The Gossip: New Wave Newsroom

by Jenny Holiday

  I joined her and set up a camping lantern I’d brought, gratified that I had made her so happy. There were overhead lights in the tower enclosure, but using them would mean risking detection. I would douse the camping light when the eclipse started in earnest, but for now, I set it to its dimmest level as we got settled. I unpacked the bag of goodies we’d bought at an all-night convenience store on our way—a box of Smurfberry Crunch and a can of Tab for her, and a bag of corn nuts and a bottle of water for me.

  “The people look like little dolls,” she said, leaning over the deep stone ledge that ringed the space.

  “Whoa.” I put my hand on her back. She was perfectly safe, but I’d reacted instinctively to seeing her leaning out over the edge like that.

  “I love that we’re up here, and they have no idea,” she said, leaning back into my hand and smiling up at me. She pulled off her mittens, grabbed her cereal box, and tore it open. “Yum!” she said, grabbing a handful of the unnaturally red and blue “berries.” Seeing her munching on the cartoon cereal, I was reminded of how young she was.

  It should have made me uncomfortable. But for once, I didn’t care. Maybe it was the strange out-of-time-ness of it, of being perched physically above campus like gods on our own collegiate Mount Olympus while we waited for the moon to transit into Earth’s shadow. Whatever the reason, the air felt electric, alive despite the cold, snowy December night.

  “I’ve never seen an eclipse before,” she said as the first sliver of moon moved into the shadows.

  “I always think it’s going to be more dramatic than it is,” I said. “The moon never totally disappears. It just gets very dim—like you would miss it if you didn’t know to look for it.”

  “But you know,” she said. “You know to look for it.”

  We had been standing a few feet apart, both of us leaning our forearms on the ledge, and I glanced over at her, trying to make sense of what she was saying.

  She slid over until she was right next to me, her forearm touching mine. Her shoulder stopped midway up my upper arm, which meant her head was exactly the right height for resting on my shoulder.

  Which she did.

  I did not pull away.

  We watched the whole eclipse like that, or at least the part where the moon was totally obscured by the sun. It glowed a very faint red, and we stood there in silence watching it for nearly an hour. It reminded me of those pictures you see of Jesus or of the Virgin Mother (all those years of Catholic school were still in there somewhere) where you can see their hearts showing through their clothing. Except instead of glowing brightly, this heart, this moon-heart, grew dimmer and dimmer, until it was almost not there.

  “Do you remember when you came to my apartment, and I said my heart was missing?” Dawn said, her voice coming out all shaky.

  Oh, Jesus, that was exactly it. This was exactly that. I put my arm around her, so that instead of standing next to me with her head resting on my shoulder, she was tucked into the crook of my arm. I held her tight.

  She didn’t say anything more, nor did I. We didn’t need to.

  Dawn

  When we got back Art’s car, it was after two in the morning. “Let’s get you home,” he said as he started the car, and I almost jumped. We had been enrobed in silence for so long, and not just any silence—a deep, extreme silence, in which I’d felt myself come through something. As stupid as it sounded, I almost felt like I’d witnessed myself being reborn gradually into the night the same way the moon had emerged from the shadows.

  “Or we could go to your place,” I said firmly, sending my own strong voice out to pierce the silence, too, to name what I wanted. He whipped his gaze to mine, but it was too dark to see what was in his eyes. Then he let his head fall back like he was appealing to heaven for help and emitted a strangled sort of half-moan.

  I lost some of my nerve then, was beginning to fear I had made myself ridiculous—again. Why had I thought I deserved this? That just because I wanted something, I could have it? Hadn’t I left that part of myself behind?

  Hadn’t Julianne taken it with her?

  He sat up and shifted the car into “drive.” We pulled away from the tower so quickly that his tires squealed a little.

  And we didn’t turn onto the road we needed to go down to get to my building.

  No. We went the opposite way—toward his house.

  My skin started to prickle like I had come into a warm house from a very cold night.

  He didn’t speak as he drove, merely stared at the road, his mouth a grim line of determination. He took the corners so fast, it was like being in one of those Atari racing games. But he remained in absolute control. I felt almost like we were in the police cruiser, the way we were hurtling down the deserted streets of campus. I was exhilarated and scared and turned on all at once—all feelings I had thought I was too permanently broken to ever experience again.

  When we reached his house, I paused for a moment in the passenger seat. I wasn’t afraid, not exactly, but I knew that if we were going to do what I thought we were going to do—what I hoped we were going to do—it was going to be totally different than my past experiences. Heck, you could tell from the way he drove.

  He’d come around to open my door while I was pausing to gather my courage. He gave me his hand, and I took it, letting him help me up from the low-to-the-ground sports car. He pulled, and as I came to my feet, he kept pulling, stopping only when I was mashed against his chest, my breasts compressing almost painfully against the solid wall of him as he wrapped his arms around me.

  I thought he was going to kiss me—was in the middle of tilting my head back to facilitate a kiss, in fact—but he did not.

  “Are you sure about this, Dawn?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s not good enough. Are you sure about this, Dawn?” he said, repeating his question in a gruff, almost angry tone.

  “Yes,” I said, trying to summon that confident, self-assured voice I’d found when I asked him to take me home. “I want this.”

  “Why?” he said, eyes searching my face like it was a treasure map. “Why do you want this?”

  “Because you make me feel good,” I whispered. “Because I haven’t felt good for so long.” Maybe ever, I added silently.

  He released me then and grabbed my hand and led me up the driveway. Once through the front door, he unzipped my coat and pushed it off my shoulders, letting it fall to the floor, then he did the same with his own.

  “What do you want, Dawn?”

  “I told you, I want to feel good.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not enough.” When I started to protest, he held up a hand and said, “Remember blah, blah, blah?”

  I nodded, miserable because it seemed like he was going to put the brakes on.

  “Well, it’s not just blah, blah, blah. I’m older than you by a not-insignificant number of years. I work at Allenhurst. You’re a student.”

  “For another week, technically. But classes are done. It’s only finals left. And there’s not anything specifically prohibiting…” I trailed off, realizing that to say any more would only make me look desperate. I had scoured the college’s policies before I interviewed Julianne, looking for anything governing staff-student relationships, so I knew that technically, we weren’t breaking that rule at least.

  “You’re vulnerable right now,” he said, delivering the stake to my new moon of a heart, because he and I both knew it was true. But then, when I hung my head, preemptively waiting for the shame to wash over me, I saw his erection. It was impossible to miss. Instead of his usual jeans, he’d been wearing gray sweatpants when I knocked on his door earlier, and now they were tented. Very tented.

  “So look me in the eyes, Dawn, and tell me exactly what it is you want.”

  That erection gave me hope. It made me brave. So I looked up. I even reached over and switched on the light in his entryway so there would be no mistaking my intentions. My heart was pounding like it wanted to flee my
chest, but I managed to make the words come out clear and calm.

  “I want to have sex with you.”

  “All right then.” In one fluid motion, he grabbed the back of his T-shirt and pulled it off. And, oh, Richard Gere in American Gigolo had nothing on this guy. Rob Lowe, Scott Baio, name your Tiger Beat hunk. He left them all in the dust.

  He came at me then, picking me up so I was at his level, and nuzzling my throat. “This is how this is going to work,” he said, using his teeth to gently scrape down to my collarbone, where he started pressing urgent, openmouthed kisses. “I require not just consent, but continuous consent.”

  I moaned.

  “Not good enough,” he said sharply, pulling away and setting me back on my feet.

  So, since there was no way I was walking away from this, I grabbed his hand and headed toward his hallway. We paused at the first door, and I peeked in, but it appeared to be a home gym, littered as it was with weights and benches.

  “I’m looking for the bedroom,” I said, emboldened not only by his still-tented sweatpants, but by the fact that I was shaking with need.

  “Next door,” he said nodding down the hall and letting me lead him there.

  When we arrived, I went to the windows and lowered the blinds. He turned on a small lamp on a nightstand. “What now?” he said.

  I went to him, lifted myself up on my tiptoes, and grabbed his head, intending to pull him down for a kiss, but he resisted.

  “I need to hear you say it,” he said.

  “I want you to kiss me,” I said, “And I want to kiss you.”

  It was his turn to moan as he lowered his head. It was as if once he’d heard me explicitly request a kiss, it lit a fire in him. His lips crashed down on mine, and his whole body shuddered as I opened my mouth to receive his tongue. We clung to each other, kissing deeply, aggressively licking into each other’s mouths. I let my hands trail up and down his muscled back. I wanted him to touch me too, so I broke for a moment to pull my own shirt over my head. I had just been wearing a camisole under my shirt—my breasts were small enough that I didn’t really need a bra—and I caught it along with my shirt, which left me standing before him totally exposed as my aching nipples tightened even more under his gaze.

  I was desperate for him to touch me, to take away some of the ache—which was what he was always doing, really, when I thought about it. So I grabbed his hands and brought them to my breasts.

  He hissed, almost like I was hurting him, and ground out, “Say it.”

  “I want you to touch my breasts,” I said quickly. “I want you to put your mouth on them, too.”

  And, just like that, he did. He kneaded them both, one in each hand, as he lowered his mouth to one nipple and sucked. Lust lanced through me, a sharp spike connecting that nipple with my vagina. In soothing one ache, he’d transferred the almost painful need somewhere else, and I writhed against him.

  He must have known—of course he knew; Art always knew—because he moved a hand to the waistband of my jeans. I followed him, fumbling to undo the button fly, but when I had my pants shoved down over my hips, his hand remained where it was, hovering. “I want you to touch me,” I said, getting the hang of this continuous-consent thing. Hell, I was getting off on it. Being able to tell him exactly what I wanted and have him comply was a huge turn-on. And he wasn’t just complying. With each additional increment of our intimacy, as soon as I vocalized what I wanted, he pounced, like a hunter who’d been holding back his lethal strength.

  He dipped a finger into my wet folds, and as I gasped, I walked backward toward his bed, pulling him along with me. When the backs of my legs hit the mattress, I let myself fall, taking him with me. “I want to take off my pants,” I said, keeping up the stream of talk for fear he would put the brakes on otherwise. “I want you to take off your pants, too. I want to be naked with you.”

  I shimmied the rest of the way out of my jeans as I spoke, and he practically growled as he whipped off his sweatpants and underwear, watching me all the while. No one had ever looked at me like that. Like I was enough. No—like I was everything.

  He fell to his knees, which startled me, and I started to sit up.

  “I want to taste you,” he said gruffly. “I want to put my mouth on your pussy and taste you.” His eyes never left mine as he made those shocking declarations. “Is that okay?”

  “Yes,” I said, even though, in truth, the idea made me a little nervous. I had never done that. It wasn’t something that had been in the repertoire of the boys I’d been with. But hadn’t I been thinking, back that first time we kissed, that Arturo was a man? I knew he would stop the moment I asked him to. And I trusted him to make me feel good.

  “Ohhh!” I breathed as his mouth made contact with my tender, engorged flesh. It was a different sensation than when I masturbated, which had been, heretofore, my only reliable method of getting off. It was less focused but somehow more intense for it. He wasn’t even applying much pressure, just licking my opening like he would an ice cream cone, teasing my clit gently at the top of every lick. And he was making noises of appreciation almost like he was eating an ice cream cone.

  “You taste so good,” he whispered, breaking his rhythm enough to look up at me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded frantically. “I want to come with you inside me,” I nearly shouted, shocking the hell out of myself. But I was close, and I didn’t want this to end without feeling my body stretching to accommodate him. “Please.”

  He grinned. “Well, let’s see what we can do about that then, shall we?” He popped up and moved to the nightstand and began rummaging around in its top drawer. I took a moment to catch my breath and admire him from afar. His bottom half was as gorgeous and muscular as his top.

  When he turned, he was rolling a condom onto a very large erection. Definitely not a boy, I thought, and I laughed from the sheer joy of it, even as I said, “You don’t need that. I’m on the pill.”

  “That may be,” he said. “But you should always use condoms regardless, Dawn.” I wanted to say that I was never going to have sex with anyone besides him again, that he had ruined me for other people, but of course you didn’t just say stuff like that. And I had no idea if he was regarding this as a onetime thing. Heck, I had no idea if I was regarding this as onetime thing.

  He moved toward me, but instead of climbing on top of me, he surprised me by lying next to me on the bed, on his back, his ridiculously impressive erection pointing at the ceiling. He grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him, just enough that he could reach my face. He smiled and stroked my cheek. “I want you to come with me inside you, too. I want to feel you clenching, squeezing my cock until my head nearly explodes.” The plain, almost-clinical statement of desire ratcheted my own lust up about a thousand percent as he moved his hand to take mine, holding it like he was helping me into a carriage in an old-fashioned movie.

  I realized he was waiting for me to climb on top of him.

  So I did, shivering as a mixture of lust and anticipation and nervousness moved through me.

  I kept hold of his one hand and pressed against his chest with my other to brace myself, watching his face as I sank down onto him.

  “Shiiiiittt,” he groaned, using the hand that wasn’t holding mine to punch the mattress next to him. His reaction was both startling and gratifying.

  It had been a while since I’d done this. It had been years since I’d done this, actually. I stayed still for a moment to let myself adjust to the unfamiliar stretching sensation, and to the knowledge that I had allowed someone else inside my body.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes glittering.

  “Stop asking me that,” I whispered as I began lifting myself off him. “I am very, very okay.”

  He smiled, but his grin disappeared quickly as I sank back down onto his length, impaling myself a little more deeply than I had before.

  “Shit!” he said again, but the word wasn’t drawn out this time; it was short and clipped
and almost angry. His eyes closed.

  “You’re going to have to think of something else to say,” I teased, but I secretly loved the fact that I had reduced this powerful, utterly competent man to a single word.

  His eyes flew open, and I laughed to show him I was teasing, but also because I couldn’t believe how…right this felt.

  “How about this then?” he rasped. “Shit, you feel amazing. So tight and wet that I never want this to be over, but at the same time, so tight and wet that I’m afraid this will be over too soon.” And with that, he reached up and pressed a thumb against my clit.

  I was already turned on, but that little touch shoved me way farther down the road. I didn’t want to talk anymore, couldn’t talk anymore. I rode him as he kneaded my clit, bracing myself now with both hands on his chest, meeting his unbroken gaze. It was intense, having that kind of eye contact. It made me realize how much I hadn’t done that before, how my sexual experiences had been about closing my eyes and sort of…imagining something else. He wouldn’t let me, though. Well, that wasn’t actually true, of course. Mr. Continuous Consent was going to be down with whatever I wanted, I knew, but it was like his eyes had so much power over me that I simply couldn’t look away, couldn’t sever that connection.

  “Oh!” I shouted, as he pushed me even closer to the edge. “I’m going to come!” I had never been a screamer before. Maybe because it always seemed improper somehow, or maybe because when I was having sex before, it was usually furtive, needed to be hidden from parents or roommates. But to be able to make whatever noises I wanted to, as loud as I wanted to. Well, it was hot. It was like a continuation of his continuous-consent thing. In being so careful to make sure I knew that nothing was going to happen unless I wanted it to, in making me name my desires, he somehow also paved the way for me to do and say exactly what I needed to realize those desires.

  I came like a jackhammer, shrieking the whole time.

  He grabbed my hips and took control of the rhythm, pistoning into me like a man on fire.