throw Rose back out into the rain, but that was an option he knew he would only use as a last resort. Instead he stared more intently at her as she stood 6 feet away and swore he saw something in Rose's sullen eyes, something he'd seen numerous times before in other troubled people he'd dealt with.
Suddenly the entire vibe in the room changed.
"You drove all this way to try to save me?" Cory nearly mocked.
Rose weakly nodded her head up and down.
"No you didn't," Cory sniped a few seconds later.
Rose's face went gaunt when Cory effectively pierced the facade she tried to hide behind. The longer Cory stood there sizing Rose up, the more he couldn't ever remember the preacher's wife dressed up quite the way as she was. Having been to church several times with the Dwyers back in the day, he could recall Rose wearing perhaps a light shade of blush and a hint of dime store perfume along with pantsuits. But looking at her now wearing a skirt and blouse set, along with a healthy layer of make-up and mascara, which was now running in several black wrinkles down her face from the rain, it further added to Cory's testosterone fueled curiosity.
"Again Mrs. Dwyer... I really need you to leave," Cory's monotone voice peeled from his throat.
Still Rose didn't move, but Cory was picking up clearly on an aura she didn't even realize she was giving off.
Rose's pupils widened and her breathing ceased when Cory started to walk slowly towards her. The discernable difference in height between the two became readily apparent with each step he took closer to her and Rose felt her own gaze withering under the white heat of Cory's stare.
"I'll ask you one more time, Mrs. Dwyer " he began, still walking straight towards her "You came all this way to save... me?"
"Or did you come to save yourself?" he cryptically added before Rose had time to think.
"... Myself..." the 51 year old woman winced, feeling Cory's words work just like an ax, splitting her self control in two.
Cory extended his hands out towards Rose before he'd really decided just what he was going to do when he grabbed her. Part of him wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her out of the fog she was in. There was also a horrible part of Cory that was tempted to grab Rose and throw her right back out into the rain and slam the door behind her, just as many people had done to him, literally and figuratively, over the years.
When he took hold of Rose's upper arms however, she seemed to simply melt in his grip. Of all the reactions Rose could have had to being grabbed, that was one Cory wasn't prepared for. If she'd tried to put up a struggle, he would have easily overpowered her. If Rose had tried to quote some scripture, he would have laughed right in her face about the wisdom of her God. But to have her collapse against him like nothing more than a deflated balloon left Cory bewildered and uneasy.
Between the adrenaline and narcotics already poisoning his system, Cory was also inundated with the scent of the perfume Rose had liberally applied before her trip, and that only added to the whirlwind whistling through his distorted senses.
The intensity of the rain pounding the front of the motel room only worsened as Cory patted his hand softly across the center of the sobbing woman's back.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry," Rose sniffled, traces of her smeared mascara now staining Cory's chest.
"Sorry for what?" he almost asked but thought better of it.
Nearly a minute passed as the two stood in that awkward embrace together before Rose finally mustered the fortitude to pull her face back and look up at Cory towering over her.
"I need you," she finally admitted in the faintest of whispers, to him and to herself for the first time. "That's why I came all the way out here Cory... I need you. "
Rose's words nearly pulled the rug out from Cory. To hear her say what she did, in the tone she delivered it in, landed well off the 20 year old boy's emotional grid. Before he could even begin to manage a response however, he took another look into Rose's eyes and saw the familiar murky gleam of desperation and want in her defeated gaze.
Cory had come to recognize that look in many of the men he'd fooled around with, many of whom were married and straight but had fought the longings for most of their adult life. It was a part of the human condition that wasn't pretty, but it was one Cory had become quite intimate with, and Rose was showing all the tell-tale signs.
To see this woman from his youth, the woman who was married to the town preacher standing in front of him in the condition she was in left Cory swelling with a sense of power and bravado. To think she'd driven halfway across the state, through a driving rainstorm and dressed the way she was to see him caused Cory to draw, as obscene as it was, only one conclusion.
Sensitivity and empathy not being Cory's strong suits, he simply did what nature had trained him to do.