Good Whiskey

Rick just wanted to give up.

It was bad enough that he had to make the tough calls, that he had an entire group to try to keep alive, that he’d had to put Sophia down, that he had Shane riding his ass about every little thing every single day. If Rick said the grass was green Shane would argue it was yellow for the sake of arguing. On top of all that he’d found himself in yet another argument with Lori.

The one person he should be able to count on to have his back seemed more interested in being just another problem. The only one in the whole group who didn’t seem to be determined to undermine him, or question him, was Daryl.

He needed to get away from it. He needed to get away from them. He needed to just get away, period. If it wasn’t for Carl, Rick sometimes believed he’d hop into a truck with a gun, some ammo, and a knife and just flip them the finger as he drove away.

Rather than do that Rick decided to take the bottle of Jack Daniels he’d pilfered from the bar and stuffed in his pocket and head out to the barn. They’d moved Randall to the stables for a few nights so the animals could keep him warm since it was getting colder. A cow put off a tremendous amount of heat and he’d be more comfortable there, for however long he had left, even if it did smell of cow and horse shit.

Rick was glad he’d made that decision. It would give him a place to be alone that didn’t smell. He took a seat in the loft and looked out over the massive expanse, most of which belonged to Hershel, at the crops that had rotted in the back fields. He couldn’t see the decay now. It was frosted over by the watery silver light of a quarter moon.

“You can see the stars.”

Rick jumped, startled. He’d only been in the barn for about twenty minutes, with his mind turning over too many thoughts, his gut churning from too many feelings that the whiskey had yet to numb. Beth Greene, Hershel’s youngest child, had managed to sneak up on him. He didn’t know the girl that well but he honestly didn’t want her there. Still, it was her barn, her farm, her right to be there trumped his.

She took a seat next to him and looked out at the sky. When she made no further effort to speak Rick realized it wasn’t all that unpleasant to have someone there, especially since that someone wasn’t making any demands on him or questioning him or criticizing him. He looked down at her wrist. It was still bandaged. The stitches would have to come out soon.

Without a word he offered her the bottle of whiskey. Beth’s brows shot up. “I’m sixteen.”

Rick shrugged, kept the bottle up. “You may as well be sixty with the way the world is today.”

After a moment a smile came to her face but she shook her head and he withdrew it.

“You ain’t worried I’ll tell my daddy?”

He shook his head. In all honesty he didn’t care. It would be just another problem he’d have to deal with. That thought in itself was numbing.

“Why are you up here alone?” she asked.

“To be alone.”

She laughed this time. It was as silvery as the moon with a pretty tinkle to it. In this lighting, with her hair down and his head feeling a bit light from the whiskey, Rick thought Beth looked like a beautiful angel that had coalesced from the liquid drops of moonlight that painted the night landscape in a silver glow. He’d never seen her with her hair down. It made her look profoundly different.

“I like your hair down,” he said.

“Yeah? I usually put it up to get it out of the way.”

He nodded and they resumed their silence. Rick took another drink from the bottle. This was a big one. Then he screwed the lid shut. He couldn’t afford to get wasted. There could be an attack and despite his annoyance, despite his weariness, he had to be able to act in everyone’s best interests. He had a good buzz going. He felt warm and relaxed. That would have to do.

“You’re doing a good job.”

Rick frowned and looked at her. “What?”

“Leading everybody? You’re doing a good job. A damn good job.”

There was an intensity to her voice, a sense of conviction to her words, that made Rick believe her. Well, he believed she believed what she was saying.

“You’re the only one who thinks so.”

“No, I’m sure I’m not. Everybody’s just scared. It’s easy to point fingers and be mean when you’re scared. You’re doing the best you can and I trust you.”

“If only…”

She cocked her head to the side and Rick looked out at the night, changing his mind about speaking, changing his mind about giving voice to what he really thought and felt.

“What? It’s okay. Nothing you tell me will ever leave this barn.”

She seemed so kind, so sincere, and Rick didn’t realize how much he needed someone to confide in that he didn’t know all that well. Beth was practically a stranger to him. This was the most they’d talked in the weeks he’d been on her farm. More importantly she was interested in what he had to say. That meant more to him than she could know. It seemed nobody actually cared what he felt or thought as long as he saved their asses. As long as he made the decisions for them so they could bitch about those decisions when things got tough.

“If only my wife thought that.”

Beth’s small, warm hand came to rest on his back. “I’m sure she does.”

“She says those words but she doesn’t believe them. She says them because she thinks she has to because she’s my wife. She’s supposed to support me but she doesn’t.”

There. He’d said it. He’d finally voiced it. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe his wires had been fried from all the tension and all the anxiety and danger but that’s what he really thought. That’s what the truth was deep in his heart.

“She doesn’t trust me.”

“She does. We all do,” Beth insisted.

She was rubbing his back now and it felt so good to be touched in a way that wasn’t violent or demanding. She offered comfort with no expectations and it was so good to feel that he thought tears would come to his eyes. Why couldn’t his own wife do this?

“She wants…”

This time Beth waited for him to speak. She seemed to know, by instinct, this was something he could share or not. Either way she wouldn’t push.

She wants Shane, had almost slipped from his mouth. Perhaps the reason their relationship was falling apart so badly was because she had Shane, kept going to Shane behind his back, and that thought infuriated him. She’d cheated on him with his supposed best friend. True, she’d thought Rick was dead when she did it, but he knew deep in his soul that could she choose, Lori would choose Shane.

“She wants something else,” he finished. “Something that isn’t me. I’m not what or who she wants anymore. Who she needs. That’s something I know.”

“I’m sorry,” Beth said softly. “We’ve both been through so much lately. I think I knew you were hurting. I’m hurting too. That’s why I came here. I figured we could both be miserable together and maybe somehow that would make us less miserable. I don’t know. Stupid, huh?”

“No, not at all,” he answered, sincere.

The buzz in his head intensified just a little as the whiskey in his stomach was digested. The hand on his back felt good but his mood was shifting. Beth’s touch had gone from soothing to arousing and he wasn’t sure how to ask her to stop. He felt a surge of need, of lust, and he knew he should have felt ashamed for that feeling but he didn’t.

He looked at her. She was beautiful in the moonlight, with her hair like a golden nimbus around her head and shoulders and her eyes looking like blue pools of light in her pale face. She looked a lot older than she was. Or perhaps the whiskey simply made him not care. Perhaps it had lowered his inhibitions a little too much.

Without thinking he reached out and drew Beth to him, pressing his lips to hers. She stiffened at once, taken by surprise. One of her hands came to rest on his chest, putting pressure there, trying to encourage him to let her go. He didn’t until she really pushed against him and pulled away. She got to her feet and he did likewise, his head spinning from the alcohol in his blood that rushed over his body. He’d had more to drink than he’d thought.

“Beth…I’m sorry.”

She was staring up at him. She was a tall girl, not much shorter than him, so he didn’t feel like some perverse bully towering over her.

“I just…”

“I get it,” she said. “You’ve been drinking and you’re down and…”

He reached for her, wanting to merely take her shoulders and speak, to apologize, to make things right, but when he touched her the heat from the whiskey pooled in his loins and he realized he was hard. Achingly hard.

“Beth…”

He’d pulled her to him again. This time she didn’t put her hands up in protest. This time she didn’t pull away. He wondered what she thought of him now. How much of her respect had he lost? He liked to think of himself as moral, noble, but when it really came down to it he was a man.

“Lori and I haven’t…since the CDC in Atlanta…I just—”

To Rick’s utter surprise her small, warm hand came to rest against his crotch where she began to rub. He moaned, his eyes closed. He’d like to blame this on the whiskey but the truth was he wasn’t as drunk as he should be to lower his inhibitions enough to want to fuck a sixteen-year-old girl. His hosts baby daughter. This wasn’t just the whiskey. This was something else, something that was perhaps dark, but also something he couldn’t fight.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

He didn’t know if he was speaking to her or himself. In the end it wasn’t going to matter. Being sorry didn’t stop him from kissing her, from plunging his tongue into her mouth and putting his hands on her ass, from pinning her to the wall before sliding down with her. Being sorry didn’t stop him from undressing her, from seeking out her pussy and licking and lapping at her folds. Sorry didn’t stop Rick from slipping his fingers inside of her, feeling she wasn’t a virgin, and feeling relieved that he wasn’t her first.

Being sorry didn’t stop Rick from enjoying every single moan and gasp of need that came from Beth’s young, moist mouth. It did nothing to stop him from yanking off his shirt and rolling it as a pillow to place under her head before he undid his jeans and pulled her legs up. It did nothing to stop him from pushing deep into her and moaning as her hot, wet flesh accepted him, clenched around him, and encouraged him to thrust.

He stared into her eyes the entire time. He gripped her thighs so hard he thought she’d probably have bruises in the morning. He pounded into Beth with wild abandon and he felt her body clench around his, felt her juices flow, smelled her arousal and saw her eyes close and her face melt into an expression of bliss before he came deep inside of her. He sighed her name as he found release. Or perhaps he moaned it. He wasn’t consciously sure.

He released her legs and she lay there, her feet on the floor, her knees up, looking at him. He had the excuse of whiskey but she’d been stone cold sober. He expected something from her. A curse, a glare, some kind of accusation. He expected her to feel guilty and then blame him. Why not? Everybody else always did.

None of that happened. Instead she sat up and kissed him softly on the lips. They dressed in silence and Rick stared out at the landscape outside of the loft. It looked like a wet painting that would never quite dry. Beth put her hand on his back.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“Stop being sorry.”

“You gonna tell me everyone makes mistakes?”

“Everyone does make mistakes,” Beth agreed. “We didn’t make a mistake. We were hurting. We got away from it for awhile, is all. I don’t regret it. Neither should you.”

She placed a kiss on his cheek and then descended the ladder. Rick sat back down, letting his legs dangle from the open window, and he picked the bottle of whiskey back up, ready to dump the contents to the ground below. He thought about what just happened and how maybe in the morning he’d feel guilty. To his relief he found he agreed with Beth. They’d both been hurting. Now he wasn’t. That was a good thing.

Fuck it. Fuck staying sober for everyone else. Fuck making every decision based on the needs of others all the time. Rick unscrewed the lid off the whiskey and took another swig. It didn’t make sense to let good whiskey go to waste.