by C. L. Donley
This bitch can’t sit still, I thought, in a five year old way.
But then I ended up at her house, changed out of my Sunday dress and into one of Kim’s frocks, drinking Kool-Aid and eating Sunday dinner with her one brother, her youngest brother yet to be born. And Kim’s mother and stepfather, still beautiful, still clean and sober.
“What your parents did for them. It’s amazing.”
“For them it wasn’t a decision. It was the only option,” I say.
I tell him the little I know about Kim’s mother’s addiction and how far it had gone. The many ways Kim acted out while living with me in high school. He never interrupts me, never patronizes me. Just listens.
“Your turn,” I say as he turns his attention to my other foot.
Dale frowns. “Can’t really compete with all that, I’m afraid.”
“It’s not a competition,” I assure him.
“What’s there to say? I grew up in a decent house in a decent neighborhood with decent parents and sisters. Decently.”
“So did I, Dale,” I giggle. “You’re telling me you had no challenges growing up?”
He looks as though he’s thinking. He exhales an amused breath.
“I met Grayson when I was five too, come to think of it.” I imagine them with amusement.
“How did that magical pairing come about?”
“I just went up to him and asked him if he wanted me to be his friend. Not that he be mine, mind you.”
“A very important distinction.”
“He said ‘yes.’ And then I went about teaching him the ways of the world.”
I giggle at the thought of his five year old tutelage.
“You laugh, but I’m serious. That kid didn’t even know how to play games right. He just wanted to fuckin’ stack everything. No matter what it was, it could’ve been a board game.”
“He was autistic!” I laughingly object.
“No one knew what the hell was wrong with him, they just knew they wanted it to stop. Including me. We were all hard on him when he needed us. He got bounced around from school to school. And then he got hard on us back.”
He stops as if having a memory, absentmindedly working on my other foot. It feels amazing. I want to cry. Dale’s been making me feel good like it was his mission in life, basically since I’ve known him. Is he like that with everyone?
“After second grade we were never at the same school. I had no idea what was happening to him.”
“What was happening to him?”
“Some awful bullying shit of which I probably still only know the half. His parents…I used to judge them but honestly they did a fucking amazing job. They made some pretty ugly mistakes. Took some bad advice. But the fact that he’s self sufficient at all is a miracle.”
“It was that bad?” I inquire. Dale is silent as the summary forms in his mind.
“He taught himself how to fill in a lot of his own gaps, and if his parents had known what it was, if they had just cradled him, he never would have.”
“He seems fine. Doesn’t seem like the type to trash his own hotel room and be hospitalized.”
He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t have believed it. I was like, ‘A human did this?’ I realized then that I was a fool to let it go on that long. I knew he had serious challenges for years and I buried it. Webster was taking off and Grayson always insisted he had it under control. Just needed to fuck or fly to Ibiza, or exercise like a maniac. But he was a time bomb. A very wealthy time bomb. We really dodged a bullet. And if he wasn’t brilliant he’d probably be dead, or in jail. To be properly diagnosed is a fucking miracle.”
As he’s talking I can tell he’s never been able to talk about this with anyone. The words are coming faster than he can say them and he’s not censoring himself at all. Not that he needs to, but Dale Abernathy the public persona is gone, all but forgotten.
“You know how people who have disabilities say they are trapped in their body? Well for him it’s the opposite. He says he feels like his body is trapped in his mind. And the meltdowns are his body trying to get free.”
“Hmm,” I hum in contemplation, learning more about this complex relationship.
“He had some very specific, profound delays. None of them intellectual,” he continues, rubbing my foot in the same spot as he pontificates. “You wouldn’t believe the hellacious combination it makes. When you can write code but you’re standing in front of your refrigerator for an hour like ‘what the fuck do I eat??’”
“Wow,” I reply wistfully, as though I understand precisely. I don’t. I could never imagine what that’s like. But as Dale goes on and on about Grayson’s reality, it becomes clear how much it has affected his.
“His life has been… incredibly hard won,” he says, barely getting the words out.
I can see the emotion welling up. With force.
I quietly watch as Dale struggles with whatever’s inside of him, and he is losing. I wait for him to go on, but he can’t, not without risking the integrity of the floodgates. He doesn’t seem to want to bring it up with me, whatever it is. But it obviously needs out all the same.
I relinquish my foot from his grasp, slosh through the water and make my way back to his side of the tub. I’m light under the water and he hitches me up onto his lap. He begins to kiss on my body and I let him, but I only respond by combing my hands through his hair. It’s confession time. There’s something he needs to air out, and as much as he does for me, I can do this simple thing for him.
“What is it?” I say.
He closes watery eyes and shakes his head.
“Just…ancient shit that won’t stay buried.”
“About Grayson?”
He furrows his brow as he looks at my brown breasts, as though he was considering them carefully. He quietly nods.
I don’t say anything, don’t move, just watch his darting eyes. Waiting for the dam to break.
“I’ve never told anyone what I’m about to tell you,” he begins. I nearly make a joke about the ominous opening, but seeing his crumbling composure I decide against it.
“Grayson tried to hang himself once, at our apartment. It was right around Christmas. Webster had just got off the ground so I was too busy to go home that year,” he starts.
I’m stunned into silence.
I don’t know what I was expecting, hadn’t expected it to be good, but this is a genuine shock. I’ve a feeling Amara doesn’t even know.
“He didn’t try, he did. But I found him in time. I cut him down with this… my dad gave me this knife as a gift. I had no idea, to this day I have no idea, why I had that knife on me.”
I close my eyes. I can’t even imagine being in his shoes with Amara. I’d never survive something like that, not with my mind intact.
Every new detail I find out about him is giving me back my confidence. Confidence that he could love me, if he can love someone as broken as Grayson truly is. I think I could be good for him. I could laugh at him and dance for him, listen to him. Make love to him. Yeah, those are all things he seemed to like and want. And they’re all things I can do. With ease. His face is haunted as he continues.
“When I found him he was actually, literally, purple. His eyes were blood red, he was struggling, he’d pissed himself. Every fiber of his being was like, ‘fuck, what’ve I done!’ It was a million years long…” he stops, as if failing to do it justice, his face scrunched, looking beyond me as if it’s playing behind me on a screen.
“It was pretty much, the most awful thing you can imagine. You shouldn’t imagine it. Anyway, that’s not the important part,” he prefaces.
What the hell could possibly be the important part, I wonder.
“The important part is… now that he knows what he’s dealing with, now that he has a wife and family and I don’t really have to worry about him anymore, not like I used to, I should be happy. I should be… relieved.”
We’re in the most beautiful bathroom, in the biggest most beauti
ful house I’ve ever seen. But he looks and feels tormented as he talks and the contrast devastates me.
“It’s the first relief I’ve felt since I was a kid. But I feel like shit. Like, before I felt drained. All the time. And now I feel…lost. Hopeless. And worse than that, I feel like I’m not allowed to feel how I feel. Like what’s the use in whining like a bitch, just because he left me alone?”
At that the damn breaks.
He buries his face into my chest and holds me tight as the sobs come violently in intermittent gusts. The forceful way that he grips me makes me want to use my body to take the brunt of his emotions. But I won’t patronize him and make his feelings about my feelings. One “I need you” from me and he’ll be off again, worrying about someone else without a second thought.
He holds me and weeps and I feel for him. He’d just been a boy trying to help another boy. Had imagined it as his responsibility to do so. And it sapped the life from him. It isn’t Grayson’s fault for being how he is. Mentally Dale knows that, but now he’s left holding the emotional bag. His soul is in shambles and that’s his real responsibility, not an imagined one, and certainly no one else’s. His head is buried into my cleavage and the dripping wet water from the bath mingles with his tears.
And just like that it’s over. Almost as I had been the morning after our first time. The memory makes me emotional. Dale sniffles, clearing his throat inconspicuously. The sound of water dripping off of me and hitting the tub becomes deafening.
“Sooo…that happened,” he mumbles into my chest with levity, not looking up.
“You’ve never brought any of this to Grayson?” I ask into the top of his head.
He shakes it.
That’s probably wise. Even though it involves him passively, this isn’t something to lay at his feet. Dale certainly wouldn’t want to find out the hard way that Grayson isn’t willing to carry the same burden for him, no matter how healthy that may be.
“Well you need to talk to someone about it.”
“I just did,” comes his muffled voice, still not wanting to look up at me.
“I meant a professional,” I grin, “this is some PTSD shit for sure.”
His hands start to roam.
“This is the most emotional bath I’ve ever taken,” he deadpans. I hum a laugh.
“And how do you feel?” I coo. He sucks a breath through his teeth, his hands moving to my ass and giving it a squeeze. I let out a moan. Finally his head raises.
“Better. Thank you.”
“Bullshit,” I skeptically reply.
“I’m serious,” he sniffs. “How do I look?”
He looks a wreck but he doesn’t need to know that. Besides he’s still gorgeous.
“Horny,” I grin.
Dale laughs, wide eyed at my unexpected response.
“I think you’re projecting your inner feelings onto me, Mya,” he asserts.
“Is that a fact,” I smirk at the sound of my name back on his smiling lips.
“I think you’ve read too much into this bath,” he says. I giggle.
His smile widens.
“Damn, I missed you,” he says, still feeling confessional apparently. His words make me feel so good I might actually be drunk.
“I missed you,” I say back. The sentiment catches him off guard for some reason.
“Really?” he asks adorably.
“Really.”
“I’m going to fuck you into next week,” he suddenly says.
Oh shit. He’s teased me to near death, lulled me with foot rubs and inner confessions. So when he says that, my entire body begins to hum uncontrollably in a throbbing chorus, my breathing slightly labored in anticipation.
Slowly, tortuously, he buries his mouth into my neck and a loud gasp escapes my lips.
“Shit,” I hear myself whisper. It’s a curse of defeat. My body, in its haste, has cut off the filter from my brain to my mouth. He unravels me again in an instant, against my will and with very little effort.
I kind of still hate that he does that to me. I have a feeling I always will.
Thirty Four
Chapter 34
Dale
As I watch Mya react to my very real threat, my entire body sends me a surge of sensuality, a directive as singular as a robot’s. I’m like a man reborn, the slightest touch sending thunderous urges to my groin.
One arm around her waist tightens, while the other hand ventures lower and squeezes— a bit hard— before it continues its patternless journey across her body.
As I hold her securely, too tightly, her palm goes to the lip of the tub, her other hand to my hair as my mouth continues to ignite her skin everywhere it goes, until it feels like she’s floating, practically levitating with the pleasure of my kiss, my insatiable touch.
Finally her lips rush to meet mine and it’s so hungry, so filled with longing that our teeth clang together and our moans are trapped in each other’s mouths. We breathe through our noses but it’s not nearly enough. Reluctantly we break apart, panting, clasping onto each other’s slipping bodies.
We kiss and lick and nip at each other’s mouths as if we’ve forgotten we have other parts with which to arouse each other.
My erection is unrelenting as Mya raises up and situates herself so that she’s straddling me in the bath on her knees. Nearly eye level with her chest, I cup one of her breasts, reveling in its perfect teardrop shape and appearance. I lower my head and slowly put one dark peak into my mouth, closing my eyes like I’ve just had my first taste of sweetness after years of rations. Mya looks down at me transfixed, her entire body trembling, more than our first time. She trembles with anticipation, knowing the pleasure in store for her. Slowly my tongue expertly lashes the tenderness of her nipple, sending potent shocks through her until she’s arched and moaning under my spell.
My other hand goes between her legs and she rocks against my palm as water sloshes all around us and over the lip of the tub. My tongue is now relentlessly working the other nipple that’s far more sensitive I remember. Mya moans eagerly, and it fuels me. I continue my lavish foreplay, on a mission to turn this day from one of her worst to one of her best.
As her orgasm draws closer, Mya’s cries of ecstasy ring out in the cavernous master bath. Suddenly it hits and she’s soundless, like a car driving over a cliff. I put a nipple between my teeth in an attempt to prolong her high until she finally drifts back to earth. I lift my head and she looks into my smiling eyes. Her wet hand grazes my cheek. She kisses me, first on the forehead, down my face to my cheek, before she gets to my lips. She gives me a long, lingering kiss on the mouth.
Mya is dripping wet, inside and out. I know she can feel the tip of my erection teasing her ass wherever it goes. When she reaches behind her and grabs it, I suck in a breath and let out a gentle moan. She begins rubbing the head of it around her entrance and my breath deepens, my eyelids are heavy. I start to feel the pressure of her around my tip. I sit up straight.
“Mya wait—” I start to say. The condoms are in my robe.
Mya isn’t listening. Slowly she lowers herself onto me as she looks into my pleading eyes. Eyes that were worried for her, for her career if she gets pregnant tonight, and her possible resentment of me for it.
But my slack jawed mouth can say nothing. I can only grimace helplessly as her sex holds me captive. Her gaze bores into me as we join.
She knows what I’m thinking, even knows it’s irresponsible on some level, but she does it anyway, and I am overwhelmed. Overwhelmed that she wants to put a violent end to our separation just as much as I do, perhaps more.
“It’s okay,” Mya says in an almost whisper, “it’s okay, I just want to feel you.”
She moves up and down on my length just once, a hump of assurance. A moan escapes my lips. When I don’t move she does it a second time and I tighten my grip on her hips instinctively, my body reacting with a thrust of its own. I try to hold back but the sensation is too intense. I move my hands under her body
and position her to take me deeper. She watches my face as my apprehension turns to surrender, my thrusts becoming intentional.
My heart is on fire. I’ve just unloaded my life’s deepest emotions and I feel light and real and more known than I ever had. Now, Mya is basically letting me impregnate her. I desperately want to have a baby with her but I’m a bit biased at the moment. I want to have a baby with everyone right now and I try not to focus on it. My hands grip her body tightly at the hips as I try to suppress the now insistent urge to procreate, which is snuffing out the desire to satisfy.
She throws her head back as my want turns quickly to need within her. She holds onto the lip of the tub on each side and engages her thighs, so that she can feel the full effects of my length inside her. My arms have only to steady her as I set the pace and the sensation sends relentless pings of pleasure throughout my body from head to toe.
Mya is sobbing helplessly as I thrust her through again and again, my hands embossed on her hips. Water is flying everywhere and I’m gasping for air, completely astray from reality in my pursuit of Mya’s orgasm.
“That’s it, that’s it that’s itfuckthat’sit…” is the last thing I hear. The only sound left is that of the few sloshing inches of water left in the bath, the sounds of lovemaking. I can feel Mya’s every convulsion on my condom-less member and there’s now no resolve left in me to soldier on.
“Can I come inside you?” I gasp.
She lifts her head and looks at me but her stare is blank as though still in the throes of climax. Is that a nod? Her head goes back again, unhelpfully.
“Shit! I’m gonna pull out,” I say hastily.
“DON’T YOU DARE!” Mya’s voice suddenly rings out.
At that my whole body seizes.
My head goes back and my jaw clenches as orgasm racks my body like a freight train. She moans about how she wants all of my cum, how she wants my baby, rolling her body around on my sensitive length like some kind of sex witch. My shudders wouldn’t stop and I curse each time a zing goes through me. I almost feel like I can keep going. I put a thumb to her sensitive clitoris and she squeals and collapses on top of me while I hold her with one arm. My legs are like jelly.
