Going Sasquatch

by Jess Whitecroft

  “Oh God,” he said, breathless. “Holy shit.”

  His cock was still hard and I couldn’t resist it. I scrambled up and sucked it clean, making him whimper and let out a low, desperate “Noooo,” as I lapped at the hypersensitive head.

  I crawled up over him and kissed him. He pushed his fingers into my hair and gave me the dumbest, sleepiest, happiest smile I think I’d ever seen on the face of a lover. “Good?” I said.

  “Mmm.” He licked his dry lips. “I am fucked. In the best way possible.”

  I kissed him again, hardly believing my luck. “Wait there. I’m just gonna get cleaned up a little.”

  “Like I’m going anywhere,” he said, stretching out on the bed.

  When I came back he was fast asleep. I laughed, as surprised as if I’d discovered a unicorn in the wild. I’d heard all those jokes about men who fell asleep directly afterwards, but I’d never come across one until now. If anything I’d always found that sex left me energized rather than the opposite.

  But here he was, out for the count once more. With his glasses off and his hair darkened with sweat he resembled the movie star I’d seen doing the red carpet strut across the supermarket parking lot. I had just fucked a movie star.

  Once upon a time that would have felt like automatic bragging rights, but now just thinking it made me feel kind of skeezy. This Chase – my Chase – was more than just a movie star. He was that luscious, longed-for bite of life I’d forgotten to take all those years when I was building up the business. He was that cool, naked plunge into the pool at the end of a hot day, and I never wanted to climb out, even though I knew I risked drowning.

  I sat up to better watch him sleep, wanting the sight of him to wash away the anxieties currently crusting up like calcium deposits in the cracks of my mind. He smiled on the edge of sleep and rolled over, his fingers stretching across the bed towards me, but he couldn’t reach me. I’d done it now; I’d gone and thought about LA and it came pouring back into my head.

  “That Chase Morrow thing,” Ivy had said, and I hadn’t asked. Because I’d said no to all of it. No gofers, no swag bags, no premieres, no D-Listed and definitely, definitely no TMZ.

  Why did he still have that phone?

  Okay, that was officially none of my business, but I couldn’t get those three big red letters out of my head. TMZ. Source of scandal, suicide and live videos of the public mental breakdowns of the rich and famous. I inched my way off the bed, careful not to wake him, grabbed my robe from the rail and tiptoed down the stairs.

  This was a bad idea, but once I had the phone in my hand I knew there was no going back. I was like Pandora, once she’d put her ear to the box and heard all those beastly things wriggling around inside. Bad idea, but gonna do it anyway, because curiosity is a bitch.

  I peeked.

  Just passed my eyes over the screen the way you do when you don’t really want to read something because you know it’s going to be awful. Headline was a rumor of a fresh OJ Simpson book deal, since the Juice was apparently loose once more. Beyonce, R Kelly…so far so good.

  CHASE MORROW: WHERE IS HE?

  The black on white letters hit me like a sucker punch. I quickly dragged my eyes over as much of the article as I could stand.

  …Chase Morrow, who missed yet another public appearance at ComicCon this weekend, prompting fears that the star may be ill…

  I closed the screen quickly. Fuck.

  My heart was pounding so loud in my ears that I thought the noise might wake him. I took my sudden cold fear sweats out onto the deck and sat there, already running through the kind of rumors that might be swirling around Hollywood. Sick, crazy, rehab, whatever David Carradine was trying to do to himself that time. All of that. And worse.

  I’d left Chase sleeping like an angel, blissfully unaware of the category five shitstorm swirling around him. Or maybe he did know. He hadn’t mentioned ComicCon to me, and that was always going to be a big deal, if he didn’t show up for that.

  It didn’t matter. Whatever he had or hadn’t said, it didn’t matter. And the stupid phone. That didn’t matter either. What mattered was keeping him from this mess, because it felt like exactly the kind of thing he didn’t need. The kind of thing that had left him hyperventilating in my pool cabana.

  Shit. Right at this moment, Angie Lorde was probably threatening to set fire to someone. That or she was checking all the local hospital morgues in case he’d decided to take ‘a swan dive off the Hollywood sign’.

  I’m not sure what it was possessed me in that moment - and I wasn’t ruling out demons, because this was Angie, after all – but it felt like the right thing to do. Just…damage limitation of a sort. I typed Chase is okay and hit ‘send’, then sat there staring dumbly at the screen with a slowly dawning sense that I had just fucked everything up.

  No, it was fine. She was bound to be worried, and I was just reassuring her and hopefully keeping a lid on some of the wilder rumors that were bound to be out there. That was all I was doing. Any human being would do the same.

  The phone rang.

  I screamed and almost dropped it in the hot tub.

  It was The Lorde. And she was not happy.

  “Where the fuck is Chase?”

  “He’s with me,” I said. As soon as I said it I realized it was exactly the wrong thing to say. I shouldn’t have texted in the first place. Oh God, what was wrong with me?

  “And where the fuck are you?”

  For some reason I remembered my rosary for the first time in a dozen years. “I’m not telling you that,” I said. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…

  Angie Lorde did that hissy thing down the phone. “You do know kidnapping is a felony, right?”

  “I didn’t kidnap him. He came of his own accord.” I felt like I was sticking my head in a lion’s mouth, but for some reason I kept talking. “He was stressed and anxious and in desperate need of a vacation, so…yeah. That’s where he is.”

  “Right,” said Angie. “Super fucking duper. And that’s really going to make up for the no-show at ComicCon. And what am I supposed to say when I have the studio’s knee on the back of my neck? That he’s ducking out on publicity dates because he eloped with his personal trainer to do steroids or something?”

  “I never prescribe steroids. The acne alone…”

  She snorted. “Figures. And you wouldn’t want his dick to shrink, would you?”

  I was speechless. How did she know? No, wait – she was Satan. Was the devil omniscient? Maybe not on a God level, but he did know a lot about what people’s mothers got up to in Hell, particularly with regard to cocks…

  “I mean, I assume you’re fucking him,” she said. “What did he do? Wave his ass at you and tell you he was lonely?”

  “You know he’s gay? Bi? Whatever?”

  “Duh. The first time I saw that boy I thought ‘this one’s like a big bag of Skittles. Taste the goddamn rainbow.’”

  “Right. And so you throw him to the studio wolves so that they can tell him that he has to pretend to be one hundred per cent straight because of Russia?”

  “And China,” she said, without a flicker of shame. “Big market.”

  “Wow, I wonder why he’s unhappy.”

  “Unhappy, my ass,” said Angie. “He gets paid ludicrous sums of money because he’s pretty and good at playing dress-up. He takes more home in goodie bags than some people make in a fucking year, and everyone wants to have sex with him. Yes, his is a cruel life of indentured servitude.”

  I wasn’t buying it. “Sure. That’s why he was a nervous wreck. Or he was. Now he’s actually relaxing for the first time in ages. It’s like he’s a completely different person. A happy person.”

  “A fired person, if he doesn’t get his shit together.”

  “Oh please,” I said. “The movie’s done. What are they going to do? A last minute edit where they dump the star on the cutting room floor because he didn’t show up at ComicCon?”

  “Let
me talk to him,” she said.

  I laughed. “Not today, Satan. Not today,” I said, and turned off my phone.

  7

  The first few hours were the hardest. Turned out that completely disconnecting from phones, tablets, Twitter and even old-fashioned television left me feeling weird and weightless, like a balloon that had been cut loose from the bunch and left to float off into the big, blue unknown.

  At first I was close to panic, imagining the mess unfolding back in LA. Enraged studio heads, rampaging agents, wild rumors. Maybe right now Angie was telling people that I’d kidnapped him and some kind of Ruby Ridge hellfire was about to come raining down on our heads.

  I almost called her back, but then Chase came out onto the deck and announced that he was making wild salmon with spinach and sundried tomato pesto for dinner, and did I want to get started on the wine?

  We got started on more than the wine. We fucked on the bed, the couch and the floor. One afternoon we got carried away applying sunblock and it turned into a slow, slippery, stark-naked makeout session on the deck. Then later we slipped into the hot tub and each sat on a jet, kissing and moaning into one another’s mouths until he came and I let his wet, mumbled cries of pleasure drag me over the edge. In the morning I woke up to feel his tongue on my belly, and I was still half asleep as I raised my hips and thrust into his hot, waiting mouth.

  That was when I realized I was starting one hell of a lower backache. Not to mention I had beard rash on my balls, which were also feeling a little tender due to the all the slapping they’d been doing up against a certain perfect ass.

  I lay spread-eagled, staring up through the window and listening to Chase’s soft licks, sucks and sighs. And I realized what I was about to say sounded insane.

  “I think we’re going to have to get out of bed,” I said.

  His warm breath gusted across my balls and he looked up from between my legs. “Why on earth would we do a thing like that?”

  “Because. We can’t just keep having sex all the time.”

  Chase sat up and wriggled up the bed towards me. “Are you okay?” he said, touching a hand to my forehead. “Are you sick?”

  “No,” I said, already regretting saying anything. His spit was still cooling on my dick and the damned thing was determined to override my brain. “I’m just…tired.”

  He frowned and swung a thigh over me, straddling me and reminding me all too vividly of last night, when I’d let him tie me to the headboard and ride me. “You just woke up,” he said. He was hard and golden and gorgeous and I couldn’t keep my hands off him.

  “I know.” I tipped him off balance and he rolled over onto his back. He didn’t seem to care that my mouth tasted of sleep, although his tongue still tasted of me. He sighed and wrapped his legs around me, his skin like satin under my hand. “Look,” I said, treading carefully. “It’s not that you aren’t very, very lovely…”

  “Mmm?” He was sweetness itself as his tongue lapped over my bottom lip.

  “No, Chase…just listen. I’ve never done this before. At least not this side of thirty. The last time I got into a sex marathon like this I was still in my twenties, and it turns out those extra few years make quite a difference.”

  He kissed me again. “Oh, poor old thing. Did I wear you out?”

  “You did, yes. My balls were practically empty last night. That cannot be good for you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Actually it’s very good for your prostate. Clears everything out down there.”

  “Oh, well. Okay then.”

  He laughed and ran his fingers through my hair. The look in his eyes was so warm and tender that it made me afraid. “Finn, if you don’t want to have sex, just say so. I won’t be mad. We don’t have to fuck all the time. We can just hang out. Or cuddle.”

  I exhaled. Relaxed. “Cuddling sounds amazing.” Already there were few things I loved more than being wrapped up in him. When he was naked in my arms it was like he was the whole world; there was just so much of him to hold and touch and taste. Long legs, broad thighs, muscled arms, and what felt like acres and acres of silky skin.

  He rolled over and I snuggled in against his back, my arm across his waist. I kissed the nape of his neck and he sighed happily and laced his fingers with mine. “There,” he said. “How’s this?”

  “This? This is great. Cozy, relaxed…” I breathed in the smell of his hair and tried to think quiet, sleepy thoughts, but once again my cock had other ideas. I wanted to snuggle, but it was close enough to his ass to set my mind flashing back on hot, strong sense memories. Like his heel on my back, or the way his thigh folded against my side when I was inside him. Or the slow, tight ripples that had squeezed me last night when he finally came, his dick spilling all over his fist and his eyes practically rolling back in his head with ecstasy.

  At that moment he shifted his butt closer into the curve of my body, and I couldn’t help it. It was like my hips had developed a life of their own.

  Chase stiffened a little, then wiggled his ass against me. “Is that your dick?”

  “Yep.”

  “It doesn’t feel very…relaxed.”

  “Yeah. It doesn’t understand cuddling.” I lay back and sighed. “This is part of the problem. Part of me just wants to keep fucking, and more fucking is inevitably going to lead to rugburns, backache and chafing. And that’s going to lead to less enjoyable sex, and that can’t happen. Because I never, ever want to stop enjoying sex with you…” He got out of bed. “Where are you going?”

  Chase grabbed a pair of clean underwear and pulled them on. “Saving you from yourself,” he said.

  “Wait, no. You didn’t have to take me seriously.”

  He shook his head. “Nuh uh. You’re right. Sex is like…eating. If you keep on stuffing your face all the time you get bored and sick, but even celery tastes amazing when you work up an appetite. We should stop for a while.”

  “How long is a while?” I asked, worried about how thoroughly he was calling my bluff here.

  Chase grinned and slid on a pair of leggings. “I don’t know. A day. Maybe two.”

  “Uh, no. Where are you going?”

  “Out for a run. If I’m not getting my morning cardio in bed…” He tugged on a t-shirt. “You coming?”

  I reached for my clothes. “Jesus. I’ve created a monster.” He laughed and hurried down the stairs, making me afraid for his ligaments. He had a bad habit of starting cold. “And I shouldn’t need to remind you to stretch,” I yelled after him, and got dressed in a hurry.

  The paths down the mountain were not great, and at least he deferred to me when I said no running until we hit town, where the roads and sidewalks were somewhat flat. We found a park with an artificial lake and ran back and forth alongside, dodging bikes and strollers as we went. In the nearby playground kids swung too high on the swings and screamed challenges to one another. There was that familiar piney tang in the air, mellowed with the smoke of distant brushfires. That nostalgic smell and the kids’ voices took me back to another set of swings, where I’d stopped playing because of the tall wall of laurels behind them.

  They’d been dark, those laurels, with no light escaping through the leaves, although here and there there’d been gaps, baring trunks and hollows that my overfed imagination had populated with hairy things that wanted to eat me. After the incident I would no longer swing with my back to the hedge; I turned around to face them, but there was no fun in swinging any more, not when I was straining every nerve in anticipation of the inevitable sasquatch attack.

  On the way back to Main Street we passed a Bigfoot Museum, which was a novelty to Chase and a nightmare to me. “Oh, come on,” he said, when I rolled my eyes. “Let’s take a look.”

  “Why? I can already tell you what’s inside. Some blurry photographs, some unconvincing footprint casts and an all-pervading stink of animal hair and futility.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” he said, and headed inside. “Some of us didn’t grow up in B
igfoot country, you know. I want to look.”

  “Ugh. It’s a good thing you’re pretty.”

  “Excuse me. I’m more than just a pretty face.” He said that, but in the dim log cabin light of the foyer, with the skylight shining down on his flushed face you could have been forgiven for drooling over his looks. His eyes were a clear grape green as he looked around at the dusty donation box and the racks of faded flyers.

  “I know,” I said, placing a surreptitious hand on his ass. “Your ass is also spectacular. Maybe we should get back and explore that further.”

  “I thought we weren’t having sex?” he said, but he leaned into my touch all the same.

  “We’re not. Not here, anyway. It looks like one of those places in horror movies where having sex will earn you an ax in the middle of your spine or something.”

  He kissed me lightly on the lips and took my hand. “Finn, just let me look at the Bigfoot Museum. Okay?”

  I sighed. “Fine. But you’ll be disappointed.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  We went in. The first thing I saw was a series of foldout boards - like the kind you get at a school science fair - covered with photographs.

  “Oh look,” I said, in an undertone. “Blurry photos.”

  He gave me a dirty look and kept walking. We both smelled pretty sweaty, but there was no mistaking the undertone of animal hair around the place. Could have been bear, wolf or just about anything, but you could always count on Bigfoot fans to have some kind of dander or pelt around the place, if only to refer to as examples of what sasquatch hair wasn’t.

  We moved on. “Footprint casts,” I whispered, as we moved past the next exhibit. “Could be anything. Bear prints that got rained on...”

  “You are the worst. You know that, don’t you?”