Going Sasquatch

by Jess Whitecroft

  I was still no wiser, so I settled down to listen.

  “They were wandering all over the city,” said Chase. “Riding the subway, walking down Fifth Avenue. And bear in mind this is round about 1958 or whatever, so Marilyn is currently one of the most famous women in the world. So they’re walking around and Susan is getting increasingly confused, just like you were, because nobody seems to be clocking Marilyn.”

  “Right.”

  “So eventually Susan asks what’s up with that, because it’s like they’re invisible or something. And Marilyn says ‘Oh yeah, that happens,’ and Susan is like ‘But you’re Marilyn Monroe.’” Chase smiled. “And Marilyn says ‘No, I’m not right now, but I can be. Do you want to watch me be her?’”

  I got it. “And she did what you just did.”

  “Yep. She shook out her curls, lowered her eyelids, pouted her lips in that sleepy half-smile of hers. There was no make-up involved, no costume change, and yet Susan Lee Strasberg said it was the most total transformation she had ever witnessed in all her years as an actress. Just the smallest adjustment to her walk and Marilyn was sashaying along like ‘jello-on-springs’, just like she did when she sidesteps the steam in the beginning of Some Like It Hot. Right there, on this same New York street where five minutes before she’d passed unnoticed, she became Marilyn Monroe. A minute later they were mobbed.”

  “It’s that easy?”

  Chase shook his head. “Nope. It’s very hard. She just made it look easy because she could act. People never gave her the credit she deserved – couldn’t see past the beauty, I guess – but she was very method. Very intense. And no more so than in the character she created for herself.”

  He was still smiling, but the story made me uneasy, because like everyone I knew how it had ended. Found cold and face down in the bed, with the telephone still clutched in her hand. Or maybe it was just those tabloids that had got into my head; they were an unpleasant reminder of all the things we’d left behind us, and not for the first time I remembered Ivy mentioning ‘that Chase Morrow thing’. Her words had been nibbling on a distant corner of my mind for a while now, the way things do when you’re trying not to think about them.

  My phone rang, and it wasn’t Ivy. It wasn’t even The Lorde. It was someone far more terrifying than her, even.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  She didn’t take a beat. “So why do I have a ‘Get Well Soon’ fruit basket for your father here?”

  Oh shit. Immediately I knew what had happened. Ivy – like the excellent PA she was – had acted on initiative and sent a gift. She wasn’t to know I was a goddamn liar.

  “Um, he’s sick?” I said. I was committed to the lie now. May as well go along with it.

  “No, he isn’t. He had a psoriasis flare up a couple of weeks ago, but nothing that merits a fruit basket. What’s going on?”

  We were back at the cabin. Chase pulled up. He looked awkward, the way people do when they’re trapped with someone making a private phone call, and hurried to unpack the groceries from the car.

  “Why do you automatically assume I had something to do with this?” I said. It was always me. Never my sister. Oh no.

  “Because,” said Mom. “You live in a place where people send one another fruit and flowers to commemorate their every bowel movement.”

  “Okay, that’s unfair,” I said, although it wasn’t. As usual she was hot on the trail. “Also inaccurate. It’s mostly colonics these days.”

  Chase widened his eyes at me. In all the time we’d worked together I’d never done anything as Hollywood as demanding he cram a hose up his ass and rinse his colon out because of ‘toxins’.

  “Here, let me get that,” I said, and took one of the grocery bags he looked like he was about to drop. I locked the car and waved him up the steps to the cabin.

  “Is there someone there with you?” said Mom.

  “No,” I said, but I’d already lied too much today and it just popped out of my mouth. “Yes. Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  I sighed and cradled the phone against my shoulder. Chase opened the door and walked inside. “Look, I’m sorry – this isn’t a great time. I think I know what happened?”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Ivy, – my assistant – her grandmother had a stroke recently.” Oh, I was a monster. Not only was I lying to my assistant about the health of my parents, but now I was dragging Grandma Ivy into this. Some poor woman who had nothing to do with this and only wanted to be left alone to do jigsaw puzzles of Mount Fuji. “She must have got her wires crossed. There’s been a lot of fruit and flowers and so on…”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. How awful.”

  “Yeah, she’s holding up, you know. But it’s rough.”

  Chase disappeared behind the door of the fridge, presumably so as to hide his confusion. I wanted to huddle in alongside him, because I was starting to sweat, which was a common side effect when hooked up to the human polygraph test who gave birth to me. Suddenly I had visions of her calling my office or sending cards to Ivy, doubling down on the chaos.

  “Don’t call my office, by the way,” I said, out of pure desperation. “Because I’m not there.”

  “Why? Where are you?”

  If in doubt, muddy the water. Learned that one from Dad. Just keep throwing information at her and let her sift through it. “Uh…I’m…I’m with someone.”

  I saw Chase’s spine straighten, but he went right on putting away the groceries.

  “Someone?”

  “Yeah. We’re just…taking a little vacation right now.”

  “Where? I thought your passport expired?”

  I briefly scrambled for a suitable alternative location, but she was only about twenty-five miles away from me, and even from that distance I could feel the pull of her all-seeing gaze, like some maternal Eye of Sauron. “I’m…we’re up by the creek, okay?”

  “Which creek?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. Your father would love to see you.”

  “Well, yeah – I know, but we’d kind of like some time alone together.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Is this serious?”

  “I don’t know. Give me a chance to find out.”

  I finished the call and returned my attention to Chase, who was trying – and failing – to look like he wasn’t fascinated by the evidence of my dysfunction. “Stop it,” I said. “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said. “I’m curious. Your family still live around here?”

  “No.” I had to say that. Otherwise things were going to get out of hand. There might be talk of introductions, and nobody needed that.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “No,” I said, again.

  “What?”

  “You know what. I know what you’re thinking, and it’s no.”

  Chase took the hint. “Ah,” he said, resting his elbows on the counter island. “They don’t know you’re gay?”

  “No, they know I’m gay. And they know that I’m single. Very, very single. I’ve been so busy getting the business off the ground these last few years and…anyway. Mom is probably right now hanging banners because I finally found someone.”

  “And you don’t want me to meet them?”

  “Nope.”

  There was no easy way to say that, so I just said it. And he looked hurt, like I knew he would.

  “Chase,” I said, going over to him. “It’s only because I don’t want you to run screaming. Which is absolutely what you would do if you knew what kind of people I come from.”

  “Oh come on. How bad can they be? What are we talking? Bates Motel? The Trumps?”

  I laughed. My dad had done some hilariously dumb shit in the past, but at least he’d never tweeted the evidence. “Trust me,” I said. “You’re better off not knowing.”

  He sighed and wound his arms around my neck. “You’re right. Maybe it’s for the best.”

  “It is.”r />
  “It’s a lot, isn’t it? Meeting the parents. And we shouldn’t jump ahead to stuff like that. Not before we even know if we’re sexually compatible.”

  “Huh?” I said. We’d felt pretty damn compatible last night. I pulled him close, my hand on his ass. “We don’t?”

  “Uh uh,” said Chase, his glasses sliding down his nose in a way that made me want to send them clattering across the counter. “We don’t have nearly enough information to make a judgment call on that just yet.”

  I buried my other hand in the back of his hair and kissed him so slow and deep that when we came up for air I could see his breath misting his glasses. His mouth was red and his eyes sleepy and stupefied already, and I felt a hard little jolt of lust at what he might look like with his legs around my neck and his brains fucked out all over the bed.

  “Well, we’ll get to that,” I said, teasing. “But I thought we were going out into the forest?”

  “Why?”

  “Thought you wanted to look for sasquatch?”

  Chase pouted and ground his hips against me. “Nope. I want to fuck.”

  “We can fuck in the forest,” I said, that brief flash of fantasy resurfacing again as I pictured him half-naked up against a tree, his dick in my hand and his eyes wide with surprise at how quickly I’d bared him to the open air.

  But he wasn’t feeling it. “Where there’s bear shit?” he said. “And poison sumac? No thanks.”

  “But what about Bigfoot?”

  “Fuck Bigfoot,” he said, and screwed up his nose when he realized what he’d said. “Oh God. There’s porn of that, isn’t there?”

  “Almost definitely. Check Amazon.”

  Chase pulled away from me and started for the stairs, unbuttoning his shirt. “Maybe later,” he said, tossing his shirt to the floor at the bottom of the stairs. He unfastened his jeans and let them slide down just enough to flash those dimples. “Right now I intend to get laid. You don’t have to join in, but I’m just saying – it’s a lot more fun if you do.”

  I couldn’t get up those stairs fast enough. He’d stripped once more with remarkable speed, lying in the middle of the big white bed with the sunlight on his gold-furred thighs and his balls tempting as ripe fruit between them. “Jesus,” I said, my blood rushing south so fast I swear it made me dizzy. “Look at you.”

  He stroked himself slowly and gave me a long, hungry look, a look that said anything and everything was on the menu. My mouth watered as I stripped. This time I knew exactly what I wanted.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said.

  “Now what?” I grabbed his feet and pulled him down – the sheets sliding under his back – until his ass was resting on the edge of the bed. He spread his legs wider and I knelt, watching his hand at work. I loved that, the way he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off himself. He teased himself with a light touch, his fingers on the shaft and his thumb rubbing slow circles around the round pink head.

  “It’s a little weird,” he said, and bucked gently into his own hand, making me ache with the desire to lick.

  I kissed his thighs, one after the other. “I like weird,” I said, uncurling his fingers from his cock. He let out a low whine, like he was pissed I was taking his toys away, but he didn’t stop me. His palm tasted of dick. I drew his fingers into my mouth, one after the other, saving the thumb – with its nerve-shaking tang of pre-come – for last.

  He arched up, his ass almost leaving the bed, showing me the dark space behind his balls. “I masturbated to you,” he said. “At the motel.”

  I dragged my tongue up the length of his cock, making him moan. “Go on,” I said, and pushed his thighs up towards his belly. He took the hint and raised his knees, sighing as my fingers slid lower and found the edge of his tight, tender asshole. “And pass the baby wipes.”

  I knew he was pretty well scrubbed; only this morning he’d raved about making good use of the bidet in the bathroom, but it never hurt to be too particular. He jolted upwards at the cool of the wipe, and I held his thighs high as I blew gently to dry the skin.

  “If it hadn’t been for those squeaky beds…” he said. “And it wouldn’t have been the first time…oh Go-od.”

  He trailed off into a moan as I licked a long, wet stripe between his cheeks. Already I could tell this was going to be a thousand times hotter than any of my sweaty afternoon fantasies about bending him over the bench press and making him weep with pure pleasure; my tongue had barely completed its first swirl and he was already gasping.

  “Turn over,” I said. “Give me your ass. And keep talking.”

  Chase rolled over. Oh God. At last. That ass. It was round and firm and grinding gently as he humped the mattress beneath him. Now that I had him in front of me I almost didn’t know where to begin. I bent my head and kissed his dimples, poking at each shallow dent with the tip of my tongue before circling them slowly. I could feel him holding his breath as I lapped at the top of the crease. “Talk,” I said, again. “Tell me what you wanted me to do to you.”

  His breath hitched as my tongue slid lower. “I used to jerk off in the shower after our sessions,” he said. “When I could still smell your sweat, feel your hands on my body.”

  I parted his cheeks and dove in, my cock thrumming in time with my pounding pulse as I licked him wet. He made a low groaning sound and spread his thighs even wider, his asshole twitching under my tongue.

  “I used to leave the shower stall door open,” he said, his voice shaking. “Hoping you’d catch me. And you’d step in alongside me…ohfuck…and kiss me, and call me a slut…oh my God, Finn, oh fuuuck…” He trailed off in a moan as I flicked the tip of my tongue back and forth. I could feel him open under the gentle pressure and my mind leapt ahead, imagining that first tight glide of flesh and sending a shudder down to my untouched but rock hard cock. I caught my breath and gently slapped his butt, prompting him.

  “Then what?”

  “Please, Finn. Please. Do that again.”

  He sounded so desperate that I had to do it. The slap rang out and I worried for a second that I’d hit him too hard, but he let out his breath in a stuttery gasp that said he was into this. And how. His butt – with my handprint already pinking up one round cheek – was humping against the mattress.

  “You like that?” I said. I was so hard I could feel the moisture beading at the tip of my cock. He was having all the fun.

  “Yes. God, yes. Do it again.”

  “Uh uh.” I held his hips steady, letting him feel my breath against the crack of his ass. “Not until you tell me what went down at the motel. I want to hear about you jerking off over me.”

  “You were dreaming,” he said. “I think. When we were on the mattress together.”

  “Uh huh.” I traced the line with my finger, finding the edge, where he was still wet from my tongue. Soft, too, I figured. I barely had to push and I was inside him to the knuckle. “What happened then?”

  He gasped as I hooked my finger, finding the firm, almond shaped bump of his prostate. “I peeked,” he said. “I looked under the covers and I saw your cock. The tip was sticking out of your shorts and you were so hard…oh God…and I had to go to the bathroom.” He felt like a furnace inside. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand this tease. “Condoms,” he said, as if reading my mind. “In my bag.”

  “Where?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “Shit. Wait there.”

  I hurried down the stairs and into the bathroom. I quickly rinsed my mouth with a capful of mouthwash, spat in the sink and searched around for the bag. Normally I would have been a little shyer about rummaging through his stuff, but I wasn’t much for finer feelings right now. I remembered being surprised to find a phone in there, but I put that thought out of my head when I found what I was looking for.

  When I got back up the stairs Chase was once again amusing himself. He lay on his back with his knees hitched up and his fingers teasing the tight little hole that he was presenting to
me like a target.

  “Oh, thank God,” he said. “I thought I was going to have to start without you.”

  I rolled down the condom, shivers of pleasure already dancing up and down my spine at the touch of my own hand. “Do you want to know what I was dreaming about?” I said, as I crawled over him, slicking lube over the latex as I went. He was soft from my tongue and his fingers, and he raised his hips to meet me.

  “Tell me.”

  I pushed, preferring to show, not tell. He was hot and tight and I don’t know what was more overwhelming, the sensation itself or the sight of his fists crumpling the sheets as his head went back and his mouth opened in a soundless moan.

  “This,” I said, as I went deeper. He hitched his knees higher and sheathed me like a velvet glove. “I dreamed about fucking you.”

  The sound caught in the back of his throat came out in a gasp. When he looked at me through his eyelashes I couldn’t help it; I thrust and felt him give, his ankle settling on my shoulder. “This is what I was dreaming about,” I said, as I started to fuck him with short, hard strokes. “Full color. Vivid detail. Sweaty, moaning, ball-slapping…”

  “Oh God…”

  I leaned back a little to enjoy the view. “…watching my dick going in and out of you…”

  Chase cried out, his muscles shivering around me. He was flushed all down to his nipples, his cock hard and quivering above his curled, sculpted belly. He wasn’t going to last and I didn’t want him to; I wanted nothing more in that moment than to watch him explode. “Please, Finn,” he said, making my dreams come true. “Please…”

  I kissed the inside of his ankle and cut loose, pounding him into the mattress. He let out a long, throaty wail and arched up to meet me, his fingers once more scrambling for his cock. I was gone, lost in the slap of flesh on flesh and the sweet tight clutch of him, each new thrust driving me harder towards the edge. I felt it maybe before even he did. It started as a brief, fluttering shudder through the latex, then I felt him clench and buck, almost dislodging me. I pulled his thigh against me, bending him almost double as I saw the first splash of white land on his stomach and felt the ripples of it course through him. His mouth was open, his eyes closed, but then he opened his eyes and looked right at me, and that was all it took to finish me off. I came so hard I felt the pressure against my eardrums. My knees buckled and I slid out too fast, collapsing at the foot of the bed, his thighs sprawled either side of me.