by JD Hawkins
I agree to meet her at a restaurant so new it’s not even open to the public yet, only available via a reservation process that’s more like a secret society initiation. The writer invites a few of her European colleagues as well, and I invite Harriet—it’s about time she started taking steps into the big leagues. The conversation is just about interesting enough to distract, but just about boring enough for me to evaluate the environment and the food, and wonder if it’s worth inviting Mia here for one of our dinners.
The most interesting of our co-diners—a dangerous-looking young Frenchman—takes a shine to Harriet, and judging by the fact that she hasn’t stopped playing with her hair since she sat down, I would guess the feeling’s mutual. He invites her to a Latin dancing club and she asks me to come along, though I’m not sure if she wants me to protect her from the Frenchman, or her own impulses.
At the club, a floor filled with tango dancers and an atmosphere full of pheromones and music seem to loosen Harriet up a little. After half an hour of her necking with the Frenchman I let a handsome stranger invite me to the floor where I show off moves I learned during an incredible summer in South America years ago.
At midnight, once I realize Harriet texted me to tell me that she’s taking the Frenchman home with her, I leave the club, my handsome stranger knowing nothing more about me than my ability to move even in a tight skirt. But I don’t make it home. The allure of an after-party for an indie film’s premiere sounding too good to resist.
When I arrive at the bar of the small theatre, it seems that most of the cast were an extraordinarily beautiful assembly of Pasolini-esque men and women. One of the female leads compliments me on the piece she read about me in a fashion magazine, and we spend the rest of the evening talking shop, the young woman smarter than her years and without a doubt a star in the making. As we talk, one of the beautiful male actors makes eyes at me so crude and sexual they would be vulgar in any older man.
Though the night has been a return to the norm for me, a familiar rhythm full of familiar twists and turns, I diverge from the pattern at this point. The typical thing, the customary thing, the thing I would do as instinctively and as nonchalantly as sipping water after dinner, would be to take this young actor home and fuck his brains out. To take his dirty, debauched gaze and turn it into one of absolute, satisfied, reverent fatigue.
But I don’t. Instead, after giving the fascinating young actress my number, I take advantage of a moment when he ducks into the restroom to leave the party and head home. I tell myself I’ve given up the opportunity for a night of hedonistic indulgence because it’s nearly two a.m. and Tuesday promises to be as busy as Monday. It’s a good enough excuse to not think about why any further.
I end up sharing an Uber home with a drunk dullard, but the trip is short enough for it not to sour my night too much. At home I feel the force of all my drinking, a heavy drowsiness setting in, but my assiduousness winning through still so that I diligently remove my makeup and shower thoroughly before putting on a face mask that I peel off just before I’m finally ready for bed.
Half drunk and fully tired, my head still dizzy and my limbs cool and stiff from fatigue, the softness of the bed and its sheets feel like a kind of drug themselves. I sigh with an intimacy I reserve only for myself as I lie back on the pillows, reaching over the nightstand one last time to turn off the light.
It’s then, with perfectly imperfect timing, that my phone rings. No vibration or noise, but the screen alighting with the name of the caller. I grab it to turn it over but accidentally catch the name and pause.
Toby.
I stare at the name for several seconds, every sensible part of me in no doubt that I need to turn the phone over and get to sleep, but a part of me I’ve been trying to ignore for a long time too intensely curious to actually do it. It’s the latter which wins. I press the green button and put the phone to my ear.
“What are you wearing?” his recognizably mischievous voice says.
“A clown suit. You?”
He laughs, seeming in a good mood, but I try to pretend that I don’t find it infectious, hiding the sound of my smile.
“I’m just sitting on my couch looking really hot in nothing but boxers and one of those Hawaiian shirts you hate. Unbuttoned. Try to picture it.”
“It’s quarter to three, Toby. Why are you calling me?”
“The bigger question is: Why did you answer?”
There’s a long silence. The sound of a car outside making it seem even heavier. I shift a little in the dark and the rustling of my bedsheets sounds like a cacophony. I wonder if he can hear my breath. Though I’m not too sure, I feel like I can hear his.
“I heard…” he begins, in a slower, less playful tone. “You were going to see Asher again.”
The statement feels like a curveball, and I decide to hide how odd I find it.
“That’s right.”
“You like him?”
“I think I’m in love with him,” I say. “I’ve been thinking of baby names ever since we met.”
“Come on, Maeve. Be serious.”
I laugh but it comes out a little too breathily.
“Isn’t that something? Toby Taylor asking somebody else to be serious.”
He says nothing and the silence once again seems too intimate, somehow the fact that I can’t see him, can’t read his face or look into his eyes making this moment even more intense than it should be. The quiet lasts too long, and I shift in my bed a little, the rustling covers sounding like brushed skin.
“What are you doing, Toby? Are you drunk?” I ask.
“So… Is it like a sexy clown outfit?”
I laugh too genuinely to pretend I’m irritated by his call now, so that it sounds insincere, like I’m only playing his game, when I say, “I have to sleep. I’ve got work tomorrow.”
That long silence once again, and it’s too comfortable now. Too easy. Dangerously so. Nothing we could say could possibly make us feel closer than the silence—the sound of each other’s breathing. I should hang up. I could hang up, and it wouldn’t even be rude or an insult… But I don’t.
“I was just thinking,” Toby starts again, “about that big garden party in Holmby Hills about four years ago. It was for some movie or something. You remember it?”
“Vaguely.”
“You even invited Mia along—I think you were trying to set her up with someone.”
I remember it vividly and smile. “Yeah.”
There’s a pause, but not long this time.
“I was surprised to see my sister there. Wasn’t her sort of scene.”
“Still isn’t.”
“And you…” Toby says, then leaves another pause. “You were with this guy. Some model.”
“An actor,” I say in a provocatively dreamy tone. “But he’d done some modelling. He was one of the most beautiful men in the world.”
“He was a dweeb,” Toby says.
“You sound envious.”
Toby scoffs, “One of those guys who spent his whole life cruising on his looks. Nothing in him. Closest he probably ever came to real life was putting on a tool belt for a photo shoot.”
I let out a laugh and say, “And I suppose you’re fixing pipes in your house every day, are you?”
“How hard can it be?” Toby says through a smile I can hear in his tone. “I wouldn’t be afraid to try, you can be sure of that.”
“Oh, I’m sure you would, honey.”
There’s another laugh, the humor fading a little.
“The thing I remember,” he continues, “is how everyone at that party kept saying that you were the perfect couple. How attractive both of you were, how good you looked together. The belles of the ball. That party went from afternoon to the next morning, and that whole time all I kept hearing was what a ‘perfect couple’ you two made…
“And all I could think was that everyone was crazy. The guy was…nothing. He was your average failed actor. All phony charisma and overbearin
g energy…” Toby leaves another pause. “But I think I get it now.”
“You do?” I say, acting disinterested.
“Yeah. It was never about the guy. It was you… They didn’t see you the same way I did.”
This time the pause isn’t so comfortable. This time I hold my breath, because for him to even hear it might be revealing too much. I no longer even feel like I’m in my own bed, in the comfort of my own house, the sense of vulnerability and danger too much.
“Toby…” I say, his name coming out like a sigh. “What are we doing?”
The moments before he replies are almost painful.
“To be honest with you, Maeve: I don’t know… I don’t know…but…what if—”
“No,” I interrupt quickly. “No ‘what ifs.’ I don’t like them.”
“Why?”
“What ifs… They’re the path to sadness, to missed opportunities, regrets, and emotional paralysis,” I say, reciting my oft-thought ideas. “‘What if I had rich parents and a great upbringing, then I’d be the person I want to be.’ ‘What if I hadn’t dropped out of college,’ ‘what if I had dropped out of college.’ ‘What if I had a nicer nose, or bigger tits, or lost some weight…’ No.
“I prefer what is. And what is, is that it’s nearly three in the morning on a weekday and I need to get to sleep too much to listen to your late-night drunk ramblings.”
After a perfectly timed pause, Toby says, “What if…” I let out a breathy laugh of dismay, and he continues, “I were to come to your house right now.”
“I wouldn’t let you in,” I say.
“What if you did...”
There’s another pause, and in this game of psychological poker I reveal a little too much. The phone mic may be picking up a little too much of my deepening breath, certainly on the rustle of the covers as I squirm a little in bed, brushing thighs at even the suggestion of his presence here, now, with me in nothing but panties in my bed.
“What if I came up to your bedroom…” he adds. “Found you in your bed…”
“In my clown suit?” I say, but my voice sounds too low and sensual for the joke, making it sound more like an invitation than a dismissal.
“In nothing but your panties…” Toby continues, his voice lower, fuller, firmer. Steamrolling over my joke as if nothing can stop his intent now. “Your body spread out, facedown… Skin cool in the breeze from your open window, head buried in the pillow… And you know I’m there, but you’re pretending not to…”
There’s no hiding my reaction in the silence now. My shaky sigh, the sound of my wet lips parting, the slow rustle of my hand reaching down between my thighs.
“Then how would I even know it’s you?” I sigh into the phone, my hips grinding into the bed in a slow rhythm now.
“You’d know…” he growls, a heavy breath crackling through the phone. “By the way I touch you… Fingers trailing up the soles of your feet… Teeth on the back of your ankles, kissing my way up your calves… I’d taste every part of you… Find every little imperfection of your body and mark it…”
I let out a soft murmur, my breath slow and warm, my body vibrating now to the forceful timbre of his voice.
“And what else, Toby?” I whisper on short breath, touching myself and arching my back in slow, swinging rhythm. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Gonna pull your thighs apart and put my face in your ass…” he says through gritted teeth, and I hear on his hard breath that’s he’s holding himself too. “Gonna pull those panties aside… And pull your ass cheeks apart… And put my tongue inside you…”
I let out a quiet, involuntary squeal, something inside of me tightening in the most satisfying way.
“I wanna pull your perfect little ass over my face… I wanna bury myself in you, grind into you, press my tongue as far inside of you as you can take it… I wanna kiss your tight little pussy until it’s wet… I wanna suck and drink the juice out of you…”
“Yeah?” I say, but it’s only a half word, the other half another surrendering squeal.
“Yeah,” he says heavily, and I can just about hear through my own dizzy pleasure that his voice is shaking as well to his own touch. The thought of him clutching his hard cock while he’s telling me all this pushing me even further, making my own hand quicker, my own urge more impatient. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to fuck me, Toby,” I gasp, words as careless and instinctive as my breath now. “I want your big dick inside me…”
I hear his breath quicken, the sound of gritted teeth as he tries to hold back, to maintain control.
“You want me to show you how hard you get me, Maeve?”
“Yes…”
“You want me to lift your ass up so I can fuck that tight little pussy of yours?”
“Yes…”
“You want me to pull you hair… Smack your ass until it’s red… Swing this long, hard, dick into you so deep you feel like you’ll break?”
“Yes… Yes, yes, yes…” I repeat, the word like a mantra, my last connection with conscious thought as my body hums and rocks to the sound of his voice, to a touch that doesn’t even feel like my own anymore.
“My hand on the back of your neck, pushing your face into the pillow… Fingers pinching your nipples, my teeth on your shoulder… I wanna see your ass cheeks shake, Maeve…”
“Yessss…”
My voice is a long gurgle now, my body moving in spasms. The momentum of my impending orgasm too big and overwhelming to stop, so that even as I try to hold back, to dwell in this sweet moment any longer, I can’t help myself.
“Show me, Maeve,” he commands, his voice hard with his own hunger. “I wanna hear how you moan… I wanna hear the sound of your beautiful body coming for me…”
I go silent for a whole two seconds, my body freezing, my breath stopped, as if it’s all too much to feel, to react to. A beautiful few seconds that feel like I’m flying, and then… Release.
A long, swirling moan emanates from my lips like the sound of gathering wind through a tunnel, a climax that comes in multiple thudding beats of sensual warmth. Every part of my body tensing and then releasing each time, toes curling, shoulders hunching, torso tensioning… And then the most lovely feeling of lightness, as if all of life’s burdens no longer exist. A glimpse of heaven.
After almost a minute of wallowing in this wonderful post-orgasmic bliss, I realize I dropped the phone onto the pillow beside me. It’s faint glow the only light apart from a pale moon peeking through the shutters. I pick it up and see that Toby is still on the call.
“Are you there?” I say, my voice back to its typically composed state, just a hint of its prior softness.
“I’m here,” Toby says, back in his normal tone—though his normal tone always sounds a little amused.
I hear his movements on the line, rustling and scratching.
“You really are a bastard, you know that?” I say through a smile.
He laughs.
“I couldn’t help myself.”
“Well,” I say, “let’s call that the last time. We’ve already dragged this on longer than we should have.”
There’s a long pause before Toby answers, and I can tell he’s thinking about it—right after coming is probably the only time he can think about anything.
“Yeah…” he says, regretfully but honestly. “Maybe you’re right…”
“Good night, Toby.”
“Night.”
13
Toby
I always walk into work with my chin high and an approachable expression, but there’s a little extra zest in me when I turn up on Tuesday morning with coffee and donuts for Sharon and myself. I’m a little late, having gone to see a friend who works for a record label with a car collection you could race a grand tour with. He ended up lending me a Porsche 911 with the option to buy.
“Good morning,” I call in a cheerful tone as I step inside.
There’s a couple browsing the cas
es, and Sharon’s chatting with an older gentleman over the counter. In the corner of the shop there are another two guys and two girls standing stiffly, their clothes a little too formal for their nervous expressions.
“Morning, boss,” Sharon says, letting the older man continue looking himself.
“This is for me,” I say, plucking my coffee from the tray, then pushing the rest toward Sharon, “and these are for you.”
“Donuts?” she says almost helplessly, as if she knows she won’t be able to resist. “I told you I’m not doing sugar right now. Gotta get back in shape.”
“Ah, forget that,” I say, waving it away. “Gain some weight, lose some weight… You still have a smile that knocks the guys out.”
She laughs and bites dreamily into a maple glazed, then looks a little more intently at me as I round the counter sipping my coffee.
“You’re in a good mood,” she says. “I’m not going to ask why.”
“I think you can guess,” I say, winking at her. I glance across the shop at the awkward group in the corner then back at her. “What do they want?”
Sharon looks at me for a second as if to be sure I really asked that.
“The candidates for the backroom staff? You invited them all to have interviews today.”
“Ah shit,” I say snapping my fingers. “Yeah… Yeah, right.”
“There are probably more coming—these ones are just those who turned up early.”
“Right right,” I say, suddenly moving double time, looking around as if to check whether I need anything. “I’ll get to interviewing then. You can handle the shop, right?”
Sharon gives me a look as if amused I would even ask such a dumb question.
“Okay,” I say, turning to the group. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
