by JA Huss
The smile spreads and he nods a tiny nod that says, It’s OK. I can feel myself biting my bottom lip as I press my finger deeper and a noise comes out of him, from the back of his throat, like a stifled groan. Like he wants to moan and say dirty shit to me, but he knows he can’t, so he stuffs it down and it’s just a squeak.
And he’s pounding into me now. I feel that he wants to be as far into me as I am into him. And he takes one hand off my hip and works it between our bellies so that he can land his thumb on my clit. I shake my head at him because I don’t know if I can take it. But he smiles and nods his head at me as he begins rubbing me savagely.
If we are to die tonight, let it happen now.
I know that’s a morbid thought, but it’s the one that lands on me.
I’m not a dumb person. I’m not a naïve person. There are many, many people who have suffered immeasurably more than I have. I’ve seen it. And there are those who have suffered more than I can imagine, who I’ve never seen. But my pain is mine. It happened to me. And even though it may make no sense, I held onto it because to share it would make it less mine.
But now I have. Shared it. I’ve shared everything. With the one person in the world who could’ve abated it sooner and didn’t. The same person I blamed for compounding it. And the only person who could have ever really understood it. And it doesn’t feel like it’s less mine. It feels like it’s just… ours.
And so, if we are to be taken away from each other in this world, I’d rather it happen while we are totally, completely joined than not. In French, orgasms are known as le petit mort. The little death. So hell. Let’s just go fucking all in.
My lips press together and I nod at him, trying to let him know that I’m about to come. But his eyes are closed and his expression is contorted, which I think is him trying not to come yet. What a gentleman. So I do what I have to do to get his attention. I slap him across the face with my free hand.
His eyes pop open like he forgot where he was, but he never lets up on the churning energy that propels him in and out. And when my eyes widen and I nod, he gives me a tiny, urgent nod in return. His thumb strums at my clit. My finger drives deeper into his ass. My hips make tiny circles under him as his back arches and crashes down with each penetrating thrust. And at the moment I come, he does too. Both of us struggling not to make a noise as the tiny grim reaper waves his sickle and we die in and around each other in exquisite anguish as our mute desire gives way to the sound of crashing waves.
TYLER
When I was ten, they demolished the Aladdin Hotel and Casino on the Strip. Scotty, Evan, and I skipped school to watch it in person. It was an implosion. Four floors of dynamite that went boom and brought the entire thing down on itself. Implosions are deceptive, because they just look like a collapse. Like it seems less messy and violent than an explosion.
They may be less messy in that they consolidate the debris to a more manageable space, but they are no less violent. The power, the force that’s required to bring a building down is just as severe as that required to blow it up. Entropy. Chaos. All that science shit. But when all is said and done, the only thing that matters is that something extremely fucking major is happening to a physical object.
Without the ability to scream, or moan, or shout, “Oh, fuck yeah!” what Maddie and I experience is something akin to an implosion. All that force. All that shared energy. All that power between us. It just causes us to collapse into each other.
Her body goes limp beneath me, drained of all its strength, and I fall limp on top of her, equally spent. It’s not that we fucked so hard. We’ve fucked harder. It’s that we were both revving at an insanely high acceleration when we crashed into each other. And now we should be allowed to rest.
But we can’t.
I pull out of her, and it’s the loneliest my cock has felt in a long, long time. Probably ever. The look on her face when I exit makes me wanna murder somebody. I mean, the truth is it makes me wanna cry, but I can’t afford to do that right now, so I convert that sorrow into anger.
Because as I pull my pants up and she cleans herself off, I am reminded of where we are. I almost forgot. Hidden behind this dune, bathed in the wash of a Christmas moon, it felt for a second like we were actually living the life I wished for us when she was packing in her bedroom. In some hidden locale, stashed away in paradise, living out our days off the grid and all alone.
But yet again, I hear shouting in Spanish from down the beach and remember, yeah, we ain’t there just yet.
I grab her panties when she’s not looking and stick them in my pocket. I don’t know why I do it. I just want to keep this moment with me for longer or something. It’s weird, I suppose. Or else it makes all the sense in the world. I dunno.
And then, leaning close to her, I whisper, “Hey. So, what happened? Why didn’t you check in?”
“I couldn’t,” she says, straightening out her dress and sitting up next to me to also look and see if anyone might be coming.
“Why? Did he, like, fucking tie you up or something?” I want the answer to be ‘no,’ but a small part of me wants it to be ‘yes,’ so that before getting out of here I can feel justified in killing this motherfucker.
“No. No, we had dinner and then he watched me sleep.”
“He watched you sleep?”
“I think so.”
“Jesus.” Then I amend with, “I mean, he’s not wrong to want to do that, but still… Fucking weirdo.”
“Yeah. Tyler?” she says, with more concern than makes me comfortable.
“Yeah?” I stroke her cheek.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Huh. That is not what I expected to come out of her mouth next.
“Whattayou mean?”
“I mean… I mean, yeah, I know I didn’t call, but shit, dude. I had it under control.”
“Well, I didn’t fuckin’ know. And we had a deal.”
“Fair enough, but the deal didn’t include you starting a full-scale war with the guy.”
The phrase “full-scale war” lands on me hard. “Shit. I am Rambo,” I mutter.
“What?”
“Nothing. Look, I’m fuckin’ sorry, but I don’t care what kind of warranty you got when you bought that drone. Shit’s defective.”
“Or you can’t fly it.”
I’m not arguing this point right now. “Hey! All I could think was that something fucking awful had happened to you and I had to come get you. If I had done it my way, I would’ve just crashed through the front door and started looking to make sure you were all right. I thought I owed it to you to be a little more tactical.”
“So you’re saying this is my fault?”
“Yeah. Maybe? Little bit?”
She looks at me like she can’t fucking believe my gall. And she shouldn’t. But then she laughs. She laughs the laugh of a person you’ve known your whole life but who still manages to surprise you. She laughs the laugh that you laugh when you’re infuriated and scared, but when you step back to look at everything, it’s just too ridiculous not to laugh. She laughs the laugh of a person who loves you.
Me.
Who loves me.
She loves me.
And that’s all that matters in the world.
Well, that and the distant shouting I continue to hear that reminds me we still have to get the fuck out of here alive somehow.
“What’s with all this?” she asks, referring to my dark clothes.
“Tactical night operations. I slipped it on when this went from a daytime raid to an evening affair.”
“An evening affair,” she repeats.
“Yeah. Sorry I didn’t bring a tux. This’ll have to do. But look, while I could chat fashion choices—you look great, by the way—all night, we gotta get the fuck outta here.”
“No shit. Where’s your car?”
You know those moments in life when someone asks you a question that you know the answer to, but your brain just malfunctions and it’s like they’re s
peaking, I dunno, Basque or some shit?
I do.
“What’s that?” I ask, like I didn’t hear her.
“Where’s your car? Can we make it there from here without being seen?”
Again, it’s like she’s talking Zulu.
“My car… Yeah. Um. So…”
This is not a moment when you want to be slowing down the forward momentum of a situation by explaining a lot of shit, so in this second, I’m figuring out how to explain clearly but still efficiently. Her mouth is open in a way that suggests maybe if she prompts me to speak, she’ll somehow plant the words in mine.
Just like when I went to tail Logan into the strip club the day he got his ass kicked by Maddie and I found myself playing checkers instead of chess, not thinking two moves ahead… Boy, do I have egg on my face now.
And then something either fortunate or unfortunate happens, depending on how you look at it.
It’s fortunate inasmuch as I am spared the embarrassment of explaining to Maddie what happened to Chocolate Thunder. (That’s what I named the Defender. So dubbed after my favorite basketball player of all time, the great Darryl Dawkins, who played on the Philadelphia 76ers with Dr. J. Before my time, but in clips I’ve seen, dude was a savage on the rim. RIP, Double D. Wow. So not the time to be thinking about this…)
It is deeply unfortunate in that apparently even thinking about Unlucky Logan has summoned him into being. Because from behind us, in the total opposite direction from which we’ve been looking, I hear what feels to my ear like the bolt of a Kalashnikov rifle being cocked, followed by, “Tyler. My amigo. So good to see you again.”
I close my eyes, take a breath, open them and see Maddie looking terrified, before I turn to—sure enough—see good old Logan strolling up with his fucked-up face and his AK-47. Shit. Unlucky Tyler doesn’t have the same ring, but it’s what I am at the moment. Or maybe just Stupid fuckin’ Tyler. But. I gotta be me. So…
“Logan! Oh, shit! Are you my Secret Santa? Well, color me surprised.”
Logan smiles a little and nods. It looks like it hurts him to smile, with his busted chops and all, and that makes me happy. Ricky, who is on Logan’s six, and who looks incredibly unsettled, does not smile. Eh. Fuck him. I know it was a solid joke.
In reference to Ricky, I say, “Hey, look! It’s your girlfriend! I haven’t seen the two of you together since I fucked him up in the alley that time. Wow… Logan. I gotta say, he looks like he’s healed up from that beating. You? Buddy. Did Maddie have another go at you?”
I like that move for a couple reasons. One: It lets Ricky know that I’m not stupid enough to blow his cover. I can tell he appreciates it because his body language shifts ever so subtly. And two: It pisses Logan off.
On the other hand, Maddie is looking at me like I’m out of my mind. Which, I mean, shit, I am. She shouldn’t be that shocked. She knows me pretty good. Anyway.
Logan keeps smiling and nodding. I swear to fuck, it’s like the guy went to cartoon villain school or some shit. So silly. But, sadly, whether it’s silly and cliché or not, when the butt of an AK smacks you in the chops, it stings a bit. Even me.
My head snaps back and I black out for just the tiniest of seconds. I can feel my knees get weak and I almost think I might actually go down, but then my nervous system rallies, everything comes back into view, and I shake the lights back on.
I smile and ask, “That wasn’t my present, was it? ’Cause honestly, it’s kind of a shitty gift.”
I can tell he’s a little confused by the fact that I’m still standing, and he winds back like he’s gonna give it another try, but when I lean my face toward him and point at the spot on my cheek where I suggest he aim next, he grabs Maddie by the arm instead. Fuck. Shit. Goddamn it. Did my fucking wise-ass behavior just make life worse for Maddie? Son of a bitch.
He shouts something to Ricky in Spanish as he’s dragging Maddie away and Ricky comes up next to me and punches me as hard as he can (I’m guessing) in the ribs. And no kidding, it’s the best punch I’ve ever been hit with. He nails it perfectly. Right in the soft spot just below the rib cage. Not quite a kidney punch, which I’m supposing he avoided on purpose, but in a pretty tender location and with enough force that I feel it. I’m impressed. I’ll have to remember to compliment him later.
As Maddie’s being dragged off, she looks over her shoulder at me, her red hair being blown about in the night sky, the urgent confusion and pleading in her eyes. I tense to go charging for her immediately. Ricky grabs my arm and pulls me back.
“You will fucking die,” he whispers to me.
“Yeah? And?” I ask him.
“And so will Maddie.” Fuck. He’s right. “I can help her, but you gotta let me. Don’t fuck me here more than you already have.”
I glance at him. He means it. I can tell. I nod and shout toward Maddie, “I’ll see you later, babe! We’ll unwrap presents and roast chestnuts and shit!”
Ricky steps in front of me, gets right in my face. “What the fuck is wrong with you? The both of you?”
I contemplate the answer to that. There’s so much to unpack in the question, I don’t even know where to start. So, I just shrug and say, “You don’t find us charming? That’s weird. We’re super fucking charming. Everybody says so.”
And when he grabs my arm and starts leading me toward whatever the fuck is waiting for me inside, I swear to God, he cracks the hint of a smile.
Chapter Twenty-Two - Maddie
There’s no talking as Logan pulls me along by the arm. No threats. No dramatic declarations. Nothing. The bedlam that was going on before, with everyone running around all frantic, has calmed and the lapping of waves on the shore is the only sound. It’s possible that from somewhere I might hear the playing of Carol of the Bells, but it might also just be my imagination. I’ve always loved that song.
I’m tempted to speak, but what the hell am I going to say? There’s no explaining I can do. Nothing I can offer to get myself out of this. I can only assume he saw me and Tyler fucking. Or, at least I hope he did. I hope he saw it and it made him furious. I hope he saw my ass pressing into the sand and Tyler’s big cock sliding in and out. And I hope it made him hard and lonely.
Fuck him.
Once we’re inside, he drags me back to the room where I was before. The one that’s set up for dinner. The one with the champagne flute that has the pill in it. Had. Had the pill in it. The flute is still there, the champagne is still filling it, but the pill has disappeared. Has it dissolved finally? Did someone see the pill sitting in the bubbly liquid and pull it out? Where did it go? If it’s the former, then maybe there’s still a chance Carlos will drink it and knock himself out? If it’s the latter… I’m screwed. More screwed. Whatever. Who gives a shit?
Carlos is sitting at the table smoking a cigar. The hazy, grey-white smoke hovers in the space like a misty morning fog. The smell is rich and round and reminds me of Pete a little bit. I take a breath and close my eyes for a moment.
“Madison,” Carlos says. “How was your stroll?” He takes a long puff off his cigar, throws his head back, blows the smoke out.
I don’t say anything. Again, I see no point.
Logan shoves me further into the room, toward Carlos. “She was with him,” he says.
Carlos nods, pursing his lips. He tilts his head back again, like he’s contemplating something. He takes another puff off his cigar and asks, “Which him, exactly?”
“The Tyler him. He’s here. He’s the one.”
“I see,” says Carlos. “And what were they doing? The two of them?”
I look at Logan. He looks at me. To hell with it.
“We were fucking,” I say. “I fucked him. He fucked me. We fucked. He’s my boyfriend. I missed him. That’s what you do.”
Logan’s bad eye is still too swollen for me to gauge an expression, but his good eye goes as wide as it can. Carlos’s expression, on the other hand, doesn’t change.
“And where is this Tyle
r now?” Carlos asks.
“Ricky has him. I’m going to go talk with him myself,” says Logan.
Carlos takes another puff, then rests his cigar on an ashtray sitting right by that still barely bubbling glass of champagne. He stands. “Very good. But please, before you kill him, find out exactly from whom he got his hands on one of my drones.”
There are two things inside those eighteen words that snap my attention up to Carlos real, real hard and cause my breath to catch in my throat.
Logan nods, gives me a shit-eating grin, and goes, closing the door behind him and leaving me and Carlos alone. Carlos taps his fingers on the table twice and then clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth five times. I find myself acutely aware of the specifics of everything happening at the moment.
He picks up a champagne glass and takes a sip. Not the champagne glass. A champagne glass. What was intended to be my champagne glass. Shit. Then he wanders over to the tray of tamales I requested, which have appeared in my absence, and picks one up. He smells it.
“They are very good. You are right to enjoy them. That is assuming you actually do.”
He cocks his head, as if he’s asking me a question. I say nothing. He keeps the tamale in his hand as he wanders over to me.
“Oh, my sweet Madison. It is very hard to be me. I know, I know, what could be hard about it? Right? I have money. I have power. But that all comes at a great cost. Responsibility. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, as they say.”
He’s circling me now. Like a shark. At least as far as I understand the way sharks behave. Or it could be like a vulture circling an animal, waiting for it to die. Either way, it’s not a comforting feeling.
“People think I am crazy. I know this. Which is good. Because it means that all the work I have done to make people believe I am is working. Can I ask you… Do you think I am crazy?” He’s behind me, leaning over my shoulder, pulling my hair back to whisper the question into my ear. “Or perhaps you just think I am stupid. Love. Sick. Controlled by my…” He presses his crotch into my ass. My ass that is only covered by this thin dress, since I don’t have any panties on. I saw Tyler take them. Weirdo.
