#1 Crush

by Kaia Bennett

  "Gabriel..."

  She rubbed until the last of her shudders started to subside, until her body went limp and she became aware of just how overheated she was. Her fingers were sticky, still rubbing in and around the plump folds of her pussy, her spine arching and bending as she rocked away the aftershocks. She opened her eyes slowly, swallowing and realizing her throat was parched. She came completely back to herself, and what she had done made her shudder with such ferocity that she had to laugh. This was about as bad as she got, masturbating on her crush's bed to his porn.

  She sat up, the sounds of the pair on screen starting to build. There would be a cum-shot soon, but she didn't care to stick around for that, having already had her fill. With one hand, she swept her mussed hair out of her face, the other still playing lightly with her pussy. She brought those fingers up to her face, smelling her own sweet musk as she dabbed her juices demurely over her bottom lip, mimicking the way the girl on screen tasted herself on the guy’s fingers. She flicked her tongue out and the taste was sweet and spicy. She turned to the mirror, wanting to see what a contented girl looked like in Gabriel's bed.

  And came face to face with Gabriel himself.

  He was standing still as a statue in the doorway, his tongue swiping absently over his lips, his wide-eyed gaze fixed on her face. His cheeks were flushed under his tan skin. Nicole stared at him for what had to be the longest second in this universe or the next. Her fingers seemed frozen against her lips, her eyes widening with the recognition she was caught, and then with the realization that she was practically naked. In his bed. With his porn blasting on the TV and her juices coating her fingers. There was no telling when he had gotten there, how much he had seen. Her entire body shuddered with a cold chill and then flushed with blistering heat. She opened her mouth to speak, to apologize.

  She screamed instead.

  Gabriel actually recoiled at the sound of Nicole’s ear splitting shriek. Her entire body shook with it, those full breasts in particular. She saw his gaze snap from where her hand covered her still screaming mouth to her naked breasts as she stared at him in horror. She tried to cover herself as she scrambled backwards and pawed at the bed looking for her shirt.

  "Nicole! Wait!"

  He entered the room, reaching for her, but it was too late. She fell off the bed, legs and arms flailing until she met the floor with a nice loud thump. She scrambled upright and peaked over the edge of the bed while she rifled through his sheets in a frantic search for her top and panties.

  "N-nicole," he called and she felt the bile rising in her throat at the barely contained laughter in his voice. "Are you... u-um, are you okay?"

  "What are you doing home? I thought you were supposed to be at work!"

  "I...got off early," he replied, tilting his head to the side as if he hoped it was the right answer.

  That's right. Ask him why he's here in his room, like he's the one at fault for catching you stroking yourself. Go ahead, see what else you can say to make it worse!

  He didn't ask her why she was in his room. He didn't ask her what she had been doing. He just stared down at her, waiting for her to make the next move.

  "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my GOD!!" The mirth drained from his face, and there was an intensity in his eyes that made her wonder if she was in danger as he started to come around the other side of the bed.

  "I-I'm so sorry. I didn't mean...I just...I was just..."

  She covered her face with her free hand and shook her head as the true weight of what had just happened seeped into every crevice of her brain.

  "Nicole—"

  "I'm...I wasn't thinking...I-I..." A sob caught in her throat. Gabriel's face turned into a blur under the fringe of her long, tear-spiked eyelashes. She couldn't even pull her shirt on. There was no time for anything other than a horrified apology as she clasped the fabric to her breasts and ran out of the room.

  Gabriel Roberts was officially done with people’s shit when he decided to call it a day and head home early.

  He was done trying to hook people up with jobs that even he couldn’t make sound appealing. He was through with ingesting coffee to keep him awake. He’d had it up to here with trying to smile through the tedium of listening to non-stop talker Shane in the cubicle next door. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d just seen pictures of his ex-girlfriend cozied up to her new husband-to-be on Facebook. His friend Davy Nuke, the drummer of his band, thought it best to tell him before he found out on his own.

  He rode the subway home in a fog, confused at the strange mixture of jealousy, remorse and relief he was feeling. He was relieved she’d found someone else, that she was happy. He’d wanted that for her more than anything. So why was a part of him upset? He stared out the window, watching platforms whiz past, his body shimmying to the rhythm of public transportation, his mind falling backwards in time.

  He had no right to be anything but happy for her. He was the one that had broken up with Marta last year, and for several very good reasons.

  Yes, she was gorgeous, smart, and everybody loved her. And at the time she could fuck like no girl he had ever been with, which was probably one of the reasons they lasted as long as they did. He still missed kissing his way up and down those long toffee-colored legs, hearing her laugh at his jokes, and feeling her fingers rub the tension from his back when he’d had a long day. But they were so different. She had her sights set on climbing the corporate ladder at her marketing firm, and he was trying to ditch his 9 to 5 to make music with his band, something she had all but blatantly said was a stupid waste of time.

  The truth of the matter was she wanted someone to make as much, if not more, money than she did and he couldn't blame her. Growing up poor could do funny things to a girl's sense of worldly accomplishment, but he wasn't about to give up his dream so he could take care of her. And he sure as hell wasn't going to get married. Ever. Shit, he wasn't even sure he could live with her, which was another bone of contention in their relationship.

  He grew up learning firsthand how fucked-up marriage could be. His parents had married young and were strict Catholics, which left him in a house where he saw everyday what it meant to be trapped with someone you didn't love anymore. It used to make him sad to think the two people who brought him into the world, who had once loved each other enough to say "forever", now talked to each other like strangers, if at all. His father worked hard, his mother put all of her energy into her kids and her home, but they were still two of the most silently unhappy people he had ever known. He could tell they tried to hide it or push it aside, but all the repressed tension in the Roberts’ household just filtered right on down to the children. His little sister, Olivia, who he was still pretty close to, had done her best to live up to their parents’ expectations of what a good child and Catholic should be. He remained the disappointment, to them as well as his girlfriend.

  Gabriel realized he wasn’t in love with Marta the way he wanted to be sometime around the summer of their second year together. They fought more and more about the future, with her often dropping hints about his lack of drive to get promoted. He didn’t fault her for being ambitious and driven; he loved that about her. He loved strong women in general, but she started using that strength to strangle all of his dreams and hopes for the future. She only wanted him to be ambitious in a way she could understand.

  She stopped coming to his shows, of which she’d only been to two in the beginning before she claimed work kept her too busy. Whenever he talked about his music she humored him for all of five minutes and then reminded him how making music full time was a pipe dream. He should focus on the future. Their future.

  Instead he’d made sure they wouldn’t have one…

  “Why can’t you just have my back?” he accused. “Just one time actually pretend like you give a shit.”

  They’d been lying in bed, talking to each other in the darkness as they started to drift off, when he mentioned something about a new song he’d written. Her tone had immedia
tely turned exasperated. She didn’t even try to hide it now, her annoyance at how seriously he was starting to take music was more pronounced now that they’d found a bassist for the band.

  Anger constricted his chest, and he struggled to get it under control.

  “You don’t hear me getting on your case about the late hours you keep since you got promoted or why you never come to my shows. How is it fair that I’m expected to be more supportive of you than you are of me?”

  It was the same argument, just different words, different settings. The variations were minute, the underlying issues monumental. This time he was tired of pretending they could agree to disagree.

  Marta sat up with a sigh, settling in for the skirmish. She shook her hair back away from her shoulders, and lifted it into a makeshift ponytail before letting it fall long and glossy against her back. It was a habitual reaction that revealed her growing exasperation. She had a lot of subtle tics like that, tics that he used to relish learning about her when they first got together.

  “I am supportive of you. I‘m just not supportive of you squandering your potential and you’re more than just a guitar player. That’s a part of you, Gabe, but you never give any other parts of yourself time to grow because you keep clinging to this idea of what you want.”

  He shook his head and sat up, turning his back as he swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  There was a time when she would have slid up against him, soothing him with the warmth of her body, the sound of her voice sweet in his ear. She would have been a siren for him, summoning him closer to her ideals, dashing his doubt against the rocks, and his passion would dim for a time. He’d pretend he was just a musician by habit and hobby like she wanted him to be. He’d sink into her embrace, then her kiss, before burying himself in her. She knew how to work him back then. Back before he started seeing alternatives, back before his mind and his heart started to wander.

  “I love you,” she said. It was a matter-of-fact declaration, all the sweetness sucked out of it. “You know I never want to make you feel like what’s important to you doesn’t matter.”

  “Then why do you, and then pretend like I’m too stupid to notice?” he shot over his shoulder, his steely gaze connecting with hers.

  This was the change, the chip in the melting ice block that was their relationship. The elements had been doing their work on them for a while, their differing natures and goals conspiring in the quiet spaces stretching between them. But never before that night had he taken an actual swing at her and her dubious intentions. Never before had he called her to the floor and forced her to face him and what he could see was happening.

  She’d reared back, shocked by the quiet fury he refused to tamp down this time. They fought as often as they made love now, but those fights had been love taps compared to the way things were becoming now. He was tired of the drama but he couldn’t stop himself. Now their fights were emotional brawls that left him bruised and bloody, pulling him back into becoming a person he thought he’d left behind when he moved out of his stifling childhood home.

  “I…I don’t, Gabriel. I told you I support you,”

  “You tell me a lot of things, Marta, but you show me something completely different. And you think just because I don’t say anything I don’t see it.”

  The bed shifted as she moved closer to him, but this time she didn’t wrap her arms around him and snuggle her face into the crook of his neck. Her breasts didn’t rub against his back, her hair falling like a curtain over him. This time he didn’t sink into her, he swam away.

  “I could say the same thing about you, Gabe. You say a lot of things too. Like you love me, you want to build a future with me. It’s really easy to say, isn’t it? Not so easy to show when it means putting me first.”

  “If putting you first means I have to pretend I’m happy and be your fucking puppet, then no, it’s not easy for me to do. I’m tired of this shit, Marta, I really am.”

  “Tired of what? Me telling you to grow up?! Me motivating you to be better? What?”

  “Better, because I’m not good enough as is—”

  “You’re a fucking child sometimes, you know that? You only hear what you want to hear.”

  He scoffed and shook his head, “That’s it, Marta, don’t hold anything back. Show me how much you love and support me, really let me have it.”

  “You are! You want to be a rock star and fuck groupies every night because that’s more fun then building a life with someone, and you want me to encourage you to do it.”

  He closed his eyes and literally bit his tongue. He didn’t dare say what he was thinking. He didn’t dare speak the truth.

  “So I’m supposed to get up at 5am,” she continued, “commute to work, bust my ass and work twice as hard as my male counterparts for less pay, come home, make dinner, then shuffle off to a dive bar to watch you play? That’s what I’m supposed to support? But what about you? When are you going to support me and what I’m trying to build with you?”

  He was silent. Fuming, but silent, because she had a point. It wasn’t fair to ask that of her. It wasn’t fair to lead her on. He wasn’t being supportive of her in exactly the same way she wasn’t for him. When they met he was very much a rung on the corporate ladder and the expectation was that he would continue climbing it. Then he’d up and decided, at least to her mind, that he was going to take music seriously. It was a bait and switch, though unintentional. Like denying who he was and what he wanted to do had been. Still, none of what he’d been doing for months as he pulled farther and farther away from her had been fair.

  “And if one day we did get married and have kids,” she ignored his grimace at the mention of marriage, “should I bring them along, too? At dinner parties should I tell my boss you couldn’t make it because you were in a van on your way to Lollapalooza to open for real bands?”

  “Because we’re not a real fucking band?” he said turning to face her, the fury she stoked in him finally unleashed. “You know what, you’d know we were a real band, with real fucking fans, if you ever, EVER heard us fucking play! Just ask the other real bands that come up to us after a show…”

  He stopped himself then, recalling one band in particular, one of the best he’d seen on the indie circuit. The Spirits. Meredith Rowe. His mind flashed with her image, the nearly white, platinum blonde hair, ice blue eyes rimmed in kohl, piercings catching the light. Ethereal, pale, long limbed. Where she had curves they were small handfuls made for sin, but that wasn’t her most alluring feature. It was a spine of iron, an aura that commanded attention and complicity in whatever mischief she could think up. She had calloused guitar playing fingers and a voice that could shake up the dormant depravity in her audience when she sang. She was an almost living embodiment of what was pulling Gabriel away from a woman he had been content with just a year ago.

  Meredith was all talent, all fire, all ice. She was contradiction, chaos in a contained, light-weight package. She was also Marta’s worst fear about Gabriel’s new path and the reason he’d stopped speaking in that moment. Guilt filtered through the rightness of his argument. Meredith Rowe, the groupies that wanted a taste of impending greatness, the guys that wanted to get high, get fucked up and make every show the best and craziest show they’d ever done…that was what she had to compete with. She had good cause to be scared. How could the life she envisioned compete with freedom, with abandon and accolades, and willing sacrifices to the altar of his lust.

  “That’s not the point!” Marta said, the defensive pitch of her voice drawing him out of his reverie. “You can be good. You can be the best, and still come up short. There’s always room for failure when you rely on other people to determine your success. How many bands make it, Gabe? What are the chances of you having anything to show for this but a bunch of stories around a campfire someday?”

  He stood then, needing to put some distance between them and the urge to shake her until she stopped talking. He could hear his father’s voice in hi
s mind, hear the disapproval, his refusal to help him go to school as a music major. He saw a life full of discouragement and silences and quiet rages. He saw himself running, not literally, but running just the same. He’d start by staying late for another drink when he should be at home. He’d advance to the next level by fucking some random girl to revisit what it felt like to be wanted instead of possessed. He saw himself telling his own sons and daughters to shut up, keep it down, stop wasting their time.

  He saw himself becoming someone he couldn’t stand so he wouldn’t be a failure one day, sitting around a campfire, telling stories about that one time he felt free playing with the guys. Just for a little while they’d pretended they could fool the world into believing they were something special…

  He had a glimmer of hope now and here was someone else he loved telling him to keep down the noise, dim the spark, shut up, don’t be stupid, be a man, not a boy. He wanted to scream, the way he used to do when he’d climb to that quiet point overlooking his hometown, the woods surrounding him, and no one around to see him cry in frustration.

  What kind of life would that be?

  Marta echoed his thoughts when she spoke. “What kind of marriage would that be… I don’t want to live that way, Gabriel.”

  “I never said I wanted to get married! You did. And can you blame me for not wanting to? Who would? Who in their right mind would want to live this way, besides people who are too scared to do anything else? Have you seen my parents? I sure as fuck don’t want to live like this! Not as your husband, not as your boyfriend. I’m not giving up who I am and this has to stop. You have to stop building a future without me. I’m standing right fucking here.”