Without Scars

by Jones, Ayla

  I clenched my teeth as a memory I didn’t want to revisit pinged. “I think I liked it better when we partied on campus,” I said.

  “Wait. Erin had the drunkest party? Oh really?” Nikki giggled and turned to me. “Oh God. Babe, did you stay with her or go out that night? I bet you went out, didn’t you? I want to hear about it.” The old memories finally rippled across everyone’s faces, and some of the energy at the table died. “Oh…I…uh,” Nikki stammered as she realized she’d crossed into weird conversation territory.

  “I wasn’t there…” I explained.

  “He wasn’t able to make it…” Erin said, a nervous smile on her face for a moment. She glanced at me with a look that was simultaneously forgiving and apologetic. She squeezed Jerron’s arm. “We should check in with the sitter. Whitaker gets up around this time like clockwork. Hey, Samira Morris…Harrison has a baby, too, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking the out she’d thrown me, “Lux Charlotte.”

  “Oh, she’s Lux now?” Nikki teased. “He calls her Booger.”

  “I can’t believe she got Fratty Pat Harrison to settle down. They were always cute together, though. I bet Lux is adorable,” Erin continued. I nodded and passed my phone to her so she could see pictures. The conversation shifted and stayed light after Joel announced that he and his girlfriend had a No Babies Ever pact going. But as I spied my girlfriend strangling her napkin on her lap through the rest of dinner, I knew she felt like she’d done something wrong.

  We declined the invitation to go barhopping in San Francisco because our flight was so early the next morning, and took a cab back to Leeward so Nikki could see what it looked like at night. She also wanted to get some souvenirs before the campus bookstore closed. I told her to take her time inside and that I’d be right back.

  “You’re gonna go buy pills, aren’t you?” she asked, frozen in front of the store. “You’ve been watching your phone a lot today…”

  “Yeah…”

  “From a student? A drug dealer? Who?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Nik.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  “No. Absolutely not,” I said, backing away from her. “I love you, baby. I won’t be gone more than an hour.”

  The look of defeat on her face almost killed me. “Okay, an hour.”

  I met the dealer whom the Miami City alum knew at a coffee shop in a nearby city. We didn’t even make any small talk. Nothing beyond a nod. He produced the bottle of pills as soon as he sat down and was a ghost once the cash was counted.

  Patches of the bottle’s original label were still visible. A prescription for something with an L and an X. How did I even know that all of this was actually what I wanted? This could’ve been reckless drug dealer chemistry. There wasn’t a Yelp for pushers. Fuck. I’d definitely upped the sleaze factor. Shame and guilt stiffened my muscles as I left the coffee shop.

  Nikki was sitting on the edge of the fountain outside of the bookstore when I got back to the campus, and she patted the spot next to her. She hugged me tightly and inhaled against my shirt. “Let me see it…” she said. I nervously passed the bottle to her, and she held it tightly for a second but stayed silent. I’d been intuitive enough to take some out of the bottle and put them in my pockets before getting here.

  “Just a few more weeks—”

  “How many more few weeks, Charlie?”

  “Not many,” I mumbled. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her shake her head.

  She pulled her purchases out of a plastic bag. “I spent more than two hundred dollars in there,” she said. Her voice was shaking but her mood was lightening up. “I saw a cute shirt for dance rehearsal, and then there were baby clothes for Lux. Future Leeward Student t-shirt? How could I pass that up? Leggings for me with ‘Leeward’ going down the sides, too.”

  “Nice. So, Erin sent me a text. She really likes you. Said I hope I know how lucky I am.”

  “I really like her, too. I kind of felt like I made everyone uncomfortable, though.”

  “Wasn’t you. There’s a story.” I sighed. “Erin and I had a really bad breakup a few weeks before her birthday my last year here. I slept with someone else after a major argument. I cheated on her. We weren’t even speaking by her birthday. I wasn’t talking to any of the people who were at Benihana tonight, anymore. I wasn’t really on good terms with them by graduation. We’ve only recently rekindled our friendship within the last year or so.”

  Nikki’s face slowly wrinkled into concern. “Why?”

  “My writing was getting rejected a lot at the time. It was hard but I still wanted it, you know? The dream. So, I figured it was time to learn my craft, learn trends, and get better. My mom’s friend from law school practices entertainment law, and she got me an internship with Richard Mauser. He’s an agent who sells scripts and manuscripts to movie studios. He’s a juggernaut, with a lot of box office wins and hit TV shows under his belt. I interned for him the summer between freshman and sophomore years in L.A. During sophomore year, I formally asked him to be my mentor. During senior year, I worked two jobs on campus to earn money just to be able to fly down and be his weekend assistant, too, Thursday to Sunday. I’d crash with a friend of my parents and make the forty-minute commute to Mauser’s house or his West Hollywood office.

  “I never brought up How to Fuck up a Friendship. I kept my mouth shut and helped him get through his slush pile of manuscripts. I asked a lot of questions about the industry. He let me sit in on a few meetings with the authors he represented, and I talked to them, too. He made me feel like I was a part of it. And maybe he boosted me up because he knew how badly I wanted it, and he saw a way to keep me around as his assistant. Because I was willing to do anything—pick up his grandkids and drive them to Orange County and babysit them for the day, take his clothes to the dry cleaners, and run errands in the middle of the night, if he needed it. Anything.

  “I was working up the nerve to ask him to take a look at How to Fuck up a Friendship. I was going to do a formal submission with a query letter and everything. I was planning to ask him first, though. I guess in my anxiety over the whole thing, I left the manuscript at the intern desk, and someone else included it with the manuscript submissions. One day he called me into his office, and there it was. Except things didn’t go well. Mauser just laughed. He was so angry. I don’t know if he thought I was using him to get ahead or what, but he trashed it. He was my mentor and he just…destroyed it, in the worst way. It wasn’t constructive at all. He made it personal. He finished by saying I needed to remember my place. And that I was just a favor…”

  My voice shook and I got silent. Nikki squeezed my hand. “Tell me,” she urged. The memory was grating my psyche, and every part of me felt raw and ready to bleed.

  “It’s not that I thought I deserved recognition, Nik. I just wanted the chance. Being a writer is the only thing I’ve ever wanted in the whole world, but I had to face it. I wasn’t good enough, especially if it was coming from a guy who knew the industry, who had best-selling authors walking through his office. Regardless of his feelings about me trying something underhanded, if my work had been good he would’ve told me so. I felt like a failure. And failing at this was different. So I thought I would never be good enough. I knew right then I couldn’t write anymore, and I stopped. There was too much pain associated with it. But getting to the point where you decide to give up on your dream is worst than any rejection; it was a death itself. I didn’t know who I was without it. The loss ripped me open. It tore my soul out.

  “I was embarrassed because Devin, Mark, Erin, and Joel had been rooting for me. They were all so sure that this was going to be my big break. After that, I shut down and got distant. Cut my friends out. I lashed out a lot. Said a lot of things I wish I hadn’t to them. Erin, especially. She saw me go into that girl’s room that night. I was probably the cruelest to Erin. But it was all just to get them to stay away from me. I didn’t want them to see me being such a fucki
ng loser, you know? Samira was the only person who managed to get through to me and pull me out of it, but by then everyone else was done with me. It took me a really long time to pick up How to Fuck up a Friendship again. I saw everything that was so fucking shitty about it. Mauser was all over it. I know it seems stupid that I would let something like this debilitate me—” I cut myself off when Nikki shook her head. Her palms landed on my cheeks, and there was comforting reassurance in her eyes.

  “It doesn’t seem stupid. At all. Look at how much worse I made things when I lost SCB. It was much easier to slide into the spiral when it was gone. I get it. We’re people who live our art. So it’s possible for it to kill us, too…”

  “I just have all these worries, Nik. Did I get lucky? Did Hillington see my skill or a popular show they could capitalize on? Am I good enough now? I don’t know the answers and that scares me more than anything.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Nikki

  “You want it…” Charlie said, his smile spreading slowly above me.

  I nodded. “I do.” His legs tensed on either side of my shoulders. With my head nearly hanging off the bed, I reached up and curled my fingers into the waist of his jeans. My thumb brushed over the button.

  “…Like this?” he continued.

  “Yes,” I said. Charlie grinned devilishly. The thing I loved most about our sex life was that we hadn’t awakened any beasts in each other (this beast was awakened when I bought my first vibrator at sixteen); we’d only acknowledged what was already there. Now we were just feeding it. I’d always thought people took their luck for granted when they landed someone who was really sexually compatible with them. I wanted to do everything with him. Enter: upside down blowjob—there were benefits to being Generation Porn.

  Charlie already saw galaxies when he was in my mouth. But I hoped this move would become so legendary that he’d jerk off to this very moment whenever we weren’t together. I hoped it would become The Thing he’d jerk off to.

  His breaths stalled and he grabbed my wrists. As he stared down at me, I saw the same violent need in his eyes that was building in my chest. It made me squirm. Made me fumble with the button of his jeans. He got to me even while I was getting to him.

  “Okay then. Open…” Charlie stroked my lips with his thumb until they parted. “No…more.” I formed a bigger O-shape as he helped me unfasten his jeans. They fell. Then his boxers did, too. He held his hardening dick over my face.

  “Baby?” I said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Slowly…okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “And keep your balls off my face?”

  Charlie laughed. I worked my jaw for a moment. Hm. It was different from this angle. But I could totally handle this. Or maybe I would overpromise and my gag reflex would make me under-deliver. Taking his shaft in my hand, I brought the tip down to my mouth. As the head of his cock teased my bottom lip, I swirled my tongue over it. He sucked in a wisp of air. He guided himself into my mouth slowly, thrusting gently between my lips as I sucked. Within seconds, Charlie was groaning unlike anything I’d ever heard out of him. It was so damn hot. I drove my fingers inside myself, got turned on by my own wetness, and worked my hand until my wrist hurt.

  Charlie squeezed my breast as he moved back and forth, his legs bumping the bed in a rhythm. I tightened my mouth around his dick, humming a moan—I was coming already. I pulled my mouth away and he finished me off with his fingers. Grabbing his length again, I sucked harder this time as he pumped.

  There was a rumbling grunt from him, fingers pressing into the flesh near my neck. “Fuck, I’m—” No more words were there. Dick deep in my mouth, throbbing against my tongue, he came. I was indifferent about swallowing. But chalk it up to one of those things I was willing to do for love. On occasion. For the sideways blowjob. “Fuck…ah, fuck…” he said in a strained voice. I went in for the kill. Kept sucking. Charlie was nearly crumbling to the floor by the time I let him go. He stepped back slowly. Then stumbled backward all the way until he ran into something. Laughing, I flipped to my stomach. “You’re gonna fucking kill me, Nik…” he whispered. His grin was lazy and the wall was definitely holding him up. Upside down blowjob was a win. “Do we have to go to dinner with Tyler and Lola? Because I’m cool with dying right here instead.”

  “Yes. Remember other people? We’ve been indoors way too much.”

  “Fair enough, but I still…hmfph…whoa.” He tripped over his suitcase on his walk back to the bed. I rolled my eyes. His crap was all over my apartment. I wasn’t the neatest person but my clutter was manageable. He’d been sleeping—living—here since we got back from California, only going home to replace dirty clothes with clean ones. My place was apparently quieter when he needed to work on scripts. I thought he had another reason. But this place wasn’t built for two. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready to have a live-in boyfriend.

  “Can you put that somewhere it won’t kill either of us? Like where you live? And while we’re on the subject…you’re moving my things around, and not putting them back where you got them.”

  “Damn, okay, babe…”

  “I’m serious, Charlie,” I grumbled.

  “Got it…” He chugged from a glass of water that was on my bureau. I sighed. He’d just taken more meds. I knew it. When we locked eyes, he knew that I knew. God, I’d lost count now, but he’d taken at least six today. Six. God. He was barely sleeping. I had to remind him to eat sometimes. His heart rate and blood pressure…what were those like? What if Charlie fainted one day? What if his heart just stopped? What would I do? I didn’t remember CPR. I sat up suddenly as panic closed around my lungs. His skin looked flushed. But from pills or blowjob?

  After he made sure his suitcase was no longer a deathtrap, he hopped back to the bed, pinning me beneath him. I didn’t bother with the charade of trying to break free. There was no fight in me when Charlie’s body was on top of mine. Not when he stared at me like he was still peeling away layers and finding more parts of me to love underneath. It was a beautiful thing to see. It was a beautiful thing to know.

  Already my worry was fading, my skin trilling under his fingers. Wow. Being in love could just drug you into submission. Sink you into fiery oblivion. And you’d let yourself burn. You’d burn with them. No one really wanted to just be loved anyway.

  We wanted to be consumed.

  Sometimes in the moments right after we were done fucking, when he was still inside me, and I was all doped up on oxytocin, my nails still digging into his back, I almost told him I belonged to him. It scared me that I could think that, but he owned so much of me. It scared me even more what I could probably convince myself to do for Charlie.

  Except letting him move in with me, of course. Because no. No. Nope. Nooo.

  Way too much adulting. Plus, I was already turning a blind eye to something else he was doing that I didn’t like.

  “You wouldn’t mind it so much if you just got used to me being here…for a long while,” he said. Drawing his fingers down my sides and over my bare stomach, he kissed between my legs. Soft lips on wet lips. Charlie flicked his eyes up to mine; his were full of hunger and taunting restraint. Then his tongue swiveled. My back arched.

  “I know what you’re doing, you jerk,” I croaked out. But God I loved it when Charlie went down on me while we were talking.

  “I haven’t even begun to do what I’m doing,” he warned before biting my thigh. Charlie flopped onto his back and stroked his cock. “Now, come get on my dick.”

  Damn.

  I straddled him and eased myself down onto him once he was hard. Charlie stuck his thumb in my mouth then rubbed my clit as I rode him. As much as his being here was wearing on my nerves, we were taking full advantage of his presence. My bed had become a deserted island where the stranded inhabitants spent the time fucking each other into exhaustion and watching Breaking Bad reruns. Sometimes at the same time…

  “You have a key…” I said when we were finishe
d and I lay next to him. Orgasms weren’t going to stop this discussion. “You’re not moving in here.”

  “I don’t think it’s safe for you to be coming home by yourself to an empty place, as late as you work sometimes.”

  “I’m a big girl, and Mr. Donovan and I get home around the same time. He always waits for me and walks me up to my floor, even though he’s two floors down.”

  “Is he into you?”

  “Um…no.”

  “Wait, why isn’t he into you? You’re amazing!”

  I laughed. “Charlie, I’m serious. Stop moving my things around. And pick up your shit. I’m going to get in the shower, so we’re not late.” I jumped when his palm collided with my butt. I sighed with a smile and went into the bathroom. Stepping into the tub, I leaned against the tile wall as the shower water warmed. I didn’t get under until steam was overwhelming the bathroom. I liked imagining that Charlie wrote things on my skin he would never share with anyone when he traced the curves of my body: his scenes and his sins. They were there—all his secrets—until I rinsed them away.

  But if I really thought I was so special to him, the keeper of things that sacred, why was I fighting the chance to have our own corner of the world right here? Hmm. Okay, maybe soon I’d let him win this round and try out this cohabitation thing. It would be a trial run, of course.

  I was out in a flash, and I slipped on a simple black sheath dress and a pair of silver flats while Charlie was showering. On the bed next to his clothes was a gift box for Tyler, a watch for his birthday. I’d told him he didn’t have to, but he’d insisted. The actual day of Ty’s birth wasn’t until the following week, and Charlie was meeting my parents during that birthday dinner. He’d even bought a cake for Ty, for us to take over there.

  Charlie got dressed even faster than I did. We’d probably beat Lola and Ty to the restaurant. His cell rang just as we reached his car. When he answered, he was barely able to get a word in after hello. “It’s Lola...” She’s hysterical, he mouthed as he passed the phone to me. “She said she’s been trying to call you.”